Read no. 33

Greetings!

In this issue, for the first time ever, Murphy has turned over the task of editing the Women in Bluegrass Newsletter to my humble self, Casey Henry. Murphy, as you may know, is writing a book on women in bluegrass for the University of Illinois Press. She needs to devote all her waking hours to writing because she has exactly one year to write it, and if she averages a page a day she’ll just make it. But no breaks for IBMA, Christmas, or her birthday.

In this issue we have the conclusion of our interview with Memphis Beck Gentry. She started playing mandolin in the 1970s and is still one of very few woman mandolin pickers out there. She doesn’t travel any more but for years she burned up the roads with the band she and her husband formed, the Falls City Ramblers. Starting on page two, Beck talks about dealing with women’s issues while traveling with five guys and a baby in one car.

You’ll also find a short interview with Adrienne Young. Adrienne is a young songwriter, singer, and clawhammer banjo player who lives in Nashville, Tenn. This year she won the Chris Austin songwriting contest at Merlefest with “Sadie’s Song,” a rewriting of the murder ballad “Little Sadie” from Sadie’s point of view.

Capp Street Carnival

I’m always on the lookout for books that have to do with women and bluegrass. I ran across this cute piece of juvenile fiction the other day and thought I'd share. Capp Street Carnival, by Sandra Dutton, is about an eleven-year-old girl named Mary Mae Krebs who plays guitar and writes songs. She inherited her guitar from her great-grandmother, who played and sang on the radio, along with a box full of songs that her great-grandmother had written. In the book Mary Mae helps put on a carnival at which she performs. While on stage there she gets noticed by the producer of a television show that showcases local talent, and thanks to that TV show, she gets signed to do the Hometown Hayride, a local opry-style program.

Mary Mae picks and sings throughout the book, carrying her guitar with her everywhere and making music with two of her friends. Although Mary Mae is only eleven, she knows exactly what she wants to do with her life—be a musician.

There is lots of female creativity showcased in this story. Capp Street Carnival is aimed at readers eight to twelve years old and could provide welcome inspiration to young girls who feel that music is in their blood.

IBMA Awards

Let’s take a look at women’s representation in this year’s International Bluegrass Music Awards nominations. Alison Krauss and Union Station, featuring Jerry Douglas, racked up the most total nominations, with thirteen (including Entertainer, Instrumental Group, Vocal Group, and Album of the Year), and the Lynn Morris Band, the second most nominated woman-led band, came in with six (including Album and Song of the Year). Rhonda Vincent made the list for Entertainer of the Year, and the Dixie Chicks’ song “Long Time Gone” earned a nomination for Song of the Year. Kenny and Amanda Smith are up for Emerging Artist, the Isaacs album Eye of the Storm is nominated for Gospel Recorded Performance, and Missy Raines, in the bass player category, once again has the sole female instrumental nomination. That is all great news. High profile women performers go a long way toward inspiring young girls to learn how to pick and sing. Alison Krauss, with Dan Tyminski, will be hosting the awards show, which is more positive exposure for women in bluegrass.

But what are we missing? Out of sixteen total categories (excluding Male Vocalist) women are only nominated in nine. This is more than half, which is good. The categories without women are Instrumental Album, Recorded Event, and the individual instrumental categories. Some women did play or sing on the nominated recorded events, Christmas On The Mountain, Down The Old Plank Road, and Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. Ill, however none were produced by women. And even though two songs performed by women were nominated for Song of the Year, both of those, and all of the others, were written by men.

The most glaring dearth is among women side musicians. There simply aren’t any. All the nominated women lead their own bands. The only nominated band with more than one woman in it is the Isaacs. This is a major glass ceiling among top-level bands, although it is beginning to slowly change in mid-level professional groups, especially in younger bands. At least ten out of more than forty-three acts appearing at Fan Fest include women, and probably more than that. Almost twenty-five percent is not bad, but I’d like to see it get closer to fifty percent.

We should thank the women that are out there working hard to play music, and who travel far and wide to bring bluegrass to the masses. They deserve all the awards we can nominate them for. We just need more women out there doing it. So encourage and

help women performers as much as you can and maybe one day we’ll be able to boast a female mandolin player of the year.

—Casey Henry

Memphis Beck

There Was No One To Tell Me I Couldn’t (Part 2)

In our last issue we met Memphis Beck Gentry, a mandolin player from Indiana who played with the Ohio River Valley Boys and the Falls City Ramblers, the group she and her then husband Roy formed in 1972. Beck discussed learning to play the mandolin at a time when there were few other women playing lead instruments, how she came to hold the mandolin playing spot in a previously all-male band, and living in a communally owned house with the rest of the Falls City Ramblers, a venture which did not turn out well for her.

In this conclusion of our conversation with Beck, she talks about being on the road with a van full of men and a baby, the challenges of traveling with her son Orville, and the other women she saw playing bluegrass music in the 1970s.

Murphy asked the questions, and Mary Jo Leet, who was also present, contributes a word or two every now and then.

