Chris Pandolfi on the State of Bluegrass

[David]

Thoughts to consider from someone with an intimate knowledge of the current bluegrass world. I still don't like Yonder, and Mumford & Sons shore ain't bluegrass, but I can appreciate what he's saying in terms of growing the scene.

http://chrispandolfi.com/?p=567#more-567

[sgarrity]

Did anybody else actually read his blog post? There is wisdom in those words and I agree completely with him!

[Mandoviol]

Chris has it right. How will you get people interested/psyched if you put severe limitations on what people can do with the music?

[David]

Geez, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to actually read this and respond. Thanks guys!

[John McGann]

Thanks for posting, lots of good food for thought.

[Eliot Greenspan]

More interesting to me than his (I think accurate) appraisal of the fight over the definition of the term "bluegrass," is his very insightful look into the internal process of keeping a band together and growing, and the import of long-term vision, marketing strategy, goals, etc, etc. Very well thought out and presented.

[Jimmie]

Brilliantly thought-out and presented. Thank you for pointing us to this, David.

[Charlieshafer]

Well, just last weekend a friendly competitor/promotor had Dailey and Vincent, as good a bluegrass band as there is right now. I had Nora Jane Struthers at my place, more of a country singer, with bluegrass overtones in the band, but leaning more towards old-time. A good portion of her songs were originals, with fairly unique arrangements. If you're the type who wants to keep score, and you really need to if you want to understand where the music is going, I had 180 people, which I was very pleased with for a young, up-and-coming artist, who is still relatively unknown. Dailey and Vincent drew 120. In the past few years, while I've had non-bluegrass specific acts like Hot Club of Cowtown, Crooked Still, Bearfoot, or Alasdair Fraser, etc, or the Sweetback Sisters (check them out!) for another young, unknown act, I've averaged in the low 200's. The "competitor" (I use the term somewhat unwillingly, as he's a friend) who does mostly all bluegrass, pulled in 14 for Del McCoury, maybe 110 for the Grascals, about 120 for Michael Cleveland, etc. His exceptions are Tim O'Brien and Tony Rice, which will sell out at 300+.

A look into the bluegrass-specific audience, at least in New England, shows a LOT of grey hairs. I think it is a function of both marketing and the exclusive club-type nature that comes with the died-in-the-wool traditionalists. Groups like the Mammals, the Horseflies or Crooked Still can (or could) launch into a dead-on bluegrass set of tunes that brings the crowd to their feet every time, but without the vibe that most of what they play will be new and fresh, they wouldn't draw flies.

If traditional bluegrass wants to grow, they need to as actively promote the alt-grass scene, or whatever you want to call it. There's a place for tradition, and there's also as many places not to follow tradition. Heck we had a tradition up here in New England years ago where we'd burn witches at the stake. Great sport for the entire town. But, we got over it.

There are a ton of ways to attract the younger audiences, but it has to be done on a grass-roots basis I believe. We do it through workshops with the kid's fiddle club we have, and this fall we'll be expanding it so some of the local youth symphony string sections from various orchestras will be required to attend per their respective directors, as a rounding out of their string education. There are other ways to be sure, but I do like the idea of enforced fun.

[Willie Poole]

I just think David is trying to get me all riled up again about this subject but I won`t say anything except that you yougsters just don`t have any idea what bluegrass is or was meant to be....An electric bass certainly could be used for a bluegrass band but not a traditional bluegrass band, there is a difference...I saw a banjo player come on the stage and played through a some electronic gizmo, something like a wah-wah pedal, now don`t tell me that is acceptable in bluegrass....

I`m not going to get into this again on here....

Willie

[Rob Fowler]

I
I`m not going to get into this again on here....

Willie,
Ya' just did.

I really thought it was a great post and kudos to Chris Pandolfi for taking the time to write such a timely piece and his own reflection on his experience with his band, The Infamous Stringdusters.

