Read no. 22

Greetings!

I just got back from a big weekend in Nashville where my friend Sally Wingate and I got to meet and pick some with the fabulous Donna Stoneman. Donna, 66, can still pick the fire out of the mandolin. She has a unique style that is very rhythmic and jazzy. You can hear a lot of Scotty Stoneman in her playing.

The next day, I went over to the Country Music Foundation Library and watched two of the Stoneman’s TV shows that have been transferred to video. Fantastic! It was great to see two women (Roni on the banjo) taking virtually all the instrumental breaks on the songs. And this was back in the late ’60s. I also got to see Mom Stoneman (birth name Hattie Frost) play the fiddle! She took some good old-time breaks on "Mountain Dew,” which Pop sang. It’s just amazing (and sad) to me that the Stonemans (except for Scotty) don’t get much credit or recognition today. I can only speculate that Roni’s and Donna’s stage attire—white go-go boots and short skirts—continues to distract from the fact that they were both talented and creative musicians. And they were full-time professionals at a time when there were few women in bluegrass—especially women playing lead instruments.

Bay Area Wibbers

In this issue, we turn our attention to women in bluegrass in California, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the years, as I’ve met women from the West Coast and have asked about their experiences in bluegrass, I’ve been intrigued to find that wibbers “out there" don’t seem to face the same barriers that women on the East Coast face. I’ve often wondered why. Kathy Barwick, who played with the All-Girl Boys, had this to say:

"Regarding women in bluegrass in the Bay Area: You betcha it’s different! In many ways. I think because there was little or no established (entrenched?) tradition of bluegrass in California, women didn’t need as much to “break in” to something. While the first bands in California were indeed all-male, nevertheless, in some respects, the bluegrass tradition was built by men and women together. There’s also the liberal social atmosphere in the Bay Area. I can tell you that from my Valley Girl (Central, of course) perspective, the Bay Area is certainly a haven for women musicians, at least in the

bluegrass style. The bluegrass “scene” (such as it is) in Sacramento has been much more male-dominated. (This is why most of the music I play is in the Bay Area!) “I bring up my usual diatribe of the need for role models. The Phantoms of the Opry and the Good Ol' Persons really set a standard for women in bluegrass in the Bay Area: this is something women do—and on an equal footing with men. We have Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, Sally Van Meter, Sue Shelasky, Dorothy Baxter, and Barbara Mendelssohn to thank for that. In addition, Bay Area men have also seen women on stage and in jams—and competently so—for over twenty years. It’s just how things are. “I’d like to add one more thought here. Many Bay Area men have served as active mentors to me—I don’t know if that happens east of the Rockies (I imagine it does—people are people everywhere, after all) but in all my thoughts about the male/female divide, I always try to remember that my [male] colleagues have been particularly supportive, especially Steve Pottier.

“One of the things that’s odd for California women when we go "back East” is dealing with that different, male-dominated dynamic. It’s hard for us to get used to the day-to-day competitiveness that men often display. (Not bad, just what they do!) It can take us by surprise. The other interesting thing to note: you might notice a lack on input from West Coast women on the “non-traditional key” question. It’s a no-brainer out here: the singer always calls the key. Period. [In a Bluegrass Unlimited article Kathy Kallick noted that “Back East, I’ve actually been scolded for playing a song in the ’wrong key.’ ”] Instrumentally, we are all expected to be competent enough to accommodate any key, including Ab— tons-o-fun on the bass, I’ll tell ya! It was quite a shock to me, in one of my first outings with the Barbelles, to be expected to kick off “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms” in D or E. I had to learn to adjust. So while there might be some moaning and groaning about an awkward key, we pickers gamely dive in and see what we can do. There is perhaps one exception I can think of: “Uncle Pen.” Don’t know if fiddle players should be expected to play that in other keys. We do try to be reasonable!” Rose Maddox apparently wasn’t worried about being reasonable. On her album Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass she recorded “Uncle Pen” in the key of D with twin fiddles! Inside we’ll hear more on the topic of women in bluegrass in the Bay Area from some of the wibbers who were there: Kathy Kallick, Beth Weil, and Laurie Lewis. If you have more to add, let me know! Email me at [email protected].

—Murphy Henry

Laurie Lewis: Committed to Being Me

By Claire Levine

Laurie Lewis is among the best-known and most-admired bluegrass musicians of either gender in the world. Two-time IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year, she is also a great fiddler and guitar player, an extraordinary songwriter and arranger, and a hard-working and effective bandleader. She has an astounding range of talents and interests—dance, violin making, long-distance bicycling. And above all, she is a caring person and a loyal friend. She recently returned from Boulder, Colorado, where she completed a recording project in tribute to the late Charles Sawtelle.

Laurie took time from her overwhelmingly busy schedule to talk to WIB about the unique nature of the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly with respect to bluegrass music and music.

I'm interested in when you first started playing music. Apparently, there was something magical happening in the Bay Area.

I would say that was true. When I first started playing bluegrass, there was a very vibrant scene going on that was mostly centered around bands that played regularly at Paul's Saloon. First and foremost was Styx River Ferry, the band that opened up Paul’s Saloon to bluegrass. It was a little bit before my time. I think I came on the scene at their going away party.

In that band were Bob and Ingrid Fowler—Ingrid Herman was her maiden name. She was the daughter of Woody Herman. She played fiddle in the band and sang, and [in August 1972] they moved to Nashville along with their whole band.

So, the first time I went to Paul’s Saloon, there were women playing lead instruments as integral parts of a band. There was Markie Sanders playing mandolin and bass in the Hired Hands, and, of course, Ingrid playing fiddle. They all played lead and sang harmonies. They worked, as anybody would, pulling their own weight.

There was Sue Erickson, who played guitar and was often a guest with bands at Paul’s Saloon. She was a songwriter and used to be in High Country. She’s featured on the first High Country album.

When did you first go to Paul's Saloon? Do you remember what year that was?

I think it was 1972.

And at that time, had you already taken up the fiddle?

