The Rocks Bluegrass Factory Band at the Frederick Moose Lodge, June 7th, 2014
"They say don't go/ On Wolverton Mountain/ If your lookin'/ For a wife.
'Cause Clifton Clowers/ Got a pretty young daughter/ But he's mighty handy
With a gun and a knife." - Hit song by Claude King (1962)
7 June 2014: The Moose Lodge, Frederick, Maryland
You know how it is. A song gets in your head and you can't remove it. This song actually has nothing to do with the show I saw last weekend at the Moose Lodge in Frederick - and it has everything to do with it. The newly formed Rocks Bluegrass Factory Band (Point of Rocks, Maryland) had aligned with the venerable Ernie Bradley and the Martin Brothers and Aspen Run for a full evening of exploration and show-casing of talents. At the center of the Rocks Bluegrass Factory effort is Joey Longwell, multi-instrumentalist and excellent baritone voice. Joey Longwell has been a long-standing member of the bluegrass scene up around Frederick County and some years ago he linked up with Gene Beachley through the Ernie Bradley connection. They played a lot around Lucketts, Martinsburg, and Hagerstown. Anybody who plays with Ernie Bradley is immediately connected to the A-List of working bluegrassers in the Maryland and West Virginia Panhandles. There aren't many. You would expect the region to be rich in working bluegrass bands and musicians. It's not. The audiences and the interest have dwindled. Working musicians sit around and complain a lot that they can't get monetary support from working their craft. It's a unique dynamic because the region was once the hot bed spawning ground for the greats who established the genre. I still love to travel out in that direction and search out the gatherings and local jams where people are playing and dreaming about teaming up to make a few bucks playing music. There are numerous, marvelously talented bands out there on the edge of the mountains who never get beyond playing the church revival circuits and fruit stand openings, or an annual street carnival. They'll play for free or what's known as "the gate" because the local operators think they either don't need to be paid, or the band is doing a free favor for somebody, usually a relative.
It's easy to sit by and do nothing. It's easy to accept 'the ways things are.' It takes a little bit more guts and chutzpah to take a step forward and try to change things. Way back in my university days when I should have been studying math and science, but really couldn't stand it because it bored me to death, I began researching the rise and spread of commedia dell'arte from Italy to the rest of Europe in the 16th Century. Along with that arose a tradition of troubadours and Italian dance masters who had as much to do with the artistic explosion of the Renaissance as any supposedly intellectual scholar of the time. What these people had was mobility. From court to court and town square to town square. The mobility was either self-imposed or forced by a local court official or magistrate. Along with the legend of the vagabond life-style arose the wonderful purpose these vagabonds served as exchangers of ideas, popular stories, and even local news sources. One can't even begin to contemplate the rise of opera, ballet, and what we often refer to as the "higher arts" without considering the early role played by traveling troupes, street musicians and actors, and other assorted entertainers. Once I left my studies and started a career in the historical travel business there was always a side-bar reason why I would leave "The Tour" and seek out the things that interested me the most; like local music for instance, or a local art scene. It didn't take me long to realize that every country in the world has some form of local music and usually that local music had something to do with the establishment of the local culture. I soon realized my university studies had been very myopic indeed. Carl Jung got it right. Deep in the human mental recesses are universal patterns that make us the homo sapiens we are. Subconscious human fears of survival or flight, fantasies of love and romance, and dealing with the loss of another human being. Whether it's the sappy love-songs of Japanese Enka music or the insipid e-minor lullabies sung by every Vietnamese mother, we pass along our state of humanity on the great DNA chains of each culture and nationality. Nothing made me happier last year than to get an opportunity to travel to the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland and go through the CD stalls in Zakopane.
