Read no. 2

Greetings!

Welcome to the second issue of the Women In Bluegrass Bulletin. This issue, like the first one, is free. If you want to continue to receive the WIBB, you will need to subscribe. This will be a quarterly bulletin, four issues per year, and subscriptions are $10.00 per year. There is a handy-dandy subscription blank provided on the back of the newsletter. Just fill ’er out and send ’er in. And thanks for your interest and your support. Not only do I need your financial support, I also need your verbal support. Write and tell me what you think. Not everyone is as thrilled about the subject of women in bluegrass as I am. For instance, I have been writing a monthly column in Banjo Newsletter since June of 1983. I have written 115 columns. Four of them have been specifically about women in bluegrass, three more have had paragraphs that specifically dealt with the issue of women in bluegrass. In a letter responding to a reader’s survey in the January 1995 BNL, one fellow says, “...Wish Murphy would stick to banjo and spend less time trying to convince us that women in bluegrass are more important than anything else…” 108 columns that dealt with men in bluegrass and seven that dealt with women? You figure it out.

Speaking of women in bluegrass, Nancy Cardwell has joined the staff of the IBMA as Special Projects Coordinator, replacing John Hartley Fox who has moved to California and is looking for a day job. Among her duties is editing the IBMA Newsletter, which is really looking good. Nancy has a special place in my heart because not only did she fill out and return the questionnaire (hint, hint!) but she also xeroxed it and mailed it out to many of the women pickers in Missouri!

Nancy was raised in Missouri, where she played mandolin and sang with her father’s country band at a very young age. At 16, she began playing rhythm guitar in the Cardwell Family bluegrass band, which stayed together for 10 years. Her primary instrument today is the acoustic bass, with a little rhythm guitar and hammered dulcimer thrown in on the side. She played bass for a year with the Wildwood Girls, and since moving to Owensboro is between bands. She is at present a single parent, having lost her husband, Frank Erdos, to cancer in 1989. They played together in a band called Homegrown until his death. Their eight-year-old daughter, Erin, already a good singer,

says her mother, is following in her parents’ footsteps by learning to play the fiddle. Nancy has a BS in Education, is a songwriter, and as a freelance writer has written many articles for Bluegrass Unlimited, Bluegrass Now, and Acoustic Musician. Also recently elevated to high office in the IBMA is dobro player Sally Van Meter, who has been named as Vice-President. Sally does us all proud by being consistently nominated as one of the five finalists for the IBMA Dobro Player of the Year Award. Alison Brown (who won as Banjo Player of the Year in 1991), Alison Krauss, and Missy Raines are the only other women to reach these heights in the instrument categories. One of these days...

The Database

The database, which inspired this bulletin, continues to grow and flesh out. Here are some of the latest stats. The figures for lead guitar are low because I did not ask the women to specify.

Names entered 856

Addresses 383

Questionnaires sent 396

Questionnaires returned 182

Bass 307

Guitar 340

Lead guitar 16

Fiddle 149

Banjo 156

Mandolin 155

Dobro 23

Hope you enjoy what’s inside! Comments welcome!

—Murphy Henry

The Questionnaire

383 of you have already received this questionnaire. 182 of you have sent it back and I think that is pretty darn good. If you haven’t yet sent it back, don’t panic and above all, don’t feel guilty! We’ve got enough guilt going around without inflicting it on each other! It’s not too late. This is an ongoing project so additions are always welcome. If you can

still find the one I sent, just send it on in now. If you’ve lost it, here are a list of the questions. Xerox it, copy it, or just do it by the numbers. If you haven’t received one, and you are a woman who plays or has played bluegrass at least at the

semi-professional level (did you make any money? cut any records?), please take a minute and answer these questions. You do not have to be active now. You very young women are welcome to answer the questionnaire, if you ever play in public. I just don’t want any students here. Thanks for all of your help!

OK, LADIES, HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS:

1. Name (include maiden name):

2. Birth date:

3. Place(s) raised:

4. Address now:

5. Phone:

6. Instruments played in order of competence (specify if lead guitar):

7. Current band:

8. Started with them when:

9. Previous bands with dates, locations, and instruments played:

10.History of musical experience on instruments:

11.Was your family musical in any way?