I was working in a dance studio. I had not been playing music at all, but the husband of the director of the dance studio was really into the bluegrass scene at Paul’s, and was a bass player. He found out that I had played banjo a little bit when I was a teenager, so he wanted to get together and play. And I tell you, I pulled out my banjo, and I was awful. I was never any good, and by then I was bad and rusty.

But, in the course of getting together that time, he found out that I had played classical violin, and his eyes just lit up, and he said, “Why, you could play the fiddle!” Just at that same time, a number of things happened. My older sister asked me to play music for her wedding. She was thinking I would play guitar and sing, because that’s what I had done generally when I had played music.

And I had also been carrying around with me, for years, this Chubby Wise instrumental album, called Chubby Wise And The Rainbow Ranch Boys, with Hank Snow's band. It's a really, really great album. My dad gave it to me. He found it at this little music store in Berkeley and bought it for me when I was about 14. So I’d always had this record, but I’d never really learned anything off of it. It had these lovely waltzes, and I thought, with my friend Geoff Berne's encouragement, I can learn some waltzes, and Geoff can back me up. And so I did.

And that was it. As soon as I realized that I could just learn by listening and play what I heard, a big door opened for me. And right at that same time, Geoff dragged me over to Paul’s Saloon.

There I heard all this wonderful music and these great fiddlers over there, and I was completely smitten. And with my classical technique that I still had from having played classical violin as a teenager, I was able to kind of jump in fairly readily. That, along with the fact that I had played folk guitar and was familiar with chord changes and had a pretty good ear.

Around the same time, the director of the dance studio had choreographed a dance to the singing of Brantley Kearns, who was a wonderful singer and guitarist and fiddler, too. He played fiddle at Paul’s Saloon in various bands and was the first fiddler, I think, with the Phantoms of the Opry. So she choreographed this dance to him singing and playing guitar, and I just loved it. I was completely blown away by how beautiful it was. So I had this other kind of “in” to that scene, just because I had watched this whole

dance get choreographed and set to music and had watched their live performances of it and was all primed. Everything happened at the same time.

And, at that dance studio, once a month, there were square dances held with an old-time band. I don't remember much about the musicians in that band, but I think it was people who went on to be part of Highwoods String Band. They had moved back East. And people who became parts of the Arkansas Sheiks, who I later played with. So, live music was all around me with women playing. So it did not seem like it was an odd thing or a thing that was so far out of my realm of possibility that I couldn’t do it myself.

There is something, I think, about the way the majority of people seem to be in our society today. They’re very removed from the idea that they can pick up an instrument and play it. They’re not around live musicians, they don’t have it in school, they just see it under bright lights on stage, where it seems like only professionals should try. You know, "Don’t try this at home.” But it was not like that at all in the Bay Area. There was no thought that this wasn't something that women do?

No, there was no thought that that might be the case. There was the band High Country, which seemed through most of its life, to be a bastion of male bluegrassness. They were very active in the Bay Area. But, if a female singer was in the audience, she’d always be invited up. And they also had a history of having a woman in the band for a while—that was Sue Erickson.

High Country was the prototypical West Coast male band, but that does not mean they are the male macho band. It just so happens that they were more in touch with, and in love with, the real traditional bluegrass. They were followers of Bill Monroe, so they were not of the mindset that women couldn’t sing bluegrass or couldn't play bluegrass, but that this is how they wanted it to sound, which is a different thing. I have those same feelings. There are certain songs that I won’t sing, even though I love the songs, because I love them so much in their keys that are male keys. I love to play them. I love to hear them there.

When you first started singing, was it ever an issue? "You can't sing that song in that key?" Did folks say that?

It’s possible that somebody did—I wouldn’t say I’ve never heard that. Mostly there would be some grumbling, like, “Damn, why do I have to play this in D? I want to play it in G.” Which means, mostly, it’s banjo players who have to play out of a completely other position. You know, you go from G to D, and it’s a major change. You cannot capo your banjo up seven frets and have it sound like the same thing. So that’s where the grumbling came from, not from some idea that you're not allowed to play something in another key.

It's not as much fun.

Sure. And, I’ve got to tell you, for some stuff it just isn't as much fun! If you move a banjo from G to D, there are some songs that just do not work. Would you try to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” in D? No. It’s not going to sound right. You learn all those classic breaks, and you can't play them. As a fiddle player, I never want to play "Can't You Hear Me Calling” in any other key but G, because I love Chubby Wise, and I love those solos, and I want to play like that, and I want it to sound like that. Tell me about Vern and Ray. Are they originally from the East?

They’re both from Arkansas. They both moved out to California and worked for a long time and both moved themselves and their families to Nashville for a while, to try to make it in the music business. That’s where they did a couple sides for Starday, the famous “Cabin On The Mountain,” with the incredibly great fiddle break and Vern singing. And that just didn’t work out. They didn’t get work. Then Vern first moved back to California and Ray followed shortly thereafter. This was in the late ’50s, early ’60s. So, I met them. I don’t recall the first meeting. I probably went to the Freight and Salvage when they were playing. There were often jams in the back room there—it was the tiniest little, tiny, tiny back room. I might have played with them some there. Not too long after I met them, they quit playing music together, except on very rare occasions, and Vern got together his own band, the Vern Williams Band, with his son Delbert and Keith Little. I ended up playing bass with that band for maybe a year or so. And I just loved it. It was so great to be a part of that rhythm section and be in that band and hearing that music from the inside.

Had you already been performing at that point?

Yeah, I had played bass in the Phantoms of the Opry, and played fiddle in the Phantoms. And Vern would sometimes call me to play fiddle with him, but I was always

so scared to do it. I really didn’t feel like I was good enough for that band. So I’d try to get him to get Paul Shelasky to play fiddle, or someone like that, and I’d wrangle the bass job. And then pretty soon, I got the bass job for a while. It was very wonderful. I really loved it.

And for him, the gender thing wasn’t an issue?

