Bluegrass Music

I didn’t grow up listening to bluegrass music or going to bluegrass festivals. My bluegrass exposure up until my early twenties can be summed up as:

• listening to Flatt & Scruggs “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” on the Beverly
  Hillbillies (Jerry Scoggins is singing on that)
• happening to step into the family room where Dad was watching Hee-Haw
  (before quickly leaving because it seemed more embarrassing than funny).

I’m specifically leaving out a bunch of music that I did listen to that wasn’t bluegrass but was definitely inspired or influenced by bluegrass. It wasn’t that I didn’t like bluegrass. I just never heard it. Nobody I knew was interested in it. I never saw bluegrass albums. I wouldn’t have been able to pick a Martin D-28 from a Gibson J-45 out of a lineup. I’m doubtful whether I could identify a mandolin.

I joined the Coast Guard after high school. After I left the Coast Guard I lived in New England. Surprisingly, New England was actually a hotbed of bluegrass music. There was a famous recording company called “Rounder Records” and this was founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts.

There were a number of women that I met who really liked bluegrass music. So I started listening to some of the classics I’d never been exposed to. Like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It was on that album that I first heard Doc Watson.

Doc Watson was blind from a young age (I didn’t know this at the time). He was an amazing flatpicker from North Carolina. After hearing him on the album I saw that he was coming to Boston to play at the Sanders Theater at Harvard University. This is a great venue (acoustically anyway) for music. After he was introduced he was led to his chair center stage by a young lady (that’s when I realized that “Holy shit! He’s blind!”). He played a great concert and after that I went out and bought any of his albums I could find.

Doc Watson led me to all sorts of other players like Bill Monroe (generally considered the Father of Bluegrass), Tony Rice (a bluegrass guitar player with amazing proficiency), Old and In the Way (a band Jerry Garcia played banjo in), and Norman Blake (by the way, Norman Blake played dobro on the album “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”). I continue to enjoy bluegrass music to this day and it’s exciting to see a resurgence of interest in bluegrass. First with the Cohen Brothers movie “O Brother, Where are Thou” and then, more recently, with the popularity of Billy Strings.

I moved to Atlanta in 1990. Met my (future) wife and we had two daughters. This was how I met Jeff Mosier. One of his daughters and one of our daughters were friends so they’d have play dates and get together at either our place or their place. I knew Jeff was a musician but to me he was just a terrific and patient father and all-around good guy. I had no idea he had played with Phish, the Allman Brothers, etc. Or that he had been part of the iconic Atlanta band “Aquarium Rescue Unit”. Jeff was someone, thanks to his Grandma, who went to bluegrass festivals from a young age. Sitting around a campfire till 2 or 3 am and sharing songs and licks.

In 2024, we saw he was playing at a venue in Roswell Georgia called Mimosa Hall. This isn’t that far from us so we got tickets. And in May 2024 we saw him and his brother play. Jeff played the banjo and his brother played his grandmother’s Martin D-35 from the 1990s. It was awesome to finally hear him! He has a very interesting approach to the banjo. And even though we haven’t seen him for years he gave both my wife and I a big hug. So still an incredibly nice human being. I recorded a little snippet of one song they played but mostly I just sat and listened (with a small audience) to him play and tell stories. We were like 10 feet from the music - which is ideal for this type of music.

I’ve gotten into trying to play guitar myself over the years but was always very busy with work and family and never had much time for it. But I’ve got a bit more time now and so I’m trying to learn something beyond some basic blues riffs and the pentatonic scale. I’ll even occasionally try to play bluegrass (Note: I’m not very good at it at the moment). I have a Mavis Mule resonator guitar and I had tuned it down to Open-C. This is C-G-C-G-C-E (from lowest string to highest). I was fooling around with it and recorded this snippet of a “version” (not a good one) of Norman Blake’s classic bluegrass tune “Randall Collins”. This instrument is probably not anyone’s first choice for bluegrass but that didn’t bother me. Everything I play on any of my instruments gives me an opportunity to learn and grow.

If you are interested you should definitely check out Norman Blake. His music is phenomenal. And you should try and listen to all different styles of music. Each one has something special to touch our hearts and teach us.

Links

Here are some Spotify links to bluegrass (or bluegrass influenced) albums I enjoy:

• Norman Blake, Whiskey Before Breakfast
• Tony Rice, Church Street Blues
• Old and In the Way, That High Lonesome Sounds
• Doc Watson, The Essential Doc Watson
• Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will the Circle Be Unbroken
• Billy Strings, Billy Strings EP
• Bill Monroe, The Essential Collection
• O Brother, Where Art Thou, Soundtrack
• Grateful Dead, Workingman’s Dead