Country Music Blog: Infamous Stringdusters

In the little town of Untermeitingen, about 8 kilometers from a U.S. military base in the state of Bavaria is a little oasis, a little slice of heaven called the Four Corners Music Hall and Restaurant. After five days of absolute unfamiliarity, five days of absolute confusion in Germany, we arrived in a country music honky-tonk right smack dab in the middle of Texas. American flags, steak, baseball, Randy Travis and Budweiser. (They sold Budweiser because a local guy, a retired reservist who calls himself Dog, can get cases of it shipped in. They sold it, but none of us drank it. Why drink beer from the U.S. when you can swill Augustiner, the best beer ever brewed. Why do all my German blog entries reference beer?) Normally a smoke-filled bar with couples line dancing would not be my first choice, but here, several thousand miles from home, I couldn't be happier. Read more...

Though some folks may resent the fact, it's pretty hard to argue that the center for bluegrass these days is anywhere but Nashville. Music City's full of bluegrass musicians, from long-timers like Roland White, who arrived back in the ‘60s, to more recent arrivals like the Infamous Stringdusters' Travis Book and NewFound Road fiddler Brandon Godman. Because they share a common songbook, it's easy for the line between music-making and socializing to get blurry, or even disappear altogether -- and of course, once you're making music together, you might as well find an audience for it. Fortunately for the city's pickers, the world famous Station Inn stands ready to serve one up.

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Is there a better way to celebrate International Bluegrass Month than by getting really international? None that I can think of, which is one reason I'm happy to be winging my way across the Atlantic to spend two weeks on tour with Sally Jones. It's a cool gig on its own, but it's also a great way to check out the European bluegrass scene during its busiest month -- and to see some good friends and neighbors along the way, since we'll be crossing paths with the likes of Tim O'Brien and the Infamous Stringdusters.Of course, if you haven't already made plans to visit the Continent during May, it's probably a little late. Fortunately, thanks to two recent releases, you can get a couple of good tastes of European bluegrass anyhow.

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It's 10 a.m. in Nashville, it's 5 p.m. in Stuttgart. I keep telling myself that it's evening, but it feels like I've been up since 6 a.m. yesterday. Maybe it's because I have. You try to sleep on the plane. You think that if you just sleep on the overnight flight, when the sun rises at 1 a.m. your time, you can pretend that it's 8 a.m. It doesn't work. I got on a plane at 11 this morning (yesterday morning, I can't tell the difference) and I finally crawled out of the van at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Subtract the 6 hours I lost in the air and I'm still traveling 21 hours straight. They say the jetlag is easier heading west to east. I haven't experienced heading east to west, but if it's worse than this, I'm not interested. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I don't have to worry about that for another 34 days when the Infamous Stringdusters take our trip back across the pond.

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Merlefest is probably the world's largest Americana and roots music festival. I was at the very first Merle Watson Memorial Festival (as it was called in those days) 21 years ago. The first concert featured jams with Chet Atkins, Doc, Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, Jim Shumate, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, Grandpa Jones, Marty Stuart, Newgrass Revival, John Hartford, Mark O'Connor and others inside the Walker Center and outside on a flatbed truck stage. I remember sitting on hay bales outside watching the whole thing go down. A few years later, I was playing Merlefest as a member of Alison Krauss and Union Station. One particular year was memorable because the mainstage show consisted of us and Ronnie Milsap, who just murdered the crowd with a solo guitar version of "Knoxville Girl."

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It was short but sweet for The Infamous Stringdusters this weekend. A last minute call to play on the Opry forced a hasty retreat from Merlefest, but that didn't stop the band from packing four days' worth of picking into two. On Thursday morning, we played a middle school for the school outreach program (Go Falcons!) then dashed down to the festival for our 5:45 mainstage set. That was our only set of the day, so I got a plate of Southern cooking and a good seat for Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives. It had been awhile since I had seen him, but Marty did not disappoint. I put him at the top of my must-see list for this summer.

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If the Nashville Convention Center and the Renaissance Hotel were to disappear off the map this week, it would take with it 95 percent of bluegrass musicians in America. Whether you think that would be an improvement or not is open to debate, but there would definitely be far fewer banjos in the world.

The IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) is hosting its annual Fan Fest and Business Conference this week, with thousands of pickers from all over the world. What is normally a very serene and plush hotel is transformed into a giant picking shed with impromptu jams springing up everywhere you can fit one. Last night I hung out at the bar with lots of pickers – Mike Bub (bass player extraordinaire), Bryn Davies (Patty Griffin and others) and Andy Falco (Infamous Stringdusters) to name but a few. It was like a pre-run meet, with everyone clutching their instruments and ready to take to the starting blocks when the time came.

The discussion turned to where all the best jams would be – floors 15 through 21 are designated jamming floors – and we all made tentative plans to meet later in the night. After one last drink to calm the nerves, I jumped into an elevator and rode it all the way to the 19th floor. As the doors separated, a blanket of bluegrass music hit my ears and a group of ten or so young pickers were laughing and putting an old standard through its paces. The hotel rooms are turned into little venues, with showcases and jams taking place. Lots of folks were wandering from room to room just as I was, searching for the right place to pull out their instruments.

I found several people to pick with last night, like the Infamous Stringdusters, Buddy Merriam and Buddy Greene. I even found a great little band in the stairwell picking tunes and smoking cigarettes. I played with them until I could take the smoke no more and headed down to the lobby at 5 a.m. With no sign of the party dying away, I walked past a girl sat on the outside front steps picking her banjo as her parents listened and tapped their feet. No one seemed to think this was anything but the norm. It may not happen for 51 weeks of the year, but for one week at IBMA it is absolutely compulsory.