I don’t think so. He’d always want to sing duets and want to play. He was just into playing the music, and didn’t seem to have a gender bias. It’s possible, if you scratched the surface deep enough, there was something there like maybe he wouldn’t want to be touring on the road with a female band member. I don’t know, because that never came up.

There are many different levels of acceptance. And also what works chemistry-wise in a band. If you’re all just living at home and you get together and play at a club or an occasional festival, that’s one thing. If you’re on the road in a van or a bus, traveling together for long periods of time and sharing hotel rooms, it becomes more difficult to be the only female in an otherwise male group. It creates all kinds of problems. You’ve got to have your own room, all kinds of things.

And then there’s also the sexual energy that enters into it—which is not always what you want in a touring band. It can be a pretty damn explosive thing.

I'm interested in the Good Ol' Persons. How did that come to be? Was there a conscious decision, a statement, to have an all-women's band?

We all met at Paul’s Saloon at jam nights. Jam nights used to be a Sunday night. I'd go over every Sunday. Often Barbara Mendlessohn, who played mostly clawhammer banjo, would come in.

There would not only be jams going on onstage, but there were a couple of back rooms, and there would be jam sessions happening in the various back rooms. If you wanted to put together a band and play a set or a few songs on stage, you could do that. So, I got together with Barbara and Dorothy Baxter and Sue Shelasky, who was playing mandolin, and a friend who none of us really knew very well, who was Kathy Kallick. Barbara Mendlessohn went to the Sweets Mill Music Campout with Kathy, and Kathy sang some songs in the car. Barbara had never heard her sing before, and she just flipped out. “Man, this is great!”

It was Barbara’s idea to start playing music with Kathy. Kathy didn’t drive at the time, and lived in San Francisco. Barbara and Sue and Dorothy all lived in Marin County, very close to each other, and I lived over in Berkeley. So we’d get together at Kathy’s place, and have a coffee klatch and play tunes. It really started out as a women’s support group. But we thought we should set a goal for ourselves, which would be to put together a set to play at Paul’s Saloon at jam night.

We went and played the set, and immediately Paul wanted to hire us for one night a week. And we said okay. But we only had one set’s worth of material. So we immediately had to start acting like a band and getting stuff together. And we did it. The band got a lot of press coverage and a lot of interest early on because it was all women. And even though there had been women in these other bands all along, there had not been, in the Bay Area, an all-women’s bluegrass band. So it was a novelty. Everybody liked us. The women liked us because we were all women on stage, and the men liked us because we were all girls.

Who played what?

Dorothy played guitar, flat-picked, played lead. She was very good, very Doc Watson-influenced. Doc was her main man. Kathy played bass, mostly, and Barbara played banjo and she also played hammered dulcimer and spoons. We were very eclectic. I played fiddle, and Sue Shelasky played mandolin. But soon, Sue dropped out and her brother Paul took her place on mandolin. The first time he played with us, he came in wearing a dress, and I think a wig, but it didn’t make any sense because he had this big beard. It was quite ridiculous.

How long were you with the Good Ol' Persons?

I was actually not with that band very long, maybe a year and a half, the first couple years of the band, and that was it. And the band continued to be together for another twenty years. I had a very small impact on the whole life of that band. People always say, “You were in the Good Ol’ Persons, right?” Well, yes, I was a founding member, but I was gone from that band by the time they did all their great music.

Back to the recognition that there was a different scene or a different generation or a different something from the roots of the music you were playing.

In the late ’70s or so, Hot Rize would come out here and play. They used to park their bus out in front of my house, and we would get together and have pickin’ parties. Pete

Wernick wrote me a letter after one of these parties—it must have been about 1980 or so. He’d been traveling all over the United States, and he wrote that he thought the Bay Area was really unique in the way women were such an integral part of the scene. He was really impressed by it, and he thought it was very unusual.

Now, I hadn’t traveled elsewhere, so I didn’t know it was unusual. I just thought, well, yeah, this is the way things are supposed to be done. You know, I grew up in Berkeley, and it took me years of getting out of the area before I got over the feeling that everything was weird, everybody thought differently than I did, everything was strange. I realized after a while that, no, I was the weird one, and that Berkeley was the strange place. And outside of modern European countries, there weren’t many places in the world that were like this. You know how Europeans claim they can spot Americans all the time? When I was 16, I went to Europe for the first time with my family. Nobody thought we were an American family. They all thought we were maybe German or Danish or something. The way we dressed and the way we were just different. But that’s what I grew up in.

So, in everything, there was a sense of being no boundaries.

Yes, in just about everything. You know, male chauvinism was a part of life, even here you would run into it, but there wasn’t a sense that that little thing would stop you from whatever it was you wanted to do. Because out here it was a far smaller issue. When you were playing with all women, what about the technical details? Did you all learn the technical parts, deal with the sound and the equipment?

I guess in the Good Ol’ Persons that sort of fell on me. I bought a sound system. Dorothy and I were definitely the more physical members of the band. It didn’t bother us to haul things, you know. Lift and tote and carry did not bother us. People would bring their own mikes and stands and cords, but the guts of the system were mostly Dorothy and me.

Did you have the most interest in the technical aspect of it or the least intimidation? Maybe the least intimidation. No, it’s not even intimidation. I think it’s just that we were the most physically active. Dorothy and I were the ones who were into arm wrestling and Indian leg wrestling and jumping and running and climbing.

What about making the sound system work? Was that something you were always interested in?

Well, I’ve become more interested in it out of necessity. You have to understand how a sound system works and how to run one in order to communicate with the sound people, and to help make sound checks go as smoothly as possible. You have to know what you’re talking about. The whole thing is a learning process. It goes on and on. It is something I’m interested in enough to pay attention to it. I’ve got to. As a bandleader, you’ve got to know that stuff.

In any given community, there are people who would most like to do the work in the kitchen, and there are those who would like to chop the wood. I was more of a woodchopper than a kitchen worker.

