Mr. White

Roland White was there at the beginning: when the White Brothers, Dillards, Scottsville Squirrel Barkers and like-minded young pickers added bluegrass to the folk revival blossoming on college campuses and at clubs such as LA’s Ash Grove; and when he and brother Clarence planted the seeds of newgrass with the Kentucky Colonels, bringing a fresh California energy to Appalachian traditions. And he would like you to know that he’s still here, keeping the Grammy-winning Roland White Band rolling, teaching and leading workshops, and tending the enormous legacy he and his brothers created in country, bluegrass, and rock. There’s an exuberant addition to that recorded legacy with the Tompkins Square release of Roland’s 1976 solo record, I Wasn’t Born to Rock ‘n Roll, remastered and on CD for the first time. The thirteen tracks display Roland’s mastery of bluegrass playing and singing, contain an unreleased song from the sessions, and include an energetic instrumental Roland and Clarence wrote while on a 1964 Kentucky Colonels tour. From today’s perspective, the title is ironic and even poignant. I Wasn’t Born to Rock ‘n Roll captures a band whose members powered some of the brightest lights in LA’s late-60s country-rock scene, experiencing its commercial crescendo but also its most personally devastating year.

After bringing bluegrass out of the folk clubs and into the concert halls and festivals with the Kentucky Colonels, Clarence White found work and new energy in the electric mingling of country, bluegrass and rock that filled LA’s canyons and valleys. That unstable musical chemistry combusted with Byrds-Springfield-Poco-Stone Poneys-Dillard & Clark-Stone Canyon Band-Nitty Gritty-Submarine-Burrito Brothers in kaleidoscopic proliferation and combination. Roland missed all that, untempted by the rock scene. “I was here [Nashville],” he remembers. “I’d hear about it, but… .” When Clarence joined the Byrds, his brother Roland left home to tour with his heroes, first serving with Bill Monroe and then Lester Flatt. The teenager who drilled his younger brothers with Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and Stanley Brothers 45s became a road-tested veteran discovering his own musical voice while supporting the old masters.

Clarence brought acoustic bluegrass breakdowns to the middle of Byrds sets (the acoustic set in this 1971 show begins with a blistering “Black Mountain Rag”); the post-Gram Parsons Burrito Brothers (led then by one-time Squirrel Barker Chris Hillman) soon did the same, augmented by players who would become Country Gazette: Kenny Wertz, Byron Berline, and Roger Bush (Gazette member Alan Munde would join later Burritos tours). The response to the acoustic sets often overwhelmed the amplified rock that bookended Burritos shows; the skeptical are invited to listen to the crowd respond to “Orange Blossom Special” on Last of the Red Hot Burritos (1972). After positive reviews and poor sales for the first generation of country-rock records, maybe this was the moment when country and bluegrass would break through to young audiences, when radio would pay attention, when one band would crystallize the commercial potential of the LA scene.

And it was. June 1972 saw the release of Eagles which refined the members’ various experiences in the Burrito Brothers, Poco, Dillard and Clark, Longbranch Pennywhistle, Shiloh — and yielded three country-flavored top-forty hits. At the same time, megastar Stephen Stills’s Manassas project pulled Chris Hillman from the Burrito Brothers and Burritos/Country Gazette members Byron Berline and Roger Bush into the recording sessions. “The Byrds invented country rock,” Chris Hillman told John Einarson in Hot Burritos. “Gram and I refined it in the Burritos, and the Eagles took it to the bank. They saw every mistake every other band made before them and they did it right.” The sudden commercial possibilities in country-rock meant there were countless opportunities to record and tour. Clarence left the Byrds in early 1973 to work on taking the music he helped create to a higher level of invention. There were projects sharing many of the same members, loose, mutable bands such as Nashville West and Muleskinner, a solo album project… and the reunion of the White Brothers/New Kentucky Colonels. That full schedule placed Clarence at the center of LA’s best session players and bluegrass stalwarts. And there was one person who had to be there: Roland.