All right, so you were going to tell us about personalities on the road? It’s a tough job being on the road, I don’t need to tell you that. And bluegrass wasn’t like being in a rock-and-roll band where somebody put you up in a hotel or that would be part of your package of going to play in another town. Or even country music. I’ve read all the stories about country musicians who took speed and cut all the legs off the hotel furniture and got kicked out of places and that kind of thing. But the bottom line is we didn’t have enough money. I mean, the Falls City Ramblers were really running on a shoestring.

You said earlier that you didn’t have enough money for a hotel room.

No. Our money went for other things and a lot of times we wouldn’t eat out either. There would be some places we’d play that you could eat there and that’s what we would do. But that was just band stuff that we couldn’t get together. At the same time, when you travel with other people you’re thrown in with people of different kinds of habits. I mean first of all, being female on the road with guys is a

are-they-going-to-stop-the-vehicle-to-let-me-out-to-pee? kind of thing. And guys get this thing you know—by golly they’re going to drive until they fall over before they’ll stop. That’s even if you ask them?

Depends on who’s driving.

And this is a democratic band?

This was a democratic band, supposedly! And of course Mary Jo has said all along that if you leave so late that you don’t have time to stop and pee then you’ve left too late. Now, I would have a trick where I would tell them that we’d have to be somewhere a half an hour to an hour earlier than we really had to be there. It was the only way we could ever get there on time sometimes. Now that’s excluding things like flat tires or tornados or anything like that. So there was that piece of it. Packing. If I brought stage clothes and then other clothes and plus had a baby going with us, packing was hard to do. You’d be with guys who didn’t care how many days they wore whatever they were wearing. Later on we had a van that had some space in it but when we were first traveling it would sometimes be six people in a car with an upright bass. So that’s the five people and the baby and the bass?

Uh-huh! Someone had to sit under the bass.

I would have put the baby under the bass. (Laughter)

Well sometimes it was six adults and a baby and a bass. And so there was that piece of it. Beyond that, some people that you would travel with were never interested in seeing anything of the country or wherever you were going that was different. Here I was, raised in McQuady, Kentucky, by and large, except for the few years I was in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which wasn’t much bigger at the time, and when I went to play in New York City, I was totally fascinated. I had to go sightseeing!

That was a cool place.

Yeah! A very cool place. I’d never ridden the subway. And I went to the top of the World Trade Center and all kinds of stuff like that. When we went to Washington, D C. and played there I went to the Smithsonian, but these guys weren’t interested in looking at anything.

So it was just you and Orville going?

Well, yeah.

Just by yourselves?

Sometimes. And sometimes we were staying with somebody that said, here I’ll take you out and we can go do something. If I went to stay at Mary Jo’s we’d go shopping. We liked to do that. But when we were on the road mostly the band’s opinion was you’d play in the van or you’d play in the car or you’d play when you got there or you’d play afterwards you know...

Were they actually playing in the car with six people in the car and the bass? People would play?

Well somebody would play the guitar and we’d work on singing or something. That kind of stuff. And sometimes we didn’t have a vehicle that had a tape player or something to be able to listen to music. Sometimes there was a radio and sometimes there wasn’t. So you would have to think of things to entertain yourself. But I think it takes a special kind of person to be on the road because, I mean, some people do it on a short-term basis. And some people do it on a long-term basis. People like Loretta Lynn. A lot of these people travel however many days out of the year, you know. They kind of carry their own home with them. Now if I travel I take my own pillow. But when space is a premium you can’t do that or, you know, somebody will pitch it out.

So is it just too obvious, or is there a way to explain what’s the driving force behind someone being on the road?

I think you have to be somewhat adventurous. You have to be willing to say, okay I’m going to jump in the car, I’m going to drive 50 million miles and then I’m going to jump out and I’m going to play. I mean I knew bands that would play locally for years and years and years. And they never felt compelled to take it on the road.

MJ: Yep, I think “compelled” is the operative word there. It’s a compulsion. I think that’s part of it. You know at the time even though you could have records and stuff, you really couldn’t go out and expect people to recognize you if you didn’t do some form of touring. If you were trying to get some kind of recognition you had to get out there. And I think that is part of that music.

MJ: It’s such a tradition in bluegrass music.

To travel, to be on the road?

MJ: Yeah.

I think for me a lot of it was, I wanted to be different. I wanted to separate myself from the audience. I wanted to be part of the circle of pickers. They just seemed like a special bunch because they were different.

And I guess you would have been special if you liked to be a firefighter or an astronaut and you would have had your own circle of specialness.

But to me the audience was, I mean I certainly tried to respect them, but they were just boring because they weren't musicians. You know, we were cool. And you got cool by being on the road. You weren’t really as cool if you stayed at home and played all the time.

Right, there is a certain element of being cool. I mean, somebody asks you what you do and you can say, oh yeah, I tour around. And sometimes when they ask you, you don’t tell them about Otto’s Knife and Gun Club that you played there. But then you say oh yeah, I played in New York City or oh yeah, I played at the Washington Press Club or oh yeah, I went to Nepal, I went to South America or whatever. It adds some glamour to the everyday essence of things I think. But I don’t think that’s all of it. Glamour is only like 45 minutes, and maybe once or twice when you’re talking to somebody. You know the shit that goes on for all those hours on the road. The hard part is riding twelve hours in a van or in the car.