12.If yes, tell us about it:

13.How far did you go in school (high school? college? degree?):

14.Married? How many times?

15.Do you have kids? 16. What are their ages and sex?

24.Do they play music? If so, what instrument?

25.If you are a contest player, list some important wins:

26.Who are your main musical influences, bluegrass or otherwise?

27.Why did you start bluegrass?

28.What was your pre-bluegrass musical experience?

29.Were you ever around women bluegrass players when you started bluegrass? 23. If so, who were they and what did they play?

30.Were any women players or singers an influence (bluegrass or otherwise)? If so, who?

31.Did you jam a lot when learning?

32.Would you care to share any horror stories? Any of your feelings about being the only girl in the jam?

33.Do you like to jam now? Explain.

34.Do you sing? Which parts: Lead , Tenor , Baritone , High baritone .

35.Does/did your husband/partner play?

36.What instrument?

37.Do/did you play in a group together?

38.Name of group:

Mail or FAX to:

Murphy Henry / Women in Bluegrass

PO Box 2498

Winchester, VA

22604 FAX

703-877-2422

Classified ad: The All Girl Boys, the West Coast’s leading all-women bluegrass band, is looking for a banjo player/singer (lead and harmony). The band is democratic, specializes in traditional and original bluegrass music, and has recorded one CD with plans for a second. The band is based in Northern California (San Francisco, Sacramento areas) and has travelled as far as Alaska, Colorado, Vancouver, and Kentucky to perform. Songwriters are welcome. For more info, contact Mary Gibbons (510) 531-3145 or Kathy Barwick (916)739-6101.

“ESTROGEN JAM” MATERIALIZES AT OWENSBORO 1994

This eyewitness report comes to us courtesy of Kathy Barwick, lead guitarist and dobro player with the All Girl Boys of California.

“I’m sorry about giving you a hard time about missing the ‘girl jam.’ Actually I was just going to check out a woman banjo player from California (Janet Beazley)—I didn’t know it was to be a full-fledged estrogen jam. Maybe next year we could go through with your idea for a more formalized ‘women’s jam’... I do have some interesting comments about the jam:

“1. Although there were nine of us—two each on dobro, mandolin, banjo (with the late addition of Julie Elkins from Wheel Hoss), guitar, and one bass player— there seemed to be more than the usual amount of space to play (not much overplaying, except perhaps on my part—I had so much fun I got out there a bit!).

“2. Although there was the potential to be too folky for my taste (a common hazard of girl jams, I think), the hard core blue-grassers balanced that out nicely, providing for a nice combination of ‘feelings.’

“3. There was an unusual (excessive?) amount of politeness/etiquette happening: ‘I have one, if nobody else has one they want to do.’ We made fun of ourselves a little over this one.

“4. This is perhaps the most interesting observation, which we all noticed: Although we women would not (I hope) hesitate to join an all-boy jam (after all, if we didn’t, we would never have learned to play!), men who came up to our jam did not join us. It was almost as if we had a force field up (or maybe because there were nine of us already, they thought that was enough...nah!).”

From Janet Beazley herself comes a list of the women in the jam. Any errors here are mine: Kathy Barwick and Mary Gibbons from the All Girl Boys; Linda Erickson and Carol Martin from Lonesome Dove in Seattle; Patty Clayton from Ladies Choice in Denver; Julie Wingfield, Elizabeth Burkett and Janet Beazley from the Rose Canyon Band in southern California, and Julie Elkins. Janet’s comment: “It was great fun!”

