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Old Music - New Approaches

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How contemporary culture and environment influence old-time music. Festivals. Bands like Crooked Still. Performers like you.

38 Members, Created 1/30/2011 -

Administrators: ramjo (owner)

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From ramjo on 1/30/2011 3:29:55 PM

I'm running off at the mouth (fingers) here, but I was in the car for a long time today, and I was thinking about the group's topic area. I guess so many of the musicians we revere were real trend-setters. Dock Boggs? Why does he sound the way he does? So many players living right nearby don't sound like that. Was it his life as a coal miner? Or was it that he just learned from someone else who played like that, someone who wasn't recorded. I tend to think Dock just played the old music with a new approach.

I wondered who I'd put on a list of pioneers, trend setters, and how I'd even define that list. I thought, "music from 1930 onward." This was well into the radio and recording era, when the styles were pretty well understood.

First would come Bill Monroe, welding country music onto a pop big-band frame. Tight arrangements, precision, space for soloists, just as he was hearing on the city radio stations.

Sam Bush, who in the 70s injected Bill Monroe's music with a mega dose of rock.

The David Grisman Quintet. Bring me the swing! Stringband music as if Django and Coleman Hawkins could play these instruments.

The Horseflies (see above). Old time meets trance.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones who brought bebop to banjo, and spawned a royal line from the various bands of Tony Trishka (who, of course, was actually Bela's teacher) to the Punch Brothers.

Crooked Still. Jazzy, rocky, but always elegant settings of finely chosen traditional songs.

Others? More?

2 Comments
NickC says: 1/30/2011 4:11:38 PM Yeah. The Horseflies really stray into exciting new territory don't they? I'd love to catch them live. Alison Brown also springs to mind along with Leon Hunt (with his new band the Scoville Units) both blend Bluegrass Celtic and Jazz influences. I'm a member of Tony Trischka's school of banjo. It's quite a thrill to rub virtual shoulders with him on that site. What impresses me most about players like him is that they have a huge respect for and knowledge of tradition while being progressive at the same time . It's been a real eye opener as Tony Trischka often talks about those Earl Scruggs licks having a 'Jazz feel' to them. Fascinating!
	ramjo says: 1/30/2011 4:24:18 PM Very cool. The world is better because of Tony T, that's for sure.
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