You know when I was young that was exciting to me, that’s how green I was. Staying at motels was exciting and eating at McDonald’s was exciting. It was just because it was so different.

MJ: And that must be part of youth, isn’t it?

I think that’s part of it. I couldn’t do it very long. I remember one time being out for thirty-five days.

Was that when you had Orville?

Yeah, but Roy was taking care of him and he was at home. I was out. That was when the band was really going downhill fast. I got really sick and all I could do was doctor my own self and sleep all day and get up and go be on stage. I had a terrible fever and we were in Traverse City, Michigan. And we had a nice place to stay, they had put us up in this cabin and it was pretty nice but I was just sick. I kept taking Tylenol to get my temperature down.

MJ: That sucks. Sick and away from home.

I’m still just blown away at the idea of you taking Orville along with you on the road. MJ: But you know he was so used to that and he was still little, three or maybe four years old. And we’d make a spot and lay the coats out and say come here and sit next to Auntie Jo or whatever and he’d take that coat and drag it up onto the stage and climb in the back so he wouldn’t get stepped on and he’d fall asleep up on the stage. I said he wanted to keep an eye on her, he wanted to know where she was and then he was able to go to sleep.

What did you do when he was fussy or raised hell? Was he just an exceptionally good quiet kid?

Just dealt with it. And he was sometimes.

How did you deal with that and play at the same time?

Sometimes I just had to get down off the stage. I had to say to the guys, I’ve got to go deal with this.

Did Orville ever do any music?

Yes. Now, even when he was little he’d come up on stage with us and he sang “The Chicken Song.” That was his big song. And when we had a washboard player, we got him a little miniature washboard and so he would stand up there and play washboard with Robin.

Cute.

And the guys got kind of tired of him being around under foot. That was kind of hard but I think it’s that way with kids. Several of them had kids anyway and were kind of used to that. But some of them didn’t. And you know, people who don’t have kids are not as

tolerant of them, I don’t think. Mary Jo is the biggest exception but she kind of took the role of Auntie Jo, so that was very helpful. But not always do people think little kids are cute.

Oh right, I don’t think I would enjoy being in a band that was traveling with a kid. That would possibly be a deal buster for me.

Actually the hardest part was getting up in the morning because if you played late at night, he was very insistent. He’d be up because he’d go to bed early. He slept through all that ruckus and stuff and so he would get up early and I thought it was really great when he could learn how to make sure there was cereal and milk there and he could get up and fix himself a bowl of cereal. Now he was good about, if we were someplace that he could watch cartoons, he’d watch cartoons and he would sit there and play. He was always good about playing by himself and entertaining himself. We never had any problem with him coming up saying I’m bored.

Glad you included that because that was the one of the hardest things about having kids and playing music, getting up in the morning. Even when we had babysitters, you’d come in at two or three in the morning and the kid is up at six? Three hours sleep? No thank you. Did you all take turns getting up early in the morning?

No, I did it. Now the bottom line is that one year Roy was off the road for six months or something. So he kept Orville at home and I traveled.

Was he okay with that? Or did he complain because he had to do that?

I think it was hard on him. Although he’s the kind of person who actually likes to stay home. Being on the road for him was probably harder than it was for me. Cause he really didn’t have that kind of personality that likes to travel. And that was harder because when I’d want to go, he didn’t want to go.

After he did the six months at home with Orville, did he come back on the road and back in the band?

He came back on the road but at the point in time everything was deteriorating. Everything! I mean it was just, you know, people left, people did whatever. It was just very hard.

Talk about signing the papers for the farm.

Okay, we’d gone together to buy the farm and actually there were five of us in that core group. And the other guys wanted to make me and Roy take one share of our earnings so they could divide it into fourths. So he and I would have a fourth and each of the other guys would have a fourth and I fought that and fought that. We had numerous discussions and that was one place that I really dug my heals in. I didn’t do that very often, but there I dug my heals in and I said no, I get a fifth just like everybody else. I’m doing the same amount of work as everybody else, I get a fifth.

Wow, but you kind of ended up paying a large portion of that farm off yourself because you were working?

Right, as the band disintegrated people just bolted. Off they went. And as that happened then we went off the road. [One of the guys] took the band to Canada under the band’s name even though the three of us actually owned that band name. And he took the band and had a whole new band and took them on the road and left us there. So when I went to work as a nurse, I started paying that bill and I got the farm paid off. And then three of them came back, got together, got a lawyer and sued us for $5,000 or something.

And you had to pay them because their names were on the deed.

I had to pay them because their names were on the deed. So I paid it off twice. You had mentioned the fact that there is no privacy on the road and it was hard to be your sexual self on the road, not even your sexual self, but it was hard having your period on the road. Talk about that.

For most women that I know when you’re on your period and maybe a couple of days before, some women have some really severe PMS. You know that irritability and I don’t think the irritability is just because you’re not happy with anything. I think the irritability comes from frayed nerves. Just too much stimuli. And your natural tendency, I think, when you go on your period, is to kind of hang out, lay around and baby yourself a little bit.

Eat chocolate?

Eat chocolate. Do whatever. It’s hard to get very far from a bathroom for some women. And you don’t want to talk about it. I tell you the one thing that really affected me was my hearing changed. I would hear sharper. And it didn’t take me very long to figure that out. So, I think those hormones do change certain things.

