I lean toward the former, as I'm not a purist, and the seemingly weird combination of funk and bluegrass works for me. Twangzine, "covering real American music that doesn't suck," has a great feature about Scott Rouse and Groovegrass, whose full-length CD (recorded in '93 but released in '98) I just listened to again tonight.
In its best parts, "Groovegrass 101" is a hyper-funkalicious bluegrassy treat featuring Nashville producer, engineer, guitarist and vocalist Rouse with James Brown/Parliament-Funkadelic Space Bass exemplar Bootsy Collins;
plus bluegrass legend Doc Watson.
And Yo, Homer, it works - for the most part.
Here's Twangzine:
Try to imagine this. It's late April in North Carolina. You are in Wilkesboro at Merlefest, the big Bluegrass Festival held every year in memory of the late guitar picker Merle Watson. It's 2 am and you've stumbled up to a campfire to hear some hot picking. You look around and see that the pickers are none other than bluegrass music legends Doc Watson, Mac Wiseman, and Del McCoury along with the rest of the Del McCoury Band and they are flat tearing it up! As you sit around the fire listening to the Greats you notice a light in the sky.And the light is getting closer. The picking stops and everyone stares at the light which has turned into a spaceship of some sort, and it's headed straight for you!!! The space ship lands in the field alongside and a ramp deploys from the side. Are these the little green men? Visitors from another galaxy? The door opens and everyone strains to see who it is coming down the ramp. It's a large black man with a bass shaped like a star.
"Ahhhh, It's Bootsy, baby!'" you hear as he heads down the ramp. This creature walks up to the fire and says: "I was just cruising around in the Mothership and I heard the music. I hope y'all don't mind if I drop in and jam with you for a while."
The music starts up again sounding like bluegrass at first, but then something strange happens. Bootsy begins laying down a funk groove and suddenly it's not bluegrass anymore. And it's not funk. It's a combination of the two. "Ah it's Groovegrass Baby" hollers Bootsy, as they all launch into "Blue Moon of Kentucky."
....Scott Rouse is the brainchild behind Groovegrass. Rouse...was raised on bluegrass. His father, Dr. Jim Rouse got to be friends with flatpicking guitar wizard Arthel "Doc" Watson from the picking parties held by Gallager Guitars in Wartrace, Tennessee. While attending the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Rouse had two roommates who were funk and r&b producers. Through them he gained exposure into producing and r&b...."I started getting all these gigs and was skipping classes....I would do sessions work in Boston and New York...I started getting gigs as a musician and as a co-arranger....I've been doing it for about 15 years.
When I was doing all that session work, I was basically playing bluegrass licks on an electric guitar. I got to really missing bluegrass bad about this time....I was trying to figure out how to get people who have never listened to bluegrass to listen to it? So I got the idea to mix dance stuff on top of it.... I'd take these acetate records I had made and give them to DJs in the dance clubs in Boston and people really dug it! I went into a club one night and the DJ asked me if I had any more of that Groovegrass stuff. The name just stuck."
On a trip back home Rouse was talking to his father and Doc Watson about his future plans. "I was making good money doing this dance and funk stuff, But I really missed the bluegrass. I was trying to decide in which direction to go."
His father told him "Why not do both?"
"Dad and Doc told me to move to Nashville and keep on pursuing the Groovegrass thing. So that's what I did....I wanted to get Bootsy involved because I had always dug what he had been doing, so I sent him a copy of some stuff I had been playing around with and he loved it. Bootsy saw it as an entirely new form of music. An extension of the same thing that he and George Clinton had done. Inventing funk while still respecting and paying homage to r&b and soul."
....In closing Rouse had this to say; "Remember, we're not trying to change bluegrass, we're just trying to get it to a generation that doesn't know it exists."
I'm a big fan of the traditional stuff. But the Groovegrass hybrid sound is pretty arresting, too. Long live bastardized music. If it rocks, that is.
Here's an Amazon buy link to Groovegrass 101, and two CD singles.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 22, 2005 10:22 PM
No way! You like bluegrass?
I thought I was the only dude in Seattle that liked it.
Posted by: BananaLand(aka Iguana) at June 25, 2005 04:55 PMOh, and I should mention I just got an extremely kick-ass Gibson Les Paul. It is far too hot of a guitar for me, but I've wanted one since I was a teenager, so I finally took the dive.
It you're going to use an electric for blue grass, you can't look any better doin' it than with a Les Paul! (Of course, it's gonna be playing a lot more than BG).
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) at June 25, 2005 05:00 PMIguana, a Les Paul? Holy smokes! Yeh, just plug it in and wail. I've got an imitation baby Strat (Vox Super Ace 1963), a sweet knock-off of a Gretsch Tennesean (nice thin hollow body electric), and the one I play the most, a beat-up old Yamaha acoustic I got in high school.
As for bluegrass, I'm way into it, especially the hot pickers, and then also some stuff sort off to the side like the "Redneck Jazz" of the late Danny Gatton, plus the 50s instrumentals by Speedy West/Jimmy Bryant in a somewhat similar vein, and the "Sacred Steel" of Robert Randolph and others. But I'm equally into funk, r&b, blues, jazz, ethnic, and a lot of rock. This is what happens when you grow up in Chicago listening to AM radio in the 60s, plus FM alternative (when that still meant something) in the early 70s, and then work at a great college radio station.
Posted by: Matt R. at June 25, 2005 07:22 PMYeah, man ... I had to go out and get ear plugs because I can't help cranking it and playing with the sustain. It's also just such a damn cool looking guitar - it's worth it just to set it up on the guitar stand. I too have a couple of old Yamaha acoustics, one of which has a really nice, full sound. (The other needs new tuners). And, an old Telecaster - not pre-CBS - so, not worth all that much, although I do get offers for it from time to time. That guitar is hot because the frets were smoothed down; but it needs new pick-ups and a good technician to give it a general tune up.
One thing about people who are into music and also skeptical about Democrats - we all seem to have eclectic tastes. Your typical Democrat will get into one genre and worship, until of course the next genre comes along.
I actually haven't play bluegrass for a long, long time. But I love listening to Bill Evans, Bill Monroe, the Chieftains, Craig Smith, Doc Watson, J.D. Crow, Lester Flatt, Ralph Stanley, Ricky Scaggs, Rob Ickes, any of the McCourt brothers (or all at the same time) .... and the list goes on.
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) at June 25, 2005 07:52 PMoh, and Split Lip Rayfield signing "Movin' to Virginia" ... which is what I think about doing in the winter here, especially after reading more of the crap in the newspapers here!
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) at June 25, 2005 07:55 PM