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 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 ?

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 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 , 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, , and then she'd get up on Sunday morning and play 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 , 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 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 .” 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 , 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 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. There wasn't much that was available at that time in tablature. But there was enough to kind of get going with the rolls,

3

and tryin' to figure out some of the books. Then I started takin' lessons at a music shop, and he kind a really made a difference in terms of giving me a sense. He would pretty much work from tablature. He didn't play professionally, he worked during the day, but he was a real good banjo player. Then I shifted over and started taking lessons. I learned that a guy named Jim Smoak was teaching, and Jim had played banjo with Bill Monroe, and…

PN: Jim is still around.

KB: …and Jim's still around.

PN: Jim made a CD about a year and a half ago. I should give the date, this is May 5th, 2010.

KB: Jim has to be in his 80s now.

PN: I was amazed to get the CD when it came in.

KB: Jim's a great guy.

PN: Is he.

KB: Oh, yeah. He'd be a great interview, actually.

PN: I've tried to get him, but he's never at the IBMA [International Bluegrass Music Association]. At any rate, Kevin…

KB: But, anyway…Jim really turned me around because he was the first one that started talkin' about hands, what're you doing for the hands. He would talk about, Jim had such an interesting way of, at this point I knew how to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”, I could play “Cripple Creek”, I could vamp, I could jam a little bit, and so I'd kind of started learning the Canon, as you might call it. Jim was the first one who said, “Ok, let's twist this a little bit, ok, so you can play ‘Old Joe Clark’, now think of it this way, a little differently, in terms of the melody.” And he really, really stressed playing off the neck, which was very interesting, was being able to work within an Earl Scruggs style and be able to improvise without tab, but just from dissecting the tune and thinking in terms of chord positions, play something up the neck, not really so much Don Reno style - single-string style, but more roll-style. He really opened up a lot of things for me, and just in terms of understanding. Then he started talkin' about J.D. Crowe, and he said, “Oh, ya know, J.D. Crowe's with the New South down at the Great Midwestern Music Hall in Louisville this weekend - you gotta go see him play.” He would always say, “You gotta go see these guys play.” So he was really pushing me out to…anytime he'd tell me. I had a friend I knew who worked down there. I was underage, and he'd let me sneak in, and then I'd go. So I started a process probably about sophomore year in college, when I was at the University of Louisville.

PN: This was about what year?

4

KB: This was '76 or so. A buddy of mine and I, a buddy who was sort of learning how to play , we'd go down and we'd go to the Midwestern Music Hall three nights a week. It was so nice, because you had, it's like the Birchmere was in Washington [D.C.], you'd have Bill Monroe in-house for four nights, so you could go see Bill Monroe with Kenny Baker…I don't think Bob Black was playing with him at that point, but it was Butch Robins was workin' with him. So, it was like you could go any night down there, and hear world-class Bluegrass. So, to me, it was like, to go down and sit in front and watch J.D. Crowe really close, or watch - that was right around the time that Boone Creek was just startin', so it was , and , and Terry Baucom on the banjo, who was doin' something really different with how they were playin', but it was real focused on this drive thing the kind of thing Jim Smoak was talkin' about - the right hand, and how you try to play like you really mean it - he would say “bear down,” which was, “Don't be tentative, be authoritative.” Which wasn't about playing loud, necessarily, but it was meaning making every note clear, making it pop. So he'd talk about pick position, he was very analytical about it, actually, he was real old time, Jim was playin' with a lot of great players in the' 50s.

PN: He had a group called, The Louisiana Honeydrippers.

KB: He was really, really a good player.

PN: When did you leave Louisville?

KB: I left there in '77, but the other transition for me was kind of the summer before I moved up to , I was playing in a band with Jimmy Estes, a singer down in Louisville, and I kind a hooked up with him, and we had a band called Whole Wheat. Jimmy was a really good Bluegrass singer, and he would make me listen to stuff, he had a great Bluegrass record collection. He was the first one who really - he was a big fan of , I guess I'd been so focused on the playing, and Jimmy started really makin' me think about the singing, and taught me how to sing baritone. He said, “If you're gonna play banjo, you gotta sing baritone.”

PN: Because Eddie Adcock sang baritone parts of “The Country Gentlemen”.