“Clarence called me in early ‘73 when I was still with Lester Flatt,” Roland recalls, “and told me he was out of the Byrds. He said Eddie Ticknor, who was the manager for the Byrds, was going to manage him, and he had quite a few places in Europe he could put us. Clarence asked me if I was interested, and how was the job going with Lester. I said, ‘OK, but it’s been about 4 years.’ We could go to Europe, get Eric [brother Eric White] and Herb Pederson to do it. I said, ‘All it takes is you telling me we’re doing it and I’ll turn in my notice.’ Four years is a good amount of time, and I really wanted to play with Clarence. And it happened. I went out to California, we played a couple of little shows, one at the Ash Grove, then we went to Europe.”

The Kentucky Colonels at the Ash Grove, 1966

Roland remembers those Kentucky Colonels/White Brothers shows in Europe (along with Herb Pederson and Alan Munde) as among his favorite shows, and calls them the finest examples of Clarence’s playing. Back in LA, work continued on Clarence’s solo record, with the brothers and friends trying out material in small clubs and in informal sessions, like one at Byron Berline’s house in April 1973, that found Clarence and Roland among the group playing standards such as “John Henry,” “Willow Garden” and “Hard Hearted.” Clarence’s Byrds bandmate Skip Battin was also recording a solo record with the same crowd, including Roland, Berline, Roger Bush, Alan Munde, Herb Pedersen, Al Perkins, and Chris Ethridge (ex-Flying Burrito Brothers). “It was an exciting time, getting to play with all those people,” Roland muses.

“First time I ever heard the Country Gazette, I was in Lester Flatt’s bus. They had that [sings] ‘Down the road, down the road’ record out. We had the radio on WAMU, a bluegrass station, and this group came on and I thought ‘Who is that?!’ And Lester, when he heard it, said ‘Who are these guys?’ It sounded different to him… . The DJ said ‘That’s Country Gazette with Byron Berline, Alan Munde, Roger Bush’… and I said, ‘Hey I know those guys!’

“When Clarence and I got together,” Roland continues, “he said, ‘I see you’ve pretty much left the Bill Monroe stuff.’ And I said, ‘I had to do it.’ I wasn’t creating anything, just playing the same stuff over and over again.” The White brothers planned to hit the summer-festival circuit, including what promised to be a legendary tour with the vanguard of the country-leaning branch of country-rock. There was one show, in June. “We were leaving to go to the Baltimore area… they had Gram Parsons, Emmylou, Gene Parsons… and they wanted a Kentucky Colonels show. Clarence, Eric and I went out there and we did the Kentucky Colonels set. Country Gazette was there, too, so we used Byron Berline and Alan Munde on the banjo. A lot of that stuff came at me so fast…”

Clarence White

And then it stopped. Within months in mid-1973, the LA country-rock community was stunned by two sudden deaths: Clarence White and Gram Parsons. After sitting in with Nashville West bandmate Gib Guilbeau at a small club in July, Clarence was hit and killed by a drunk driver. Roland, injured, grieving his brother and most important musical partner, faced an unknown future. Where do you go when coming home ends in the death of your dreams? To longtime friends and a home in the music that sustained you from childhood. In a Fretboard Journal interview, Roland describes Roger Bush, friend and bandmate from The Country Boys days, asking Roland at Clarence’s funeral what he would do, if he would go back to Lester Flatt’s band. “No, that would be stepping back in time,” he replied. On the spot, Bush offered him the departing Kenny Wertz’s guitar chair in Country Gazette. Roland spent 13 years in Country Gazette, moving in late 1975 from guitar to mandolin. I Wasn’t Born to Rock ‘n Roll is at heart a Country Gazette record that spotlights Roland’s talents.