As much as we like it or don't like it the blanketing label of "bluegrass" is here to stay.....even for bands that really aren't bluegrass to the hard-core traditionalists that were at the first-ever bluegrass festival and were there to hear Bill pull out his first ever G chop chord or the first time he ever played Tennessee Blues (well....before bluegrass, I guess, then). Bands like Railroad Earth, Green Sky, Yonder Mountain, Infamous Stringdusters, etc. are going to be labeled bluegrass and I think that's fine....as long as they understand where the roots of the music came from and they have an understanding and respect for that.

SLIGHT GRIPE TIME (mostly Yonder gripe):
The only thing I wish is that these newer grassy bands stop all playing solely through pickups and get some high quality mics, like the Punch Brothers or the Jaybirds. I went to a Yonder Mountain show 2 weeks ago and I cringed every time I heard Jeff Austin solo with his pickup-burdened Nugget. He might of well had a Michael Kelly or something as it would have sounded the same. Sorry if that's harsh...just not a big fan of his style or sound, I guess. Yonder also had a smoke machine and an expensive light system that really added so much to the show...Ummmm.........If we get into stuff like that then I see where Willie is coming and understand his point from but we can't get all hung up on that at the same time, either.

Everything must evolve and change.

Anyways...

[mandolirius]

SLIGHT GRIPE TIME (mostly Yonder gripe):
The only thing I wish is that these newer grassy bands stop all playing solely through pickups and get some high quality mics, like the Punch Brothers or the Jaybirds. I went to a Yonder Mountain show 2 weeks ago and I cringed every time I heard Jeff Austin solo with his pickup-burdened Nugget. He might of well had a Michael Kelly or something as it would have sounded the same. Sorry if that's harsh...just not a big fan of his style or sound, I guess. Yonder also had a smoke machine and an expensive light system that really added so much to the show...Ummmm.........If we get into stuff like that then I see where Willie is coming and understand his point from but we can't get all hung up on that at the same time, either.

Everything must evolve and change.

Anyways...

It's not harsh at all, in my view. In fact, I think it's technology that's part of the great divide. The pickup question is certainly part of it but I'm thinking back to the part of the piece where he talked about a promoter banning electric basses and in-ear monitors. The electric bass thing is truely a dead horse but the in-ear monitors made me stop and think a bit. Regardless of what brand of bluegrass is presented at a festival, I'm not sure it's the place for stage effects like smoke machines etc.

It makes me wonder how far it may go. I really don't think anyone wants to see a performer go all "garth brooks" at a festival. Musically, I agree with what's been said. The demographics don't lie. Bluegrass has evolved and will continue to do so. But the bluegrass festival is a kind of special thing too and I wouldn't want to see too much of the club/concert vibe brought to it.

[Jordan Ramsey]

I come from TN, and I'm a die-hard bluegrass traditionalist. I live in CO going on four years now, literally right down the hill from Jeff Austin, and Chris's manifesto definitely struck a chord with my situation as a working musician on the Front Range. I love traditional bluegrass, and have griped for years about "jam grass" (which is king around here), even jokingly complained to Jeff about "pluggin' that Nugget" after I met and got to know him. We can bitch all day long, but, ultimately, these guys are making money... REAL money. They have an amazing following, which = nice homes, nice cars, nice instruments, families, etc... pretty incredible for any musician, and especially for "bluegrass" musicians. The sooner that the die-hards learn to accept and tap into an association with this kind of success, rather than bastardizing it, the better off all working musicians in and around this genre will be. Kudos to Panda for writing this.

[Charlieshafer]

I think griping about whether or not it's traditional bluegrass is missing the point completely. The new guys don't WANT to be labeled as traditional bluegrass. Financially, that's the kiss of death. They WANT to be seen as alt-grass, new-grass, whatever. They're not trying to change "traditional" bluegrass; they're not trying to change any traditions associated with bluegrass. They're trying to play something different, that most of the time uses traditional instruments and some tunes, but that's about it.

