Listening To Music For Inspiration For The Banjo

Another article in the series of ‘Listening to other music for inspiration and motivation.’  This time another article from Matt, who is passionate about the 5 string banjo.  So, with no further ado, over to you Matt!

Thanks Dave. “Oh No” they cried, “He’s done another one, and this time it’s about Banjo Players. Does the man have no mercy?”

Well the answer is no, no mercy. But I do an encyclopedic knowledge of the originators, progenitors, instigators and revelators, the wild men, the glamour boys (that bits made up, no room for glamour boys!) The makers and the shakers in the wonderful world of the 5 string Banjo.

Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. The Complete Mercury Recordings

• Bluegrass

The list just had to start with Earl Scruggs. He is the Elvis, The Jimi Hendrix, The Django and the Bach of the 5 String Banjo. Stuff went on before him, but nothing went after him that didn’t have something to do with the stuff he’d done.

The Mercury Recordings consists of the first batch of things captured of the newly formed Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys.

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had both worked in Bill Monroe’s band until ’48 when the touring got to hectic and they both walked. Within months the new line up had recorded the single most important piece of music in Banjo history. Foggy Mountain Breakdown is less of a tune or a standard as it is a template for what to come in the world of Bluegrass. It’s fast as hell, the fiddle screams and Earl takes every single musical concept that was available to him in 1949 and churns it into a solo that is unpredictable, charming, eloquent and viciously in your face all at the same time.

Elsewhere on the sessions you’ll hear all the swagger that they became famous for, Lester’s mountain tenor wheeling effortlessly over the band. Oh, and a load more really fast stuff too.

So why this album? I’ll be honest, I got a banjo at the age of 18 after a few years of guitar playing as much out of curiosity as anything. Then I heard this. Curiosity quickly became intrigue, which became envy, admiration and obsession.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Will The Circle Be Unbroken

• Bluegrass I guess, but so much more.

Writers Comment: This is more than an album, its an audio document of the past and the present (and with any luck the future) of traditional American music. Read the wiki page for the details, enough has been written about this.

A country rock band decide to show the world that the founding figures of the Cosmic American music of the Byrds and Gram Parsons, The Dead, The Purple and sage and all those other monster bands of the early 70’s, were alive and well and still kicking ass.

What you get is 3 LP’s, or in my case a badly recorded cassette and a half, of the Dirt Band recording straight to two track with guest including Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs (yeah, The Earl is here again) Vasar Clements, Norman Blake and more and more and more. The youngsters provided the swagger and the old guys (and Gals) brought wisdom and class. No electric instruments, no hints of Rock n Roll, no Nashville twang.

This really is an epic album in every sense. The musicianship is on fire, the songs selection covers Opry favourites, traditional tunes, Fiddle breakdowns, bluegrass numbers and a couple of Hank Williams numbers. The Banjo player is John McEuan, not a house hold name and, as I was encountering the good old fashioned copied tape of this, it was years before I new who he was. He plays uncomplicated stuff that just drives. He is obviously blown away on the tracks that Earl is on but you can’t but love his gusto on the instrument, he is slick and clean.

I played and played this tape in my old Morris Minor till it fell apart (the tape and the car!). When I saw a copy on Vinyl I couldn’t afford it but it looked cooler than I could ever have expected. The guy on the cover in Civil War gear with the ace beard, The lettering, the fact it weighed a ton. It was a Rock n Roll record after all. Everything about it, and all the people playing, care only for the end result.

You don’t have to like it, nobody cares, we like it. You probably won’t buy it, nobody cares, we enjoyed making it.

If that’s not Rock n Roll, nothing is. 

John Hartford – Areo-plain

• Style: Bluegrass, newgrass.

Writers New songs with that old familiar sound and proof that you can be a traditionalist with a sense of humour and not be novelty act!

Through the back half of the 60’s, Hartford wrote and recorded a bunch of successful albums for RCA, he played on the Byrds Sweetheart, he worked on The Glen Cambell show and was generally a well respected “serious” Nashville character. Then he thought “ah… Sod it!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Areo-Plain, and the world was whole lot more interesting than it ever was before.