Now by hearing sharper, you mean...

I heard sharper as opposed to flat. Tuning was the worst. And sounds were more piercing at that point in time.

So you would, like, tune your mandolin sharp?

Yes.

You’d sing sharp?

I’d sing sharp. It would be just a tiny bit but just enough to be noticeable. The other members in the band would notice or just you?

I probably noticed more than they did. And then I could compensate once I knew that was going on, but it was really hard. And I’d have that fatigue and it would be really hard. I don’t know about other women, although I’ve certainly talked to enough women to know that they would have cramping in their thighs and lower abdomen that made it hard to stand for long periods of time. It just seemed like everything was wearing on you, but, how do you address that? Guys don’t understand it, certainly don’t have any sympathy for it.

I wonder if that’s a good question to pose for women who have played in all women’s bands to see if it was dealt with at all? If there was more sympathy?

It would be interesting to know, plus there’s another thing. You know that groups of women who live together, their periods actually go onto the same cycle. Now, I find that interesting. It has everything to do with pheromones.

Well, I'm glad you brought the subject up cause if you're an all-women band, and pretty much everybody is having their period at the same time, then I wonder how do you deal with that?

Yeah, and I’ve never had a chance to ask people, women who play music you know, did this affect your hearing. It affects your visual acuity.

I didn’t know that but, I guess you’d have to be aware of it and you just seem to be a really aware kind of person. I never noticed anything like that when having my period. I

just was mostly oblivious to it I think. That was just my way of coping, trying to be one of the guys and guys don’t have periods.

Right. So you can’t have.

Right, but I was really lucky, I didn't have cramps. It would have been really hard to play through that. I thought it was somewhat difficult to play being pregnant, especially in later stages when you’ve got those Braxton Hicks contractions. You know, you’re on stage with a banjo or a mandolin and all of a sudden your stomach is hard as a basketball and you’re trying to sing.

Right. Even just trying to sing when you didn’t have the Braxton Hicks did you notice you didn’t have as much air?

Oh, yes.

It felt like you couldn’t hold notes as long. You never knew if that baby was going to kick you and you were going to go “ohhh.”

When Beck started learning to play the mandolin in the early ’70s, there were almost no other women playing mandolin. Beck learned off of records and from watching guys play. So when she first saw another women mandolin player, it was a revelation. Talk about seeing Donna Stoneman.

This was great. I was down visiting my mom and I was driving past the Breckenridge County Fairgrounds and I had the window down and I hear this mandolin playing. So I stop the car, jump out, go over there, and there’s the Stoneman Family playing for the Breckenridge County ROTC thing at the fairgrounds. It’s kind of a cool night, so Donna Stoneman is playing and she’s got these white gloves on with the tips cut out of the fingers so she can play. It doesn’t seem to impede her playing at all.

What year was this?

Oh man, this had to be mid-'70s.

So you’d been playing for five or six years.

Yeah, I’d been playing, but I mean this was like a gift that just sort of dropped out of the sky and I’m just going whoa!!

And who was in that band? Scotty?

Well, I don’t know if Scotty was there by that time. But Roni, Pop Stoneman. I imagine Van on guitar, kind of a large guy, Jimmy on bass I’m sure. And I’m just going, well darn! So that’s the first time you’d seen another woman play the mandolin?

Yes.

Maybe with the exception of Alice McLain who didn’t really count because she was a kid.

Right, but that was it. And I was just knocked out. And she was wearing a mini skirt and white go-go boots! And I’m going, all right!

How did you like her playing?

I loved her playing. I mean she was rock solid. How could you not like her playing? I know some people didn’t like the Stoneman Family.

Why do you think it was?

I think part of it was the Stonemans were considered kind of wild. It wasn’t like watching the Lewis Family because, even though Little Roy Lewis was crazy as all get out and would do all these musical tricks and obviously drive his sisters to distraction on stage, they tolerated him. It was like tolerating a mosquito or something. But they didn’t deviate and you could tell that they were very—I don’t know what the word is— straight-laced maybe. Even though they were bluegrass and they did tons of shows, not just gospel shows. They would be playing main sets on Friday or Saturday night. Now they would usually have them early in the evening. But I guess, they were almost of a different… I don't know how to explain it. You know you’d have these bluegrass pickers and then you’d have the Lewis Family. But the Stonemans had already, I mean here was Scotty and he was out creating this wild music and obviously he’d been doing all kinds of stuff. And you could see that these people were actually living in the real world. I think the Lewises, I guess the word I think of is isolated. They had their own radio and TV show, and you never saw them in a bluegrass jam. Whereas, you’d see Charlie Waller in a bluegrass jam and even Bill Monroe did some of that. Red Allen. All of those guys, you

know somewhere along the line they would be somewhere, maybe it was just their old buddies or whatever, but they would be out picking. But the Stonemans. I mean the fact that she was wearing a mini skirt and white go-go boots.

You’d never see Polly Lewis in a mini skirt and white go-go boots.