I once came across one of the Bluegrass Suspects albums. This one had members of the Good Ol’ Persons, and it had Tony Rice and Peter Rowan and Norton Buffalo. Was the Bay Area sort of a magnet for people from other places to come and do their music? Well, it really was for a while—it was quite a hotbed. We probably have Grisman to thank for that more than anybody. Because David got together this great band and attracted Tony Rice and Mike Marshall, and he had Darol Anger in the band and Todd Phillips in the band. The fact that he was here and had such a drive to do this thing musically was exciting for these very hot musicians with a bluegrass foundation, but who wanted to stretch beyond the boundaries. And he created a focal point for them. And we’re just lucky to have him here.

Are there still places where everybody gets together and jams?

Well, there’s a New Year’s Day party that happens where a lot of people go. There’s not a place like Paul’s Saloon anymore. It was a really important gathering place, and it was the place where there was bluegrass or some kind of related music seven nights a week, and if anybody was visiting town that’s where they'd end up. it was always open a lot later than, say, the Great American Music Hall. Ralph Stanley would come to play at the Music Hall and then drop in at Paul’s Saloon. That would happen when the Grisman Quintet would play there. They’d all just fall by Paul’s because it was in a direct line between the Music Hall and their Marin County homes.

But it looks like there is currently something of a renaissance going on in the bluegrass world out here. There are now three clubs that I know of that have bluegrass on a regular basis: The Acme Cafe, Last Day Saloon, and Radio Valencia. I’ve been on the road so much that I’m really out of touch with the local scene. I look forward to exploring what’s happening now.

Did you start Grant Street shortly after you left the Good Ol’ Persons?

I quit the Good Ol’ Persons in about early 1977, and Grant Street had our first gig in 1979.

When you started touring, did you encounter surprise that you were a woman bandleader?

I don’t know if surprise was it. By the time I started wandering about the rest of the world as a bandleader, I already pretty much knew that this was what I did. I knew that this was who I was. I was already committed to being me, and the rest of the world would either accept me or not. And the fact of the matter is that I’ve gotten to play with so many great musicians that the world has been very accepting. That’s great. I feel like, when the old timers say, “Hon, you play like a man,” that’s a compliment! I take it as a compliment. I used to laugh at it, and I still laugh at it, but it’s their way of saying, “We accept what you do, and we like it.”

So, you haven't encountered opposition or mistrust?

Well, opposition, definitely. In any given festival, mostly back East and in the South, they have a quota. Many festivals have a quota. Before Alison got so popular that she’s just completely out of the league of other touring bands, my booking agent would come across this attitude. This probably happened to Alison, too: “Well, we already have our woman bandleader, or we already have our girl fiddler at the festival. We already have one, so we can't have another.” That used to be a sort of common thing. I could point out instances where that’s still the case. I think it’s a growing and learning experience for everybody, but it probably doesn’t help anybody learn to have their noses shoved in it.

Have you ever talked to anybody like Hazel Dickens, any of the previous generations, the groundbreakers, about this?

Well, Hazel has talked about that at Augusta [the August Heritage Festival in Elkins, W.Va.]. Definitely, there was the women’s place in a bluegrass band, which was playing bass and singing tenor. Not easy for Hazel, although she played bass and sang tenor in a lot of bands.

Any conclusions, any final thoughts?

The things I love about bluegrass are its really visceral qualities and the way it is so bare-bones emotional. It’s got this incredible energy. And I have to say there are not very many women who are willing to put that kind of energy into the music, it seems to me, and that’s an unfortunate thing.

Do you think that's changing?

I hope it’s changing. I think it is. I get really excited when I hear somebody who can fiat cut it on their instrument, but then they often disappear. There’s a lot more pressures on women than on men in having a music career. Even if you decide not to have kids, if you're trying to have a relationship, there’s a lot of other stuff that goes on there that makes it more difficult, I think. Kathy is very lucky to have Peter [Thompson]. We all need a wife. “Get a wife!” WIB

Beth Weil – There Was Nobody Saying We Couldn't

By Claire Levine and Beth Weil

Beth Weil, 48, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved as a teenager to West Virginia. After graduating from college in Portland, Oregon, she moved back to the Bay Area and became involved with the vibrant musical scene there. Beth played bass in the original Grant Street String Band with Laurie Lewis, and later played with the Good OF Persons. In 1991, while on stage with that band, she suffered a disabling stroke. With right-side paralysis, Beth is no longer able to play, but she retains a joyous love for bluegrass and related music. Beth is working on a book about her stroke and its effect on her life and that of her family. She spoke to WIB about her experience as a woman playing bluegrass.

You were in West Virginia when you first started playing music. Can you tell us how you started?

For some reason I started playing the fiddle, because of old-time music. Then a boyfriend came and steered me into bluegrass. I could play old-time music much better than I could play bluegrass, so I became a spectator and went to all these early ’70s festivals with him.

You felt pretty good being an old-time fiddler?

I felt pretty insecure being an old-time fiddler. I played the fiddle and the mandolin because they’re both tuned the same way, and I was mediocre at both at best.

Was bluegrass a guy thing in your experience on the East Coast?

I don’t know, because I didn’t participate. Basically, it was for musicians better than me, so I didn’t identify it as a guy thing. I identified it as a professional musicians’ thing. I was in two old-time bands in West Virginia. One was a jam band led by Dwight Diller, the Double A Cutters, and that was just a band that jammed in people’s homes. And the other band was the Appalachian Women’s Band, and since it was all women, we didn’t have to deal with any of that possible worry about it being a guy thing. You graduated from Reed College in Portland and moved back to the Bay Area. Were you playing mandolin and fiddle then?

