The Rosine Barn Jamboree Source: Diane Williams’s Photography
Rosine, Kentucky is famous because Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass Music, was born and is memorialized there. Every Friday night from March to December, musicians and listeners come to the Barn and have a great time - for free!
Reposting this photo from April because today is Bill Monroe’s birthday. Will post a couple more photos from the evening I was there. Also want to post a link to The Writer’s Almanac (Garrison Keillor) which elaborates on Bill’s background. https://writersalmanac.org/
Elise Vandevelde: If I want to believe that Maybelle is a star up in the sky, I will. If I want to believe she’s a bird that perches on our window sill, or a butterfly that sits on my shoulder or a bloody frog that…
Didier Bontinck: Maybelle is dead, sweetheart. She’s dead. She’s gone, she’s not here anymore.But we are still here. I’m still here. We have to carry on together.
The Broken Circle Breakdown, Felix Van Groeningen (2012)
First 8tracks #NewMusicFriday of 2021! @SteveEarle released a great new album called J.T. (tribute to his son Justin Townes Earle) that mixes #bluegrass,#folkrockand#americana. Listen to the song “Harlem River Blues” on the playlist below:
You know, he came from Florida. He didn’t read or write music, but he was influenced by everything he heard and he incorporated this into a very personal and powerful style, which I think any term like `hillbilly jazz’ or, you know, any of these general musical terms just don’t come up to what he created. They don’t indicate the magnificence of what he did.
A few legends of bluegrass singing a great old gospel song. Alison Krauss sang this on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, but it’s a much older song Doc says he got from his grandmother. The valley is a common theme in gospel music, from Lily in the Valley to Peace In The Valley to the biblical Valley of the Shadow of Death. Maybe it’s the humility of the valley next to the mountain (a place where God is often found), or the isolation from the rest of the world. The geography was changed to a river for the movie, another prominent symbol in gospel music, and was played during a scene of people being baptized en masse.
Doyle Lawson is a legend of bluegrass, and while his mandolin playing is second to none, it’s his a capella arrangements that draw me back to him. This one in particular showcases some modern, almost barbershop-like harmonies within a traditional framework. Bluegrass has always had a push-and-pull dialectic over tradition vs modernity, and I think this song, and Lawson’s music in general, treads that line beautifully.