“The band is Country Gazette at that time,” Roland allows. “Slim Richey [producer and head of Texas-based Ridge Runner Records] said, ‘You have to have a Roland White record.’ We had done a couple of Alan Munde records and more later on. And he said, ‘How about doing a record for Ridge Runner?’ We were going to be in Dallas for a couple of weeks, so he said, ‘Why don’t you work up some material?’ I thought, ‘Well, why not these songs we do on the road? We know ‘em and they’re well rehearsed.’ So that’s what we did. It didn’t take very long to do it. We knew the songs! I played a lot of mandolin and sang most of the leads. I was the lead singer – when Country Gazette hired me, that was my job. I started playing mandolin with them in late 1975. So this is first record we made together with me on mandolin.”

The band today.

Roland mentions some of his favorites that appear on the record. “If I Should Wander Back Tonight”: “I love that song. There’s a third verse but I could never remember it. It’s too poetic!” “Powder Creek”: “Well, this is the Kentucky Colonels in 1964, I guess. We were headed south toward Baltimore to play a coffeehouse. Clarence and I were in the back of the wagon. He had his guitar out and I had my mandolin, and we came up with this tune. We never had a chance to record it before he died. So I had it in Country Gazette, but we never recorded it, we just did it on stage. When it came time to do this record, it was the perfect thing to put it on. Alan really liked it and loved to play it.” There’s also an upbeat version of “The Prisoner’s Song,” a number Roland brought back from Monroe’s set, and that had been a staple of White Brothers sets (check the version in the Vault’s Ash Grove collection, from a 1967 concert.

At the center of the record, “The Marathon” gives a sense of the fireworks generated at Country Gazette shows. The 7½-minute bluegrass breakdown includes takes on six standards, including “Nine Pound Hammer,” “Live and Let Live,” and “Sittin’ On Top of the World.” “When we would do that on stage, it would change from time to time,” Roland says. “If I came in on the second or third verse, instead of the beginning, they would follow – cause it would get too long otherwise. On the record, it’s a little shorter. When I got to ‘Sitting on Top of the World,’ I thought, ‘Gee whiz, we gotta quit this sometime,’ so I made a motion to quit. We heard from several DJs that ‘Hey, we love that ‘Marathon.’ We can take a break, go get a cola or cup of coffee or something.’ ”

Roland White has seldom taken a break. After his years with Country Gazette, he spent 11 years with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, released a second solo record in 1994 called Trying to Get to You, and founded his Roland White Band, which includes wife Diane Bouska on guitar, in 2001.

-Bob Moses

www.smokemusic.tv

[Roland White: A Record Of His Own is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Washington Square, the '60's.

The real-estate boom of the ’90s assured that Brooklyn would become the home of NYC’s artists, writers and musicians as they abandoned the unaffordable lofts and tenements of Manhattan’s downtown. Brooklyn offered an appealingly pugnacious personality, dormant warehouses for makeshift housing and rehearsal spaces, cheap bars, and abundant, varied music communities, including, and by no means limited to, indie rock, funk and R&B, Haitian rara, experimental and modern composed — and bluegrass, country and old-time. Now, that sounds unlikely in a city that hasn’t had a country-music radio station in the living memory of most, but a real community thrives, supported by proliferating jam sessions, tolerant and even downright welcoming bars and restaurants, instrument shops, and, most important, players with deep knowledge and enthusiasm for the music.

Much of the traditional music community circulates through Brooklyn’s jam sessions. They’re equal parts social meet-up and instrumental workshop, a place to hone new material or just hang out and learn the repertoire. The longest-lasting Brooklyn session I know is the Ponkiesburg Picking Party . Founded in 2000 in Brooklyn Heights, the session has migrated from bar to bar (it’s now every Sunday from around 5pm till 7:30p at Kili on Hoyt Street near Atlantic), and in flavor from large, rambunctious song scrums to tightly focused bluegrass sessions that rival anything you’ll see on local stages. In fact, several bands have emerged from the session, and many of the crowd attend bluegrass festivals and workshops. Depending on who brings what instrument, the material ranges from old-time fiddle tunes, bluegrass breakdowns, mournful ballads, to honky-tonk standards. It’s an invaluable opportunity for less-experienced players to pick with and learn from musicians who played on one of the city’s stages the night before. I first showed up at the Picking Party around 2002, shyly strumming a guitar on the outer edges of the circle, like many who wind up at the session, a rock refugee. Over that time I’ve learned songs from players I admire, witnessed outbreaks of clogging (and, yes, there are occasional clogging and square-dancing workshops in Brooklyn), improved my mandolin and guitar playing, and made real friends.