No. They always wore those big long dresses with the froufrou collar all around and all that kind of stuff. And it was polyester, and that was fine, and certainly their singing was amazing. But the Stonemans were definitely different. And I think Roni Stoneman has talked about that several times. Just the fact that they were out actually playing, and they were actually playing instruments. Maybe that was the difference too. And it may well be that they actually had some jealousy stuff going on. Cause you did see that jealousy coming from a lot of women because there were women out there playing and they were hanging around with the guys.

And the jealousy was from the women that weren't out playing? Wives and girlfriends? Yeah, and they interpreted that these were loose women or wild women, and that if you knew your place you wouldn’t be out there hanging out with men playing. Now that’s the best I can come up with. I mean at the time you don’t think in those terms. No, but I’m just so curious. It seems to me that the Stoneman Family, as good as they were, didn’t get any respect. Donna was an exceptional mandolin player. I mean she really was. Even if someone was a bluegrass purist, Donna was rooted in the Monroe style.

Yes.

And although Roni was a good solid banjo player, she didn’t get any respect. But you know one thing that they did was they moved around on stage, they danced, they looked like they were having a good time. Donna always looked like she was having a good time in anything that I’d ever see her in. I still think that they were exposed to a lot of things. And like I said, during that time you just didn’t just see alcohol and drugs striking into every culture. There were a certain number of people who thought you were a hippie. That was the big criteria back then. Long hair. Hippie. So part of that was in knowing your place.

Exactly. But yeah, I don’t know why she was considered an outcast. Roni didn’t get any kind of recognition until she was actually on Hee Haw. And here it took a show where she had to black out her teeth and act the general fool or the witch, you know, with her ironing board and her hair up in curlers. And she’s talked about, she was on that show for however long before she was even allowed to play the banjo. She had to prove herself. The banjo player couldn’t do it one time, I don’t know if it was Roy Clark who couldn’t show up or what, and she said “I could do it.” Oh no, we’ll have to get somebody else in, and she kept saying “I can do it.” And she just kept on them and kept saying “I can do this.” And that’s how I think a lot of women ended up in music—by default. That’s how I ended up. They couldn’t find a mandolin player for the Ohio River Valley Boys.

I still think that is a little bit on the amazing side that they let you be in the band. Why not just go without a mandolin player?

Tradition.

Oh, got to have the Monroe.

They’ve got to have the mandolin player. And so, you know sometimes we’d have a fiddle player and sometimes we wouldn’t.

But the mandolin was an essential. Had to have one those.

Now the other person I did see on a regular basis was Dolly Parton. Cause we got Porter and Dolly’s TV show. And then we got some station out of Bowling Green, Kentucky that actually had some bluegrass on it. And I think I saw Roy [her husband] and the Ohio River Valley Boys on that station a couple of times before I ever knew who it was. But I saw Dolly Parton all the time.

Did she make an impression on you?

Yeah.

Positive? Negative?

Positive! And I was always struck by Porter Wagoner and his fiddle player, Mack Magaha. I heard some really bad notes come out of that band. I mean seriously, you’d be watching TV and you’d be going whoa!! And I don’t know whether it was because

back then it was hard to mix that stuff and get it, plus the other thing was it was live. But Dolly was always good. But, she wasn’t playing bluegrass.

Right. But she was still a woman that was playing.

She was still a woman and so I did watch her.

Now, when you were singing traditional songs, did you ever change the gender in the song so it would work from a woman’s point of view?

No. I never changed the words to most traditional songs.

Why did you choose not to do that?

Because if I was doing somebody else’s song, my interpretation was going to be, more or less, the way they did it, as far as the words and everything. I did try to look for songs that I felt okay with singing.

Did that have anything to do with your starting to write songs—so you could find songs that were comfortable for you to sing and songs that had words that meant more to you than “Little Cabin Home On The Hill"?

I think the writing came from writing in general. Not just writing songs but even growing up I dabbled in writing in poetry, stories, and those kinds of things. And I was such an avid reader. I would read all the time. I think that’s where that came from. Just kind of a natural extension?

Right.

I ask that question because, in my own songwriting, I think that’s where a lot of it came from. “Will You Be Loving Another Man,” “A Good Woman’s Love,” and “Little Girl In Tennessee" are great bluegrass songs and I love them but they just don’t work if you change the pronouns. So I just wanted to write stuff from a woman’s point of view. That wasn’t the issue for me because I was listening to people like the Boswell Sisters and a lot of women in the blues and things like that. So, I knew enough songs written from the woman’s point of view that I didn’t feel like that. But a lot of times my favorite bluegrass songs were like “Amelia Earhart,” songs that told stories. I liked more songs like that. “Knoxville Girl,” that was a story.

Speaking of “Knoxville Girl,” how do you feel about singing a song like that now, the women killing songs? Do you have a stance on that issue?

I hadn’t really thought about that. I mean, Robert Earle Keene sings a song where he puts all the bluegrass stuff together. That was in his early, early stuff. And he talked about dismemberment songs. You know, he’d say stuff like, well he couldn’t stand just killing her one way, he had to kill her three ways to make sure she was really dead. And so, I didn’t think of bluegrass in those terms.

Even when he took her by the golden curls and drug her around and around and threw her into the river?

