Rolling On With Blue Train

 Blue Train: Tom Lyons (filling in for Mike Hartnett) Dave Propst, Tom Reeves, 

Rick Miller, and George Osing.

5 October 2013

      Why can't northern Virginia or the D.C. metro area get its bluegrass act together? I'm mystified to say the least. We're blessed with lots of money, a huge audience base, and literally thousands of potential playing spaces, and yet, I find myself continually going over the border to Maryland and across the Mason-Dixon Line to hear the kind of bluegrass I want to listen to. Thank God for WAMU/Bluegrasscountry for feeding my addiction for traditional bluegrass. Last night was no different. I took a chance and drove out beyond Baltimore to the White Marsh Mall area. Remember this place? It's not called White Marsh for nothing. That's what it used to be. Now Mother Progress has turned it into New Jersey South. It seems to be continually under construction and expansion. I remember it as a flat swamp 'back when' on long hauls northward to Maine. I hate malls - emphasis on the word hate. But that's progress, and if it means jobs for the locals then so much for some sort of positive spin on progress. I had to get off the exit at White Marsh to find my destination. It's a nightmare of road construction and tricky temporary exits that I imagine, change every day, as the road improvement continues. Exits navigated, I easily found Pulaski Highway (Route 40) and my final stop: The Williamsburg Inn at White Marsh.

     We got there early enough to get something to eat and I already recognized some friendly faces from other bluegrass venues. The Williamsburg Inn is what it says. A beautiful old house that looks more like a B & B with an attached restaurant and bar. Behind the house is a small motel, beautifully manicured landscaping, and recently added within the last year, a huge 60 by 30 ft. tent/pavilion for functions and events. The restaurant and bar were doing a brisk business. Connie and I ordered the She-Crab soup and Reubens. We finished half of the sandwiches because it was just too much. The prices were good, too. Because I'm the type of guy who notices these things, the customers seemed to be dressed above average for that part of Maryland. Not overly dressed, but obviously dressed for a special night out that meant something to them. It gave me the feeling that I would probably want to return to this place to try more menu items. I ask a lot of questions when I come into a place I've never been before. It seems that everyone I talked to had never been there, never played there as a musician, or had never been there before to listen to bluegrass.  So in essence they were all in the same boat as Connie and I. The draw that night was Blue Train and the audience consisted of a lot of the same people I see at Jumbo Jimmy's, Goofy's, Rob's Barn, and a few other places around Pa. and Maryland. This was Blue Train's sixth official paid performance. They've been on a stage only six times since last Fathers' Day. They've actually had fewer rehearsals. They have no CD's, no googahs to sell, no videos up on YouTube. They don't even have a website yet. What they have is talent in abundance, and the musical strength of their membership - and bookings. Lots of bookings up to the end of the year, while most bands are fretting over where the next performance will be. To launch a new band and then be busy every weekend is a working musician's dream-situation. Blue Train is obviously doing something right.

     What they are doing right is staying strictly traditional and yet expanding their repertoire of songs to broaden the entertainment value of each performance. Word gets around in Maryland in a way that it doesn't get around over here in northern Virginia. There is a tradition to uphold. I used to think it was indefinable. I kept hearing the phrase, "Baltimore Bluegrass Style" or "Maryland/Baltimore Bluegrass." I've tried to pin-point what local musicians were talking about and it may be an eternal search for the Holy Grail. Maybe it doesn't exist at all. If you hang around these guys long enough you begin recognizing the differences, even if they're hard to define. For me, it mainly rests in the musician's respect for the basic material of bluegrass up to and including the 1950's and early 60's. God help me, but every 'younger' group of players I see over in my neck of  D.C. suburbia think they can change the rules, call themselves "Americana" and throw in some amateurish banjo-frailing. They badly miss the point. Very badly. And wonder why they can't get paying gigs, let alone any gig other than playing for some friend's birthday party.

     What's also very different about Maryland/Baltimore bluegrass actually has nothing to do with the people who play it and perform it. You have to consider that plenty of good performance venues still see a dollar-value in the product, and that people are willing to pay to hear it; either through ticket sales or by consuming lots of food and drinks. Enter the Williamsburg Inn and it's risky step forward to at least give some of the people what they want. My discussions last night with Inn owner Rob Parker and entertainment manager Nikki Kimmel were interesting. Why bluegrass? Why offer such an esoteric form of music, and one that is viewed skeptically as having a limited audience? Ron's answer was, "We're having a huge success with all of our entertainment. We might have to get a bigger tent. We've had a very successful first-year of business." Nikki Kimmel mirrored Ron Parker's optimism about the future. She's obviously a hard-worker and has a huge task before her. Blue Train was the acting vanguard, and Nikki hired them on hearsay alone, which says a lot for the entertainment potential of such a new entity in bluegrass. She not only signed them up once, but once again for a repeat performance on November 23rd. It's a sign. A sign of things to come for the continued existence of a style of music which some call Maryland/Baltimore Bluegrass. It doesn't survive without the support of promoters and restaurant/bar owners who are willing to take a risk and hire good, local talent to entertain the patrons.

Blue Train will be appearing at Rob's Barn Concert Series (Westminster, Md.) on October 19th and will return to the Williamsburg Inn on November 23rd.
Blue Train is:  Rick Miller, guitar. Dave Propst, mandolin. Tom Reeves, bass. George Osing, banjo. and Mike Hartnett, fiddle.