Bluegrass music provides a common vocabulary, language and repertoire to all its many devotees. This has been proven and proofed in countless living rooms, and at festivals, campgrounds and parking lots since the first bluegrass festival held in Fincastle, VA in 1965.
This shared language and repertoire can serve as a working ally to those interested in playing and performing professionally. Being an active member of “Belle Monroe & Her Brewglass Boys,” a hard working San Francisco based sextet, I have learned to keep my eyes and ears open for well-paying private bookings. Recently via email, a lucrative opportunity presented itself. I lobbied my own band to pull together for this plum booking but being a busy, multi-talented bunch of pickers everyone was booked. So I did the next best thing: I hired a bunch of ringers, spontaneously came up with a band name and initiated contact with the client. From this well spring of events, “Hoarse Opry,” was born. The vital bluegrass scene in San Francisco provides a tight-knit community and an active roster of approachable musicians who share a well honed devotion to the art and craft of Messrs Monroe, Flatt, Scruggs, Martin, the Stanley’s and their ilk. Armed with an electronic rolodex of fellow pickers I started making calls and dropping emails to player’s whom I’ve enjoyed playing music with and soon had a quorum together in order to form my new project.
Back in April I had been called upon to host a few Saturday Afternoon Pickin’ Parlor shows at the Iron Springs Brewery up in Fairfax ( Marin County). These were intended to be loose, informal sessions based on a model established earlier in the year by David Thom, bringing together disparate pickers who may or may not have had an opportunity to play together in the past. At one of these sessions I managed to assemble a particularly capable bunch and the results were more than satisfying to both the players and audience alike.
My first call was placed to Katy Rexford, a terrific fiddler and singer currently with Eric Embry’s “Burning Embers,” band. We’d picked many times at Jimbo Trout’s monthly Atlas Café Jam in San Francisco’s Mission District.
I’d performed at a few gigs with the victim of my next call, Gary Kaye. Gary plays banjo with a great North Bay act called, “The New Good Old Boys,” whom I’d caught and penned a review of in the NCBS’s March Bluegrass By the Bay following their SFBOT gig in February.
Via the internet and the Monthly Atlas Jam I managed to connect musically with a talented singer and flatpicker named Larry Goldfield. Larry recently relocated to San Francisco from Philadelphia. We’d been getting together to pick tunes for the last few months in my living room and he seemed up to the task.
I myself play guitar, mandolin and bass, but in my guise as a working musician had primarily played mandolin so it seemed I had that roll covered, but on a busy May weekend it proved difficult to contact a doghouse bass player not already booked. Knowing I could play bass Larry suggested I contact mandolin player, Dan Large of the Alhambra Valley Band and with this call, by default I was left to fill the bass chair.
The beauty of the whole endeavor was that the collective experience of the 5 players involved added up to a wealth of shared knowledge, and with just one rehearsal and a concerted effort to maximize efficiency we managed to pull together three full length, sets of bluegrass and perform at a fun, private gig with good pay and excellent benefits. The shared tradition of the language and repertoire of bluegrass armed us with the skills, knowledge and repertoire to make this happen. The organizational, networking and logistical skills, combined ownership of PA gear and a willingness to go for it aided in the endeavor.
This experience has reinforced the notion that bluegrass music can serve as a kind of mechanism for unity and cohesion that has the added positive result of providing artfulness, pleasure and in the best of cases, a bit of income for the work involved. Hoarse Opry is actively seeking bookings in Northern California and comes equipped with it’s own PA, one good reference (so far) and a lot of talent.
For more information please drop me a line via my website: www.WorldWideTed.com.
