Whograss! Yougrass!

I'm excited!  Yesterday I impulsively bought a Steve Martin album called The Crow.  No, it's not a comedy album.  I don't really like comedy albums much.  They are (sometimes) funny the first time you listen to them but after that what's the point?  No, this Steve Martin album is a bluegrass album of songs that Steve Martin wrote himself and also plays on the banjo.  Awesome!

Apparently he's played the banjo for 45 years now, so I guess he started when he was -3 or something.  It's a good album, I've listened to it twice already.  Most of it is instrumental, there are a couple of guest vocalists, and one track where Steve himself kind of yells out these wacky lyrics in a very stevemartinesque way.  That one is a little surreal actually but the rest of the album is quite beautiful.

I really like bluegrass and have slowly accumulated a few CDs, mostly by chance and happenstance.  It all started way back around 2000 or so, before we had much electricity here in Australia, when I bought an album called Smoke by the great Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and a bluegrass band called Uncle Bill.  It's a fantastic album mostly of bluegrass versions of Kelly's own rock songs.  He released a follow-up called Foggy Highway which is good but more inconsistent and a bit disappointing actually.

A few years later I went to the Woodford Folk Festival and saw the Sensitive New Age Cowpersons for the second time, in their final show.  Afterwards I ended up watching a four-piece bluegrass band I don't remember the name of now (tragically - although I am sure there was some connection to Uncle Bill).  Afterwards they divided the audience into four groups and taught us how to sing a song in four-part harmony.  It sounds so awfully nerdy but it was great fun.

Shortly afterwards, I was discussing this with an acquaintance that I ran into in an antique store in Brisbane and he recommended that I should get hold of some Old Crow Medicine Show.  So I did.  And then I got hold of some more.  They're a bluegrass-slash-oldtimey band from the US, basically self-taught.  And you have to love a musician called "Critter Fuqua".  They play pretty chaotic and abrasive bluegrass that I was initially appalled by, but I came to love it.  It was their 3rd album that I was considering buying yesterday when I noticed the Steve Martin album in the next slot over and bought that instead.

I also found about a banjo player called Béla Fleck while watching a documentary on SBS and got hold of the first two of his Tales From The Acoustic Planet set.   They are both great, especially the 2nd.  There's something about minor key banjo playing that is indescribably wonderful, like musical salted plums or scratching a bad sunburn.

That was about it for my bluegrass buys for a little while.  I took a short diversion through oldtimey stuff like Steven Foster that I heard at my parents' house.  My dad had bought it impulsively off Amazon in one of those 2 for 1 deals when he was after some Willie Nelson (I think).

But then about two years ago I was watching RocKwiz and there was a questions about Dolly Parton's bluegrass albums.  This was news to me.  I knew Dolly from when she was in the film 9 to 5 when I was a kid, which I really liked, and from her songs on the Country Music Hall Of Fame volumes I and II, such as Harper Valley PTA, Jolene, and The Carroll County Accident.  I was intrigued, especially because the people on RocKwiz were being quite complimentary about her bluegrass stuff.  So I ran out and bought Little Sparrow and was very very happy with it.  Go Dolly!  I really must pick up some more of her stuff.

And last year I was surprised to listen to an album by a group called Cornbread Red, who specialize in doing bluegrass covers of famous pop songs.  (Alarmingly enough, on their website they claim to "the Steely Dan of bluegrass.)  An Esteemed Colleague of mine lent me their album of Franz Ferdinand covers and I actually ended up liking it much more than the originals.  I liked it so much that I made an offsite backup copy in case her house burns down or something.

Which brings me back to Steve Martin and The Crow.  When I took it up to the counter in the record store, I was served by a young lady with numerous piercings and tattoos.  She scanned it, then looked closely at it and said, "Oh wow, I saw him play on Letterman the other night and he was great!  I think I might have to get this."  That's what I love about bluegrass - it's so far outside the normal boundaries of cool/uncool that it can appeal to anyone.

Listen to some bluegrass today - I dare you.