IB bluegrass INTERNATIONAL
Vol. 32 No. 10 November 2017
EXHILARATION: the 28th Annual IBMA Awards Every Shade of Bluegrass: the Second Ballot Rhiannon Giddens’ Keynote Address
International Bluegrass Editor: Kelly Kessler kelly@ibma.org
Vol. 32 | No. 10 | November 2017
Designer: Erin Faith Erdos erinfaitherdos@gmail.com
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TA B LE O F C ON T E N T S INTERNATIONAL BLUEGRASS
NOVEMBER 2017
World of Bluegrass 5
Exhilaration: The 28th Annual International Bluegrass Music Awards
10 Every Shade of Bluegrass On the Second Ballot 11 Rhiannon Giddens’ Keynote Address 17 Conference News – Broadcaster and Songwriter Tracks 21 Beautiful Guitar, Beautiful Cause 22 WOB 2017 in Pictures
departments 50 IBMA News 51 Remembering Aubrey Holt and Pete Kuykendall 53 Industry News Photo credits: Dave Brainard and Willa Stein
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We value our members. This newsletter is our primary conduit for sharing news across our trade organization. Our goal is to carry news each month from all constituencies of IBMA’s membership. Deadline info: news items and press releases are due at the IBMA office via snail mail or email by the 18th of the month. Submitting before the deadline is encouraged. Email all materials to Kelly here, or mail to 4206 Gallatin Pike, Nashville, TN 37216. International Bluegrass
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Here’s how the Wernick Method helps bluegrass grow We’re in 42 states & 11 countries 6000+ students, 70+ teachers
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1. The Wernick Method gets folks jamming *right away* with just 4 chords: G, C, D, and A. They learn essential bluegrass songs, how to play along and even fake solos on new songs. It’s easy and fun — jamming keeps them involved and motivated to practice. 2. Compare this with closet playing, often a dead end that results in so many new students giving up. Lessons, tabs, and videos generally lead people to closet playing. If they start jamming, they stay involved in bluegrass... usually for life. Learn to jam first!
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International Bluegrass | November 2017
“I feel like I’ve made jamming friends for life.” FESTIVALS hosting Wernick Method classes:
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Exhilaration: A Thrilling Night at the 2017 IBMA Awards Show Photo credits: Dave Brainard, Todd Gunsher, James McKelvey, Dan Schram, Willa Stein The 2017 Awards Show offered up a string of noteworthy moments. The audience was treated to an unprecedented number of special collaborations by Hall of Famers, nominees and highly regarded artists paying tribute to the Bluegrass Songbook. The Earls of Leicester and Bluegrass 45 brought a particular spark to “Salty Dog Blues”, while Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle, and Jim Lauderdale enjoyed the full support of Tim Surrett, Sammy Shelor and the 2017 nominees for Fiddle Player of the Year as they paid homage to the Bristol Sessions. Particularly moving was the tribute to Pete Kuykendall, with past IBMA executive director Dan Hays sharing a heartfelt remembrance, and Danny Paisley, Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas, Missy Raines and Molly Tuttle playing Kuykendall’s own “I Am Weary, Let Me Rest”. New to this year’s show were three Hall of Fame inductions. Ricky Skaggs shared memories of Bobby Hicks, and then joined Hicks and his band on “Cheyenne”. Jim Lauderdale introduced Roland White, noting what a difference he had made early in Lauderdale’s career, followed by the Roland White Band’s rendition of “Dark Holler”, ably abetted by Patrick McAvinue and Kristin Scott Benson. Laurie Lewis welcomed Alice Gerrard and Hazel Dickens’ nephew, Buddy Dickens, to the stage to induct Hazel and Alice. Lewis then joined Gerrard and Tim O’Brien, backed by a chorus of all the women nominees, singing “Won’t You Come Sing For Me”. There were a run of surprises when the instrumental awards were handed out. Josh Swift won his first Dobro Player of the Year Award. Patrick McAvinue won his first Fiddle Player of the Year Award. Alan Bartram won his first Bass Player of the Year award. And Molly Tuttle became the first woman ever to win Guitar Player of the Year. With Sierra Hull and Noam Pikelny picking up their second Instrumentalist of the Year awards, it can safely be said there are plenty of new faces in this category. Also winning for the first time were Brooke Aldridge (Female Vocalist of the Year) and Donna Ulisse and Marc Rossi (Song of the Year). Volume Five picked up an Emerging Artist award as well. Bobby Osborne’s win for Recorded Event for “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You”, while not his first IBMA award, clearly took him by surprise. The Awards Show would stand out simply for the appearances by all the Entertainer of the Year nominees. This year did not disappoint, with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver setting a high bar, followed by strong performances from Flatt
Lonesome, Balsam Range, the Gibson Brothers, along with the Earls’ aforementioned turn with Bluegrass 45. Hosts Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn stitched the evening together with a running bit about meeting on “banjomingle.com”, and it is possible they innovated a new art form, with Abigail clogging to a decidedly modern banjo piece by Béla. Front Country, nominees for Emerging Artist, rocked the house with their “roots-pop” take on “The Storms Are on the Water”. The Awards Show finale brought the audience to its feet as the songs segued from “Hello Stranger” (Hall of Fame inductee Alice Gerrard, Laurie Lewis and Molly Tuttle) to “More Pretty Girls Than One” (Hall of Fame inductee Roland White, Doyle Lawson and Tim O’Brien). By the time Sonny Osborne and Bobby Osborne took the stage for a 50th anniversary tribute to “Rocky Top” with a wall-to-wall all-star band, the audience was on its feet to stay. IBMA thanks Awards Show producer Claire Armbruster and co-producer Mary Burdette, production assistant and teleprompter operator Jill Crabtree, scriptwriter Craig Shelburne and the entire production team. The 28th Annual IBMA Awards Show was sponsored by Chiesi, VA Tourism, Larceny Bourbon, Deering Banjos, the International Bluegrass Music Museum, Compass Records, BMI and the Boston Bluegrass Union. Partnering with Radio Bristol, IBMA streamed the Awards Show on Facebook Live. You can watch the show in its entirety here. We encourage you to take the time to plug in some good speakers: you will not want to miss a single note.