Editorial comment: I hated missing that jam. But I had the same thing happen at Owensboro in a small jam I initiated in the Bluegrass Canada Hospitality suite. There was already picking in the back room, so after standing around a while in the front room with my daughter, Casey (both armed with banjos), I decided to do what I would not have had the courage to do a few years ago: I got out my banjo and started to pick. Naturally, I knew that Casey would pick, too, so that was a help. I figured someone was bound to join us. Someone did, almost immediately. Naomi Higuchi, a young Japanese banjo player, who knew most of the same Scruggs instrumentals I did. So, the three of us women stood there and played banjo instrumentals for over an hour and no one joined us. Plenty of people were listening and I’m sure there were other pickers that floated by, but we played by ourselves the entire time. When we finally quit, another group of men pickers quickly took our places. I remarked to myself at the time that this was interesting and, yes, I do wonder why. There sure weren’t too many of us, we could have used a rhythm guitar, it would have been nice to break up the instrumentals with some singing. But, no. One wonders... Comments, readers?

Women in Bluegrass is a quarterly publication. Editor, Publisher, and HWICC, Murphy Henry. Layout and Computer Consultant, Red Henry. We welcome your letters, input, and pictures of you and your band. Address all correspondence to: Women in Bluegrass, POB 2498, Winchester, VA 22604.

HORROR STORIES

In the questionnaire I asked the women if they would like to share any horror stories that had occurred while they were jamming. Although there were many who said they had no horror stories, that they enjoyed being the only female in the jam, many of us, myself included, have had experiences ranging from uncomfortable to intimidating. Let’s hear what some of our compatriots have to say. All quotes used with permission.

“The Problem is More Subtle”

Brenda Wolfersberger, from Indiana, plays acoustic bass in the group Natural Bridge with her husband, Brandt Smith. She has been playing bluegrass for about 10 years, but her previous musical experience was all classical: piano, voice and string bass from early childhood through college. Brenda says: “I’ve never been overtly made to feel unwelcome in a jam...To the contrary! All jams are more than happy to have a bass player, regardless of sex. The problem is more subtle. The problem is that the commonly known repertoire is male-oriented. As a singer, I want to sing! But, there is a resistance to transpose traditional tunes to keys where a woman can sing lead. If one gets lucky, and the group slaps on the capos (and the mandolin/fiddle players don’t object too loudly), then the female often finds herself singing solo, because the guys can’t figure out how to harmonize in the new key!

“Those songs that have been written by/for women (more all the time, thank goodness) are usually not well-known enough to pull out in a jam among strangers because they usually deviate from standard chord-structures (eg. G-C-D only). S-o-o-o, in jams I usually end up just playing bass and not singing. B-O-R-I-N-G!

“Lucky for me, I have my husband, Brandt, who always sings with me, so in all honesty, I usually end up singing a duet in those jam sessions. But that loses the ‘jam’ effect because when he and I sing, it feels like a performance since no one else joins in. Lately, I’ve taken to avoiding jams at festivals or loaning my bass to someone else and sneaking off for long breaks. Your article [an article I sent her talking about this same thing] helped me realize that I’m not just moody, with unrealistic expectations. I’m encouraged to know that others are going through the same thing. Maybe I will just hang in and try to bring about some of the gradual changes that need to be made for women to ‘fit in’ in jam sessions.”

“It’s Still an Uphill Battle”

This story comes from a classically trained woman, who asked me not to use her name. First of all she says that it was thrilling, after playing classical music, to discover that there was a way of performing that didn’t involve being terrified of making a “mistake;” a music where “putting across an emotional ambiance was primo.” That also meant, for her, coming “out of my shell, which I’m still working on.” Once she started learning bluegrass, she wasn’t allowed to jam with her husband or his friends until she became better than anyone else they could find. “It took years.” Now, “I’m getting better at ‘coming across.’ The better and more versatile I get, the harder it is for my husband and his friends to write me off, but it's still an uphill battle. I’ve had to earn my right to jam every step of the way.” Once, at a festival, before she played any bluegrass instrument, she stood in a jam for three hours and was turned down every time she asked if she could sing harmony. She was told, ‘If you don’t play, you shouldn’t sing.’ “Now that I do play, male bass players are still given priority, but since the ones we know don’t sing, I'm allowed, now that I can play, just to sing."

“Bummed Out” by Attitudes

This I saw originally on BGRASS-L and got permission from the author, Jan Goldberg, to reprint part of it here. Many of her points were echoed by other women in the questionnaire.