KB: So, he sat me down and said, “OK, if we're gonna do ‘Fox on the Run’, here's your part.” So, that's how…it's like a light went on…'cause I'd listened to enough music, so I could hear the concepts of the harmonies, but his message was, “You've gotta be able to hear these parts, and you have to be able to sing in the trio. You can sing lead if you want, but you have to be able to sing another part, whether it's tenor or it's baritone, or whatever it is, you have to have some sort of ability to understand the singing of Bluegrass.” So, we'd sit around and sing a lot – ‘Bringin' Mary Home’, or it was…he would just go through this Country Gentleman songbook, and we had to learn 'em all, so it's just all the classic trios that they had in that band he'd also bring out other stuff, but he just felt, for him, that was really distinctive trio singing. It was interesting, 'cause in that band, there was a fiddler that would work with us periodically, you know him - Art

5

Stamper, and so Art was playin' fiddle who would work with us periodically, you know him - Art Stamper, and so Art was playin' fiddle in that band. Art was drinkin' pretty heavy, and oftentimes I'd have to go out and go get him. He had a barbershop, but he wouldn't call himself a barber, he's say, “I'm a Hair Dresser.” He was out in Bullock County, which is outside Louisville a little ways, I'd have to go out and try to find him - he'd probably been drinkin'. If we had a gig at eight or nine, I'd head out that way around three, just to make sure that Art could get into the gig. [Laughing]

PN: So you could get him sobered up a little bit…

KB: A little bit, we'd go have and get a cup of coffee, or whatever, just to make sure that he was gonna show up.

PN: You were the new guy in the band, so your job was to go get Art…

KB: I was the kid, but I worshipped Art. I mean, Art was like, whether he'd been drinkin' or not, I can remember, I hadn't been playin' long, and we were the Kentucky Fried Chicken Bluegrass Festival- I think at that time it wasn't even the KFC Festival, it was just the Louisville Bluegrass Festival, or the Belvedere Bluegrass Festival - but there'd be jammin', but a lot of people didn't like to play with Art, because he was drunk a lot of the time and he'd be obnoxious. But I was hungry, so I'd back him up, and he'd say, “Ok, let's play ‘Sally Goodin'’, do this…play it like this…you gotta play with drive. If you're going to work the banjo with the fiddle, you have to listen to me, but if I'm playin' high, you make sure you're playin' low…don't fight me, give me a base to play over.” He would kind of talk about that sensibility of playing. So, I feel like in those early days before I moved up here, I felt like I had just a lot of exposure to wonderful musicians who taught me a lot about Bluegrass, and at the same time had a chance to hear really, really high caliber professional Bluegrass players a lot. So, there was a good two years of goin' to school of learnin' to play the instrument, but at the same time, it was sort of like reading, but you were goin' out, and you're playin', and you were going and hearin' the music a lot, so, for me, that was critical.

PN: When did you come to Minneapolis?

KB: I moved up here for the second half of my junior year in college in December of '77.

PN: Why'd you do that?

KB: My folks weren't gettin' along really well, and I said that I just needed to change, and a friend of mine was also interested in transferring up here, so we said, “Let's go!” So we both just transferred up.

PN: So, it wasn't to study any particular specialty at the U [University of Minnesota]?

KB: There was a rationale: I was a Philosophy major, thinking I wanted to go to law school.

6

PN: Oh, that, plus Bluegrass will get you some work [Laughing].

KB: Well, I had it fully rationalized that this would get me to law school. I was thinkin'…

PN: Philosophy's gonna get you to law school…

KB: I had an advisor who said, “Are you thinking law school?” and I said, “Sure.” I just always liked Philosophy. Even in high school, I was really into it, I had a Humanities teacher who kind of got me into it, and who also liked Bluegrass, so we'd talk about…we read Plato, he then, at the same time would be turning onto music, so it was pretty cool. In college I really wanted to continue studying it…I just sort of dug it. So, on the rationale I'd say, “Minnesota has a great Philosophy Department - you got Herbert Feigl was up there, you actually had a very good national reputation,” but the rationale in the background was…it was time to get out of Louisville. So we had hitchhiked through here before, when I was like in high school, my friend, Bob, and I had hitchhiked, the day after graduation, out to San Francisco, to go see Bob Weir and Kingfish, and the Grateful Dead, Old in the Way were performing…so we came up via Minneapolis, which was a weird way to come, but it was just the way we picked to come. I had just really liked the city, so we always said if we ever transfer we should go up to Minnesota, so we did.