I'm sitting at a bluegrass performance in the DC suburbs. Every table was taken and there were empty seats at mine, so a couple asked if they could share the table and I obliged. I introduced myself and then went back to listening to the music. That's what I want to do. I want to listen to the music and study what the musicians are doing. The man who sat down "Harrumphed" a lot. That was aggravating enough. But then he asked me if I knew anything about bluegrass. I asked him what he did for a living and he told me he taught music at a local university. I didn't know whether he wanted to know more about bluegrass, or whether he was trying to set me up for a game of 'dozens.' I said nothing to him. Better for him to try and make the first slice in this Duel of the Minds. He pedantically proceeded to give me (along with a lot of aggravating harrumphs) the stock Music Appreciation 101 (Freshman Level) lecture on how bluegrass came here to this region on the backs of Irish and Scotch settlers and all of today's bluegrass music has these Gaelic roots, and you can hear it in every bluegrass song. I listened to this drivel for a half-hour before I got up and left and told him to have a nice day. I never asked him where he taught or what he taught. I didn't want to know. I wanted to ask why then, did the same note structures, chord patterns, and lyric ideas show up in Japanese, Vietnamese, English, Filipino, and lo and behold, Polish Mountain Music?
About two years ago Joey Longwell and Gene Beachley started posting home-made videos on You Tube. There is some wonderful stuff up on You Tube and then there is the inordinate amount of crap and trash. You know what I'm talking about. Joey posted his songs first and his solo work is good. Not exceptional, but very enjoyable. Then he invited Gene Beachley to add his high lonesome tenor and the videos became even more interesting. I watch a lot of You Tube stuff whenever I have to check out a band or musical act I'm unfamiliar with. I'll normally watch a minute of something and if I hate it, it immediately gets the delete button. Joey's little productions are interesting. And again, not exceptional, but promising in the simplicity of it. Just two guys, two guitars, and a microphone. Basic back-porch stuff. Music I remember as a kid back in my neighborhood when some of the men would get together with their guitars and drink beer. Joey packs a wealth of old bluegrass standards. Gene Beachley is comfortable with the old honky-tonk, dance-hall tunes, the stuff of drinking and she-done-me-wrong songs that you know will lead down the road to murder ballads. It's easy to laugh at it; make fun of it. The Professor probably would. It's a lot more complicated to observe it and try to put it into the universal totality of what it represents as art - traditional folk art and living and breathing art for the here and now of today.
Don't go up on the mountain if you're looking for a wife. You might get your throat cut. There are still scary places up in the Appalachians and you can still lose your life through a bear-attack or snake-bite. Not a good idea to go up there alone and spend any time unless you really know what you're doing, or if you've had sufficient survival training. The best bluegrass music reflects its primal and primitive beginnings. I seek out the local bands who have the ability to maintain that rough-edge while eliciting the proper response from its listeners. This is minimalist art and not easily accomplished. For an idea of what I'm talking about, take in a few appearances by the Hillbilly Gypsies or Marv Ashby and High Octane. You may not like this kind of music, but you cannot, not listen to it. It's as primitive as it gets. It's primitive on a grand scale. It's also no-joke intended, mountain music. Ernie Bradley and the Martin Brothers and Aspen Run all come out of a basically primitive musical style that we once jokingly referred to as hillbilly music. The years have passed since the 30's and 40's and popular tastes (and Musicology) have re-classified the various threads of the 'bluegrass genre.' Every bluegrass band or entertainer attempts to return to the primitive beginnings. Few succeed. I have my favorites. Everyone who follows bluegrass does. When I sense unnecessary embellishments it's time for me to head toward the nearest exit. When I see a whole crowd of people get up out of their chairs and start dancing, I need to stick around and watch and especially listen to a band closely.
The "Bluegrass in the Traditional Way" evening of hard-core bluegrass was a first-time event to introduce and showcase the talents that the Rocks Bluegrass Factory hopes to carry on into the future. It was a first step not without its rough edges, but rough edges are to be expected in any show-case endeavor. The Moose Lodge in Frederick provided an excellent playing space and spacious dance floor that got a lot of use once the Martin Brothers and Aspen Run hit the stage. The best part of the evening shined when it was just Joey Longwell and Gene Beachley up on stage. A naturally talented baritone and a naturally talented high tenor blending their voices in plaintive melodies. Joey added his dobro and gene his old Martin. Primitive. And it sounded just right.
The Rocks Bluegrass Factory Band:
Joey Longwell, guitar, dobro - Gene Beachley, guitar, lead vocals - Jaime Anderson, banjo - David Morris, bass.
Special Guests: Ernie Bradley, The Martin Brothers and Aspen Run
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