It's the fork-in-the-road thing. Traditional players are taking one road, the new guys another. Everyone is happy with the road they're on. The trouble starts when one group starts throwing junk at the other. The new guys DO NOT spell the end of bluegrass, and are most likely critical to the preservation of it. Whether one loved Old And In The Way or thought it was the end of the world is irrelevant, the fact that they brought many to the traditional bluegrass is undeniable. The same will happen with the other bands now out there. They open the door to exploration, which will lead some back to traditional bluegrass.

Wanna see bluegrass die? Keep up the crotchety attitude about tradition, and it'll happen soon enough. Look out over the audiences next time, and in all but a very few parts of the country, it's an old audience, pure and simple. Attendance numbers don't lie, and it won't get better with a bunch of bitter old traditionalists.

[AlanN]

It's one thing to voice an opinion as a fan/listener/seat-in-the crowd/for-fun picker. Quite another thing to be out there as a working musician, trying to make a living. It's an age-old thing, with bluegrass, jazz, indie rock, whatever. I remember seeing Count Basie at a Rte. 4 Paramus, NJ small restaurant called The Steak Pit. Long after the hey-day of Basie Big Band, near the end of his career. A gig is a gig, as they say.

Hats off to the bands who are attracting younger folks and making a go of it. They can call the music they play what they want to. You'll always have the grumblers. After a TRU set last summer, I heard similar grumblings at the campsites. I just smiled. The Seldom Scene were within a similar deal, albeit in a different era. And frankly, I think the grumblers actually enhance the jam-band appeal, at least to the younger set.

"It ain't my Daddy's bluegrass...Thank God!"

[Dave Cowles]

As the President of a fairly new bluegrass association in Florida, I was responsible for creating a Mission Statement. I used the wording " Bluegrass music and its evolving variants " as a nod to the fact that the music is indeed evolving. I played traditional bluegrass for a long, long time, but was never reluctant to step "outside the box" to include many different types of songs, but still maintaining the instrumentation and presentation that is consistent with the traditional. Although I'm not into smoke machines and lighting effects, I think Pandolfi eloquently and succinctly stated what needed to be said, and thanks for posting this.
Dave

[Scott Tichenor]

Wondering how many of you went a little deeper into this and actually read about the "Bluegrass Nation" web site that's supposed to be the catalyst for the change in bluegrass and particularly IBMA that Chris' nicely written piece refers to. Here it is. The link within that post to the site working document and vision statement is a real eye opener.

Going a little deeper yet, read a re-print of Jon Weisberger's 2005 article Bluegrass - It's not the music and his comments about Chris' piece. By the way, I love the quote within Jon's piece, "Bluegrass—it's not the music, it's the people I can't stand."

Running IBMA is certainly a difficult and thankless task and no one will ever make everyone happy. Personally, I think the only thing that's going to change bluegrass much is the passage of time.

[mritter]

"pulled in 14 for Del McCoury"

Charlie...is that true? If so, very sad.

[AlanN]

I think a '0' must have been left off.

And another thought: when fronting/running a band, the picking is the easy part.

[David]

Yes Willie, I posted this just to get you riled up. Snort!

Charlieshafer your second post hits the nail on the head, said it better than I ever could.

[Charlieshafer]

"pulled in 14 for Del McCoury"

Charlie...is that true? If so, very sad.

Yup, chalk it up to lying on a couch with a laptop. 140 is the correct answer.

[mandolirius]

This seems like such a simple solution I feel there must be something wrong with it. But I can't see what it is.

The idea is simply to create the category of Traditional Bluegrass. That's bluegrass, as we have come to know and love it (well, some of us). Everything else is simple "bluegrass". Because I don't think jamgrass is going to stick as a label. Newgrass didn't and I don't really think a new one is needed anyway. Traditional bluegrass is easily understood and it's exacty true - bluegrass played within a certain tradition.