Ponkiesburg at the Brazen Head

Some of the players at Kili come in bleary because they have been at Sunny’s until the sun starts to color the cranes on Red Hook’s still-active docks. Looking like a relic from On the Waterfront, Sunny’s caters to an eclectic crowd of artists, longshoremen, and other Red Hook denizens. It’s generally agreed that Sunny’s remains Sunny’s because it’s so damn hard to get to (and get home from at 4am), and therefore impervious to the merely curious. The Saturday night jam session gets going late, but by midnight half the crowd is playing an instrument – and the ensemble and repertoire is as eclectic as the patrons, from country sing-alongs to accordion-pumping waltzes.

Nearby on Brooklyn’s Columbia Street waterfront, Jalopy has become a combination drop-in center and performance space for the folk, bluegrass and old-time scene. A pocket opera house, Jalopy’s raised stage welcomes touring artists and local luminaries, as well as regular Wednesday night Roots and Ruckus shows hosted by Feral Foster. Jalopy also serves the community with instrument workshops, classes, instrument sales and repair, square dances, hoe-downs and other assorted hoo haw. This weekend, the Brooklyn Folk Festival takes over Jalopy. Hosted by Eli Smith, a key instigator of Brooklyn traditional music who programs Down Home Radio (which he describes as a “hardcore, unreconstructed, paleo-acoustic folk music program”) and plays banjo, fiddle, and washboard with the Dust Busters. His band will be appearing tonight with The Calamity Janes, an appealingly sassy old-time band featuring Dr. Kari Denis, fiddler, clogger, and generally nurturing presence to the shyer jam-session attendees.

Brooklyn Folk Fest logo designed by Ernesto Gomez. Poster by Jose Delhart.

A definitive list of bluegrass, country and folk venues and sessions would be impossible as more appear every time a couple of folks with guitars asks a bar owner if they can sit and play a little. Saturday and Sunday brunches are long-time staples: the Nolita House on Houston Street hosts regular afternoon sets for the Manhattan types – with Brooklyn players; Superfine in Dumbo has had a long-running bluegrass brunch on Sundays. Alex Battles and Whiskey Rebellion host a honky-tonk free-for-all called the CashHank Hootenanny Jamboree at Buttermilk in Park Slope the first Thursday of every month; those with sharp elbows and determination can grab the mic to deliver some three-chord heartbreak.

To set the mood for a Brooklyn bluegrass crawl, or get some tunes you’re liable to hear at the sessions under your fingers, the Vault offers some old-time and bluegrass treasures in the Ash Grove collection – and even hidden in the rock archives.

Bill Monroe

Bill Monroe, being the father of bluegrass, is the place to start. There’s a 1967 Ash Grove show (featuring Roland White and Byron Berliner in the band) that includes “Little Footprints in the Snow”; you’ll often hear “Uncle Pen,” too — there’s a great version featuring Del McCoury in the Bottom Line show from 1983.

Vern and Ray offer a version of Monroe’s burner, “Molly and Tenbrooks,” and “Pike County Breakdown” in an Ash Grove set from August, 1967. The White Brothers, Clarence, Roland and Eric, were among the founders of the California bluegrass revival. Hear them early on in a 1967 Ash Grove performance of “Sally Goodin,” a tune they returned to often and used to teach generations of players. Then catch Clarence White playing “Black Mountain Rag” in a Byrds set from Amsterdam in 1971 as he holds down an acoustic picking session in the middle of the show.

