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Bluegrass Archive

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There's a great story from Vassar Clements:

C: Do you have any fond memories of playing with Jerry Garcia from years past?

V: A lot of them. He was a guy who just loved to play, so that just fits in with the rest of us musicians. He wanted to play all the time and so did we. We became friends before I ever knew who he was really. Me and Jerry Garcia as a person became friends before I knew who he was playing with. We made our way out to San Francisco and then I saw this billboard sign that looked like Jerry. I said, “hey Jerry, that looks like you,” and everybody started laughin’. They didn’t know that I didn’t know who he was. They got a kick out of that. That’s one of the funniest things that happened. We had a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

https://jambands.com/features/2000/03/15/vassar-clements-pro...

I love the story of how Bob Weir met Jerry.

Legend has it, it was New Years Eve and Weir was with a buddy looking for a bar that would let them in underage when they stumbled across Jerry Garcia. Garcia forgot it was New Years Eve and had been waiting for a student to come by and was playing his banjo on his porch to pass the time. Weir was so mesmerized by him that he stopped looking for a bar and hung out with Jerry. The rest is history

Man, Vassar was one of the true player’s players. Totally self taught, mostly by ear, and could spin circles around most of the Nashville cats.

Love Redneck Jazz, and his playing on Bela Fleck’s Bluegrass Sessions Vol 2. “Valley of the Rogue” is such a dope tune.

Valley of the Rogue is very nice and has quite the cast of players. Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3_rBQWMNao

Out of all of his huge library of work, that might be my favorite of all of Bela’s tunes.

That whole album is absolutely fantastic.

It’s a fuckin’ journey.

I think it’s his best. Drive is a classic but Bluegrass Sessions has a vision.

I think the title is actually Hillbilly Jazz, unless it's a deep, deep cut.

You’re right, I always mix up that and Danny Gatton’s album Redneck Jazz.

One of the major reasons I took up the violin last year, after 20+ years of guitar and bass.

Bluegrass is such an underrated genre. My favorite band is the Lewis family, partly out of childhood nostalgia. Parents listened to them all the time in our minivan tape player. This is one of my favorite songs by them:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hQ47acvJhFg

Oh wow there’s a loooootta stuff in here.

Great to see all the Bill Monroe bootlegs.

Definitely gonna give a few of these Bill Keith live shows a spin. Keith was a genius of the banjo and is criminally underappreciated.

I don’t think there’d be a Bela Fleck without Bill Keith.

I got to see Trampled by Turtles play last weekend. The experience of watching them jam at the end of each song - six musicians giving it 110% and perfectly in sync - is something I’ll never forget.

I hope you go see more bluegrass music. You can get this experience just about as often as you like nowadays - lots of great bands have amazing improvisational skills, and they use them!

It’s missing Sturgill Simpson’s “cuttin’ grass”

This is all live bootlegs, and Sturgill (sadly) never toured those albums.

His songs slam. Trying to put together a bluegrass tribute set of his music for early next year.

He did. I saw him right before his voice blew out on the tour with Willie Nelson. He was touring with those players and did a fully bluegrass set.

He’s not taper friendly.

Damn, I didn’t know that. I watched the Ryman show he streamed over COVID and that was pretty sick.

Someone shot video of the show I was at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQzHObcbMvw

Sound it's great but it's listenable

Without the <frameset>

https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/contents.htm

Steel Drivers are worth checking out if you like Chris Stapleton.

For fans of Bela Fleck and "Newgrass" (progressive/Fusion BlueGrass) music, I recommend any show from the band "Strength in Numbers," a 1980s supergroup featuring a young and pre-Flecktones Béla Fleck, Mark O'Connor, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer. Compositionally strong, and featuring a few early song versions of what would be recorded on the first Flecktones CD release.

If anyone likes bluegrass, check out billy strings. Those guys have figured out how to release chemicals in my brain. A joy to listen to.

Check out Greensky if you haven't already. A lot of Billy's recipes were adapted from their book.

Ha. All the purists will now yell at you because you enjoy progressive "newgrass".

What's the easiest way to play these songs? Short of downloading each individual track, is there an easy means to play/stream these songs? Does VLC or equivalent play these easily? Hoping to just give it an artist or album root path and it just picks up the songs in order to play from there.

click on the link - plays in the browser

Only one song at a time, though. I'm talking about more at the album level. Like a playlist.

Does anyone have more information about this webpage/resource? Legality etc? It's fabulous.

Hoo boy, looks like I will have to work through some Jerry Douglas! (and a lot of others...)

Jerry’s band right now is hot. Christian Sedelmeyer and Mike Seal are spicy players.

My favorite Jerry Douglas (at least for now): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whg2viEY3eU

Christian's "Ravine Palace" album from a few years ago is an awesome piece of work. Jerry plays on it, alongside some other modern greats like Andrew Marlin and Eli West.

Anyone know if these are on the Internet Archive? Would make it much easier to jump around and listen without having to download FLAC versions.

Why is "Bela Fleck and The Gang Of Twang" the only one with a sensible date format?

Many Bluegrass websites are labors of love created by musicians that are not experts in computing and web design. If you were to tell them that they are violating the ISO 8601 time standard, they would have no idea of what ISO 8601 was. Just be glad that they are adding more Bluegrass to the web.

Mind you, there are high quality Bluegrass websites around. For example, take a look at the California Bluegrass Association website.

https://californiabluegrass.org/

Or the IBMA website.

https://ibma.org/

> they would have no idea of what ISO 8601 was

Maybe this is a fair time to persuade there is an ethos of hillbilly hacker that prioritizes function over form.

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