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AWA R D S S H O W
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C O L L A B O R AT I O N S
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H A L L O F FA M E
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MOMENTS
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Every Shade of Bluegrass on the Second Ballot IBMA is frequently asked about the awards process, and how our nominees are selected. To shine some light on the process, we share here all the names on the second ballot for 2017 voting. Voting members will be familiar with this ballot process: the second ballot lists all the candidates that our members have written in on the first ballot. These are all the names our members put forth to be considered for 2017 IBMA Awards. The second ballot was then sent out to our members, and the five candidates in each category receiving the most votes became the nominees on the final ballot. While this information is confidential during the voting process - indeed, the only way to access it during that time is by being a voting IBMA member - the 2017 IBMA Awards are now a matter of record. We share the second ballot now because we are proud of the broad range of bluegrass styles our membership put forth to be considered for awards. As a sample, we are including below all this year’s candidates on our second ballot for IBMA Entertainer of the Year. See the full second ballot for all awards categories here.
2017 IBMA second ballot candidates for Entertainer of the Year Alison Krauss Balsam Range Becky Buller Band Blue Highway Chris Jones & The Night Drivers Claire Lynch ClayBank Dailey & Vincent Dale Ann Bradley Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass Darin & Brooke Aldridge Dave Adkins Del McCoury Band Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver Feller and Hill Flatt Lonesome Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen Front Country Hot Rize Jeff Scroggins and Colorado Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice Lonesome River Band Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road Marty Raybon
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Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper Nothin’ Fancy Punch Brothers Rhonda Vincent & The Rage Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out Sam Bush Band Sierra Hull Sister Sadie Special Consensus Steep Canyon Rangers Steve Gulley & New Pinnacle Terry Baucom’s Dukes Of Drive The Boxcars The Earls of Leicester The Gibson Brothers The Grascals The Infamous Stringdusters The Lonely Heartstring Band The SteelDrivers Tim O’Brien Town Mountain Trinity River Band Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike Volume Five
Bringing Diversity Back into Bluegrass Rhiannon Giddens’ 2017 IBMA Keynote Address “Community and Connection” [Editor’s note: In the days following World of Bluegrass 2017, Rhiannon Giddens was awarded one of the highest honors in the United States when she was made a MacArthur Fellow.]
Good afternoon. I am honored to have been chosen to present this year’s Keynote Speech for the IBMA; after also receiving the Steve Martin Prize in for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass last year, it feels incredible to be recognized by my banjo peers for being the die-hard banjo nerd and activist that I am. It was extremely challenging to go from a three minute song to a thirty minute speech, but here goes!
“I’m just a hillbilly at heart”: That’s what my Aunt Ruth said one day, smiling broadly at me, all cheekbones and gorgeous brown skin; to say she surprised me is an understatement. We had just listened to a few tracks off my first album with the Carolina Chocolate Drops when she dropped this bombshell; my elegant great-aunt, who had lived in the north for decades, but came of age in rural North Carolina. This was in the beginning of my career, when I still hadn’t fully come to comprehend just how much the popular notion of the hillbilly stereotype shaped post-war Southern life and culture - the moonshine and the banjos; the overalls and the hay bales; the coal mines and the fiddles. International Bluegrass
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KEYNOTE ADDRESS All of these generalizations had left out people like my great-aunt; people like her sister, my grandma, and her children. And left out people like me - who come from both sides of the track - except, in so many areas of the South, there is no track. There’s just people living and influencing each other in spite of what they are told to feel and do; and yes, Southern and American history is unfortunately thickly dotted with instances of the worst of human nature: violence, discrimination and the warping of our souls; but underneath, and behind and around all of these acts is the strong current of intense cultural exchange, which is the hallmark of American culture. The ability of musicians and artists to cross artificially-created boundaries and mix and mingle and become something new is exemplified in American string band music, the music that gave birth to the Grand Ol’ Opry; the music without which, bluegrass wouldn’t exist. That enormous moment in 1945 when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys was, of course, not born of a vacuum - it was a moment that was hundreds of years coming.
So more and more of late, the question has been asked - how do we get more diversity in bluegrass? Which of course, behind the hand, is really, why is bluegrass so white??? But the answer doesn’t lie in right now. Before we can look to the future, we need to understand the past. To understand how the banjo, which was once the ultimate symbol of African American musical expression, has done a one-eighty in popular understanding and become the emblem of the mythical white mountaineer even now, in the age of Mumford and Sons, and Bela Fleck in Africa, and Taj Mahal’s “Colored Aristocracy,” the average person on the street sees a banjo and still thinks Deliverance, or The Beverly Hillbillies. In or-
der to understand the history of the banjo and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narratives we’ve inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scots-Irish tradition, with ‘influences’ from Africa. It is actually a complex creole music that comes from multiple cultures, African and European and Native - the full truth that is so much more interesting, and American.