I thought more in terms that, growing up, I remembered hearing about gory things that really happened. And I don’t know how to explain this. It was a different sort of thing. Yeah, this was stuff that happened and yeah, there’s always been this violent piece in the world. But there was something about bluegrass that actually, you didn’t get involved in that. Now I also think there were other songs in bluegrass, not everything was violence towards this person or that person, you know, even country music had a certain amount of jealousy that went on—lost love and all that kind of stuff. But there was also other stuff that was mixed in with it.

I certainly sang “Knoxville Girl,” loved the song, loved the tune, it’s great. Now I just choose not to do it. Cause I just don’t want to sing women killing songs anymore. That’s just my choice, and you could have a different one, so I was just curious. One time, I was just sitting around playing the mandolin and I was singing one sad song after another, after another, after another, and this person turned to me and said, “Do you not know any happy songs?” And that gave me a clue that maybe that was the nice thing about putting some other kinds of music in there. Oh yeah, you could do this song about love gone bad but then you could turn right around and you could put a jugband tune in there or you could put a fiddle in there where you could dance to it. Some of the other women I have interviewed have talked about being in camps in the summer, and seeing music played there.

It wasn’t exactly a camp like you asked but when I graduated from high school, before I went to nursing school, I got a job as a waitress at the Rough River Lodge. I hadn't been there but a couple of weeks when they found out that I played guitar. So they took me out of being a waitress on Saturday nights, which was a big night, and essentially I was

kind of hired out to go over to this place where they did hayrides for all the people who stayed at the Rough River Lodge. They had negotiated with this family who brought the tractor over and took guests out on the wagon. I’d take the guitar and I’d be playing all these hayrides and they’d take us out in this field way out in the middle of nowhere and I’d play a couple of hours of music, then they’d bring out another set of people. I’d ride in and ride back out and so I was doing two shows a night.

Wow, just you and your guitar.

Just me and my guitar and that was when I really started working with audience participation and stuff. The whole idea was to get audiences to participate. And you know, I still do that sometimes. I still play for Otter Creek and those kinds of places where the whole idea is to get kids involved in the music. And that’s really one of my favorite gigs.

So, what kind of stuff were you singing ? What are some sing-a-long songs you did? Oh, “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad”...

“Coming Around The Mountain"?

“Coming Around The Mountain.” Now lately sometimes I’ll play with the accordion and we'll do the “Hokey-Pokey.” And then we’ll make up words. You put your right earlobe in and you put right earlobe out, you know, and we’ll play with it and the kids all will get into it. They poke each other and then they drag their little brothers up and make them all do it. And so we get to do that. But back then I worked up a repertoire of ghost stories so we’d sit around the camp fire and sing, and then we’d tell ghost stories and roast marshmallows and then we’d go get another group of people and do the same thing.

Wow, so you WERE the entertainment.

I was the entertainment.

Well, I think we should play some music, what do you think?

I’m ready.

No Women Honored This Year: IBMA Distinguished Achievement

Awards

Each year the IBMA presents several Distinguished Achievement Awards to “those in bluegrass music who have proven to be forerunners in their particular field of endeavor or who have fostered bluegrass music’s image with developments that will broaden the music’s recognition and accessibility.” In the seventeen years the IBMA has been presenting these awards, women have received just thirteen out of seventy-five total awards—that’s 17.33%—not even one per year. Among these are Ola Belle Reed, Hazel Dickens, Alice Gerrard, Mary Tyler Doub, Gloria Belle, the Stonemans, Janette Carter, and the Lewis Family.

Once again this year IBMA has chosen to present Distinguished Achievement Awards to men only: Jack Cooke, Terry Lickona, the Station Inn (J.T. Gray), Bob Turbanic, and Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith. It is disappointing that no women made the cut. These recipients are certainly deserving of awards. Their contributions to bluegrass have been very valuable and they should be honored. But they are not in any way more deserving than a number of worthy women who are also “forerunners in their particular field” and have “fostered bluegrass music’s image.” What about Louise Scruggs, who managed Flatt and Scruggs? What about Alison Krauss, who has sold more CDs than any other bluegrass artist? What about Alison Brown, who heads an award-winning independent record label? What about Felice Bryant, who wrote or co-wrote countless bluegrass hits, including “Rocky Top”? Bluegrass would not be where it is today without the contributions of these women. And they, too, along with many other women, deserve to be recognized.

The Puny Pickers

By Gina Furtado

If you have ever been in a family bluegrass band as a kid, you will probably get a little chuckle out of reading this. You’ 11 find that all these kinds of gigs are the same. We drove for a fairly long time through hills and fields and finally pulled up at the Mr. Zion Lutheran Church. Bordering it was a small graveyard and a sheep field. We each took our instrument out of the car and walked down the steps into the basement of the old church. We saw a cluster of old folks, mostly ladies, chatting, and they didn’t see we were even there. A few times I heard them say, “Puny Pickers ... they’re so cute...” and all that sorta thing. We saw a hand-sewn banner that said MT. ZION CHURCH, and a big board with Moses and the Burning Bush on it, made with glued-on colored rice. Of

course, it only took several minutes for us to sight all that. When we were spotted, they said we could tune up, and they were going to do devotions, then we could play. Before the Head-Chief old lady scuttled off, she bent her head way to the side and smiled at Christina: “You look really shy. Won’t you smile for me?”