I’d play in the house occasionally, but I don’t remember any significant playing. I got back to Berkeley in 1975, and after getting a job and finding a place to live, wanted to join a band. Then I met a group of people who were in a band called Oakum. They had a mandolin player who was much better than me and two fiddlers that were yards better than me, and no bass. So I bought a bass and immediately got taken into this band and we started getting gigs. The first one was on a Tuesday, the day after I bought the bass, at an Irish pub called the Starry Plough. I was scared to death, and didn’t get on the stage until the beginning of the second set, when a waitress came over to me, asked how old I was (I was 24), and told me to either get on stage or leave. I got on stage. Oakum was the ultimate democracy. There were four men and two women, and at first the other woman resented my being a woman too, but after a while we became friends. I felt totally at home with them. We didn’t just play the songs, we arranged them, figured out intros and breaks, and figured out who would fill when. In retrospect, I was very lucky to have gotten in that band. What would have happened if I had been back East, where women weren’t thought of as playing bluegrass, or if I had gotten into a country band with a star and a backup band? Together in Oakum we trained each other to be better musicians.

By this time, I understand, women were very much an integral part in the Bay Area music scene.

The West Coast was full of bands like Oakum—all-women’s bands, bands of both men and women. Music knows no gender here. Men on the West Coast were open to women musicians, even woman bandleaders, because rock and roll was that way out here. Joy of Cooking had two woman bandleaders [Toni Brown and Terry Garthwaite], and Ace of Cups was an all-woman rock band. It never occurred to us not to play

bluegrass—there weren’t the problems of an exclusively male tradition like there were where bluegrass was born, on the East Coast. We thought we could do it because there was nobody saying we couldn’t.

And there were other bands that were playing acoustic music with women in them, too. The Good Ol’ Persons were a charismatic group that had started out all women, but Sue Shelasky quit and her brother Paul joined the band. They were funny and they played bluegrass and old-time. Their first gig sold out. And there was a band of all women called Any Old Time that played a slightly different style than we did, no bluegrass, only old-time and little-heard popular stuff from the ’20s and ’30s. As far as the music scene went, the vernacular music scene (by that I mean anything that wasn't popular), women were an integral part of the music scene because they always had been in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, in the ’60s, there were women playing.

Who were some of the other women besides Sue Erickson, who had played with High Country, who were playing by the time you got back there?

Markie Sanders was my inspiration. There was a band that Candy, from Oakum, was in. I can’t remember the name of the band, but I only remember women being in that band: Miriam Stafford and Lowanda Ultan. I vaguely remember that they played folk music. Laurie Lewis has said there was always something unique about Berkeley. Was it the time, was it the '60s and ’70s. Was it the fact that the Bay Area had always been more progressive?

All of that. There are so many factors that make California different from the East Coast that I can’t even start to talk about them. Hippies started out here, more hippies happened out here, although they happened other places. [Interviewer confesses to her hippy indulgences at the University of Wisconsin.] I don’t even know how to explain it. In your experience, was there an overt or implicit sense that you shouldn’t be playing or that you weren’t welcome or that you were less welcome?

In fact, we didn't even think about that. The thought didn’t enter our minds. There was no sexism in the music business— first I was going to say that there was no sexism in the kind of music that I was playing, but there was no sexism in rock bands, either. Joy of Cooking was a precursor to my time.

What happened after you joined the first band?

While I was in that first band, Laurie Lewis asked me to be a bass player with Old Friends for a gig, and the next thing I knew I was asked to join this band. The previous bass player, Nancy Josephson, was quitting, and I guess they wanted me. So I joined the band, and I was in Old Friends and Oakum simultaneously. Old Friends wasn’t really a band it was a Paul’s-Saloon-on-Tuesday-night band.

Then Laurie wanted to form her own band. She used the double fiddlers from Oakum, and the guitar player and mandolin player came from Nevada City. They got a banjo player from the Sacramento area. So it was a seven-piece, ungodly, unwieldy band that only lasted for a couple months. Then the two fiddlers from Oakum said goodbye. Then it was a five-piece band with no name. This was the beginning of Grant Street. Tell us a little about Grant Street.

I played with them from 1980 to 1984, five years. We practiced and arranged and performed, and the music got better and better. I particularly liked the duets Laurie and I sang: “In My Dear Old Southern Home,” “True Life Blues,” and “Blue Railroad Train.” “The Bear Song” was my all-time favorite one that she wrote during my first stint in the band.

We recorded one record. [Self-titled, in 1983. Available now on CD from Flat Rock Records.] When we weren’t playing, I had my graphics job at the Continuing Education of the Bar office in Berkeley.

In 1984 I quit the band and started playing all different kinds of music. Because I didn’t take solos, bluegrass was getting boring. So I started playing Dixieland and klezmer and all different kinds of music, the bass line being virtually the same, although in klezmer one usually has to bow the bass. I did session and studio work, both instrumental and vocal, went on a European tour with the Good Ol’ Persons, had two kids, and did the wife and mom thing.

When did you get married?

I got married in 1983 while still in the band. Laurie and Greg Townsend [from Grant Street] played music as I walked down the stairs. We got married in the Rose Garden. [Beth married Tom Diamont, co-owner of Kaleidoscope Records. In the latter part of the ’80s, she was a graphic artist for the company.]

What made you decide to get back with Grant Street?

Laurie and I were estranged for many years. Finally, I grew up a little. During the first time I was in the band, Laurie and I competed fiercely for control of the band, and I got to the point where I was totally obnoxious. Greg started hating me because I was obnoxious, so I just said, "Forget this." I was not with Laurie for five years. And in that five years, my self-confidence grew, and I decided that being a side person was not a bad thing. When I came back in 1990, I was just a side person and happy to be there. I was only in the band for six months or so. Bethany Raine had been playing acoustic bass for the Good Ol’ Persons for over ten years and she quit, and I finally had my chance to join that band. Laurie graciously let me go. It all ended two months later. [With her stroke.] My musical knowledge is buried in a musically useless body. However, I can still love it.

What was your competition with Laurie about? Was it because you were the two women in the band?

Laurie is very ambitious, but only on stage! The rest of the time, she’s totally happy to make it a democracy. If somebody wants to take a song over and make it their own, she’s perfectly happy. But on stage... It’s a positive thing, the ambition, but it’s an aggressive thing. I think she would have done that with anybody.

Were there particular stresses that occurred performing with women that might not have occurred performing with men?

Quite the opposite. I felt at home with women. With men, either I became romantically involved with them, so there was that, or I didn’t confide in them. So the music wasn’t as personal.