“I have been away from bluegrass for a number of years, in part because of being ‘bummed out’ by the attitudes of many of the men pickers. I was just sick of picking parties and jam sessions which were more like competitions then enjoyable experiences. The intent seemed to be to show each other up rather than to make good music and have fun. And I don’t ever intend to stand in another circle of musicians who are jamming and watch the circle close tighter together and find myself pushed to the outside of it.

“Having played banjo for over 20 years, and with three local bands, (two of which were all female), I was neither a bad picker, nor a weak picker. I was as good as all of them and better than most. Having been taught to play by Bill Emerson, my playing style was as loud and aggressive as any man’s. However, what I didn’t do was play loudly over the other singers, throw every lick I knew into every break I could get into, and grab breaks from other players...

“I think there are two facets to the problem of the acceptance of women in bluegrass: acceptance of women as singers and acceptance of women as musicians. I think it is much easier for women to be accepted as singers. I think Alison Krauss’s popularity is due more to her singing ability than to her musicianship, although obviously she excels at both...In most styles of music, the singer needn’t even play any instrument at all. “The problem for women in bluegrass is much more in acceptance as musicians. Why are there so few? I think it’s mostly cultural. Women have so many other responsibilities that they just don’t have the time available that it requires to develop their skills... “When I was just getting into bluegrass banjo, I used to play about 10-12 hours a day. I could do this because I was at home with my infant children...! was also fortunate that my husband w as supportive of my efforts and did more than his share to help out, so that I could play more...I find it interesting that the overwhelming majority of female pickers I’ve met are either single or divorced. Apparently it’s just too hard for most women to have both a marriage and play music...”

Ratifications

by Casey Henry

I realize that by now you think you have heard all that you could possibly hear about Owensboro ’94. All aspects have been discussed, all performances have been critiqued, all notes have been compared. Well (brace yourselves), here comes some more! Hopefully, I will be able to provide you with a viewpoint that hasn’t been talked to death.

As a sixteen-year-old junior in high school, the only people I come in contact with who play bluegrass are my family. When I get home from IBMA, bursting with excitement and experiences, I need somebody to talk to. Everybody would. I can’t tell my family because they don’t want to hear about it. They were there. The problem is that I can’t tell my friends either. They have no idea who Ronnie McCoury (!) is or Jason Carter (!!) or even Earl Scruggs, poor things. They do their darnedest to look and act interested but it’s just that—an act. I have really tried to expose and interest them in bluegrass but I can’t shove it down their throats.

For example, I returned this year bursting to tell someone about the awesome jam session I got in with the Del McCoury Band’s Jason Carter. Besides being incredible looking, he is also an incredible fiddle player (both big pluses) and one of the most considerate people I have ever met. My brother and I jammed with him for a couple of

hours on Saturday night. When I arrived at school Tuesday, zombie-like, I did attempt to tell my friend Nancy about it.

Casey: On Saturday night I got in an incredible jam session with Jason Carter (!!). Nancy: Tell me about it. I want to hear. First of all, who is Jason Carter and what is a jam session? Casey: Sigh.

Marty Stuart describes the same problem in his interview in Acoustic Musician (December 1994). He talks of coming home from Bean Blossom when he was twelve years old with a Bill Monroe pick. He says, “I had something that nobody else had and nobody else spoke that language.” People still don’t speak that language. The bluegrass language. I am hoping that when I go to college the situation will get better but I realize it may only get worse.

What are we going to do about it? Maybe we could start a bluegrass hotline that people can call when they have something really exciting and bluegrass related and have no one to tell. (Like jamming with Jason Carter until 4 a.m. or like meeting David Grier, Pete Wernick, Alan O’Bryant and seeing Bela Fleck all in one night.) It’s just something to think about and I would be more than happy to be on the receiving end. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with reading the bluegrass E-Mail that Frank Godbey is so kind to send, since my parents won’t let us get a modem. Sigh.

