Joyous Sounds
PBS airs celebratory bluegrass special taped earlier this year at the Opry House
Last year, when she was 10 years old, mandolin player Sierra Hull watched the first All-Star Bluegrass Celebration on the PBS affiliate serving her hometown of Byrdstown, Tenn. “I don’t get to see very much bluegrass on TV,” she said, “so it was good to see that.”
This year, Hull made the move from television audience member to performer, as she appeared with Alison Krauss + Union Station on the show’s second installment. Frowning with concentration as she kicked off their signature “Every Time You Say Goodbye,” the youngster relaxed into a broad grin as Krauss launched into the song’s opening vocal line, and it never left her face the whole time she was onstage.
There were plenty of smiles that night, and viewers can catch the music that engendered them on June 1, when NPT offers a sneak preview of the show, scheduled for airing on PBS affiliates across the country later this year. (The show re-airs here June 4.) Recorded April 2 at the Grand Ole Opry House, the show was edited into a tight 80 minutes by producer Terry Lickona, of Austin City Limits fame. The air of good humor throughout underscores the fact that it is a celebration—not just of the music itself, but of its tenacity and the increasingly bright prospects for its survival.
“Our original goal, even in early discussions with PBS, was to do an annual show, and to build on it and try to expand and diversify it each year,” says Lickona. “Of course, there are no guarantees in this business, but then, I didn’t expect Austin City Limits would be here for 29 years, either. And the Celebration has really touched a lot of people in different ways, including people who didn’t have a lot of exposure to bluegrass.”
Watching the show, it’s easy to see why. Opening with a powerhouse reading of Jimmy Martin’s “My Walking Shoes” by host Vince Gill with the Del McCoury Band, the Celebration explores virtually every nook and cranny of the genre, honoring its roots but also serving notice that innovation isn’t exclusively the province of the young—or that tradition isn’t the sole possession of the elderly. Patriarchs Mac Wiseman, Jesse McReynolds and Ralph Stanley serve up vintage sounds, but 75-year-old Vassar Clements is as exuberant and daring a fiddler as any teenager, while Hunter Berry, teenage fiddler for Rhonda Vincent, plays with a stout fidelity to past masters of the instrument.
In fact, the concert is a dazzling refutation of the stereotype that, as Lickona puts it, “bluegrass is music played by guys in old, rumpled suits who can’t manage an expression the whole time they’re onstage.” Rhonda Vincent & The Rage are dressed to kill as they sway into and away from their single microphone, while Chris Thile of Nickel Creek bounces dizzily from one member of the band to the next as each solos. From rising stars Mountain Heart to the black gospel quintet The Fairfield Four, there’s an energy to the show that belies any notion that bluegrass is for the infirm or the sedentary.
—Jon Weisberger
