Kentucky: A Bluegrass Odyssey

by Jools Stone
on May 31st, 2011
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Bill Monroe museum sign

Kentucky may be more famous for bourbon, horse farms and the Derby, but it’s music that drew me there. For many years I have hankered after the notion of rolling up in the hometown of one of my favourite bands: Louisville’s My Morning Jacket.

A combination of stormy weather and a busy itinerary mean that when I finally get there on a press trip kindly organsied by the Kentucky Tourist Board, I never quite manage the fanboy pilgrimage I had in mind originally. But the trip is still a revelation, and music of a decidedly more old time vintage, but one whose influence you can no doubt trace in the Jacket and others of their ilk, is the key.

Kentucky is of course known as the Blue Grass state. You can buy little jars of seeds in the tourist shops though I never spied any pleasingly blue blades out in the open myself. I’m told you have to see the sweetly undulating hills in a certain morning dew light. But if you come there looking for bluegrass of a less literal kind, well, you’d be in luck.

Back in 1938 Rosine-born country singer Bill Monroe, tired of the musical partnership he had sustained for over a decade with his brother Charlie playing country brother duets (think of a downhome precursor to the Everly Brothers) decides to start a new band. He calls them the Blue Grass Boys and before too long the band name becomes becomes synonymous with the new breed of music they play.

With its origins in what was once called ‘hillbilly’ or ‘mountain’ music, before the term country was really in circulation, and a driving rhythm powered by string instruments and close vocal harmonies, Bluegrass gave the music of ordinary folk from the Appalachians a much needed kick in the britches.

Over the years the popularity of the Beverly Hillbillies TV show and the soundtracks of films like Deliverance and, more recently, O Brother Where Art Thou has kept a little light shining on Bluegrass, while its commercial kissing cousin country has dominated the American music scene.

This all started in Kentucky and indeed it’s very much alive and well today. Owensboro’s International Bluegrass Music Museum has been a driving force behind much of it. Not only does it preside over the world’s preeminent collection of bluegrass knowledge and history and schools tomorrow’s generation of pickers and fiddlers through its education programme, but it also takes an active role in spreading the music through it’s 24/7 radio station, Radio Bluegrass International. It has a big hand in various festivals too, notably ROMP, headlined this June by Steve Martin, and this year a special series of evenings of live performances which showcase all living members of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame under the one roof for the first time ever.

The museum’s young Marketing Director Danny ‘Hootenanny’ Clark (to use his full, stage name) guides us through the music’s history, and is the consummate ambassador, his knowledge and enthusiasm brimming over in equal measure. From him we learned that the banjo has its origins in West Africa and that the distinctive bluegrass rhythm can be heard in the steady gallop of Chuck Berry’s guitar and much other rock n roll.

There’s plenty of reason to hoot n holler this year, as it’s the 100th birthday of Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass. You can visit the house where he grew up and laze on the very porch where his Uncle Pen taught him to play the fiddle. While you’re at it, you can attend the Jerusalem Ridge Festival, an annual celebration of the man and his music, this year extended to 6 days from late September, which is held in the idyllic woodland of his estate.

Just down the road from the house sits Rosine, a humble looking one horse town comprised of a general store which doubles up as a restaurant serving up Chicken Plank and Soup Beans with Cornbread, the Blue Moon Gift Shoppe, a church and a hundred or so houses. Arriving in Rosine feels like steeping back to Monroe’s time. Broken down tractors languish under the shade of a rusted Coca Cola sign, groups of old timers in check shirts and highwaisted denims sit around chatting and jamming on benches outside the Barn.

I’m introduced to one, a man named Lester, and ask to take his photograph. He obliges telling me that if I ‘get it processed and put it up on my bathroom wall, it’s a sure cure for constipation.’ In the shop the storeman’s buddy propping up the counter implores me to ‘go ahead and take a sweet from the jar.’ He dissolves into hysterics when I do so and am slightly startled by the jack in the box toy rat that leaps out at me. For half a second I wonder if it’s real. We are definitely ‘not from round these parts’ and everyone here knows it, but I’d best check in those hillbilly cliches right there, at least no one told me I was ‘real purdy.’..

Our reason for stopping in Rosine is the town’s other amenity: the Rosine Jamboree Barn. Every Friday night the spirit of Monroe is kept alive and kicking here with an evening of live bluegrass attracting many of the state’s best players of all ages. Bands trade licks and banter, mixing in jokey country covers ( The Big Bopper’s Running Bear becomes Running Bare, in a paean to accidental nudity) and their own compositions with old standards. Elderly couples get up to slow dance and after each act departs the tips hat is passed around.

A get well soon card for an absent regular is also circulated at one point and it’s hard to shake the feeling that we have stumbled accidentally into a true community fixture, reminding me of Danny words, quoting Bill Monroe, at the museum earlier that day: ‘Bluegrass is like one big family reunion, but where everyone gets along.’