Music has a power to bring us together in ways books, lectures, and indoctrination don’t. So the question becomes - are we going to let bluegrass, as an artform, recognize the fullness of its history? Are we going to acknowledge that the question is not, how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity BACK into bluegrass? How do we reframe the narrative so that it is seen to be welcoming to all - that the impact of Arnold Shultz, for example, on Bill Monroe is not a footnote, but rather recognized as being part of the main narrative of the story? I have bluegrass in the blood. My uncle Dale plays in a long standing local bluegrass band, Southeast Express, and his father, the grandfather I never met, also played in a bluegrass band. My dad ran from bluegrass and went to the bustling metropolis of Greensboro to became a hippy guitar player, and incidentally, marry a black woman! - only to see his daughter grow up to play the old-time banjo. Life is funny sometimes! Now that’s the white side - but as I thought about my upbringing, I realized bluegrass was in the black side, too. I lived the first part of my life out in the country, I guess you could say- my sister and I lived with our mother’s parents in a small town outside of Greensboro. Back then there wasn’t much to do other than play this really exciting game my
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sister and I came up with called “run around the tree till you can go back inside the house” just to get swatted out again. My black grandparents, retired, farmed their acre, played competitive bridge, listened to jazz and blues records and watched Hee Haw every Saturday night. You didn’t get in between grandma and that large cabinet TV on the floor when Hee Haw was on -she was a huge fan of Roy Clark and his bluegrass banjo playing. I realized, as I prepared for this speech, that these are among my first memories of string band music and bluegrass - the ‘picking and grinning’ latter-day hayseed minstrel show that was Hee Haw - and it was glorious - we laughed at the cornpone jokes, watched the great guest performances, and all round had no notion there was anything odd with any of it, a black rural household in the South being entertained by this commercial idea of Southern music and culture while actually living the real country life. My sister and I also often visited my dad’s side of the family, the white side, on weekends, in another rural part of the outskirts of Greensboro, and there was Hank Williams and old gospel tunes coming out of my other grandma’s radio. Now, I listened to plenty of pop music growing up, but it is these early sounds that I connected to when I turned to fiddle and banjo and became a disciple of 86-year-old Joe Thompson, the black fiddler from Mebane and the last in a long line of African American string band musicians. He often compared my banjo playing to bluegrass, probably ‘cause we played at the speed of light whenever we could - and that drove this clawhammer girl crazy! But for Joe, bluegrass was the new music, and he loved it.
RHIANNON GIDDENS But before Joe, before the Carolina Chocolate Drops, when I first got into string band music I felt like such an interloper. It was like I was ‘sneaking’ into this music that wasn’t my own. It’s a weird feeling - I constantly felt the awkwardness of being the ‘raisin in the oatmeal’ in the contra dance world, in the old-time world, and in the bluegrass world. What was odd to me then but makes sense to me now was the place I felt most comfortable was the bluegrass world. Because there, in the Piedmont, I was “Dale’s niece” and everybody had an accent I grew up hearing, and an upbringing that I understood. But regardless, whenever I brought out my fiddle or banjo, or my calling cards to call a dance, no matter where I was, I still felt like the ‘other’. I remember so vividly the first time I saw one of Marshall Wyatt’s superb compilations called “Folks He Sure Do Pull Some Bow” and seeing a picture of a black fiddler and freaking out - I had stumbled upon the hidden legacy of the black string band and I wanted to know more. Shortly after, I met Joe Thompson and realized that by picking up my banjo and by calling a dance I had joined an enormously long and almost forgotten line of black dance band musicians who helped create an indigenous American music and dance culture; of barn dances, corn-shuckings, plantation balls, and riverboat and house parties.
It is now becoming better known that the banjo is an African-American instrument; a hybridization of African construction and tune systems and European adaptation and adoption; Dena Epstein in her book Sinful Tunes and Spirituals thoroughly documents the undeniable blackness of the instrument from the 1650s to the 1830s when it was known as a plantation instrument. This impression of the banjo continued until Joel Sweeney and his compatriots turned it into a commercial instrument meant for performing, with a standardized number of strings, tuning and frame construction, and minstrel music, performed in black face, became the most popular form of American entertainment for the next 50 years. It was incredibly racist, but o so entertaining and the music was so catchy. It was the first American cultural export to sweep other nations, a full hundred years before rock and roll. It was banjo fever everywhere, and the real birth of the American popular song industry from Daniel Emmett’s “Dixie” to Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna,” and minstrelsy became the bedrock of American popular culture.
But the black to white transmission of the banjo wasn’t confined to the blackface performance. In countless areas of the south, usually the poorer ones not organized around plantation life, working-class whites and blacks lived near each other; and, while they may have not have been marrying each other, they were quietly creating a new, common music. The Reverend Jonathan Boucher who emigrated to England after the Revolutionary war wrote a definition of the banjo in his dictionary published in the late-18th century. It says the banjo is “A musical instrument, in use chiefly, if not entirely, among people of the lower classes.” Now, it wasn’t just Scots Irish fiddle meets black banjo either - that’s too simplistic - one of the earliest recorded instances of banjo and fiddle being played together was in 1756, in Newport, Rhode Island, by black musicians for an “African frolic.” As Phil Jamison says from his book Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics - the Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance, “West African fiddlers have accompanied singing and dancing with one-string gourd fiddles since the twelfth century, and many black musicians in America learned on similar homemade fiddles before switching over to the European violin. As early as the mid-1600s, black fiddlers were playing for both black and white dancers at street celebrations in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (New York City), and by 1690 slave fiddlers were routinely providing the music at plantation balls in Virginia. As elsewhere, dancing was the chief form of entertainment on the eastern edge of the North Carolina piedmont, and in the early nineteenth century every town and village had its ball-room, and its musician [was] almost always a negro fiddler.”
So there’s this incredible cultural swirl going on here minstrel music becoming a huge commercial success, with traveling troupes bringing professional songs to different regions of the US; blacks and whites in places like Appalachia, and the piedmont, and other racially diverse areas are beginning to pass the music back and forth, and a wide flung net of black dance musicians are providing the music for communities all over the country, and are becoming the first to call square dances.
