by Amy Condra<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article was originally published in The Juneau Empire<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is something brave about bluegrass, about the honesty of a group of musicians who stand up on a stage, before a crowd, with nothing but their instruments and a story to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when it\u2019s done right, a good bluegrass tune will make your pulse quicken and your blood rise up; it\u2019ll be like a ride down a wild, rushing, twisting river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes bluegrass different from, say, a standard country song?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think hard-driving rhythms, fast-paced improvisations, and high-pitched vocals that wind up and down the melody like an inquisitive strand of kudzu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople ask me, does it have to be so fast? Well it does for us to get the point across that we\u2019re bluegrass music,\u201d said Jeremy \u201cJunior\u201d Kane, vocalist and banjo-player for The Great Alaska Bluegrass Band (TGABB). \u201cWithout the high tenor, the mandolin, the banjo, then it\u2019s bluegrass style\u2026 but it\u2019s not bluegrass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And traditional bluegrass, the way it was played back when it began, is what TGABB wants to epitomize, says Kane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TGABB, which also includes Andrew Heist on mandolin, Brooke Munro on upright bass and Scott Burton on guitar, recently recorded their first album, \u201cSemi-Bluegrass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019ll be celebrating the release of the CD this Saturday night at the Alaskan Hotel & Bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018Semi-Bluegrass\u2019 has been in the making for a long time,\u201d Heist said. \u201cWe were all waiting until things got tight enough to make something that we could really be proud of\u2026 it\u2019s really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heist, who started off playing the electric guitar in a rock band, gradually shifted his skills to the acoustic guitar before moving on to the mandolin, an instrument he had inherited from his great-grandfather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBluegrass was the first real high-energy acoustic music that I heard, and I was hooked,\u201d Heist said. \u201cI loved the bluesy sounds of Bill Monroe\u2019s mandolin and the intense drive of Earl Scruggs\u2019 banjo\u2026 learning to sing three-part harmonies and to play instrumental breaks and to improvise on the mandolin was addictive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn other types of music I felt like I was just playing along, whereas with bluegrass I really felt like I was a part of a living tradition,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That tradition began and evolved with musicians such as Monroe, Scruggs, guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo player Ralph Stanley, all of whom were born in the Appalachian South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bluegrass musicians took the old-time mountain music of the region and added influences from gospel tunes, work songs and blues music, taking traditional acoustic instruments past their former limits and adding distinctive vocal harmonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back in the 1950s, Lester Flatt told NBC journalist Frank McGee, \u201cThe banjo is the lead or background in all of our numbers; if you notice, we have no electric instruments whatsoever in the outfit. And that\u2019s what we call bluegrass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earl Scruggs added, \u201cThe fifth string is plucked with the thumb, the rest of the strings are plucked with these two fingers\u2026 it\u2019s as simple as this!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when you see the rapid, intense, heavily syncopated style of bluegrass players, \u201csimple\u201d probably isn\u2019t a word that comes to mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you can\u2019t play music to the fast pace of bluegrass, it\u2019s very evident that you\u2019re not proficient,\u201d Kane said. \u201cWe run speed drills, or play for an hour straight, to keep our proficiency up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other types of music I felt like I was just playing along, whereas with bluegrass I really felt like I was a part of a living tradition.<\/p>Andrew Heist<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The band is committed to practicing and playing regularly, despite the members\u2019 day jobs: Kane is a ceramics professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, Munro is a middle school teacher, Burton is a graduate student and works with Discovery Southeast and Heist works for Allen Marine Tours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It all began when Heist met Munro and Burton in 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was one of those things like, \u2018This is Scott, he plays guitar. You should hang out,\u2019\u201d said Heist. \u201cIt actually worked. Scott had a bunch of tunes he knew from the songs of Utah Phillips, and I started trying to sing harmony parts with him. After a couple years playing together, we had a good bunch of tunes worked out and were both wishing we had a banjo picker to bring into the group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe went to the Alaskan Bar one Sunday when there was an old-time jam there, and Junior walked in,\u201d Heist said. \u201cHe brought out his banjo and hijacked the jam with some driving bluegrass banjo, and everything else fell into place. Brooke bought a bass and learned how to play it pretty quickly, and we were gigging within a few months.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kane, who had played in Fairbanks-based bluegrass band Clark County before moving to Juneau, says that touring around Alaska evokes what he thinks it was like for the first bluegrass musicians in Appalachia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou drive around, and there\u2019s not much money involved, you\u2019re playing in little tiny country bars in the middle of nowhere,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s the closest thing to being back in 1950! You\u2019re playing by fires, gone for days at a time, and trying to get back home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When asked about the expansion of bluegrass from the rural South to the far North, both Kane and Heist bring up Carl Hoffman, a musician who brought his band, the Pine Hill Ramblers, to Fairbanks more than 35 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCarl Hoffman basically introduced bluegrass to the state in the days of pipeline construction,\u201d said Heist. \u201cHe has taught so many people here, including Jeremy, how to play and sing bluegrass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCarl has amazing stories \u2014 when he was on the East Coast he booked bluegrass bands like Monroe and Stanley,\u201d said Kane, who considers Hoffman a mentor. \u201cThen he gets here and is a very well-regarded musician, bluegrass player and guitar trader.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about the band\u2019s self-proclamation as The Great Alaska Bluegrass Band?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s not a cocky thing,\u201d said Kane, who says that the band was called Bluegrass 101 until they found out that another band down south had the same name. \u201cIt\u2019s respect for the state, for the music. And we think it\u2019s kind of funny, because there\u2019s a \u2018Great Alaskan\u2019 everything. So we kind of go with thinking OK, so we\u2019ll have a \u2018Great Alaskan Bluegrass Band!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Alaskan audiences have treated the band well, says Heist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJuneau is a great town in which to be a musician,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are great venues that welcome live music, and never a shortage of excited people out to have some fun. And I\u2019ve been blown away by the number and exceptional talent of musicians in this state \u2014 there is a huge community of musicians that all feed and nurture each other, and when I became part of that community, I instantly had friends and family in all corners of Alaska.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Think hard-driving rhythms, fast-paced improvisations, and high-pitched vocals that wind up and down the melody like an inquisitive strand of kudzu. by Amy Condra This article was originally published in The Juneau Empire There is something brave about bluegrass, about the honesty of a group of musicians who stand up on a stage, before a… Continue reading Alaska band stokes Appalachia tradition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,7,105,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alaska","category-arts","category-biomass","category-bluegrass","category-juneau","post_format-post-format-gallery","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}