Phil Nusbaum KB: Kevin Barnes PN
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Kevin Barnes Narrator Phil Nusbaum Interviewer May 5, 2010 PN: Phil Nusbaum KB: Kevin Barnes PN: I'm Phil Nusbaum. Kevin Barnes is here. This is part of the Minnesota Bluegrass Oral History Project, and we are at KBEM radio, using the microphones and everything. We are not employed here; we are independent contractors here. KB: But we control the place right now! [Laughing] It is under our control. PN: So, we're here to talk about Kevin's experience in Bluegrass in Minnesota. How did you get started with Bluegrass music? KB: It's funny, because, again, my roots go to Kentucky. I was born in Louisville, Kentucky. I used to travel down, my grandparents lived in western Kentucky, around Hopkinsville, Kentucky - Crofton area, an area that was actually fairly close to Paducah, so, pretty close to where Bill Monroe was from. My uncles - my dad's brothers - were farmers, so, as a kid, I can remember traveling down to the farm, and they'd all be talkin' about the Opry. They'd be talkin' about hearing Mack Wiseman, or they'd be talkin' about, “Oh, did you hear Bill Monroe on last week, and he did this really funny skit.” So, I can even remember as a kid, my family talkin' about Bluegrass music. Before that, and before I played banjo, my grandmother used to talk about her grandmother, actually it's too bad I don't have a - you should see the picture, her name was Algie Hickey from Crofton, Kentucky. She was a seamstress and she was a musician; she was a banjo player, played a 5-string, I've got a photo of her when she's about… PN: This is the grandmother of the grandmother… KB: Yes. And she made her living by playing, and you've interviewed Chubby Wise, and heard these stories perhaps, but they used to…Chubby used to say…they always called 'em “Frolics,” down south, and I think there's traditions here in Minnesota, as well, which were basically just house parties. They'd clear out the house, put the furniture out on the lawn, they'd have music on a Saturday night. So, she would typically play for those gatherings - banjo, fiddle, and then she'd get up on Sunday morning and play piano at church or play whatever instruments were needed. So, she did that from the time she was about 17. So, my grandmother would talk about those stories. Through high school, I was studying Classical guitar, started playing piano pretty young - about 7, and moved to Classical guitar 1 when I was 14…very interested…a friend was playing guitar and I thought I'd like to play guitar. Then, my folks, there used to be a spot in Louisville called the Storefront Congregation that was run by Kenny Pyle, who was a defrocked Baptist minister. He had a spot in the Highland area of Louisville, which was sort of a hippie, a lot of head shops, lot of spots in the late '60s and early '70s. But he had Bluegrass there, and my folks, from the time I was about seventh grade, my folks would take me up there to hear Sam Bush and the Newgrass Revival play. This was when Newgrass was just startin' out. This was about 1970, '71. PN: How old were you right then? KB: I was 14, 13. PN: So you were born in…? KB: '57, so it's right around 1969, 1970. Newgrass was basically the house band every Sunday night, there at the Storefront, and Sam was still a teenager - Sam Bush, who was also from western Kentucky - who was from down around Owensboro, originally, and he had moved to Louisville, when he was like 16, to work with the Bluegrass Alliance. It was like, at that time in Louisville you could go out and you could hear a lot of Bluegrass anytime. My folks liked all sorts of music, they kind of came back towards Bluegrass, but my Dad was a doctor, and it was sort of interesting that there was almost like a class thing that he sort of put that [Bluegrass] aside and said, “We listen to Classical music.” Or “We listen to Jazz.” So, we listened to all of that stuff. But, there was sort of a transition, where once begin to go out and hear it, he decided he was going to take us out to go hear it, and Storefront was great, because it was picnic tables; Kenny would whip up a big batch of Kentucky burgoo, which is what he called it, which is like a stew; in Kentucky that'd be like rabbit and squirrel and all sorts of things - he'd have it lot more palatable, I suppose. They'd serve beer in Mason jars, everybody'd come up and get stew, and Newgrass would play. So, my Dad loved that ritual of Sunday nights going and hearing them. So, that was kind of where I really first started - it's kind of like my whole awareness started shifting, because the club would be packed, and a lot of families would come, and at that point, they were really experimenting. I didn't know the difference between - I'd heard people talk about Bill Monroe and I'd seen Monroe, I'd kind of spent some time with my folks being around the music, but we didn't go to festivals, they didn't play, so it was really more just kind of hearing it and experiencing it. But I can remember one of those nights sayin', “That's what I wanted to do.” I was watching that band and saying, “That's what would love to do.” At that point, it was Courtney Johnson on the banjo, Sam Bush, and Ebo Walker, and Curtis Burch…it was the original band. PN: I saw that band. KB: I remember they used to do the long jam on “Casey Jones”. Sam recorded that on one of his records, Newgrass would always…I can just remember it, it was like, the energy in the room was incredible because they'd jam on it for 20-25 minutes. So, it was really their whole model, I 2 really noted that, even at that age, that wow, they really experiment, it was much more jazzy, I guess, in the sense that it wasn't like a two or three minute tune. Every tune had a Grateful Dead- ish sort of jam element that they were really tryin' to do. Then they'd turn around and just play, “This Heart of Mine”, or something like that, and do it pretty straight. But it just stuck in my head that that was so cool, I thought, and, really for me, kind of zoned in on the banjo, so that and the Dobro, interestingly enough, 'cause Curtis was playing Dobro on the shows, too. Then, through high school, I kind of moved over and played bass, was playin' Rock-n-Roll, and played bass. Probably senior year, one of my best friends was actually playin' banjo, and he said, “You should get a banjo.” And I thought, “Ah, I'm not ready to do that yet.” PN: Did you say that you were playing the banjo and then you thought you were going to get… KB: No, I wasn't playing the banjo at that point, I was playing bass, and then it was sort of like the summer after my senior year, the band that I was playing Rock-n-Roll in broke up, and my brother Brian had been learning how to flat pick. He was 16, and he had shifted over and was doing more Bluegrass stuff because he was in a church where they needed somebody who could sing Bluegrass tunes and Bluegrass Gospel, and that sort of thing, so he said, “You should get a banjo.” So, I went out, traded my bass in, and got a banjo. Then, that was just before the freshman year of college was pretty much when I started pursuing it. PN: Interesting that you had heard the banjo and it was appealing to you, long before you actually started playing it. KB: Right. PN: Why was that? KB: I don't know, whether it was having kind of reflected back that my great-grandmother was a banjo player, or what it was that was intuitive to me, I was just really, really attracted to it. I could remember The Beverly Hillbillies, and seeing Flatt and Scruggs on, and Glen Campbell Show, and seeing John Hartford play on the show, 'cause we'd watch all those summer shows, so I was exposed…would always kind of zone in, so I can remember when Hartford was on the first time and did, “Gentle on My Mind” on the show, and that was really cool. At that time in the popular media, the banjo was on a fair amount, here and there, not just Beverly Hillbillies, but The Smothers Brothers, and other shows, and my folks were watching those shows, and my older sister was really into watching those shows, so I can just always remember that I just seemed like I just really zoned in and was exposed to banjo. So it seemed actually, like this is the point when it all came together, and Brian said, “You should get a banjo,” so I got a banjo and started playin'. I just started to figure out tab, and tablature, which was the method of learning for those of us who were getting into it in the early '70s, there was, with the Earl Scruggs book and with a few resources.