Tondeleo: This is a continuation on Doc and Big Dave talking about how they do NOT play bluegrass, and that not all rural Americans even LIKE bluegrass.
Doc: Tondy, like we been sayin’, not all mountain people plays bluegrass or even likes it as much as city people does.
Some of the places we play
at when we was growin’ up and where we plays now when we go back down home, don’t allow no bluegrass, no country western and no electric guitars. Some songs ain’t got no instruments. Just sung. Some of the work songs and the sad songs is just sung straight from the heart. I do that sometimes.
This ain’t music for sellin.’ It’s gospel spirituals, work songs, coal minin’ songs and such. But up here, we play more songs what people want to hear. And we ain’t about goin’ out an’ showin’ our shame.
Big Dave: Yeah, we play what we got to play here, and we still draw the line ourselves on what we play. Old country, blues roots, Gospel and things like that. But we don’t do no new country western or bluegrass. Of course, we ain’t no GOOD at bluegrass! We don’t play it! (laughs)
Me and Doc, we like electric guitars and our friends do, because we like to be able to play loud and we like the tone that you get on a tube amp. We like a little distortion, but even that is the music we grew up playin’ with our friends and neighbors. You can play a acoustic guitar into a mike like they do at a lot of the festivals and places we play, but it just sounds like a louder acoustic guitar, which is what they want.
Doc: We like overdrive, Tondy! But we also grew up with fiddles, and I like fiddles if played right, and banjo’s and such. I like a mandolin ok. A banjo with bad tone don’t set well with me. If a banjo aint played right, it sounds like a bunch of bees stingin’ me in the ears.
But a lot of folks down home and in a lot of places ain’t got no electric, so they gotta play music without it. I take my ‘coustic guitar and dobro when I go down there, unless I know I’m goin’ where there is ‘lectric.
Marilyn: I like playin’ harp. That runs in our family for back to my great grand dad and Doc thinks my great great grand dad. I like a dulcimer, too. Doc has one that he strung with guitar strings and plays with a bottleneck slide sometimes.
Another thing what runs deep is dancin.’ My aunt does flatfoot and cloggin’ but I can’t do none of that. I can yodel, and always could, but she cain’t yodel!!! Uncle Doc can yodel, but he don’t do it too much.
Doc: A lot of the mountain roots music and blues roots is about the same thing. Bein’ broke. Havin’ a mean boss or bad landlord what don’t understand. Bein’ sick. Bein’ cheated on. Your loved one dyin’. Some is about just bein’ sick of this earthly life and wantin’ to just go ahead and go to Heaven. All the songs is about the basic thing about bein’ human and what goes on in your heart in hard times.
A lot of the sound comes from church where it gets blended, black and white folks, singin’ the same songs, and we pick up a little bit from each other, but we don’t copy no one. Most of us, at least my people is Pentecostal, too. Pentecostal folks whether white or black usually got a heart for music and have a bunch of good musicians and singers.
Tondeleo: Isn’t any music that’s made with banjo’s and mandolins by definition, “bluegrass?”
Big Dave: No. There’s differences. Bluegrass is more modern, like for city people that maybe came from the country and were missing home, and bluegrass was a way to sell that sound. I don’t know. I like Dawg Music, which has then same instruments, but isn’t bluegrass and ain’t quite country. David Grisman does it.
Doc: Well, as I see it, mountain music, roots music is more about bein’ music to dance to, more about a steady beat. That’s what we do in everything we do, keep a good beat. Mountain music uses more open tunings, which blues roots does, too. Both uses Open G a lot.
I grew up listenin’ on the radio and on the records when Daddy could get them, and sometimes live to the Carter Family, the Mainer's, the Stoneman's, the Delmore's and the Blue Sky Boys,the Carter Brothers and folks like them.
I spent some time with Donna Stoneman and know her to be a good Christian and nice person. Her sister Ronnie was on Hee Haw. But all them people ain’t bluegrass. Mountain music and roots, I call it. We like that ok, heck we grew up on it. But we also needed to get away from it when we got out of there and done some travellin’ and didn’t want to be hillbillies.
Big Dave. He’s right, Tondy.
Marilyn: We live in the country and we ain’t got much money, but we ain’t hillbillies.