Being here was very fortunate in the sense that I was in Middlebrook Dormitory over on the West Bank, so on the West Bank you have the Riverside Cafe, you have the coffee house Extempore [Cafe Extempore], all of the sudden I was on the West Bank, 'cause I can remember walkin' down and playing, like one of the first nights I walked down to the West Bank, it was Rod Bellville and Johnny Bellville playing down at the Riverside Cafe. So, I immediately started talkin' to 'em and found out what was goin' on about the coffee house Extempore, where the Powdermilk Biscuit band was playing, and there was sort of a slow, steady process of running into folks. Actually, I'd put up a sign over at The Podium music store about just being a banjo player who'd moved in town and got a call from a guy named, Tom Cornish, who was a , and you might remember Tom, he used to work with Russ Rayfield quite a bit, in the early days of the Jug Sluggers, and he said, “Let's jam!” Because he also lived on the West Bank.

So we got together and played, and he said, “Oh! We got a square dance over at Powderhorn Park tonight, you wanna come and play?” I said, “Sure!” And at that park gig is where I met Russ Rayfield, and so it was like, really, within a couple of weeks of movin' up here, I was meetin' folks like Mark Brier, who introduced me to Alan Jesperson, and then, so, early in the game the community was really receptive and friendly about gettin' together and playin' music. So, out of that…then there was a time when I played in a group called, Minnegrassco, which was Tom O'Neill and Bill Hinkley, who was also a really good teacher in a lot of ways, actually, and Joe Trimbach came on board, Matt Haney. So we had a band. In its best phases had Matt Haney on fiddle, and Joe on mandolin, and Gary Kraniak was playing guitar, and Tom O'Neill on bass.

PN: Who was singing?

7

KB: It varied ….to me, there wasn't a real strong lead singer in that group; Gary would sing, I'd sing some stuff, Matt would sing some stuff, but it was a group that had some pretty good harmonies. Joe and I had gotten to be really good friends - Joe Trimbach, and I would go over to his place all the time, we would just play…we were like playing, playing, playing like crazy. I was done with school, and thinking in terms of going to law school, had taken the LSAT [law school admission test], and was thinkin', “Ok, I'll just go to the U or something.” The more I played, and the more I just sort of kept focused on it, the more I realized - I don't want to go to law school. I was working part time at a law firm, too, so the focus with Joe of playing as much as we would played was really a time where I thought, “I think I want to really try to play music.” And then we would talk about what we thought would be our favorite band…and Joe's wife was Kate Trimbach, at the time, and Joe and I would be playin' and Kate would be over on the couch, kind of humming, and we finally started calling her over to sing, and that's how Kate Trimbach, at the time…changed her name to Kate MacKenzie, after she and Joe got divorced…

PN: That was her maiden name?

KB: That was her maiden name. She came from a family that sang, and she always liked Bluegrass, but she always said, “That's what Joe does, I don't really do that.” That's when the first stages of Stoney Lonesome started.

PN: So, it's really right after undergraduate days for you, so this would have been '78 or '79?

KB: '79.

PN: That band went for…'til '90 something?

KB: '97.

PN: Wow, that's a long time.

KB: …it's a long time, but it was sort of interesting to me, that's the cool thing about Bluegrass, and I think it happens in a lot of musics, but Bluegrass particularly, is that the informality of this is about sittin' around at the kitchen table, drinkin' coffee, and playin' music. That was really a cool thing, 'cause that made it more safe, once I came into the picture, for Kate to say, “Maybe I'll come in…” So, man, then she just jumped on it and started learnin' all of these tunes, and had her book, and we would work out the harmonies for trios to these songs…that was really a very special time. But that's when we decided, we should really form a band, and so then we approached John Niemann to play fiddle, Joe said, “You should call your brother Brian and talk him into movin' up here and playin' guitar, 'cause he's a great guitar player and singer, so I talked Brian into movin' up. That was fall of 1980, that's when we formed Stoney Lonesome. So, that's basically when that started, and that's the first point where…I had left my job at a law firm, and said, “I'm just gonna teach banjo to support playing music, and really focus on playing music.”

PN: Why didn't you say, “I'm gonna work at the law firm to support playing music.”?