Devotions started with “Does anyone here know what ‘Advent’ means?” My attention span ended there. I leaned over to Joe. “Doesn’t that lady look like Lucy Foeckler?” (She’s our seven-year-old neighbor with red hair.) He looked startled, then nodded. I sat back in my chair and chuckled in content. Towards the end of devotions, an old lady with dyed black hair went to play the old piano. Page Two: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Her playing sped up and slowed down as everybody sang—very warbly and too high for their voices. At the very end of devotions, they bowed their heads to pray. I bowed mine and studied my banjo inlay. But I heard what they said: “We’d like you to remember Betsy who fell and broke her nose on Tuesday, and I didn’t know it until a few days ago, but Hazel fell last month! She has to use a walker now. We also, dear Lord, would like you to remember Frances who’s just been whizzin’ around this world in an airplane, and who’s headed home right now...”

When we got up ‘on stage’ to play, we had a better look at our crowd. As we played “Down Yonder” (a definite favorite in places like that), I noted that almost every lady there had a red sweater on with lots of weird Christmas decorations on them. The few men varied a little more. After “Orange Blossom Special” (another favorite) someone raised their hand: “Is that in any way supposed to resemble a choo-choo train?” Everyone else found this remark uproariously funny and the laughter didn’t die down for a few minutes. (That’s good—it gave me time to retune for “Real Women Drive Trucks.” Of course, we did not tell them the name of that one!) Malia was chunking too loud. I whispered to her, between clenched, smiling teeth. “Don’t chunk so loud!” She didn’t look at me and she didn’t stop smiling, but out of the corner of her eye, I saw the glimmer. She began chunking even louder than before! She was not in a very good mood.

As we walked off the ‘stage’ I slipped my picks into my pocket and was just about to do the same to my capo when a friendly old man stopped me. “Is that what you pick the strings with?” “Uh, no,” I said. “That’s a capo. You put it on the neck like this so you can play in different keys.” Then I showed him my picks. “OOOhhh... chuckle, chuckle... I didn’t think you could play with that...uh...capo!”

While we put away our instruments, a steady flow of old folks came over to tell us how “pray-shous” we were and how our playing brought them back to childhood. Some of

them asked something like this: “Was Ward Sager your Grandpapa? Oh he was? Why my golly! He’s my third cousin! We’re related!”

Everyone was starting to get in line for lunch and we were all secretly rejoicing that we had had not one hug, and all the praise was already over. Just as that thought was formed, along came a straggler. “You all did just so wonderful!” She then proceeded to hug us all, and poor Christina (ten years old) was given a kiss! “I’ve just gotta kiss you, sweetie pie!” I thank my lucky stars that I’m not the youngest in the band! We got to go first in line for lunch because we are the Puny Pickers! We all thoroughly stuffed ourselves with “delicacies,” including salad topped with red Jell-0 and boiled cabbage, and drank lemonade and punch. When we had finished, several old ladies came to us and encouraged us to eat more! “We don’t want you to go away hungry!” They did not have enough money to pay us, so instead, they gave us a big box full of homemade cookies and all sorts of sweets and candy.

As we left the basement of the church, there was a chorus of bye-byes. We smiled and waved, then got in our car and drove that long way home.

Adrienne Young

By Casey Henry

Adrienne Young was born in Tallahassee, Fla., and grew up in Clearwater, just west of Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico. Her family often played music when she was young, especially on Sunday afternoons after church when they would sing while her mother played piano, her dad played banjo or guitar, and her grandma would chime in on the tenor part. Her granddad, who is almost eighty, still plays mandolin with a bluegrass band in Tallahassee.

At age eighteen Adrienne started a jazz band and made a living singing around Florida. She chose to attend Belmont University, in Nashville, Tenn., “solely to be surrounded by the finest songwriters in the world.” They must have rubbed off because this year Adrienne won the bluegrass category of the Chris Austin songwriting contest at Merlefest with “Sadie’s Song,” her re-imagining of the murder ballad “Little Sadie.” Citing her band as a “poster child for post-modernism,” Adrienne’s influences truly come from all over the musical map. She says, “How can you not be influenced by everyone you hear?” From the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Bach, to Hoagie Carmichael, Patty Griffin,

and old country folks playing and singing on their back porches, Adrienne listens to it all. “I just want to be a good songwriter,” she says.

Her new album, Plow To The End Of The Row, features a mix of mostly original songs with a few traditional tunes. Adrienne’s stage shows contains the same combination of old-time, bluegrass and her originals, anything that is “good music,” she says. Adrienne plays rhythm guitar and clawhammer banjo and is backed by a wonderful band: Jesse Milnes, from Elkins, W. Va., on fiddle; Tyler Grant, from San Diego, Calif., on lead guitar and mandolin; Amanda Kowalski, from Wheeling, W. Va., on bass; and Kristen Andreasson, from Portland, Ore., on vocals, fiddle, and dancing. They will appear on the Grassroots Stage at this year’s Fan Fest. Adrienne does all her own booking and hopes to tour nationally in the coming year.