This was not the picture I was painted as a child! I grew up thinking the banjo was invented in the mountains, that string band music and square dances were a strictly white preserve and history - that while black folk were International Bluegrass
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KEYNOTE ADDRESS singing spirituals and playing the blues, white folk were do-si-do-ing and fiddling up a storm - and never the twain did meet - which led me to feeling like an alien in what I find out is my own cultural tradition. But by 1900 this cross-cultural music was all over the South, not just the Appalachians, and a common repertoire was played by black and white musicians, not to mention regional styles, which often cared nothing for race. My own mentor Joe Thompson constantly talked about white musicians who lived in his area who he learned tunes from, and there was a constant stream of local white musicians who learned from and played with him, in what turns out is the great American tradition.
So what happened to change the paradigm so quickly between the turn of the century and the advent of bluegrass? Well, to begin with, there was the Great Migration. Six million Black southerners like my great-Aunt Ruth decided to leave an economically depressed and racially depressing South for the mythical better life up North - and they took their families, food, and folkways with them - but in most cases they left that old-time string band music behind. Newly arrived folks to New York, Chicago, and other Northern cities suddenly found that their lives were shaped by a totally different rhythm - an urban rhythm - that precluded corn-shuckings and other rural events that would have required the familiar string band sounds they were used to; in addition, in the early 1900s the black community had shifting musical tastes - it was a time of great innovation and a proliferation of styles that would greatly affect the American cultural landscape.
African American culture began a pattern of always innovating, always moving on to the next new sounds. The five-string banjo became, up north, a dazzling urban instrument that played jazz and ragtime, and, with its cousin the tenor banjo, became a mainstay of the dance orchestras until it was eventually replaced by the guitar by the 1930s, only to be eventually forgotten in the memories of urban blacks. What is often left out of this story, however, is that not everybody left the south there were plenty of black folk who remained behind, and there were still black players of string band music, despite the burgeoning popularity of the blues guitar. By some accounts, half of all string bands at the turn of the century were black. So why does it take a diving mission to find them? Were they recorded? It turns out they were - far less than we’d like, but more than people know - but never to be a mainstay of the body of recordings that form the basis of commercial country music and a foundation for bluegrass.
Before the invention of the phonograph and the attendant records, the music industry consisted of sheet music - popular songs of the day to be played yourself, and they chiefly consisted of patriotic and sentimental songs, minstrel songs, and orchestra pieces. But when the record industry was born, a whole new way of consuming American music was invented that was intended to make this new product easier to sell. Ralph Peer led the vanguard of A&R executives who would have a big hand in transforming how we think of our music; in his hands (and others) the musical genre was born. They saw that black consumers were loving the blues, and in 1920 the first ‘race’ records were put out. Two years later they created the ‘hillbilly’ market for rural Southern whites. In a musical market that had previous-
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ly been dominated by professional compositions, it was a triumph for the working man that music ‘of the people’, vernacular music, began to be recorded.
One can celebrate this shift in the music industry while grieving the fact that in instituting these artificial categories, even if based on observed contemporary trends and assumptions, these record companies had a huge hand in the rapid segregation of American music. Columbia, Vocalion, and others would set up recording sessions, after advertising in local papers, that on one day they would record white musicians, and on the next, black musicians. If a black string band walked up to a session only knowing fiddle tunes, even if, as often was the case, they pulled from a common southern repertoire that both black and white musicians knew, they’d more often than not be sent away if they didn’t play the blues. The record companies had the power, and they wielded it at will as Ralph Peer himself was quoted saying in 1959, “I invented the Hillbilly and the Negro stuff.” Except, of course, that he didn’t say ‘negro’. There were a number of crossracial recording sessions, such as Blue Yodel # 9, from the Father of Country Music himself, Jimmie Rodgers, which paired him with a little-known trumpeter named Louis Armstrong, and his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong; and the Georgia Yellowhammers recorded with African American fiddler Jim Baxter, but for the most part this artificial sorting at the source was hard to buck. Occasionally black string bands were put on the Hillbilly label but with their name obscured, such as when Vocalion Records released a set of tunes under “The Tennessee Chocolate Drops” for their race records and the exact same set of tunes under “The Tennessee Trio” for the Hill-
RHIANNON GIDDENS billy division. It rarely happened the other way around; when Columbia released the white Chattanooga duo the Allen Brothers’ second record on their race series, the brothers sued Columbia for $250,000 for the damage to their reputations. A quarter of a million dollars in 1927! As they said later, “We were trying to get into Vaudeville back then. It would have hurt us in getting dates if people thought we were black.” As Patrick Huber says in his essay “Black Hillbillies - African American Musicians on OldTime Records, 19241932”:
“In terms of their actual consumption patterns, southern record buyers of the 1920s were far more omnivorous than record company executives generally seemed to comprehend, and interviews with elderly black and white musicians reveal that many of them purchased records intended specifically for sale to other racial and even foreign-language ethnic groups. Still, much of this appears to have been lost on talking-machine firms, which focused their promotional efforts on marketing race records to African Americans and hillbilly records to rural and working class white southerners.”
These promotional efforts reinforced a simultaneous nationwide movement towards creating a mythic white American history- A 1927 newspaper advertisement said that Columbia’s hillbilly series “Familiar Tunes Old and New” were for those who “get tired of modern dance music - fox-trots, jazz, Charleston- and long for the good old barn dances and the Saturday night music of the South in plantation days.” Seems that everybody ignored the irony that the players for these blessed events would have uniformly been black in the “good old days”. Noted xenophobe Henry Ford founded fiddle competitions, but forbade blacks to enter; likewise White Top and Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s Asheville Folk festivals in the twenties were off limits to the melanin. There was an effort to repaint Appalachia as this completely homogenous society that was a direct unsullied line back to the old country, whether England, Scotland, or Ireland. This is a region that has always historically had a black population, in some places as high as 20 percent before the great migration, and is clearly a place where musical and cultural exchanges have been going on for a long time.