I’m not the kind of person to disrespect the wonderful life I have. My friends are amazing, I have the love of a wonderful wife and a family that surround me with constant support and joy.

I would however give them all away to be John Hartford. He was the coolest person ever to live, wrote some of my favourite songs, played Banjo like nobody before or after, was an amazing fiddle player with an encyclopedic repertoire, and could he could play, sing and tap dance all at the same time…in spats and a Dardy. He was a Steamboat pilot who became as well known for his knowledge of Mississippi lore as for his music.

Aero-plain (I’m not spelling that wong, you are!) came out in 1971 and apparently it bombed. It was weird, had a weird title, a really weird picture of Hartford on the cover, weird songs on it and is so unbelievably brilliant it could only really be liked by the coolest of the cool.

Songs about Steam powered Aereo-planes (he spelled the song differently to the album title, not my mistake, yours,) songs about the death of the good ‘ol days, songs about his love of the Opry, songs about songs, songs about doin’ the boogie and songs about sharing your stash. Tie all this together with a band that consisted of Vasar Clements on Fiddle, Norman Blake on Guitar, Tut Taylor on Dobro and Randy Scruggs (Earls son) on bass, what’s not to like?

Buy it, play it till you Boogie, dream about the river and remember, If you’re Holdin’, don’t hold out!

Bela Fleck – Acoustic Planet 2 The Bluegrass Sessions

• Style: Bluegrass, Newgrass, Impossibly Cool Grass.

Writers Comment: Bela is, on a technical level, the greatest Banjo player ever. People will always moan about that. It can’t be helped. People always refer to the best with words like “Emotionless” etc. Well bull to all that, Bela rocks!

Acoustic Planet was an album that saw Bela making music with a whole host friends and peers. It was a bit folky, a bit jazzy and had some great tunes on it. For Volume 2 he reassembled the line up from his classic album Drive (which could very easily be the choice here but I flipped the coin and this one won). So you Tony Rice , Vasar (again), Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, I think Sam Bush is on there, John Hartford pops in and once again proves what we already know about him both a bit weird and immensely cool and Earl does a couple of duets with Bela that will make you weep.

If you can, for a moment, transport yourself to back to being a kid in a sweetshop. You glance around at the jars full of wildly coloured orbs of sugar, jars of colourful dust, jars of psychedelic stick type things, and those things that were meant to look like peanuts (I apologise to anybody under the age 40 who has no idea what any of this means). You didn’t know what to choose put this was pre-pick n mix. You can only have one type in that paper bag! Whats it gonna be? You felt like a kid in sweetshop.

And the first time I heard this band play, I was a kid in bluegrass instrument shop. I didn’t know if my life had been changed and wanted to be a mandolinist, or dobro player. Christ the turmoil! But the Banjo won out. Bela plays perfectly, of course he does, he’s Bela Fleck, he’s the best of the best, but the writing, the melody, the interplay the humour, it never ends. I hear new things every listen.

Bill Frisell – The Willies

This is the curveball album. An album where the great mercurial Bill Frisell plays guitar accompanied by Danny Barnes on Banjo and Keith Lowe on Bass. They play largely traditional in a way only Bill Frisell could.

• Style: Wierd Jazz with a bluegrass thing going on

Frisell was a few albums into his “American Music” stage at this point. He had done the great Nashville album, Good Dog Happy Man (a classic) and the Have a Little Faith where he looked at American songs of all types. This one hit me on first listen ’cause of Danny Barnes.

Danny Barnes is another uber cool guy. Wicked songwriter, checkout His song Big Girl Blues, He was in a great band called the bad livers that were like Dock Boggs meets REM (check out Dock Boggs, he nearly made the list too).

Danny’s playing on this is kind of odd, but then its an odd album. When I thought about it, Danny is playing accompaniment in the way banjo players did before Earl Scruggs. Before banjo’s had there own feature point they provided percussive backing for a fiddle player and that’s what you get here. A bit of rhythm, a dash of melodic interplay here and there, very clever stuff.

He also plays without picks, like folk used too, in sort of half clawhammer, half picking kid of way that is perfect for the soft, melancholic nature of the whole record.

Again, some ace tunes from the past twisted and turned by visionary players.