ED HENRY: For My Own Information

AcrosstheTrack Bluegrass - one of my particular favorite traditional bands working in Maryland.

Mike Hartnett, James Langer, Rex Smith, Fred Long, and Darin Wassum.

31 December 2014
Vienna, Virginia

      In the past few years I had been sensing a shift in my preference choices for bluegrass by slipping across the state-line to experience more of it in Maryland. I even wrote about it in several postings. Believe me, I caught some flack about it when my addiction for traditional bluegrass went over the line too, and I began searching for new haunts in Maryland. Make that new haunts (venues) and new (old) bands I hadn't experienced yet. The more I discovered in Maryland, and the more I wrote about it, the more the personal criticism from bluegrass friends here in Virginia deepened. But it's still a humorous situation - nothing serious to write home about, or nothing that's going to permanently banish me from Vienna, Virginia. I'll caveat my statements right here and now with some geography: I live in the "DC Metro Area" which straddles the Potomac River, so it's easy for me to draw an imaginary 100-mile circle around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and call it my OPs area ('Operational' for all you non-military types). Since Virginia is roughly shaped like a triangle with a northern pointed top, the circle includes more of Maryland than Virginia. If the circle were a clock, the upper right quadrant - from 12:00 to roughly 3:30 - would include portions of what is now considered Baltimore suburbs. The whole circle is actually becoming one great big megalopolis with very few defining boundaries between suburban commuter 'bedroom' communities. Traffic congestion anywhere within a hundred miles of this imaginary picture has become a major social disease that controls our lives - or disrupts it now on an almost daily basis. One traffic accident on I-95 north or south can cause grid-lock anywhere on the two major beltways around Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The older I get the more I ask myself why I want to live here. One of the major reasons why I want to live here is the "100-Mile Ops Area" is rich in the diversified activities that Connie and I like to indulge in, rich in the arts, and our slice of the good life includes a little parcel of Virginia property that just keeps sky-rocketing in investment value. We like Vienna, Virginia, because we have a town government that is dedicated to maintaining Vienna as a small town amidst the morass of out-of-control suburban sprawl that is Fairfax and Loudoun Counties.

      You would think that such a rich and diversified area as northern Virginia would be supporting and presenting a lot of traditional bluegrass - it once did. The D.C. metro area was once the hot-bed of bluegrass. But times and tastes change and those changes are reflected in a pure dollars and cents attitude with club and bar owners and the promoters who want to stage entertainment that will turn them a profit. For more than a few years now I've been to bars and clubs here in northern Virginia that attempted to draw customers with fairly well known bluegrass bands and the results were usually disastrous. The usual complaints were rampant and up-front: "I can't get a drinking crowd in here with bluegrass." The northern Virginia suburbs has hundreds of bars and restaurants offering live music - traditional bluegrass is not an option. There are a few exceptions, but even the music is "Americana" and geared toward a younger audience that is going to spend more money on beer-drinking. The taste of the music loses its importance over the taste of the 'artisan' 'hand-crafted' fruit-flavored and fruit-laced beers that younger drinkers seem to be hooked on. I blame none of this demise of the music or demise of truly authentic beer-drinking on the club and bar-owners. They are in the business to make money selling alcohol and food. I often laugh at the naivete of the older bluegrass guys when they tell me, "Yeah, that bar doesn't hire us any more. We used to play there regularly and now they never call us." I don't say anything in return. There is no sense in saying anything. They're not getting the big picture of alcohol economics.

       If I couldn't find traditional bluegrass in northern Virginia I could find it by going 50 or 60 miles north, east, or west of where I live. Even now to go south, you have to travel almost to the outskirts of Richmond to find traditional bluegrass. There is no sense in arguing with me on this point because I frequently check all the resources (what little there are,) to keep abreast of the Traditional Bluegrass Scene in my area. I am excluding here discussion of the infrequent special show, the one-time event of a well-known or lesser-known bluegrass act, and the staged summer-time big festival setting. We have a number of long-running, successful, summer bluegrass festivals in Virginia and Maryland and I don't like to attend them. It's another personal non-preference of mine. The more I traveled around Maryland the more locally known secrets I uncovered; not so much through open-advertising, but by word-of-mouth. Older folks and younger folks would approach me with, "If you like this then you have to go over to this place to hear this group!" I discovered something else, too. A core group of bluegrass bands and families connected to those bands were providing regularly scheduled entertainment - on any given weekend throughout the year - in any number of venues in Maryland. Not only that, but this core group provides a lot of the traditional bluegrass for Delaware, southern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and certain areas of West Virginia. The names of the bands may change, the configurations of players may change, but certain family names of members keep popping up to constantly surprise me. Or, a family member will offer up a hot tip: "You know I have a brother who's playing next week at the VFW in Martinsburg!" Keeping up with my own personal preferences was becoming a bit much every weekend.

I started putting together my own calendar on my blogsite so I could personally keep up with it. I started the calendar on Boxing Day, December 26th, 2013.

782gear.blogspot.com/2013/12/traditional-grass-good-times-galore.html

My original intent was to run it for a few weeks into the New Year of 2014 and then keep changing it by deleting old entries. After a month into 2014 I went public with it and was soon shocked to get over a thousand hits on it, (and also a story I had written about the Annual Jumbo Jimmy's Christmas Party). That party was significant because one band disbanded and another formed up to become "Northern Connection." In the following months I recorded the emergence of new bands and configurations as long as the band in question followed my own prejudiced guidelines of what constituted traditional bluegrass. I wanted to see for myself how the health and vitality of Maryland traditional bluegrass was faring. What better way than to record the births and deaths of bands, or how many times any certain band was being asked to perform at a venue. The calendar also quickly became a dated record of productivity. I smiled too, when printed hard-copies of the calendar started showing up, usually in the hands of older folks at some of the places I liked to hang out. At the end of 2014 the Calendar exhibits some unique facts about the state of traditional bluegrass in Maryland - and Maryland bands and bluegrass musicians playing in and out of the State of Maryland:

1. Over 200 performances by local bands occurred in 2014. This is traditional bluegrass only and does not include any band that mixes contemporary music, blues, Celtic, Irish, 'old-time,' or originally-written material. There are any number of bands in Maryland that are working, and producing this style of music.
2. The Calendar does not reflect Maryland bands that also participated in the larger, organized, multi-day festivals.
3. The Calendar also does not reflect amateur local bands that end up playing (gratis) at Churches, public picnics, street fairs, and local town gatherings such as pumpkin festivals, market openings, street carnivals, etc. There are plenty of these local, thrown-together bands in Maryland, and some of them are extraordinarily good!
4. Cypress Creek Bluegrass Band, The Rocks Bluegrass Factory Band, Northern Connection, Special Blend, Hickory Hill Bluegrass all emerged this year and are gaining audiences. Blue Train experienced its first full year of completing a busy schedule.

In helping me to compile the First Year of the Calendar I need to acknowledge the assistance of the Families at the center of Maryland's bluegrass production. Thanks and sincere appreciation to the Paisleys, the Lundys, the Millers, the Martins, the Meeks, the Shorts, the Blair Brothers, the Beachleys, the Streetts, the Runkles, the Eldreths - and I've probably missed a few more who've helped me along the way. Please feel free to correct the error of my ways the next time you see me - and I'll post the correction. It's all for the good of the cause - letting the world of traditional bluegrass know that traditional bluegrass is alive and doing quite well in the State of Maryland.