Folklorists and song collectors at the time also had a huge hand in the creation of this myth; Cecil Sharp, founder of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, was one of the first to brave the Appalachian mountains in search of it. With Maud Karpeles he spent three years in the Appalachian mountains, recording families and making much of what he found there - but only the white folks. Now by the time they got to western North Carolina, the black population wasn’t as high as it was, but that’s only part of the reason there’s no black representation in his collections, which influenced everyone who came after; they just plain didn’t like black people. This abounds in their writings - my favorite quote is this one; after a long hard hike looking for the most isolated homesteads to record, they caught sight of some likely looking log cabins. Sharp says: “We tramped - a very hard and warm walk, mainly uphill. When we reached the cove we found it peopled entirely by negroes!! All our trouble and spent energy for naught.” Except of course, he didn’t say negroes. My goal here, today, is to say that what makes this bluegrass, old-time, and other forms of music so powerful is that there is room for everyone to explore these incredible traditions. I want people to understand – that recognizing the African American presence within these traditions does not come at the expense of trying to erase all of the other tradition bearers who have already received so much of our attention. I want to celebrate the greater diversity of the people who have shaped the music that is so much a part of my identity. I want the public to appreciate this string band music, this bluegrass music, as a creole music that comes from many influences - a beautiful syncretization of the cultures that call this country home. I don’t want to minimize, trivialize, or ignore anyone’s passion to explore this music. I just want them to understand, as fully as possible, the entire picture! If we are going to embrace greater diversity in bluegrass music, then we must be willing to acknowledge the best and worst parts of tradition. It is important to what is going on RIGHT NOW to stress the musical brother and sister hood we have had for hundreds of years; for every act of cultural appropriation, of financial imbalance, of the erasure of names and faces, of the outside attempt to create artificial division and sow hatred, simply to keep us down so that the powers-that-be can continue to enjoy the fruits of our labor, there are generous acts of working class cultural exchange taking place in the background. These ex-
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KEYNOTE ADDRESS changes are indelible parts of this music. It’s not about the ‘influence’ of African Americans; we didn’t ‘shade’ the tunes with some contributions of syncopations and flatted sevenths; in actuality the great stream of string band music that stretches back to hundreds of years ago, and that reaches forward to that great moment in 1945, is part of the foundation of what truly makes America great. It’s not just Washington, Lincoln, Douglass and King. It’s also the untold thousands of ordinary folk playing banjos, fiddles, guitars, mandolins, basses and everything else they could get their hands on - to make life a better place. So that’s the legacy. The question now: is that the future? Are we going to let a handful of dead A&R men and white supremacists decide how we feel about our own music? About who gets to play our music? Are we going to stand up to the kind of prejudice that had people warning me and my fellow Chocolate Drops, “Oh, don’t go to the Galax Fiddlers Convention?” That fellow in Floyd who said to my husband, “Oh, you’re with that high yellow gal? and I see you got one of them blue gum negroes in the group.” …Except of course, he didn’t say Negro.
Are we gonna remember that pioneering hillbilly star Fiddlin’ John Carson was a devoted member of the KKK? Or that we remember the Carter Family, but not Leslie Riddle? Hank Williams, but not Tee Tot Payne? Jimmie Rodgers, Hobart Smith, Tommy Jarrell, Doc Roberts and countless others, who freely acknowledged all the black musicians who inspired them, but that we, as a society, don’t remember or value? And what about Earl Scruggs’ amazing innovation but not the hundreds of years of cross-racial music making that led up to it? When the Carolina Chocolate Drops became the first black string band to play the Grand Ol’ Opry–and let me tell you, it felt amazing–people started calling it a Healing Moment.
But I have to ask - a healing moment for whom? One or two black groups, or one or two black country stars is not a substitution for recognizing the true multi-cultural history of this music. We have a lot of work to do. We need to build on these moments, on these incredible opportunities to expand understanding. Some of the best times the Carolina Chocolate Drops had were at bluegrass festivals, at the Grand Ol Opry, and when the
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old-time community welcomed us with open arms; Joe Thompson received every accolade possible for an old NC fiddler before he died. Yes, there’s so much beauty in this music, and in this, our culture - we have to keep reaching for it. To tear down those artificial divisions and let bluegrass and string band music be the welcoming place that it has, and can be, and, in more and more places, such as here at IBMA, strives to be now.
As Boots Faught said when he was confronted about Arnold Shultz being a colored fiddler in his band, he said, “You don’t hear color. You hear music.”
I would like to leave you with the words of Paul Laurence Dunbar, eminent African American poet - the last stanza of his poem “A Banjo Song” he published in 1913: “Now de blessed little angels Up in heaben, we are told Don’t do nothin’ all dere lifetime ‘Ceptin’ play on ha’ps of gold. Now I think heaben’d be mo’ home like Ef we’d heah some music fall F’om a real ol-fashioned banjo, Like dat one upon de wall.”
For Giddens’ bibliography, and for a video documentation of her Keynote Address, please visit our website here.
CONFERENCE NEWS –TRACKS and CONSTITUENCIES BROADCASTER NEWS
by Bob Webster
This year’s Broadcaster Track at the IBMA Business Conference featured, for the first time in several years, an Information Exchange Forum between recording labels representatives and broadcasters. This dialogue explored areas of mutual concern, including current and future states of music delivery and on-air presentation. Seminar sessions in the Broadcaster Track included Voice Coaching for Broadcasters and Your Best. Show. Ever. These events were held in addition to the annual DJ Taping Session and Artist Reception for Broadcasters.