Ok, tell me. What am I missing?

[Charlieshafer]

This seems like such a simple solution I feel there must be something wrong with it. But I can't see what it is.

The idea is simply to create the category of Traditional Bluegrass. That's bluegrass, as we have come to know and love it (well, some of us). Everything else is simple "bluegrass". Because I don't think jamgrass is going to stick as a label. Newgrass didn't and I don't really think a new one is needed anyway. Traditional bluegrass is easily understood and it's exacty true - bluegrass played within a certain tradition.

Ok, tell me. What am I missing?

I don't think you're missing anything. It's all pretty simple. The best bet would be to do without labels at all, but that's impossible. It actually helps to have some sort of labels when promoting. On the flip side, to accuse bluegrassers of being the only ones this sticky is just wrong. Listen to Baroque fanatics argue about different Bach performances. It's actually funny at times. Jazz can be even worse. There was a long running and well publicized feud between Wynton Marsalis and Lester Bowie on the trad jazz vs. free jazz movements. I know one guy who has virtually every recording that Charlie Parker ever made, including all unreleased outtakes that everyone knows of. He and his friends will sit for hours discussing if the solo on outtake number 26 was better than the one on outtake 11. And what was he thinking, why did he play it that way. Did Thelonious Monk wreck the piano that Earl Hines and Art Tatum develop? Why are we here. I forget...

[TonyP]

good reality check Charles. And thanks for posting that link David, and also the line to Bluegrass Nation Scott. Going to be really interesting where this whole thing goes as I don't think it's going to go where they think it's gonna go. Does it sound like Bluegrass Nation is going to be like a facebook for bluegrass?

[Alex Orr]

I wrote a lengthy response to this but forgot it on another computer. My basic point though, just to play devil's advocate, is that Chris seems to be missing the point about why a lot of traditional bluegrass fans aren't into YMSB, Trampled By Turtles, Railroad Earth, or even the Stringdusters more recent stuff. There seems to be a lot of hand wringing about music politics, the curmudgeonly BG police who refuse to enjoy "modern" BG because of some loyalty to an idealized sound from the '40s, but lost in all that is the fact that the music Pandolfi is advocating and the traditional bluegrass a lot of folks prefer is actually quite different. Sure...same basic instruments, same background for a lot of the performers, sometimes some of the same tunes, but the sound really is quite different. It's like telling someone who digs big band that they MUST like free jazz, and if they don't, it's all because of some twisted sense of loyalty to a genre and the cultural significance of it remaining "pure" in sound. The fact that the big band fan may simply think free jazz sounds like horrific noise is completely disregarded by the advocate for "progress".

Traditional bluegrass folks like shorter songs with some room for improvisation, but basically they like set songs that are short. The territory the Stringdusters are entering is the jam-band sphere where the audiences like looooooooooong improv breaks usually played at high speeds, or just spacey free-form noodling that can go on for over ten minutes at a time. I don't blame a lot of trad folks for not caring for that stuff - it's very different music.

I'd also suggest to Chris that he's neglecting to point out that a lot of the new crowds he's playing to with the Dusters are basically jam band crowds. Speaking as someone who spent a good decade heavily into that scene, I can tell you it's worlds away from the kind of concert experience and audiences that a lot of bluegrass fans may feel comfortable around. It's hard to blame music politics when older and more conservative bluegrass fans (of which there are quite a lot) just don't feel comfortable at shows dominated by hippies and frat-boys dancing around, talking throughout the show, and doing lots of drugs and booze...not that there's any thing wrong with that IMO mind you

Finally, I'd also suggest that Pandolfi's view of the wider audience for bluegrass is a bit too rosy. Again, his band has basically re-modeled itself on the YMSB model in terms of sound and image. The jam banders dig this and hence his band feels acceptance from a new audience, but I'd say that's more because of his band's style. Put Dailey and Vincent, The Gibson Brothers, or Claire Lynch in front of the audiences the Stringdusters are typically playing to now and I do not think they would be very interested. Sure, there will be a handful of folks who may discover more traditional bluegrass through bands like YMSB, and there may be a good number of younger BG fans who are thrilled to see some BG bands adopt more of the musical styles of rock bands, but I think those folks are far smaller in number than the Bluegrass Nation faction is willing to concede.