-Bob Moses

http://www.smokemusic.tv/

[Shall We Gather in Brooklyn? is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Palmer’s Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi (1981) was more than book for generations of music writers and enthusiasts. His survey of hallowed ground became a combination syllabus, sacred text and guidebook for those willing to follow its lead. DeCurtis quotes Ted’s Palmer obituary from the Boston Phoenix in his introductory essay:

I treated it as a Bible, reading each chapter and then buying every record it mentioned. It was a post-grad-level course. But it was nothing like the firsthand encounters with the music I’ve had in places like Holly Springs, Clarksdale, Greenville, and Rolling Fork. Those have been experiences that changed my life and broadened my understanding of humanity and myself.

Though the book presents the range of Palmer’s interests — including, but not limited to, jazz, punk, composed, classic rock, and, especially, what came to be known as “world” music — but the blues form a through narrative in the book and it’s the foundation of his influence on fellow writers. The music of the Delta he explored finds its way into his thinking on many of the genres above and also in his fundamental belief in what constitutes American music. His profile of Muddy Waters for Rolling Stone (1978) contrasts the central figure of blues’ transition from acoustic country to Chicago electric at ease in his home in the suburbs with searing memories of hard work and high times at Muddy’s own juke joint. The Vault has recently posted Waters’ Newport Festival appearance, the 1960 show important enough to merit Palmer’s attention in the profile.

The Vault has a significant collection of Lightnin’ Hopkins performances from the Ash Grove. Palmer profiled the Texas blues icon for the New York Times in 1980, describing “An aura of vaguely defined but palpable menace…” around the most-recorded artist of the blues revival. The Vault sets find this “real folk poet” (in Palmer’s description) becoming one of the busiest bluesmen of the ’60s. As Palmer says, and as these sets demonstrate, though at the time he was appearing with rock bands and playing concert halls, “… he’s usually at his best in a small club, especially when the audience is willing to interact with him.”

Ted is Exhibit A for the transformative power of the blues, and his quest to completely master the subject both as writer and performer follows Palmer’s shining example. Ted gave me a hand up onto the editorial ladder, first at Musician magazine, and then to The Boston Phoenix. He was a gentle, generous editor and friend. When I became an editor, I was able to return the favor a few times. I also played on shows with Ted’s first bands, and at that time he was playing a slightly off-kilter brand of smart rock, generally letting the spotlight fall on female vocalists. No longer.

From atop tables and banquettes, while testifying in the faces of the audience as he strides through the crowd, turning listeners into trembling tables for his guitar as he wields his slashing slide, Ted and Scissormen demonstrate that the “blues” is more than one 12-bar thing. Gospel, country, Chicago, grind, British Invasion… Ted picks up the various blues live wires and twists them into a high-tension highwire.

Ted also reminds us that the blues was Saturday-night music, meant to encourage dancing, induce laughter, and bring solace. He reduces his presentation to the juke-joint duo of guitar and drums (this night, Larry Dersch). That’s plenty, as his guitar fills the club with piercing slide, driving rhythms and plucked bass. Opening with a haunting gospel blues, “John the Revelator,” Ted unrolls a tour of blues history, with historical asides and tall tales. He references his mentor R.L. Burnside frequently, and honors Burnside on Scissormen’s last studio recording, Luck in a Hurry, with “The Devil is Laughing,” an original created with Burnside’s characteristic slow grind.

A remarkable show, and an inspiring witness to personal and musical transformation.

Scissormen: “Delta Train”

—Bob Moses

http://www.smokemusic.tv/

[The Blues Road: Robert Palmer and Scissormen is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Jeff Bridges mounted the Hollywood stage on Oscar© night and gave the elegantly-groomed proceedings an ebullient kick in the butt. He had reason to celebrate: breathing life into ancient movie archetypes is no small feat. The lone drifter with a dark past and inexplicably irresistible allure. The redemptive woman and the love that turns dark abyss to rosy fade-out. Maybe Crazy Heart works because we think we know where this thing’s heading — and then the characters start acting human.

