Country Gazette Interview

Good morning and, uh, welcome once again to the CU Creek Pickaway. We're talking this morning with the gentleman from Country Gazette who are in town last night to do a concert over at Stephens College and gladly gave up a little bit of their time this morning to come and visit with us. And, uh, first of all, you guys did a great job last night and you mentioned that you had a new album in the works. Yes. And, uh, maybe you tell us a little about what's going to be on it. I noticed you were doing a lot of original material that you suggested would be on your new record. Yeah, we're real excited about the new record. It will be on Flying Fish. Not exactly titled yet. So, we're not sure but it will be the new one. And we're featuring mainly material written by songwriters from the Texas, Oklahoma, ah, that's largely the area they've come from. There are two songs written by a fella named John Hadley who has written quite a few songs that we've recorded on past albums. Ah, Bill Caswell who's from Tulsa, Oklahoma wrote three or four the songs. Mike our bass player wrote two of the songs that are on the album. three, as a matter of fact. And Allen wrote an instrumental and uh so there's a lot of different influences there but mainly new material that most people haven't heard before.

We're real excited about it. Are you doing, ah, what some people might call straightforwardly traditional bluegrass uh or will your album be mostly, now I hate to stick labels on things. Well, the music is, I mean it's being written, it's been..it's contemporary in the time it was written. But, uh, the, and, but they're like there's a song written by a fella, well two guys, one is Bobby Clark, and then, uh, Greg Kennedy is another. And Greg used to play bass with Bill Monroe and they've written a song that's very much uh sort of a Jimmy Martin type sounding, uh, bluegrass song. So, it has that, there are some traditional sounding things as well as the things that sound more like the things we do. So, uh, all sorts of things. Uh, we finished mixing once and didn't like what happened on some of it so we're remixing uh a few things. And then it gets sent away to have done all those things that they do. Like stamp it and press it and make mothers and all

that stuff. And so, uh, I don't know, uh, I would think by Summertime if they're fast. Yeah, I'd like to mention also that this is, the record doesn't have any, you know, it's just a pure sound of the equalizer and the compressor and, uh, the harmonizer. You know, we don't use any recording gimmicks. We just go for the pure sound in all sounds. You know, the studio sound. We don't add any, uh, artificial things. And also we used an acoustic drum on a few cuts, you know [laugh] so for one little tiny little electric guitar solo that you could skip so over the

just out of curiosity, obviously you guys have been influenced by a lot of different styles of music other than straight traditional bluegrass. Anyone could tell that from listening to your to your music. And, do you have any perception of where bluegrass is going to go in..in the eighties? Obviously, in the seventies there have been a lot of influences that have creeped in from rock-n-roll, from jazz, from a variety of other musical influences and a lot people are saying well bluegrass is slowly becoming jazzgrass or slowly becoming rockgrass or whatever. Do you think the trend of what Grisman's done and Tony Trischka is doing and other people is going to continue? Is it gonna be more difficult in the eighties for straight lonesome traditional bluegrass band to make it commercially? Straight traditional bluegrass band has ever made it commercially yet so those bands will continue to do what they're doing now. Which is playing those festivals circuit. Right, they'll be doing those things. Where things will happen if anything's happening at all and the things that seem to be happening, Grisman; while it's related to bluegrass, it's

not really bluegrass. I mean, they've taken away the most more essential parts, you know, and to do that music Plus they're... Which may result, is the reason it's so popular, you know. Also, it's a non-vocal thing also. Yeah. So, uh, but, you know, to me I can see the..the level of competency, musicianship, that's better, uh on the, I mean that's getting better and better and I can see that the Grisman thing is helping that, 'cause all the sudden there's people that are really good players that are much better than have ever been on the instruments before. I think it's kind of working its way towards a, rather than being defined as bluegrass, it may be the same instruments but it will be just an acoustic band approach rather than uh just you know bluegrass, you know, with the banjo being played a certain style and the mandolin, you know, that stylized it might be just a wide variety of things.

John McEuen was there last, played a concert last. He plays a wide variety of styles on the banjo, you know, and I think that approach, it's probably more what it will evolve to. You know, he plays classical and the uh frailing and but still even when he, some of the frailing things it's not necessarily just the traditional old timey things. They're very contemporary sounding things. To me with all that's happening, the newgrass revival, and uh uh who else? David Grisman and Tony Trischka and all the younger players is kind of getting more to a uh uh similar to jazz but an acoustic band approach to playing music rather than the acoustic band playing just bluegrass. So it does. Yeah. I'll buy one of your records. We'll be looking forward to your new album coming out.

[laughter] Any idea when you'll be coming back this way again? Uh, there's a chance we may be back in October playing for the, uh, in Booneville playing for the Boone County Historical Society. Possibly in October. [Agrees] We're going to be playing for them some time but I think the date is gonna be in October. Well, we'll look forward to seeing you again and thanks a lot, you guys, for taking out a little bit of time this morning before you had to hit the road to stop by and talk with us Thanks again. We enjoyed it.