8

KB: I don't know, it was just, I think it was intuitive to me that if I was going to be a professional musician, then I should try to make my living through music…not another part time job, but just do through music. I didn't mind teaching music, as long as I was around the instrument and the music. To me that was a better head place.

PN: I see.

KB: It just meant always thinking about playing.

PN: Your experiencing of music might change when you decide, “Well, this is my profession now.” Could you describe that?

KB: Yeah, I think it ramped up my desire to really think about, ok, not only do I need to be a better player. . .I need myself to be a better player, and to practice more, and to say, “Ok, every day, I'm going to practice for two or three hours or four hours or whatever I need to do,” and I'd been doing that, but just to really try to do that, but also, that the band had to practice a lot; we were practicing five days a week. This wasn't getting together once a week…we were playin' a lot.

PN: Were these rehearsals or were these practices?

KB: These were practices, rehearsals, workin' up material, workin' on harmonies, it was very, very focused, and I attribute a lot of that dedication to Kate, because she said, “Hey, I'm on the learning curve, if I have to catch up with you guys - that really drove it a lot. We were all in town, so we could get together really easily, so even if people were workin' day gigs, we'd get together every night - we'd get together at seven and we'd play 'til ten or ten thirty. Once Brian moved up here it was like, ok, now we've gotta band, and we gotta figure out what does that mean, and can we work, and what does all the pieces mean? Probably about seven months after we started the band, this would have been about the spring of '81 - and this is before he moved to town, but there was a regular Monday night square dance that we would all play at, periodically; either I'd go in and play some banjo, or guitar, or whatever they needed; called The Monday Night Square Dance at the Union Bar. And, Peter Ostroushko would always show up, and Peter had heard us - we had done an opening set at the Extemp, and Peter came up to me - he was the musical director on The Prairie Home Companion show at the time, he came up to me and said, “You guys wanna come on the show?” He could make that connection.

PN: That was about what year?

KB: That was April of '81.

PN: Early on for Stoney Lonesome.

KB: So, we were like, right around the first or second Saturday of April…that was the first time we went on the show, and that was, for any musician, such a fortunate thing, 'cause Garrison

9

[Keillor] liked it, he loved Kate's singing, he felt comfortable with the group, so we worked a lot with the show. So, that was sort of the point where, again, as a professional, it was like having a project like that where we had to work up new material. We worked up new material for every show we were on, to do on the show. That was really, really helpful.

PN: What was it like to work on the Prairie Home Companion, becoming actors? 'Cause that's what you were, it wasn't just only the performance; it was the interaction…the acting.

KB: Yeah, because I always felt, and I think this was something going back to Louisville days watching Jimmy, he really wanted to have a relationship to the audience, and he felt as a Bluegrass performer, you have to bridge this gap. So, there's that level of acting, which means that you're kind of putting on a show and you're making a relationship, and you're kind of doing it through the music, whether it be through humor - Al Jesperson was always great at that… that was what I really noticed coming up to Minnesota and watching the Middle Spunk Creek Boys, was that they were just like…or Buck Acre Bluegrass, or whoever it was…they were kind of more Dillard-esque, in terms of havin' fun, and it was really entertaining, but really good music, too, actually.

There's that level of acting, but, I think, also, there is a level of acting for yourself, where you have to imagine yourself as a musician. I often used to think, there's a point when I would play a certain tune, like if we were doing “The Old Home Place”, I would try to put myself in the shoes of J.D. Crowe, and I would literally try to imagine myself playing it as he would play it: physically, emotionally. That was to me, the emulation was a very important part, so in the sense of a Classical actor saying that if I'm going to do Shakespeare, or Tennessee Williams, then I am going to imagine what was one of my favorite actors who did the role, and kind of have that as a muse, so to speak. That, to me, was the process all of the sudden beginning to think, “Yeah, I think I am a musician.” Because I'm beginning to think in those terms. It's not just about my creativity, it's not just about my art, and it’s about the music. It's not just about my stuff, it about this form, and who are my muses of that form? It was Monroe, Eddie Adcock, J.D. Crowe, Earl Scruggs, but what I think what was really cool was having Kate part of that. There was a band called Grass, Food and Lodging that I'd heard…maybe you remember those guys, out of Milwaukee, with Dede (Wyland) and she hooked up with Tony Trischka to do Skyline?

PN: I met Dede at the last IBMA - interviewed her.