At the annual Broadcasters Constituency Meeting (an open forum for members to meet with their IBMA Board representative), participants zeroed in on these top five concerns: • • • • •
How do DJs decide which songs to play? What information on CD jackets/discs is important to radio DJs? CDs vs. digital downloads, and how do labels decide who gets CDs? How important is it for Airplay Direct to include album information? Do bands inform their labels of DJ interview results?
An additional concern identified was radio distribution by new and independent labels, who might lack the distribution lists and resources of established labels for effectively reaching broadcasters.
The discussion was open to anyone and The panelists were label representatives Mark Freeman, President of Rebel; Ashley Moyer, Rounder; Melody Cochran, Mountain Fever; Ty Gilpin, Mountain Home; Valerie Smith, Bell Buckle; and songwriter/producer Rick Lang of Haley Anna Music. The participants indicated a desire for another similar session next year. Also in attendance were reps from at least three other labels: Very Jerry Records, Voxhall, and Dark Shadow. [Editor’s note: For the Broadcasters Constituency Meeting, Bob Webster - Broadcast Media, IBMA Board of Directors - served as host and moderator.] International Bluegrass
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CONFERENCE Broadcaster Track Notes from Barb Heller Vocal Coaching, Your Best Radio Show Ideas, and DJ/Label Relations classes in 2017 have paved the way for more in-depth classes next year. Vocal Coaching participants made funny faces, read aloud in exaggerated voices, and read tongue twisters together. It was fun! Best Radio Show Ideas illuminated the little-known National Mining Day - a treasure trove of material for a bluegrass host, along with several other great ideas for show themes. If you have a great idea for next year’s Broadcaster Track, email Barb to share your idea.
Voice Coaching for Broadcasters, photo credit: Dave Brainard
Songwriter Track – Banner Year This year’s Songwriter Track at the IBMA Business Conference was clearly buzzworthy. The Songwriter Committee slated a record ten events at the conference. The very first Songwriters-in-the-Round to be included on the Bluegrass Ramble featured four winners of the IBMA Songwriter of the Year Award (Ulisse, Weisberger, Buller and Stafford), and they packed King’s, transforming it from high-energy venue to intimate listening room. The Songwriter Mentor One-on-One Session was “a slam-dunk homerun,” according to Rick Lang, chair of the Songwriter Committee, with ten mentoring writers and around thirty mentees. Look for this new feature to be in the Songwriter Track again in 2018. The first songwriting seminar of the week - Publishing 101, hosted by Sherrill Blackman - had to add additional chairs due to strong interest. That happened again with The Essence of Good Songwriting, a seminar featuring the stellar lineup of Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle & Jerry Salley, where “folks came out of the woodwork to sit in on this one,” according to Lang.
What the Songwriters Say…
“There was standing room only (at King’s)…Looking out over the crowd my heart swelled with pride as I realized songwriters were being given this bright spotlight.” -Donna Ulisse
“Mine & Lisa Aschmann’s Song Circle was a full house with a good mixture of beginning writers to the pros like Milan Miller, Jerry Salley, Jon Weisberger and Dawn Kenney. What a great way to build community.” - Irene Kelley
“I have always thought that an apt description of bluegrass music is “Singer-songwriter with string band.” When I look at the originals–Bill Monroe, Carter Stanley, Lester Flatt–the description fits. For a long time, the bluegrass world seemed content to rehash the masters’ material over and over again. But finally, there is a real resurgence in creativity in the genre, and I am pleased to hear so many new voices singing from their own experience. And it makes me feel good to be a small part of helping those writers hone their craft.” Laurie Lewis
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Songwriters-in-the-Round on the Bluegrass Ramble (Becky Buller, Tim Stafford, Jon Weisberger, Donna Ulisse). Photo credit: Willa Stein;
“I thought the Songwriter Track at IBMA this year was the best I’d seen. There was a great variety of offerings-- panels, rounds, mentor and critique opportunities, a lot of good writers participating. Lots of optimism about songwriting in this arena despite the uncertain future trumpeted in the rest of the music business.” - Tim Stafford
CONFERENCE
Essence of Good Songwriting (Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle, Jerry Salley and moderator Kathy Anderson). Photo credit: Willa Stein
TIPS FOR TRACK SUCCESS We asked Rick Lang to share some insights on how the Songwriter Committee created such successful content for the IBMA Business Conference. Here’s what he told us: 1. Have a vision, a plan and achievable goals. 2. Build on the successes of your predecessors. “Becky Buller brought great energy and enthusiasm to this committee,” says Rick. 3. Build a team of doers and worker bees, then empower them to contribute. “Have a good idea of how small the IBMA staff is and how busy they are already. If you have a goal, be willing to do the work to make it happen.” 4. Keep it positive.
Do You Want to Get Songwriter News? Join the mailing list for the IBMA “Songwriter News” e-blasts we send out periodically. If you would like your name to be added, email Rick and put “Join IBMA Songwriter List” in the subject line.
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Beautiful Guitar, Beautiful Cause Lucky Stephen Dunn! His wife, Janis, won him this Custom Shop CF Martin 17 Outlaw dreadnought for his birthday on IBMA’s online auction on October 5. Better still, the Bluegrass Trust Fund - which has been helping out bluegrass people in times of emergency need for decades - received all the proceeds from the auction. And that’s because Martin Guitar cares about bluegrass, and donated this hoss of an instrument to help the Bluegrass Trust Fund. Thank you, Martin Guitar, for all those in the bluegrass field who will benefit from your generosity in the times they’ll need it most.
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2017: A PHO
Please enjoy the following images capturing the round-the-clock acti moments were captured by IBMA pool photographers Dave Brain
OTO ALBUM
tivities at World of Bluegrass 2017 in downtown Raleigh, NC. These nard, Todd Gunsher, James McKelvey, Dan Schram and Willa Stein.
