August 2006 –

Two days, two shows:
Doin' My Time With Earl

He may or may not have "invented" bluegrass banjo picking.
But without the innovations and stylings of Earl Scruggs,
someone once said, nobody would care who invented it.

Bluegrass music's annals are filled with clashes between its first generation (pretty much of the vintage labeled "The Greatest Generation" by Tom Brokaw) and pickers who came along later. An annoyed Bill Monroe once heard variations on traditional themes reeking through the air backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. He solicited an explanation from an obliging, fresh-faced Sam Bush, who called it "newgrass."

"Yeah, I hate that," said the Father of Bluegrass Music.

Now Bush himself now reigns as the king (or at least the president) of live acoustic artistry, or whatever the kids are calling it now. But the Bush act typically builds to a frenzy with remorseless drumming, a lot of rock material, and sometimes an electric mandolin reminiscent of Duane Allman on guitar. I always expect them to start smashing up their instruments at the end. Bush and his boys were indeed the grand finale at this year's Rocky Grass Festival, a cousin to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, held July 28-30 in Lyons, Colo.

I strapped on a wristband for Day 3 at Rocky Grass, moved not so much to see president Bush, but for the penultimate performance, led by Earl Scruggs. Who at 82, shares a rank in bluegrass royalty matched only by that of Mr. Monroe himself, who died a decade ago, and perhaps Ralph Stanley, who is not quite 80 and still touring actively.

This touring troupe's title is Earl Scruggs With Family and Friends (italics mine). The familial sector includes just his 57-year-old son, Gary, who played bass and did much of the singing and for this family, all of the talking. Earl spoke not one word to the boisterous Rocky Grass crowd. (He did have a nice long chat the next day, at a second gig--a radio taping in Boulder; more on this shortly.)

His onstage friends at Rocky Grass included two of the hottest guitarists around: Bryan Sutton on acoustic and Brad Davis on electric. Plus fiddler Hoot Hester, Rob Ickes on dobro, and John Gardner on drums. There was a time when working as a bluegrass drummer would have been like being the Maytag Repair Man, but no more.

So even Earl Scruggs, it seems, has been bitten by the electric guitar and drums bug. But his extra-acoustic forays are nothing new. After he and long-time partner Lester Flatt parted ways in 1969, the Earl Scruggs Revue was born. It was hailed by some as one the best country rock acts of its era. That's a strong statement, given that the era included the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Buffalo Springfield. But while those youthful hipsters were ingesting peyote buttons and hanging with the Stones, Earl was a 50-year old guy touring with his own sons. Even then, to some, he seemed a relic.

A throwback, a relic, a museum piece. It's probably been said at one time or another about everybody over 50, at least in the performing arts. Right now, some punks somewhere are probably saying that about Sam Bush (who is 53 or 54), as they tune their iPods to hear Nickel Creek or the Yonder Mountain String Band. Recent media profiles of Scruggs have insisted he hasn't lost it. But in semi-retirement, his schedule is occupied largely with presentations of honors and awards, such as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Right there with Phyllis Diller, I imagine.

Country singer George Jones once declared, "I Don't Need Your Rocking Chair," in a tune of that title. When artists trouble to deny their own irrelevance, well, something's changed, right? If Earl has ever commented on his own substantial standing in American music, or its diminution, it's gotten little ink. His quotes always reflect gratitude more than pride. That's in contrast with Bill Monroe, who often reminded bluegrass fans that he was indeed their music's father.

Scruggs negotiated his way onto the Rocky Grass stage, with his son Gary seeming as much a professional handler as the bass player. Surrounded by bandmates dressed more casually, Earl looked like a guy at the office--white shirt, dress slacks, and a tie. A stagehand delivered his prized five-string, a pre-war Gibson Granada that's he's played since the 1940s, as Earl sat quietly waiting for the show to start. Not on a throne, as you might expect, but on a standard Oak Express dinette piece.

He stood for the opening number, "Salty Dog Blues." They played "Earl's Breakdown," the warhorse banjo instrumental with the mid-song "de-tuning "of two strings, using what were once widely known as Scruggs pegs. (They're cam devices that flip the strings from one tension to another, say from a B major to and A major, so that a D replaces the G as the open chord. You don’t see them much anymore because, other than "Earl's Breakdown" and a few other old standards, nobody has much of an idea what to do with them.) When they got to "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," the old Dylan tune with the phrase, "down into the easy chair," Earl took a seat, where he remained for most of the rest of the show.

It jostles the mind to hear Scruggs playing standard "Scruggs licks"--the fills and taglines that banjo players start learning in their first week on the five-string. Their sound contributes much to the very definition of bluegrass music. Here's the guy who created them, spilling out musical phrases so perfect that it's hard to think of life without them; yet so familiar as to be a cliché.

Now it must be said that in this show, Scruggs was not at the top of his game. Evident in his playing were a number of missed notes, dead spots, and missteps in tempo. Perhaps a dozen guys in the audience, and another dozen backstage, could have out-picked Earl at any given moment. The very next five-string banjoist on the stage, for example, was Scott Vestal of the Sam Bush Band. His precise, blazing banjo passages make him the perfect fit not only for that high-energy Bush band; he also toured this year with rocker David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame.

Three-finger bluegrass banjo picking is often called Scruggs-style banjo. It’s an old debate: Either Earl "invented" it, or he merely brought a quantum leap of imagination to the advancement of what had been a sleepy rural art form, in the first part of the 20th century. Bill Monroe, at that time, was touring in "hillbilly" bands with a sound predating bluegrass as we know it. When Earl came onboard as Bill's banjo player, the sound came together, and they lit up stages all over the South.

(Continued)
  How It All Started
  Show 2 at Chautauqua