KB: I was like, man…down south you never saw Bluegrass bands with women in 'em, and so, I remember goin' down, before moving to Minneapolis, very soon before moving to Minneapolis, watching that band and just diggin' the material they were doin' and just thinkin', “Wow, she's a great singer! And it works, and it's current, and it's very, very well done.” And they were also very funny, very entertaining band. I think it was Ken who was playing banjo with that group, and I used to go back and talk to him a lot, but they'd go down and play the Station Inn in Nashville, and they were touring quite a bit. I think in a way, intuitively, for me, that became a

10

model for me. I like it that there was a woman in that band, who had a really strong role, she played guitar - actually very well…very solid rhythm guitar player, she was thee rhythm guitar player in that band. You just didn't see that in Louisville bands, you didn't see that very much in Nashville bands - it wasn't very common. I'd go to jams and I'd hear women come out and sing Bluegrass, very rarely play guitar… they'd come into a jam and sing, Ruby, but they were more Country singers who sang Bluegrass, whereas I felt like this was a young band ….

PN: So you were sort of influenced by this, really, northern thing [Grass, Food, and Lodging], upper Midwest thing.

KB: It's exactly right, 'cause I'd seen a lot of southern Bluegrass, and a lot of Bluegrass coming out of Washington and North Carolina, and there was a definite style, but this style was different, and it was different from Newgrass, it had some inspirations from Newgrass, but they weren't tryin' to play like Newgrass, really, they were just tryin' to play really well, they had great harmonies, they were entertaining, and they were doing a lot of original stuff, and I think there was a point, maybe it was just in my own evolution, where I said, “Wow, they're really doin' some interesting, wonderful music.”

PN: Through your career, did you notice that there are other stylistic markings of this northern Bluegrass, that were different than what you experienced down south comin' up?

KB: I think Grass, Food and Lodging most defined it for me; that it was something very different. It had a lighter touch; I think it was a touch smoother, a little less edgy, it had plenty of drive, but it was less macho, I think that was one thing that was interesting to me. People down south would say, “Man, they're really good Bluegrass band for a Yankee band.” People joke about it, but they liked it, and they were very open to it.

PN: So, they were sort of acknowledging that this wasn't a southern group, and sort of makin' a joke out of that, but from what you're saying, people were not opposed to northerners playing Bluegrass, just acknowledging that it was not really expected.

KB: Right. My sister was at IU [Indiana University], where you were…and you were probably there at that time too, there was a little different thing goin' on in Bloomington with music, 'cause you had Bean Blossom. I'd go over to Bean Blossom a lot…

PN: I went there…

KB: So, I'd always go for the spring and the fall festivals when I was livin' down there. But, then once I started getting into town, then I started meeting musicians who were a little more Old Time-focused - you had the Hot Mud Family, remember those guys?

PN: Yes, I remember them.

11

KB: And they had a woman who sang in that band, and I remember going out and hearing them, again, Suzanne [Thomas] singing - really good singer…great singer! But they were doin' Uncle Dave Macon tunes, and they were doin' really great blend of kind a real straight ahead Old Time stuff, but real Bluegrassy - a lot of harmony singing, and stuff, and I'd say, “Wow, that's a different way for a band to do it!” And I got to be pretty good friends with those guys. But, they were southern, most of them were from the south - they weren't from the north, it was just a…

PN: I'd like to get your perception of this, now: this might be to result of a band that doesn't really have a leader with a name, like, in other words, if you're playin' with Jimmy Martin, you're tryin' to play like all of Jimmy Martin…there might be someone who is a coordinator who tries to find the points of convergence between all those people, so you have a band like Hot Mud Family playin' some combination of Old Time and Bluegrass that was outside of the normal stylistic parameters that would be pushed by a record company, it's just kind of what they did.

KB: I think it was sort of maybe it was more of a '70s thing with young bands who said, “We're more of a collective” and lived out on the farm together for a while. Bloomington, to me, was a real hotbed of great music. You had Grey Larsen, you had Trapezoid - which was also a very interesting band that was doing some very interesting stuff…almost Renaissance-ish, Old Timey, great singer, really interesting stuff.

