MONROE CROSSING -- A Man of Constant Sorrow

MONROE CROSSING -- Into the Fire

Part 3 -- BLUEGRASS -- The Best Bands You've Never Heard In Your Life!

www.monroecrossing.com
MONROE CROSSING

FOUNDING MEMBERS of MONROE CROSSING;

ART BLACKBURN – Lead vocals, guitar, harmony vocals

LISA FUGLIE – Lead vocals, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harmony vocals

MARK ANDERSON – (Lisa’s husband) Bass, bass vocals

MATT THOMPSON – Mandolin, fiddle, harmony vocals  

BENJI FLAMING - Banjo

Art Blackburn has recently retired and been replaced by a fine singer, songwriter, guitarist DEREK JOHNSON

          My month - long coverage of the bands that appeared at The Aledo Bluegrass Festival Labor Day weekend ends with my favorite current bluegrass band, Monroe Crossing. They are the current leading purveyors of traditional bluegrass music a la Flatt & Scruggs, The Stanley Bros., Reno & Smiley, & their namesake, Bill Monroe.

          Yet, there is more to their act than staunchly following tradition. Highlights of their stage shows and albums also include The Temptations’ “My Girl” & Etta James’ “At Last”. Their comedy shtick often includes the band playing short bursts of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”, The Troggs’ “Wild Thing”, Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”, Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk” & the music that plays whenever Darth Vader appears on screen.

          Highlights of the Labor Day shows included Lisa’s take on Bill Monroe’s take on Jimmie Rodger’s “Mule Skinner Blues”, & her vocal tour de force “At Last”.  The Saturday night show ended with their perennial showstopper “The Orange Blossom Special”, resulting, as usual, in a hollering and cheering standing ovation. They topped it all off with a rousing rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Overall, their performances were much subtler & low – key than I remember them being in the past, but these guys are so brilliant that, even when they are tastefully understated, somehow their phenomenal playing ability still shines through brightly.

           If you can’t see them in person any time soon, I recommend you go to their website and purchase a copy of their great DVD – the next best way of experiencing their showmanship, humor & musical virtuosity.

           Happily, all ten of their CDs are available for download from iTunes. With the exception of their bizarre experiment “The World Beloved – A Bluegrass Mass”, they are all uniformly excellent. They are characterized by an endearing, gentle, folky approach. If I had to recommend ONLY ONE, I guess it would be “The Green Mossy Ground”. It contains the best mix of bluegrass standards and original compositions by the group and their friends.           

FREE KOZMO !!!

If you want to add some FREE humorous content to your website, why not include “Kozmo of the Cosmos” comic strips? They are a great source for humorous internet content. According to strip creator Bob Kronlage, “I only have a few requirements;

1) You must get my permission by e-mailing me at kozmoofthecosmos@hotmail.com. The only way I can only imagine I would turn down your request is if your site has material not appropriate in relation to an innocent strip like “Kozmo”.

2) You must include my copyright info. (Naturally!)

3) You must always reference www.kozmoofthecosmos.com

4) You may not change any content of the strips.

Otherwise you can go crazy.” This thing won’t go viral on its own!

HELLO KITTY -- A brief character study.

Hello Kitty is the height of five apples, and the weight of three apples. Her favorite food is Mama’s apple pie. She has her own fragrance, Hello Kitty Cologne. It has the fragrance of apples – yellow, red & green ones. Her turn-on’s include sushi bars and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Her turn offs are mean puppies and shallow people. Oddly, even though she is a kitty, she has a pet kitty named Charmmy Kitty.

(Two sentences in Ms. Kitty’s profile were just made up by me.)

DENNIS THE MENACE What the hell were they thinking?

Hard to believe, but this Dennis the Menace strip ran all over the world in 1970. Yet again, NO ONE in the entire process spoke up to suggest this might be a racist depiction of a black person?” Following outraged responses, the strip’s creator Hank Ketcham apologized that the strip was a product of his own naivete, not racism. Had the man never met a black person in his life? Crazily enough, according to Ketcham (according to the authoritative source “Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis the Menace” (Fantagraphics Books) “I named him ‘Jackson’ and designed him in the tradition of  Little Black Sambo, with huge lips, big white eyes, and just a suggestion of an afro.” YEESH!

AMISH MUG SHOTS

These Amish men from Kentucky got arrested for refusing to put those big orange reflective triangles on the back of their slow moving vehicles. Also, apparently there have been major advances in haircuts in the last 100 years or so. Who would have thought that?

Part 2 BLUEGRASS- The Best Bands You Never Heard in Your Life

www.bankesters.com

http://www.harmansbluegrass.com/home.html

www.theexpeditionshow.com

Three more bands that appeared at The Aledo Bluegrass Festival were; The Bankesters, The Harmans & The Expedition Show.