The truth is that BG is always going to be something of a niche music and it may be time for a lot of folks to just accept that. Maybe take a lesson from the blues and showcase it's variety at more festivals, but also realize what most blues players learned a long time ago, which is that even for excellent progressive blues players, the audience is just not that large. Furthermore, as rock overshadowed the blues, it allowed for both new avenues of exposure for some artists but it also made the blues community establish some boundaries about how far they'd expand the genre definition. When I hear the recent refrains about bluegrassers somehow trying to lump Mumford and Sons into the camp of "progressive bluegrass" I just don't get it. Just because the band has a banjo player they're now bluegrass? Come on! By that logic the polka players of the world could anoint Arcade Fire as a "progressive" polka band because they sometimes have an accordion in their songs. It's like the equivalent of a bunch of blues festival organizers in the late '70s noticing that Boston and their hit song "More Than a Feeling" has become very popular and although they don't play traditional blues, they do feature electric guitars, bass, and drums, and some of their songs feature pentatonic licks, so why not call them progressive blues and see if they can be booked for some blues festivals.

Yup, chalk it up to lying on a couch with a laptop. 140 is the correct answer.

That's just wild. It must be a regional thing. When he plays DC these days, Del is usually booked at the Strathmore music center which can hold a capacity just below 2000.

[allenhopkins]

After reading the Pandolfi article (excellent explanation of his band's dilemmas in expanding their career and audience), I realized it was more about marketing and presentation than it was about their actual musical decisions. I'd sum it up as, "We can't play to rock audiences if we act like a traditional bluegrass band, or call ourselves 'bluegrass,' so we need to change our press package, do more 'jams' and fewer 2 min. 30 sec. instrumentals, and buy a light set and a smoke machine." I'm probably being a bit unkind, and I do appreciate Pandolfi's clear analysis of the alternatives, but isn't this the kind of musical evolution that a zillion other musicians, from Bill Monroe leaving the "brother duet" scene to front a hot string band, to Earl Scruggs going off with Randy and Gary to play to new audiences, to Alison Krause de-bluegrassing her repertoire and performance style, have done before?

New Grass Revival toured as openers for Leon Russell in the '80's, and no doubt aimed their music at the Russell audiences, rather than at the crowds at Bean Blossom or others of that genre. What does emerge from the Pandolfi article, is an ambitious younger musician's impatience with the strictures that IBMA puts on its version of bluegrass. On the other hand, I've read and seen enough to think that IBMA's idea of bluegrass fits very well with the opinions of the traditional bluegrass audience. The question Pandolfi and others like him have to ask themselves, is whether playing by the IBMA rules and pleasing the "trad" BG fans, is a wise career move.

It is obviously frustrating for a younger, more eclectic musician, who loves bluegrass and was raised playing it, to be told that the new ideas he's trying out are unacceptable, and that he has to play it the way it was played in the past, or "take a hike." But I don't think the minds of the IBMA types are going to change. I can remember well arguments about "Keith style" banjo, electric bass, women singing lead, guitar as a lead instrument, use of a snare drum, etc. etc. There is a certain restrictive orthodoxy that keeps the purists happy, but recurrently pushes others away to create their own sounds and labels. If bluegrass is happy with that, OK, but I feel that an interesting and creative element is being made to feel unwelcome. Even Bluegrass Unlimited has started reviewing "On The Edge" recordings that don't fit the "trad" bluegrass template. As the old-line bluegrass audience ages, and Monroe, Flatt, Martin and others recede further into the past, I foresee some changes ahead.