Nancy Hicks Pate

Sugarbabies in the Studio

My sisters and I recorded a bluegrass gospel album this summer. [The Hicks Sisters: With Sweet Accord] Since the five of us have three states between us, most of our practice and planning sessions were done long distance. In August we met at the studio in our oldest sister Murphy’s house in a brash effort to nail thirteen songs in 48 hours. The three weeks prior to our recording session were filled with phone calls between myself and Murphy. We weren’t discussing our harmony parts and arrangements, oh no. We were discussing child care, one of those critical issues that probably never gave the Blue Grass Boys a moment’s worry.

Of the six children involved, my two were the youngest: Caroline was two-and-a-half, and Natalie was only six months old. Their grandmother calls them her sugarbabies, but I wasn’t sure they belonged in a recording studio. Natalie, however, would have to

accompany me: she was still nursing. And leaving my toddler with her dad was not really an option.

So my initial conversations with Murphy centered on having her teenagers babysit. Casey, 16, is as levelheaded as they come and her brother Chris, 13, is a natural baby entertainer. They would have an assistant in my nine-year-old niece, Helena, and three charges: my two plus Helena’s four-year-old sister, Mac.

Then came a flurry of phone calls. The bass player had a conflicting gig. Who could we get to fill in at the last minute? Casey was the obvious choice—she is a solid bass player and she knew our arrangements. It felt right to keep things in the family. But who would take charge of the sugarbabies?

The phone rested a few days, and we regrouped. When the phone rang again, it was because Murphy had been inspired. She would trade banjo lessons for babysitting and have her friend Ruth come in and supervise on Saturday, the crucial day. I was satisfied, and ready (though far from eager) to hop in the car with the sugarbabies for our first long distance ride together.

Murphy had sent each sister a practice tape in the mail and a recording schedule, detailed down to the meals planned for each day. Armed with these and a carload of baby equipment, we set off. The first day’s ride was Suwanee, Ga., to Charlotte, N.C., where we picked up my younger sister, Laurie—an easy drive. The next day was more taxing, Charlotte to Winchester, an eight-hour trip spent listening to a crying baby accompany a poor-quality practice tape played over and over ad nauseum because Caroline refused to listen to anything else. At least Laurie and I got in lots of practice. When we arrived in Winchester, the Henrys and our middle sister, Argen, greeted us warmly. Murphy even allowed us to eat and get Natalie to bed before holding our first practice.

On Friday morning we attended a performance of Red and Murphy & Their Excellent Children. Caroline got into the spirit and danced for the crowd. Back at the house after lunch, still a sister short, we commenced recording. I left Chris in charge of Caroline while Natalie napped. The studio is reached by a door off the kitchen. While the tape was rolling the door was closed but during practice or playback we opened the door so Chris could bring in the girls. They loved it. They would roll on the studio floor and listen to the playback, Caroline singing along, then head out the door while we tried another song. After satisfactorily taping versions of four songs in less than three hours, we called it quits and began preparing for Claire’s arrival, with Helena and Mac in tow.

Daybreak found every bed with one or two occupants, and every floor with its pallet. The gospel quintet was now at full strength. After breakfast, Murphy’s friend Ruth arrived and I gratefully left Natalie in her hands. As I entered the studio I tried to block out the sounds of Caroline and Mac fighting for possession of Casey’s old Barbie dolls. The morning went smoothly, if you discount the time wasted by the five vocalists constantly dissolving into laughter. Luckily as the day wore on, we wore out and our supply of wit ran dry. The kids began to give out, too, and I was constantly popping out of the studio to settle a dispute over Barbie clothes, feed a baby, put a baby to sleep, or comfort a crying baby. Natalie was suffering from that bane of the on-the-road musician: constipation. When the exhausting day was over, we had recorded nine songs, getting passable versions of each. Maybe tomorrow we’d have time to hit Precious Memories again before the photographer arrived to take the cover picture. Now for pizza, Pictionary, and bed.

