A Bluegrass History Tour

Kelly and me

One of the things I really enjoy about playing music is the opportunity to do musical projects - one time shows, gigs - that focus on a specific topic or type of music.   My Daughter Kelly and I have done a show on the Carter Family - me doing a talk on the history and importance of the Carters to American Music, and Kelly doing the singing of some of the classic songs and tunes from the Carters to accompany the talk - in the style of the Carters.   Plus, we would add songs from more contemporary singer songwriters to illustrate the influence the Carters hold on today's music. 

What is enjoyable to me is combining the things I love - history, music, and performance into one - generally for just one or two shows.   It gets me to read and research topics I would not normally dig deeply into, and it also introduces new songs and tunes (and musical styles) into my bag of tricks.    And you tend to meet and make new friends along the way.

The Christmas Carol Band


Over the past few years I've been involved in  setting up the music for things like a reading of Dickens Christmas Carol, a reading on the Alcott's, the early History of Orville Gibson and his contributions, and an O Henry Christmas story.    Each project involved learning new stuff musically.   Plus I've worked with some really good musicians on the projects and they all have contributed and added to the output - folks like Mike Hoke, Mike Carroll, Conrad, Skip Mansur, and Bruce Wightman.  

Flophouse String Band

Last week I had the good fortune to work on another project that was pretty close to home - a lecture demonstration on the musical styles that influenced the development of Bluegrass Music.   What made the project really neat was that the Flophouse String Band (FSB)- Wayne and Becky Kelly, Susan Donohue, and yours truly was together for a gig the next night opening for Rhonda Vincent at the Capitol Theater (more on that in another blog).    The FSB plays a very eclectic style of mostly American Roots music from the early 1900's to today's Americana - encompassing Old Time, Cajun, Blues, and Early Country.    We were pretty well setup to do the musical demo.

Becky, Susan, Lydia

Lydia Hammessley, a professor of Musicology at Hamilton, was doing the talk, and she had laid out a basic outline of what she wanted to demonstrate, and from there we developed a list of tunes to illustrate her talking points.   We also needed a Bluegrass Banjo player and were lucky enough to have Phil Husted, one of the best around these parts join us on banjo and dobro.   Lydia also plays a mean Clawhammer banjo, which was a perfect addition to the group.   A bonus to all this was that we would also be doing in before the Seldom Scene played their concert at Hamilton!  (how does a weekend get any better).



Phil and Bill

One of the things that happens on projects like these is that when you get six musicians together in a room, the ideas start to flow.  And they have a lot of fun playing music.   It usually means something good will happen.   As with all projects the collaboration added a few new wrinkles, tunes, and arrangements, and voila!   And I think it helped Lydia further develop her talking points around the music we were playing - playing always fires up my creative juices.  We had a great set list that included an overture suggested by Phil where we opened with Old Joe Clark in an Old Time Style and finished with Bluegrass and Chromatic Banjo.   We played a while after we had finished our project set list and really didn't want to stop.  Funny how often that happens playing good music with good musicians.


Lydia's lecture wove a lot of different musical threads to come together at the end at Bluegrass and she did it in a very effective manner - and as much as I know and take for granted about Bluegrass I learned a few things!   It was pretty clear that the audience enjoyed Lydia's talk (I think people really welcome and apprecatie this approach) and the music we put to it - OT, Appalachian, Celtic, Carter Family and Blues -- all in the musical stew that is today's Bluegrass.   Can't wait for my next project......