In “Sadie’s Song” Adrienne takes Sadie’s character and lets her tell the story of her murder from her own point of view. The lyrics to the original “Little Sadie,” (which Adrienne has conveniently supplied for us) suggest to me that Sadie was a prostitute, since “pimps and the gamblers [were] hanging around to carry Little Sadie to the bury in’ ground.” But Adrienne doesn’t interpret it this way and instead turns Sadie’s story into one of misplaced ardor and brutal disillusionment. I asked her to share with us how she came to write the song and her answers give us a little insight into her songwriting methods.

You can find “Sadie’s Song” on Adrienne’s new album Plow To The End Of The Row on Addiebelle Music. More information available at www.adrienneyoung.com.

Adrienne speaks…

Where did you learn the original “Little Sadie”?

Well, the character “Little Sadie” had resided somewhere in my subconscious for quite some time, but until I got into Clarence T. Ashley I had just sort of grouped her into the collective “females who suffered morbid deaths” category along with Pretty Polly, Katy Dear, and that poor creature from Knoxville. Clarence T.’s and Doc Watson’s versions were modal and spooky but it was the Old Crow Medicine Show’s version that really got me into the story in the lyrics.

What gave you the idea to rewrite it from the woman’s point of view?

I just thought it was sort of a raw deal how so often women in these time-honored standards would be viciously murdered by their lovers and we never find out why. Usually the man woos them into physical intimacy just before the ring gets on the finger,

leading me to gather that this was a sort of melodic morality play where it is demonstrated to all those gathered round the fireside that promiscuity leads to death and eternal damnation. As my Great-Grandmother used to say, “If you got the milk, what do you need to buy the cow for?”

Did you merely take the character of Sadie and give her her own story, or did you take the circumstances from the original and work within that framework?

Honestly, I had the chorus weeks before the verses. When Mark Sanders and I finally worked out the completed version, it became more about a loss of innocence, akin to the situation most all of us encounter sooner or later when we, blinded by trust, put our faith in someone only to be abandoned, or worse, wounded and left to perish. You co-wrote Little Sadie with Mark D. Sanders, who writes a lot of country song and lives in Nashville. Would you care to say a word about him?

Genius. Unusually funny, extremely intelligent genius. (That’s more than a word.) As a songwriter, do you consciously make an effort to give women a voice in your songs, or write from a female point of view? Or do you just write whatever comes out? Now that you are asking me to articulate it, I suppose that in regards to a personal approach to songwriting, the inspiration for my work lies primarily in the hands of a muse. My muse most often appears atop sundry mountains, where rivers and streams cross and in Midwestern parking lots. However, in terms of subjects or perspectives I regularly attempt to incorporate, its references to the past, both in the natural and ethereal worlds, that for me most effectively illustrate the perpetual truths that human existence appears bent on proving ad infinitum.

Sadie’s Song

Pretty boy, my faithless fallen angel

Took me completely in his arms

In his eyes, I saw Eden's garden

But the serpent lay hidden in his charms

Well I used to love to sing with the sunlight in my hair

Till that fateful day when I followed him there

Chorus

He said, climb, Little Sadie higher

Spread them downy wings and fly

You will find your crown of gilded glory next to mine

Climb, Little Sadie, climb

Icy winds up on Lookout Mountain

Chilled two bodies to the bone

But for that man, I did gladly lay down my back

Upon a bed of stone

Well I used to love to sing with the sunlight in my hair

Till that fateful day when I followed him there

Chorus

Something’s wrong, I heard my voices whisper

I heard 'em whisper something’s wrong

A single shot, he said “Fare thee well, Sadie”

The ground was cold, my breath was gone

Well I used to love to sing with the sunlight in my hair

Till that fateful day when I followed him there

Chorus

Little Sadie

Went out last night to make a little round

Met little Sadie and I shot her down

Ran right home, went to bed

Forty-four smokin' under my head

Woke next morning half past nine

Coaches and the buggies all standing in line

Pimps and the gamblers hanging around

To carry Little Sadie to her buryin’ ground

I began to think about the deed I done

Packed my bags and away I run

Made a good run but a little too slow

They overtook me down in Jericho

Standin’ on the corner readin’ a bill

Up stepped the sheriff from Thomasville

Said young man is your name Brown

Remember the night you shot Sadie down

I said yes sir but my name is Lee

Shot little Sadie in the first degree

First degree second degree

Got any papers won't you read 'em to me

Took me downtown dressed in black

Put me on the train and started me back

All the way back to the Thomasville jail

For I had no one for to go my bail

Judge and the jury took the stand

Judge held the papers in his right hand

Forty-one days, forty-one nights

Forty-one years with a ball and stripe

Taking A Hiatus?

Dear Readers,

Since Murphy has to finish writing her book on women in bluegrass by next September, she doesn't have time to do that and edit this newsletter, too. We don’t want to stop publication completely, since this is the only forum that women who play bluegrass have to tell their stories and to discuss women’s issues. So for the next year we ask that you be patient as we may not put out all four issues, or even two, or any at all. Who knows? Casey may edit some issues (as she has this one) but things are up in the air at this point.

Rest assured, loyal subscribers, that you will get all the issues you have paid for, though perhaps not in a timely manner. WIB is a labor of love; we love to do it, but we’re just busy right now. So we’ll get back to it as soon as possible.

The WIB Staff

(aka Murphy and Casey)