The next morning we listened to the playbacks while Natalie and Caroline tumbled between us like puppies. Surprisingly, we still liked most of our work. But there was that one song with the rough duet between Murphy and me. Chris and Helena scooted out with the little ones, and we went back to work. I expected to be interrupted for Natalie’s morning nap, but when we finally got a good cut, I emerged to find that her clever cousins had bounced her to sleep in her cloth bounce seat. Great invention; great kids! Now we sisters turned our attention to clothes. We traded shirts back and forth before we settled on five that looked good together. We were hustling now because we wanted to get shots for the cover, plus shots of the six cousins together before Claire and her bunch had to leave.

Soon it was all over but the crying. Because once I got the sugarbabies dressed and ready for the picture, they both began wailing and wouldn’t stop no matter how many contortions Laurie and I went through. We eventually gave up on that shot and focused on our own. But I could hear them still fussing through most of our photoshoot. When songs and photos were all done, the first set of partings was painful. Five sisters had been “working close” for two days, with hardly a cross word spoken. After Claire and Argen left, my kids immediately went down for two-hour naps, a rare occurrence. Even after naps they were still frayed. Bath time that night is a painful memory. Monday was a day of rest. On Tuesday morning Laurie and I took a few deep breaths and strapped the sugarbabies in for the long ride to Charlotte. This time Caroline

insisted on hearing the rough mix tape all the way down. Of course we were pretty happy with our work, so it was hard to complain.

Natalie had a fussy night, so I felt a bit jaded the next morning as I loaded the car (for the fourth time! Did I mention the playpen, potty, bounce chair, high chair, three suitcases, and two bags of toys?). I was looking forward to the short, final leg back home, little knowing we were destined for “the ride from hell.” I took two wrong turns before getting out of Charlotte, wasting twenty minutes of valuable Natalie nap time. Those weren’t the last of my bad moves. Soon came the cry from the back seat, “Mom, I have to poopie!” Naturally I took the next exit—which should have been marked “No Return Access.” But it wasn’t. And there were no gas stations, no restaurants, no nothing. We drove and drove along some back road before I finally pulled into a tiny church parking lot, and unpacked Caroline’s potty. Did she poop? Of course not. Okay, where’s the quickest way back to the interstate? Uh, oh. I left my map on somebody’s table. Then I felt my fussy baby’s forehead—yep, she’s got a fever.

Well, we eventually made it home, where Natalie’s pediatrician discovered a raging ear infection. Hey, I’m sure the Stanley Brothers had their own set of troubles when doing the Starday sessions. As for me, I learned that sugarbabies and studio-time can mix if everybody stirs hard enough. I also learned that Caroline has the aptitude to be either a road musician or a Greyhound bus driver. Because when we came to a stop in our own driveway after that long, long trip, she refused to get out of the car. In tears she wailed, “I want to go back!” And in a tiny corner of my mind, so did I.

The Hicks Sisters: With Sweet Accord

Gospel music at its down-home finest! The five Hicks Sisters, who have been singing together all their lives, have finally put some of their favorite gospel songs on cassette! Now you can enjoy the fresh, enthusiastic sounds of five sisters who love to sing! This project started out to be a family recording for our grandmother but we enjoyed it so much that we wanted to share it with everybody who loves these old hymns! In the Garden, Amazing Grace, Precious Memories, Uncloudy Day, Lily of the Valley and more!

Just $8.00 plus $1.00 shipping.

Send to: Arrandem Music Co., P.O. Box 2498, Winchester, VA 22604.

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22604

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Change of Life

(A column devoted to changes in our lives, musical and non.)

We are sad to report that Missy Raines’ brother died of AIDS in the spring of 1993. Missy described her brother and herself as “soul mates” and she and her mother spent the last year of his life taking care of him, Missy dropping out of music to do so. The experience changed her life, she said. Our hearts go out to you, Missy, and to your family, as you continue to deal with this devastating change in your life. Ginger Boatwright continues to hold “show and tell” about her recent mastectomy. She was in Winchester recently and she and Lynn Morris and I had a nice visit, “drinking mash and talking trash.” (Actually we were drinking coffee.) Ginger is purely amazing with her positive attitude, determination, and pluck. She is looking good and after three chemo treatments, still has her hair! And her husband, Buck, is a sweetie! Can’t wait to hear you plucking on a regular basis again, Ginger!