Let's talk about this democracy thing in bands. I've heard that Good Ol' Persons was very much a democracy. That's not something you hear about much in traditional bands. I have a fantasy of Jimmy Martin running his band like a democracy. Is this a Bay Area thing or a woman thing?

I think it was a West Coast thing. A friend and I have discussed this somewhat by email. He says it’s a West Coast thing.

How many of the bands had a clear leader, and how many tried to do everything by consensus?

I think most bands on the West Coast did everything by consensus. In my memory, in the ’70s and ’80s there were more democratic bands than there were bands with clear leaders.

Did most of the democratic bands have women in them?

There were some in the South Bay that didn’t have women in them, but then there was Sidesaddle, which was an all-women’s band, too. I don’t think bands were drawn on gender lines. They were drawn along lines of like-minded musicians and the goodness of the musician, rather than the sex of the musician. WIB

WIBLETS

Segregation of Women

Joann Sanders Loehr (budding mandolin player) has a Ph.D in Biochemistry and is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology. She has been teaching graduate and undergraduate students for the past 25 years, and she also has an active career as a research scientist. For the past five years she has been a guiding force in AWSEM, Advocates for Women in Science. Engineering, and Mathematics, a program which helps young women in middle and high schools develop confidence in their abilities as scientists and leaders.

With regard to the segregation of women—that it is only okay for them to be performing with other women—this is not totally a bad thing for right now. I say that based on my science experiences. First of all, just seeing a group of women performing gives everyone the idea that women belong in the genre, and they are more visible as a group (have more of an impact) than as side musicians. So it is an important means of consciousness raising for men and women alike.

Second, our Advocates for Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics program is based on the fact that girls learn science better in unisex groups where they feel freer to express themselves. In choosing a person to jam with, both Jane Gallagher and I felt much more comfortable with another woman. So, women-oriented gatherings may be good for encouraging women to get involved.

For most of my career I was bothered by feeling invisible in my science and did a lot to try to make myself more visible. Happily, this last year I have come to the realization that it doesn't matter anymore. I am happy with the woman I have become and I don’t care

whether other people see it or not. Interestingly, people seem to be appreciating me more than they used to.

I think what I am saying is that even if women performers only get appreciated by other women, that will still be lots of appreciation. Who is buying all those Lynn Morris and Laurie Lewis albums? Certainly women like me. As someone told me recently, “It is possible to be open to the outcome, without being attached to it.” [And, as Joann explained to me, this means that while we want women to be accepted as equal players in bluegrass, we should not think less of ourselves as musicians if people are slow to accept us.]

–Joann Sanders Loehr. Portland. OR

Thoughts on Flatpicking

I have been intending to send some thoughts on the flatpicking issue. I disagree with the notion that perhaps women don’t flatpick because it takes so much intense woodshedding. (I don’t remember exactly how it was put.) Learning the banjo takes a similar amount of time (fiddle takes more, I suspect), and there are many more women banjo and fiddle players out there who have spent that concentrated time learning the basics and perfecting their craft. After reading the issue, I think if I had to pick one most important factor, I think it would be physical strength, or lack thereof. Similar to Laurie’s comments about pulling tone and volume, it’s just physically hard. Following would be the lack of female role models (concomitantly, the degree of male dominance), and the competitiveness of the flatpick world.

I was also intrigued with Laurie’s comments regarding “support systems.” It’s telling that the joke—“What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless.”—doesn’t make sense when you change the gender. For all that men are expected by society to support the family and make a living, the daily obligations of life somehow seem to get in a woman’s way when it comes to stuff like this.

—Kathy Barwick, Sacramento, CA

Let’s Vent!

Thanks for the newsletter. I read Casey’s article [“Proving Yourself in a Jam,” WIB 21] and was embarrassed, enlightened, and enraged. (Not really enraged but I love alliteration.) Okay, let’s vent.

Let me expound on some of my naive views of bluegrass: I believe that there is a certain bluegrass etiquette and that it should be that as one approaches a jam in progress, one should listen, determine if he/she could add anything to the music and count the number of banjos. Any number of banjos over one is too many in most jams, so if one is there, don't screw it up. Go find another or start your own jam somewhere

else. Now, after reading Casey’s article, I know why I feel this way. I never realized that the obnoxious s.o.b. that crashes the inner circle and takes over is actually challenging my masculinity. (Don’t use this word much—hope it’s spelled right!) I guess that the feeling of wanting to jerk his banjo out of his usually sweaty, grungy hands and shove the peghead clear to his tonsils is just my male aggressiveness rearing its ugly head! I have had this happen several times, but just shrugged him off as another uneducated banjo-playing lout. I still feel that playing music with a group of people is a privilege not a contest, and that is how I will continue to approach it although now I will know when I am being challenged. (As if trying to play the damn banjo isn’t challenging enough!) Oh yeah, a note for Casey: because you are a “young, fairly good-looking female” (modesty is always attractive), you should be very careful that you don’t trade those qualities (demureness, deference, politeness) for the aggressive, controlling, and rude shortcomings of others. Keep up the good work.

—Dan Loftin, Nashville. TN

KATHY KALLICK – BY EMAIL

In a recent email to Beth Weil. Kathy Kallick spoke freely about wibbers in the Bay Area. When first asked the question “Why was the San Francisco Bay Area more welcoming to women in bluegrass than the East Coast?” The temptation is to answer, “Because California is not Kentucky!” While the fact of the matter is that women achieved equality in many fields on the West Coast before they did elsewhere in the country, that’s a small part of the answer.

The men in the West Coast bluegrass scene were pretty much always welcoming to women. Some of the earliest bluegrass bands in the Bay Area had women in lead roles, most notably Ingrid Fowler of the Styx River Ferry (fiddle and vocals) and Markie Sanders of the Hired Hands (mandolin and vocals).