KEYNOTE
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AFTER HOURS
HEADLINE HERE
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SPECIAL AWARDS
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MOMENTUM AWARDS
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SEMINARS
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SONGWRITING
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GIG FAIR
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KICK OFF PARTY
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RAMBLE
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IBMA AWARDS
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EXPO HALL
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EXPO HALL
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RED HAT
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RED HAT
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RED HAT
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YOUTH STAGE
HEADLINE HERE
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IBMA News IBMA to Merge with Foundation for Bluegrass Music IBMA announced on September 26, 2017 at World of Bluegrass that it will be merging with the Foundation for Bluegrass Music as early as late November. This move creates promising synergies for both organizations. IBMA will gain 501 (c) 3 status, opening avenues for fundraising that will be more appealing to potential donors, as well as opportunities for discounts on purchases available only to non-profits. Read in further detail about this upcoming merger in the press release sent out during World of Bluegrass 2017 here.
A Change in how IBMA Shares News The IBMA staff is dedicated to finding the most effective ways to share news with our membership. Having taken a good, hard look at how our current newsletter is serving as our main news conduit, we find three reasons to take action. They are: -
Readership for IB is down, and in its current format, reaches roughly a quarter of our membership every month. (Average readership per month this year: 650. Average time spent per issue: under 4 minutes.)
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Readers have shifted in how they prefer to get their news, namely away from the magazine format, and towards a series of briefs and/or headlines, with some items leading to long-form articles;
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While our reach via our social media channels continues to grow (87,500 followers to date), the format we use to publish IB (PDF) is inhibited from being shared by design on the part of social media platforms, compromising our ability to reach wider audiences with our news content.
Beginning January 1, IBMA will begin sharing news exclusively through e-blasts (our emails sent out to all our members), our social media channels, and our website. Look for a monthly IBMA news e-blast in the first week of the month, and a second, briefer e-blast during the third week of the month, focused on member and sponsor news. As always, we will reach out to our membership via e-blast with breaking news on an as-needed basis. This format is inherently conducive to sharing news on our social media channels as well. This new approach means we can get you the news while it’s timely, and still provide all the content our membership relies on. We know some of you will miss the newsletter in its current form. We ask you to bear with us, and see if you don’t experience some of the benefits this new approach will bring. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you will also receive IBMA news items geared toward the membership and public in a timely fashion.
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Remembering Aubrey Holt by Joe Mullins One of the great singers, songwriters and showman has left us. But he has left us hundreds of songs and thousands of wonderful memories. My memories of Aubrey Holt go back to the early 70’s when he, his brother Jerry and their uncle Harley Gabbard first started doing shows with my dad, Paul Mullins. As a popular radio personality and fiddler, dad always had a connection to other regional performers he could assemble when work came his way for a radio promotion, county fair or local event. Dad had such a love for the Holt and Gabbard families. Their friendship was in place before their professional relationship. They always enjoyed hunting and fishing together, as well as making music. On the air, if Dad was in charge of promoting bluegrass entertainment at any function, by 1973-74, he would announce that wild bunch of “Boys from Indiana” will be on hand to pick and sing. Along with Dad on fiddle and Noah Crase on banjo, they became an in-demand act everywhere within a year or two.
stopped touring in the mid 90’s. Aubrey’s songwriting and great tenor singing was still featured alongside his Tony Holt with the Wildwood Valley Boys until just a couple of years ago. Off stage, he was a ton of fun and always quick with a smile or a good story. As a kid hanging around years ago, he always made time for me. He also let me on stage as a kid with the Boys as a guest along with dad, even after dad had left the group in the late ‘70’s. I also have fantastic memories of filling in on banjo with the Boys several times in the 1990s. Traveling with those guys was unforgettable! So many good laughs and they were all good cooks and big eaters. And I know hundreds remember the BFI hospitality suite at the first several IBMA gatherings. In later years, Aubrey was still so creative. Besides songs, I have emails saved from the past 15 years or so from Aubrey -- his wit and personality came through in every word. He’s been in our prayers the past few years, and now he’s resting in peace. Gone on before, and never forgotten by the bluegrass community he loved and who will always love him, his songs and the cherished memories.
Besides all of this crew being great showmen, the Boys had a phenomenal trio, and a songwriter who churned out great original tunes by the dozen - Aubrey Holt. His songs propelled the band and created a connection with legions of fans everywhere. The first album was titled We Missed You in Church Last Sunday. The second was Atlanta is Burning. These two songs alone are stills favorites at bluegrass gatherings everywhere. Add in dozens of others that are still heard today by our favorite artists and we must be thankful for Aubrey’s great gifts. The Grascals, Alison Krauss, Blue Highway, Flatt Lonesome, The Radio Ramblers, Feller and Hill and many other bluegrass artists have covered songs written by Aubrey and first recorded by the Boys from Indiana. In addition to the songwriting, Aubrey was a fine lead and tenor singer. He sang both parts on dozens of BFI recordings and hundreds of shows from the early 70’s until they
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Remembering Pete Kuykendall We share here Dan Hays’ eulogy for his friend, Pete Kuykendall, with permission from Dan and Pete’s widow, Kitsy Kuykendall.