PN: Bob Lucas…

KB: Bob Lucas, yep, I knew Bob pretty well…great . Bob wrote a tune called, Stoney Lonesome, I remember meetin' him for the first time, he said, “You know my song, ‘Stoney Lonesome’?”…actually no, he didn't write it, he said there's a guy out of Bloomington who wrote a song called “Stoney Lonesome” because the name “Stoney Lonesome” we got from a Bill Monroe's tune, but he got it from Stoney Lonesome, Indiana, which was…

PN: Not too far from Bloomington…

KB: …right outside of Bean Blossom, and that sort of an interesting…so, I guess I was hearing really good Bluegrass in Louisville, going up to Bloomington, getting to be friends, and going to hear bands like that, seeing Grass, Food and Lodging…that, to me, when we got Stoney Lonesome happening, I said, “There's all these elements…” and Kate was very much inspired by those elements, she was a real leader in terms of material, because: woman singer, she loved singing Stanley Brothers stuff, but she also was introducing me to music like Hazel and Alice, and she learned some beautiful tunes that I had no exposure to, but then she'd also listen to Dave Macon and say…she loved Suzanne Edmondson's [now Thomas] singing…she would listen to a lot of what they were listening to, so a lot of Carter Family stuff, and so that really got my head opening up, too, more to the thing of music - Bluegrass is important and key to it, but let's think in terms of being an interesting music ensemble.

PN: What was it like booking Stoney Lonesome?

12

KB: Well, because of the radio show, it was pretty easy.

PN: Really…

KB: You still really couldn't make a living off of playing though, Phil, unless…we could work a lot. I see what Art Blackburn has moved up, how he's really raised the bar with Monroe Crossing now, but any band, even at that time, that was working, even the Hot Mud Family - they were touring pretty much constantly, so you had to be able to go on the road. I think being in Minneapolis, it was tougher, because we weren't near the east coast; it was easier for friends and bands working out of, at that time, Bloomington, Louisville, even up around Cincinnati, because they could go to the east coast. You had a lot of house concerts, clubs, coffee houses, colleges, so our living tended to be focused more on, “I could make an ok about a ¾ living playing music…,” which at that point we were livin' really cheap, so I wasn't that focused on making a lot of money, I just kind of wanted to keep working and see if we could keep our bills paid, and Terri, my wife, was working, too, so we were ok, but that focus of…I still had to teach, and have something that could supplement, but had the flexibility to allow me to easily leave. I can remember shifting my teaching schedule to where I was just teaching during the week and saying, “I gotta keep all my weekends open, 'cause we have to work every weekend.” So, there was a point where, because of the Prairie Home show, and because the fact that people had heard us, we were getting a lot more calls for corporate events, a lot more calls for weddings, so, then I would really focus into County fairs. At that time there weren't a lot of community concert opportunities.

PN: Now it seems that every city has a summer concert series.

KB: Yeah, it wasn't that way in the early '80s.

PN: Those pay almost enough…

KB: Absolutely…

PN: They don't pay enough, almost enough…today, 2010, you maybe could book yourself for $700, $800 into…maybe, but there're five of you.

KB: Exactly. Well, and a good billing was 600 bucks, and Stoney Lonesome had six people in the original incarnation, so, it was a lot of people. I can remember we traveled down to Iowa to play some event and they paid us $1700, and it was like, “Oh, my God! This is incredible money.”

PN: “Let's get more like this!”

KB: Yeah, exactly… “We're worth this!” But, we worked a fair amount. Starting up in '81, '82, we were working every weekend, between mid to late May up through September we were pretty

13

much three days a week. And it was a real mix, it was like, park systems, festivals, we traveled out to Rapid City did the Bluegrass Festival. We traveled to a lot of Bluegrass festivals…

PN: Were you the booking agent for the…

KB: Yeah, I did most of the booking.

PN: So, you would instigate the contacts with venues. What was that like?

KB: It was, to me, pretty natural. I was never that afraid to cold call. The lead-in was much easier for us if I'd said, “This is Kevin Barnes, I'm with a band called Stoney Lonesome out or Minneapolis,” and if I said that we're one of the house bands on , which we were at the time, that was our entree. They said, “Oh, ok.” That was credibility. I think it would have been much, much, much more difficult to do it without that, and so, that's where I really admire the success of a Monroe Crossing, who really don't have that, they're all great musicians, and they've been around a long time, but it's not like they have like in their pocket that we've got a house gig with a national radio show.

PN: At this point they just have to say, “I'm Monroe Crossing,” and that's their credibility, but it was a long road to get there.