It was Ingrid Fowler who convinced the owner of Paul’s Saloon to present live bluegrass in his club on a regular basis. That became a primary bluegrass venue, with live music seven nights a week for many years. Paul’s provided the opportunity to hear quality music from visiting as well as area bands, plus a place to jam, learn an instrument, or debut a new group. All the bartenders and waitresses were women, and it was ferociously defended as a place where women could go and not be harassed. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, many women took the stage at Paul’s with utter equality. By this time, women in the Bay Area took their equality a little more for granted,

and would be very surprised and offended at being excluded in any realm on account of their gender.

Before this time, the Bay Area was home to several rock bands and folk acts fronted by women. Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Tracy Nelson, Terry Garthwaite, Toni Brown, Joan Baez, Barbara Dane, and many others had raised the consciousness of West Coast male musicians. Nobody could ever say that Janis couldn’t rock as hard as a man! I can’t think of this kind of precedent existing elsewhere, and it probably contributed to the acceptance of women performing other styles of music.

The novelty of the Good Ol’ Persons in 1975 was mainly its “all women” hook, though other “all girl” bands quickly emerged in several places. However, the early Persons also played an interesting and eclectic assortment of musics in an era of specialization (and Bluegrass Police!).

Some of the more unusual (for the time) qualities of the Good OF Persons were: music that encompassed not only bluegrass but also old-time, country, folk, swing, and Celtic; the use of clawhammer banjo, hammered dulcimer, spoons, and twin fiddles; the nearly-constant switching of instruments; an emphasis on original material; and a provocative name and other boundary-defying stances. The band was never easily categorized, and tended to piss off narrow-minded people for many reasons. The Good Ol’ Persons’ approach toward bluegrass was the same as toward other forms: to go for the emotional core, the gist of a style, as fully as possible. Mentored by Monroe/ Stanley-based players at the time, the bluegrass numbers had a certain “traditional” sound and approach despite non-traditional instrumentation. And what they lacked in nuance, they made up for in enthusiasm. WIB

(More from Kathy on next page.)

MORE FROM KATHY KALLICK – THE INTERVIEW

Recently Peter Thompson did an interview entitled "On the Air: An Interview with Kathy Kallick. " With Peter's permission, we have excepted parts of this interview here. DJs can receive a copy of the complete interview (on CD for airplay) simply by requesting it. Copies of Kathy's latest CD Walkin’ In My Shoes are also available to DJs. Contact Peter at [email protected] or at POB 21344, Oakland, CA 94620. You've been performing since the mid-1970s. How have things changed in your music world since that time?

I am surprised, 23 years after I started playing bluegrass, that there aren’t more women active in the bluegrass world. Really, it doesn’t seem to have changed very much at all. There are a couple of women at the top of the heap in the bluegrass scene and getting airplay, but still, as you look at festival lineups, or as you look at the band representation at IBMA, or any situation where you see a lot of bluegrass bands, it’s almost all bands made up of all men, and that is very surprising to me.

I’d say also, in the last 23 years, the sound of bluegrass has changed. When we were all getting started, everybody was really trying to emulate the sound of the traditional bands. Everybody would do a Jim and Jesse song and try and do it just like Jim and Jesse. And of course, that’s a wonderful basis for starting in anything. It doesn’t seem to me that that interest in replicating the sound of the older bands is happening currently or has been happening for a long time. Of course, everybody’s writing their own songs now, and that’s a good thing because everybody gets to have something to say, but the traditional sounds do get lost a little bit along the way, and everything’s taken on a smoother, more pop-country sound, a little more homogenized. And one of the things I wanted to do with this new record [Walkin’ In My Shoes] was to throw in some of that roughed-up sound of bluegrass that I loved so much in the early days.

What was special about that legendary band, the Good Ol’ Persons, you co-founded in 1975 and led into the mid-’90s'?

One of the things that was special about the Good Ol’ Persons was the incorporation of a lot of different styles of music at a time when no other bands were doing that. Bands were either straight-ahead bluegrass or folk or country or Irish or old-timey, and we liked to do some of all of that—and then some Latin numbers and some swing numbers and some Cajun numbers, and it all seemed appropriate to that group. It all fit inside the envelope which we pushed the edges of without ever meaning to, just because that’s what we liked. We liked the sound of all those kinds of music, and we could play them and make them all sound like Good Ol’ Persons sounds, so it worked for us. And the Good OP Persons was one of the early groups to mix women and men in a group and have women in a lead role and to start to feature original music as a big part of the repertoire—not just an occasional thing, but a major part of the repertoire. And songs that we covered took on an original sound and feel, so that everything had an originality to it and was not referring necessarily to the original version of anything. We didn’t call ourselves a bluegrass band. And when we were called a bluegrass band, there was a lot of arguing about it. A lot of people quibbled for myriad reasons: oh, you can’t be a bluegrass band with women singing lead, you can’t be a bluegrass band and sing in those keys, you can’t be a bluegrass band if you don’t have a five-string banjo, you can’t

be a bluegrass band if you don't wear suits and hats. So we didn’t call ourselves a bluegrass band, we said we played bluegrass and, when we did, we did.

Compare and contrast the Kathy Kallick Band with the Good Ol' Persons.

The Kathy Kallick Band is comprised of individuals who all played for some time with the Good OP Persons: Tom Bekeny, Amy Stenberg, and Avram Siegel. So everybody heard a lot of the Good Ol’ Persons. Amy and Avram kind of grew up listening to the Good Ol’ Persons, so that sound was influential to them. And there are similarities between the Kathy Kallick Band and the Good Ol’ Persons. I think the sound of the mixed voices of men and women and the focus on original material is similar, but one of the huge differences to me between these two groups is that the Kathy Kallick Band is a bluegrass band. We are focused on bluegrass as the main style of music we play, and we are trying to replicate a traditional sound—while we’re doing original songs, while we’re incorporating country songs or things that are slightly Irish sounding. It all fits into the description of bluegrass music that all of us feel comfortable with. We've got the five-string banjo, and everybody has a renewed vigor and interest for traditional bluegrass music and is thrilled to be playing that. I know I feel that way. Having made the foray into folk-pop, I feel a renewed enthusiasm for traditional bluegrass music at this time.