Bridges’s Bad Blake borrows a bow-legged cliche that took root at the very birth of movie westerns. Transposed from gun- to guitar-slinging, the wandering stranger inhabits our imagination of the endless road — a lonely narrative that doomed many of our musical heroes. Waylon Jennings, Townes Van Zandt — the Texas country songwriters and outlaws haunt Crazy Heart. T Bone Burnett uttered not a word in acceptance of the Best Song award and let Ryan Bingham offer thanks. But Burnett brought his Fort Worth running buddy Stephen Bruton to the production, and that made a difference.

Bingham and Burnett wrote “The Weary Kind,” Crazy Heart’s award-winning song , and it works fine as a romantic plot summary and makes sense as the “theme song.” But Bruton wrote (with Gary Nicholson) “Fallin’ and Flyin’,” the song that tells us what gave Bad Blake that glint in his eye. It rides shotgun in the soundtrack with Waylon Jennings’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?,” a snatch of which fills in all the assumptions we make about Bad Blake’s heydays. It’s my favorite of Jennings’s songs. Waylon’s career was a pointed question posed to Nashville and the countrypolitan sound of the 70s; he couldn’t be more relevant now, and his presence serves as a reproach to the pop/country purveyed by Colin Farrell’s character. The film is dedicated to Bruton and that feels right. If anyone involved lent the project authenticity, it was Bruton. He played with Kris Kristofferson from the early 70s, produced Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Marcia Ball, and heard his songs recorded by Willie, Bonnie Raitt, Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Martina McBride… and Waylon, among many others. T Bone Burnett credits him with being the glue that held the music of Crazy Heart together, working with Farrell and Bridges, producing the tracks. He lived just long enough to see the results, but not the acclaim.

You can hear Bruton backing up Kris Kristofferson in a 1982 show at the Country Club in Reseda, CA, part of the Vault’s Silver Eagle collection. (The second guitarist, btw, is the legendary Billy Swan.) It’s a full, clear reading of the Kristofferson catalogue in a small-band setting. Kristofferson released a new album last fall, and stopped by the Daytrotter studios to run through that new material, including a tender “From Here to Forever.”

The Vault has a pair of Jennings shows recorded in 1984, and they make a terrific introduction to the bard of Luckenbach. Jennings had been filling auditoriums — even in Yankee Boston — and hitting the top of the charts. His multiplatinum Greatest Hits had just been released on CD, with Volume II hitting stores as well. Recorded on his birthday, with wife Jessi Colter adding vocals and birthday wishes, this is an upbeat, polished take on the outlaw repertory. You’ll also find a particularly biting version of “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” recorded right in the belly of the Nashville beast at Opryland the previous year — with Hank’s son Hank Williams Jr. joining in and giving the rendition a rollicking inspiration.

The other musical spirit coloring Crazy Heart’s melancholy edges is Townes Van Zandt. The instinctive lyricism, the painful honesty, the legion of tall tales about outrageous behavior, and a heartbreaking decline after too many nights in too many bars. The movie’s setting in Houston recalls the locale of Van Zandt’s early career and his home base at The Old Quarter. The scenes of collapse, the half-hearted shows and forgotten lyrics, and the relief in being back home, just a guy with a guitar writing songs all echo Townes’s life story. I was fortunate in seeing Townes a couple of times in the late 80s and early 90s. Just Townes, a guitar and a chair, and in pretty good shape. Not the shambling, forgetful, drunk, or disdainful performer that built the dark part of the Townes legend. I have seldom witnessed such nakedly honest performances and never touched as deeply.

We hear just a bit of Townes’s well-known song, “If I Needed You,” on the soundtrack and the lyrical statement of need and vulnerability underlines the opening of Bad Blake’s heart. But I might have chosen “To Live Is To Fly” as the movie’s theme:

We all got holes to fill
Them holes are all that’s real.
Some fall on you like a storm,
Sometimes you dig your own.

[Real Crazy is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]