The Change That I See in Bluegrass Over The Past 20 Years.
Too long a story to go into here, but I took a sabbatical from music in about 1992 or so and never touched a string for well over 20 years. Like I said, too long a story. What I want to say is how I see the change in bluegrass after a 20+ year hiatus.
Back in the day, it was common for there to be one or two, maybe even three “hot pickers” and about 4 or 5 of us “yeah, I’ve got a guitar” and one woman that knew the first verse and the chorus of every country music song ever written, but didn’t know the second verse of even one of them. As a general rule, that’s what we had for a jam session in rural Alaska in the early 80’s. Today, I am impressed with the “hot pickers” of today. I am also impressed with a few of the “yeah, I’ve got a guitar” people. However, it seems that the several strata of players have a different mix. There appear to be a lower ratio of “hot pickers” to “I have a guitar” guys. But, the hot pickers are way, way hotter than what I experienced in the 80’s. The “I’ve got a guitar” guys are still the “I’ve got a guitar” guys. Another thing that I was very glad to see is that there are far more women in bluegrass today. That gal that knows all those first verses is still there though and she still doesn’t play an instrument of any kind.
The instruments that are available today are head and shoulders above what we had back in the day. Nobody in their right mind would have owned a Yamaha in 1982. Today I have two of them. If you wanted to play bluegrass you played a Gibson F-5 mandolin, a Gibson Mastertone banjo, a Martin D-18 or D-28 guitar and a Kay upright bass. It was “de rigour”. It was heresy to play anything else. And speaking of basses, NOBODY played an electric bass in a bluegrass band, at least not without several snide remarks. A few other things that were considered “not acceptable” were accordions even though Bill Monroe had a woman accordionist in his original band and drums, but I still don’ see a drum used in todays bluegrass, and I still don’t see a place for one in bluegrass. I’m glad to see several electric upright basses being used in todays music. And, why not? Even the mighty upright bass is usually miced up so that it can be heard! The modern electric uprights fit into a bag that you can easily carry on your back or shoulder, not like the Moby-Bass upright. Hint: If you must play an electric bass guitar, mitigate the hate speech by playing an acoustic/electric.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.
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