What's it like to be in a band again with another woman?

This is the first full-time band I’ve been in since the Good OP Persons that has another woman in the lead role—or in any role, for that matter. And I’ve got to say I really feel comfortable and happy having a group that consists of mixed genders—two women and two men. That feels like a family to me, it feels like a community, and it feels like normal life. So I enjoy the personalities of this group very much. I also really like the sound of mixing my voice and blending it with another woman’s voice. And it’s something that can’t really be replicated by singing with men. I love to blend my voice with any good singer, but there’s a special quality in the sound of two women’s voices blending together.

How does West Coast bluegrass compare with the bluegrass made in the Southeastern U.S.?

You know, twenty years ago, playing bluegrass on the West Coast, we were fairly isolated from the traditional sounds going on in the Midwest and the eastern parts of the country, and we were pretty confident that we were doing it the right way, playing bluegrass just the way anybody else would. And, as the world got smaller, and we all started to travel, and we took our music back East and got to hear the sound of West

Coast bluegrass on an East Coast festival, we had to recognize that there were differences. Some of the differences are: we haven’t grown up steeped in those sounds, we haven't grown up in a holler with our uncle playing fiddle, we had to come to this music second-hand, through recordings and as an audience rather than as a participant. So, it’s pretty pick-and-choose what you want to take. You're not being spoon-fed these sounds from birth in your kitchen by your family members. You’re really choosing who you're going to listen to, and, of course, all of the West Coast players listened to a lot of other styles of music as they were forming their musicality. So while we are devoted to the sound of traditional bluegrass. We can't help it: lots of other music gets in there and blends in with it and always has. And that’ll always reflect in the sound of West Coast bluegrass.

What was the initial appeal of bluegrass for you and how has that evolved? I think I was initially drawn to bluegrass because of the immediacy of the feelings. The feelings are right up front in bluegrass. It's not a real intellectual form; it’s smart, but it’s not intellectualized. It’s music from the heart, it's soul music, just straight from the singer’s heart to the listener's heart, and that really gave me a big thrill. I think bluegrass is thought of initially as a rural, white, male music form, and so, over the years, people have wondered, “What’s a nice city girl like you doing in a place like this?" And I've thought about it some myself. Initially I liked being around all those guys— that was fine. I got a lot of attention for being a gal singing and playing bluegrass. And I tried and tried to sing like various bluegrass singers over the years. I tried to sound like Bill Monroe, tried to sound like Jimmy Martin, tried to sound like Lester Flatt. And then I'd try and sound like Kitty Wells or Rose Maddox, and after a while I didn’t sound like any of them. I just had to settle for sounding like me and trying to make it sound like bluegrass. Then I came upon this idea that I was going to start writing songs for bluegrass, and my role was an important one in bluegrass, in bluegrass of now, of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and on into the next century. There weren’t very many songs about a woman’s experience when I first started singing, and I started writing songs about my experience. Some of those, it doesn’t matter who sings them, it could be a man or a woman, but some of the songs I write specifically speak to and relate to the experience of being a woman in the world today, whether it’s rural or urban, Southern or Northern.

You are well-recognized as an excellent songwriter. What was the initial reaction to your songs?

From the early days, people on the West Coast were writing their own songs. They were learning traditional songs, and trying to do them as good as they could, but, from early on, there were writers that were adding their songs into the repertoire. And those early

songs became part of the standard repertoire of the West Coast bluegrass bands. So it was the natural thing for me, as a woman in bluegrass in the 1970s, to start writing my own songs and expressing my concerns and points of view. It was a challenge for me to find material and content that fit into bluegrass. But I was greatly encouraged by Bill Monroe. When he heard my first bluegrass song “A Broken Tie”— I was a little sheepish in performing it at Bean Blossom—he stood right out in front and watched the Good Ol’ Persons play every set, and he came up to me and he said, “That’s a fine bluegrass song, I want you to sing that every time." And he stood out there and insisted I sing that song every set we played. And I was very encouraged by the thought that he found the lyrical content and the music of this song, which was about me growing up in Chicago and the twists and turns of my family, to really fit into a bluegrass context. And I've taken that encouragement to heart and continued to write bluegrass songs that really represent me and my feelings and my thoughts.

In what other ways was Bill Monroe an important influence?

I think the repertoire of West Coast bluegrass has been very Monroe-based from the beginning. I’ve been a huge Monroe fan, and Bill Monroe was the bluegrass musician we got to see the most on the West Coast because he came out here often and played in San Francisco almost annually. I got to know him pretty well and be pretty friendly with him: go out for meals with him and go visit him at his farm. And his music and his approach towards music and his personality have influenced me throughout. I love to pick a song that I think of as an intrinsic Bill Monroe bluegrass song and try and personalize it. I like to take the “Rocky Road Blues,” which some people might think of as kind of a throwaway song—it’s a groove, and it’s a feel, and it doesn’t have lyrics that are gonna change your life—but I love putting that in a female point of view. WIB

[Backpage]

Women on Stage at IBMA

You didn’t mention in your [last] newsletter about all the nice women that played on the IBMA main stage or the Roots and Branches stage. Come on, give me a break. I did a really good job this year. Lots of women around, doing things, involved in the shows, not just segregated out. The workshops I don’t run.

And another thing. How about some more articles on women behind the scenes? You hardly ever see any.

—Kitsy Kuykendall, Fan Fest Chair, Marshall, VA

A Most Womanly Job

While reading an Amanda Cross mystery the other day (A Trap For Fools), I came across a great quote. Detective Kate Fansler has just been congratulated on solving another mystery: ‘“A masterful job, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ the [male] provost said some weeks later. ‘But I do mind,’ said Kate...’It was a most womanly job; most men couldn’t have done it. But if acting like a man is your highest compliment, then I can only accept it while hoping to change your terms of reference.’ “ [Italics mine.] So the next time you hear someone say “She plays just like a man” you might want to remember what Kate Pansier said.

WIB