It is a sunny, fall afternoon along the banks of the Ohio in Louisville, Kentucky and the towboats are rolling up slow. The city has reconstructed much of its waterfront over the recent decade, and included a paved walkway along the river. This stretches for miles westward, downriver, and I have decided to utilize it, breaking away from activities at the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) convention at the Galt House hotel.
This is the annual worldwide gathering of the bluegrass clan—musicians, merchants, fans, and the just plain curious—a week long schedule of musician showcases, workshops, tradeshow gawking, networking, jamming, and awards presentations. It all culminates with a 3-day “Fan Fest” featuring some of the top groups in bluegrass.
I am looking at an informational plaque which tells me that the river here was once known as the "Falls of the Ohio," a rocky stretch which once represented a navigational barrier to river traffic. There is little evidence of this geological impediment now, for the limestone base of the river was blasted away a long time ago, forever leveling and taming this riverine stretch.
The plaque also informs me that it was at this same spot, on an island in the river, where Lewis and Clark trained their party of explorers for their momentous 1803 expedition across the continent. Today the island doesn't exist. Instead, the most prominent feature I can see across the river is a gigantic, stories-high clock hovering over New Albany, Indiana.
I muse about the muddied flow of the river, how it ambles, swirls and rushes on its long, deliberate way from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River. In these circumstances it is easy to start drawing comparisons with one’s life, and I find myself meditating on the equally long, sinuous flow of musical events that led me from the musical flower power of 1970 San Francisco to the “wildwood flower” of Louisville, 2002.
In 1970 I was a young lad fresh out of Vietnam, having relocated to San Francisco by way of my childhood home in Michigan. Typical of my generation I was “into” rock & roll, and spent many hours absorbing live presentations of top San Francisco bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, and my personal favorite, Santana.
On a given day one could catch Frumious Bandersnatch (there’s some trivia for you) and Canned Heat “goin’ up the country” at a free concert in Speedway Meadows. From there, it was off to Winterland for a peace benefit featuring the Grateful Dead and opening act, the Maharishi (errant, stoned-out cries of “Bring on the ‘Dead, man” shattering the collective, atmospheric, meditative “Om”). Top it off with Chicago Transit Authority (later, “Chicago”) and the Steve Miller Band at the Fillmore—that is, if you hadn’t already ingested (directly or indirectly) enough illegal substance sufficient to render yourself inoperable.
I had a large rock & roll record collection (courtesy of Tower Records—$2.50 a pop), buttressed with the latest technology I could find for my Volkswagen bug: an 8-track tape player.
One night a friend from Georgia convinced me to go hear a band at a small club on Union Street, the Drinking Gourd. Their name was the “Styx River Ferry” and I was told they were a “bluegrass” group. I had never heard bluegrass before, and was completely taken. “Where does this music come from and who got it started?” I remember asking my friend. “Well, there’s this fellow named Bill Monroe…” he replied.
I guess you’d have to call it a life-changing event. Overnight I was a convert, taking in every local and national bluegrass act I could set my eyes and ears, on: High Country, Vern & Ray, the Phantoms of the ‘Opry (still the best bluegrass band name I’ve ever come across), Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys to name a few. So complete was the transformation I was soon down by the side of the road in Mill Valley hawking all my rock & roll records for a buck a piece so that I could go buy my first guitar—a Guild D-50. I was on my way toward being a bluegrass musician and I never looked back.
Thirty-two years have passed since that momentous day—thirty-two years, seven bands, 16 musical instruments, 18 bluegrass radio-host years, dozens of articles, hundreds of performances, thousands of collected records and new friends, millions of pleasurable experiences—and one CD recorded (The Fossils, The Fossil Record, Voyager CD348 in case you’re interested). Yes, it’s been a long, winding road but it still seems only yesterday I made that hard, swerving turn onto it.
Next page: “This is the best band I’ve heard here”