The Bankesters (pronounced in three syllables (Ban kes ters) are a family band consisting of Mother (Dorene) & Father (Phil), three of their four daughters (Alysha & Emily, & Melissa Triplett) & the oldest daughter’s husband (Kyle Triplett). They are all fine singers. The youngest daughters appear to be about 13 and 15. The youngest plays mandolin and fiddle, the second youngest (featured in the above video) plays fiddle, mandolin & claw hammer banjo. Their self titled CD is excellent. It is very sweet and smooth, without ever becoming boring or cutesy. The producers created an album that is as near to perfection as I can imagine – a perfect showcase of this family’s talents. Many of the songs probably would have to be categorized as modern Christian music, but they are presented in a completely unpreachy, this – song – has – a - message – if – you – want - it manner which perfectly fits the family’s attitude. There is old fashioned bluegrass too; a great vocal / instrumental medley of the old fiddle tune “St Anne’s Reel” & notably Ralph Stanley’s creepy “I Am the Man Thomas” (The resurrected Jesus confronting Doubting Thomas). Another very dark gospel tune is the great “Water Grave” which equates suicide by drowning, with baptism by submersion. One of the band’s mentors is country song writing legend Tom T. Hall, founder of the CD’s

Blue Circle

label.

The Harmans hail from Bethalto Illinois, a very small town where they run the sales barn. Obviously, it is another family band. Their leader is their father Mike, formerly banjo player for Alison Krauss. Highlights of their performances included a Mexican gunfighter ballad called “Gunfighters Lament”, appropriately Leroy Van Dyke’s “The Auctioneer”, & a finale of “John Hardy” which featured the band playing their instruments behind their backs. The CD I got, ”Timeless and True” features a vocal duet with Ms. Krauss, the afore mentioned “Gunfighter’s Lament”, and surprisingly, a bluegrass remake of The Orleans old 70’s pop hit “Dance With Me” (Remember “Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can’t you see, the music is just starting, night is falling and I am calling, dance with me”) The remake sounds shockingly similar to the original.

The Expedition Show were the headliners from Nashville. They were formerly The Williams & Clark Expedition before Clark quit. Their leader is banjoist / songwriter  Blake Williams who played banjo with Bill Monroe for ten years, followed by another ten years as bassist for Mike Snyder, followed by ten years with The Expedition. Surprisingly, they were the most low key band of the weekend, but they are a fine band, and a little extra listening effort revealed Blake is an incredibly ornate back-up banjoist. I like their self titled CD even better than the live performances. It is available on i-Tunes, so check out the song clips!

Next time, my heroes, Monroe Crossing!    

Ashley Lewis --Haunted

Pt. 1 - BLUEGRASS - The Best Bands You've Never Heard in Your Life!

http://www.barnesbluegrass.com
www.ashleylewis.net

          Friday night, and all day Saturday. Labor Day Weekend, I attended The 39^th Annual Barnes Family Bluegrass Festival in Aledo Illinois. It was excellent as always. The acts were; Ashley Lewis, The Bankesters, The Harmans, The Expedition Show & Monroe Crossing. All week long, I’ve been facing the daunting task of trying to write a review that would cover five bands, each performing three times, plus reviews of their CDs I bought. This flies in the face of my goal, which is to create this web log using little or no effort. The above video of Ashley Lewis goes a long way towards relieving me of my writing duties. “Haunted” is one of her original compositions. Her live act also included some Django Reinhardt / Stephane Grappelli style swing jazz numbers, traditional bluegrass, and fine bluegrass arrangements of “Johnny B. Goode” & “Burning Love”. Funny – I’ve heard Elvis sing that song a million times, but it’s as if I’d never heard the lyrics until I heard Ashley sing it, (ie; “my chest is heaving… higher & higher the flames are licking my body, ‘til I’m a hunka hunka burnin’ love.”  Yow! (She’s even cuter in real life than on the above video.)

          She provided the weekend’s most impressive moment of showmanship. On the first song of her second show, her mike was creating horrible feedback any time she got anywhere near it. Undaunted, she walked down in front of the front row of the audience, unmiked, playing what must have been a minute-and-a half long, ferocious  mandolin solo, stopping walking several times to play for whoever she was standing in front of. This fearless improvisation really won over the audience.

          Her CD “Here I Stand” is excellent. Most of the songs on it are her original compositions, & they reflect an artistic maturity beyond her years. (I would have guessed she was 18, but apparently she is a few years older.) Unfortunately, only two songs from it are available on iTunes.         

          I’ll be writing about the other groups soon.

JC PENNEY What the hell were they thinking?

For girls ages 7 to 14. T-shirt says, "I'm Too Pretty to Do Homework so my brother has to do it for me." Copy says "With the new Justin Beiber album out, who has time to do homework? She'll love it because it's just as cute and sassy as she is." Empowering!
Seriously, JC Penney is a huge corporation. How many people had to see and hear about this shirt during it's concept, design and production, yet NOBODY SAID, "What the heck are we saying with this shirt?"