Our friend and Hall of Fame member Pete Kuykendall passed away on August 24. He was a wonderful husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and in his 79 years in this realm he would become a benevolent friend literally to millions. It’s an amazing thing what passion can drive a person toward and Pete and I talked on several occasions of how – once bitten and infected with a passion for bluegrass – people will sometimes abandon all sense of what’s in their best interest and launch headfirst and happy into a life devoted to it. To the amazement of some, no one has starved from it, and to the contrary, many have lived very productive lives that we should all aspire to. Pete was just such a person. He was a disc jockey, multi-instrumentalist and banjo champion, sound engineer, songwriter, music publisher, event producer, collector, record producer, historian and much more. He helped found the International Bluegrass Music Association as well as one of the premier museums devoted to a genre of music. And most notably, he was a co-founder and long-time editor of a publication that has earned the reputation as “the bible of bluegrass” – Bluegrass Unlimited - with more than 50 years of capturing the stories, events, personalities, character, culture and history of the music. Speaking of Pete and the influence of Bluegrass Unlimited, Hall of Fame member David Freeman of Rebel Records once said, “When the magazine started publishing, bluegrass was pretty much at a low point. The magazine spread the word and highlighted the artistic aspect of the music, which helped to bring it out of the bars where it was in the 1950s. Without him I don’t know where the bluegrass industry would be today.” Our friend Sam Bush remarked, “I can’t imagine the bluegrass festival scene would have gotten off the ground without Pete and Bluegrass Unlimited.” The mission of Bluegrass Unlimited is, and I know will continue to be: For the Furtherance of Bluegrass Music. That was Pete’s personal mission, too.
Pete and the magazine came along at a time when there weren’t many institutions devoted to bluegrass. From those beginnings, he somehow managed to be everywhere and involved in most of the music’s important developments along the way. His leadership helped promote and advance a fledgling genre of music, by connecting and shaping entirely new facets of the music industry around it. He was an optimistic and visionary teacher, chief encourager and mentor, and at the same time a willing listener as eager to learn as he was to share his vast knowledge. He was our ambassador to the broader world of entertainment, and had unquestionable ethics and integrity and was entrusted with confidences that would test his diplomatic skills daily. Those are a lot of jobs and responsibilities for anyone to bear, and it’s hard to come up with any brief way to describe what Pete’s role has been these many years. If Bill Monroe is the Father, and Jimmy Martin the King of Bluegrass (and I know Jimmy was the “king” because he told me so!), I would suggest that Pete has been the music’s godfather. Now, by godfather, I don’t mean the nefarious “mafia boss” kind. I’m describing a “godfather” as a title of honor and importance, a title for the person a family - our bluegrass family - entrusts to see that a child is raised right, who takes a responsibility for its education…a person of great influence and a mentor. Pete would scoff at such a title. But in his professional life, which was no different than his personal life, he did just those things for the music and is the most trusted and influential behind-the-scenes person in the music’s history. And of all the traits we admired in him, a couple especially stand out to me - his humility and generosity. Altruism is said to be a selfless concern for the well-being of others, without an expectation of anything in return. It is the opposite of selfishness. It is also said that no act of sharing, helping or sacrificing can ever be described as being truly
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or perfectly altruistic, as the person may receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification. Well, Pete wasn’t perfect because I know he felt a great deal of gratification in helping others. I was blessed, as so many of us were, to spend a lot of time with Pete and he always impressed on me – in fact, made sure I knew - that being front and center or recognized on stage or getting the credit for something he’d done weren’t ultimately what mattered most to him. He genuinely believed that his calling and the purpose of leadership were about giving back. He hoped his life and actions were an example that helped instill a responsibility in others for caring for each other and what they have a passion for. And for Pete, that meant contributing to the furtherance of the music. It’s an amazing thing what passion can drive a person toward – and once bitten and infected with what Pete Kuykendall has given and taught us - people might just abandon all sense of what’s in their best interest and launch headfirst and happy into a life devoted to it. Godspeed my friend.
INDUSTRY NEWS
November 2017
LUTHIERS & MERCHANDISERS, ARTISTS & COMPOSERS DEERING BANJOS & ALISON BROWN COLLABORATE ON THE JOHN HARTFORD-INSPIRED JULIA BELLE LOW BANJO Deering Banjos has launched the new Julia Belle Low banjo in a unique collaboration between Deering and banjo icon, Alison Brown. The 24fret low-tuned banjo features John Hartford’s hand drawn artwork on the fingerboard as well as design aesthetics and features customized by Alison herself. Greg Deering worked with John to design and build his first signature Hartford Model banjo. John’s Deering low banjo was an iconic part of his sound for many years and was an inspiration for many banjo players, among them Alison Brown. As a proud owner of John’s prototype Deering low banjo, a long-time friend of the Hartford family, and as a fellow San Diegan, it seemed fitting for Alison to reach out to the Deerings to collaborate on an updated version. John’s sketches adorn the banjo, including an enigmatic woman in a flowing dress, [Julia Belle], Captain Trone, the captain of the famous Mississippi riverboat the Julia Belle Swain and the man who taught John to pilot the paddlewheeler, and a riverboat sketch. The name “Julia Belle” is immortalized in John’s own handwriting, and Alison Brown’s name is inlaid as well. Tonally, the Julia Belle shines when played in lower tunings such as open E or open D, as well as in standard G tuning. “I love my banjos to sound as warm and full as possible. I think that tone tends to draw people in, particu-
larly folks who are not that familiar with the banjo or are put off by the traditional bright, poppy bluegrass banjo sound,” Brown explains. In a twist on John’s original banjo, Alison also opted for two extra frets with an overhanging fingerboard. “In my opinion, there’s nothing like a low banjo to open up a player’s creativity. The low resonance gives the banjo a solo voice that is so comfortable and inspiring to play that I find myself reaching for it often to play around the house. It’s a great tool in band settings and in the studio too, especially when you need to play in D, E or F but really want to hear the open sound of a G roll.” The Julia Belle has an MSRP of $5,699 and is available to order at any authorized Deering retailer or at Deering Banjos.
NOTE TO ARTISTS, MANAGEMENT, LABELS, AND PUBLICISTS BEGINNING IN DECEMBER, IBMA WILL RETURN TO ITS LONG-STANDING PRACTICE OF SHARING NEWS OF NEW BLUEGRASS RELEASES IN OUR NEWSLETTER. WE WILL NO LONGER BE WRITING CD REVIEWS.
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