KB: Yeah, yeah. I can remember there was a transition where we had been working in the Midwest and we'd drive down to Chicago a lot and play, Old Town would have us down there to play at the Folk music school at least once a year, sometimes twice, so then I'd book three or four shows around that - goin' up into Evanston, then that kind of got us workin' up toward the U.P. was pretty good…up in the Upper Peninsula was sort of a real scene of Bluegrass. You had the Hiawatha Music Festival, you had…there were just a lot of places to play, but we're drivin' a lot, so we had a van and we just hopped in and away we went. Again, what made it possible was being able, for me, being able to say that we worked along with Garrison on Prairie Home…or they'd heard us, and say, “I love you guys!” - generated calls, just like workin' on the Opry or anything, they call and say, “Hey, we want to book that band for our Folk festival.” My job was much easier because of that. But then you go through a point where that's not enough, either, and you still have to think in terms of, “Ok, where do we want to be working?” So, to me, that was a transition of thinking, “Ok, we need to play a lot more Bluegrass festivals, and then we were, 'cause they were payin' better, we could get more, even, believe it or not with Chuck Stearman…

PN: [Laughing]

KB: Chuck paid us pretty decent to come down and play, and, I mean, he covered the bill, he never bounced any checks and he got us to work. Chuck had a regular season of festivals down in Iowa, and so we worked a lot of those - didn't always like workin' 'em that much, but it was like, it was ok pay…

PN: What made it that a festival was good to work or not good to work?

14

KB: To me, those audiences were great, actually, they were really were very supportive of a band, but I liked, if we were playing festivals, the energy of jamming goin' on, 'cause we'd do our set, and we'd always go out and jam. At Chuck's festivals, if there was any jamming, it was always just from the musicians who were playing the festivals; because it was a much older crowd…it was funny: they were lovers of the music, but they didn't play. Did you notice that?

PN: It's been a long time since I've been to a Stearman festival; I used to record them.

KB: Yeah, I remember, we met at one…Central City, we always used to play down there - that was a great one.

PN: That was a good festival - that was a picker's festival. I remember going down to a Stearman festival. I was already living in Minnesota, and Chuck got me to run the [sound] board, which I was happy to do…

KB: Thank goodness…usually nobody was runnin' the board. [Laughter]

PN: …in that event it was good that I was running the board - it worked out well. I remember that night, Lenny Kalakian was there and we got into a jam, it was a really big jam, I really had fun.

KB: At Central City I can remember, the story I always tell is, we drove in, got down there like Thursday night - the festival was going to start Friday, this is like the second year…'85 maybe, we got out of the van, I kind of got set up, and then Doug Lohmann - who was playing bass with us at the time, he and I wandered out into the area to start seeing who was pickin', and I could remember hearing this voice, and I went, “Oh my God! Who is that?” I wandered over, and it was this girl, about 13, played fiddle…

PN: Gayla Drake?

KB: It was .

PN: Oh!

KB: …and Union Station. It was her band, she was, like, 13, and Doug and I went over, and she sounded like she sounds now - a little less developed, but really, really, really good. She had John Pennell the bass player who wrote a lot of her songs, and the other guys, and they were all, like, 30s, and Alison was 13, and she was playing and singing, and they were practicing…she was rehearsing that band for their set that next day. Her parents would always drive her around and come along, but that was at Central City. That was before they entered the band contest at Kentucky Fried Chicken - which we were down there that year with them, too, and this was before Alison's first record, but I can remember it was so good, and so different, and so well done. It was like every tune they did was unbelievable. So that was one of those things that can happen at a Bluegrass festival, that you say, “Wow, wow, that's really, really fun.”

15

PN: To talk about the booking thing and how that played with relationships with other band members…would they tell you things like, “Why can't you get us X amount of dollars!?”

KB: Of course, of course. Yeah, it was never enough money, people were never, never, never makin' as much as they wanted to make. They loved workin' in the band…Stoney Lonesome had a lot of challenges - individually, emotionally - there were just a lot of…and I'm not gonna go into all the details, but it was just always…bands have enough challenges…but you had a husband and wife…

PN: …that broke up.

KB: …which broke up, you had two brothers…

PN: And they stayed playin'…

KB: …and they stayed playin' - it was the determination that they were still friends, they were able to make it as friends, but the band held it together. Everybody was feelin' like, “This music is so enjoyable to play, that we're gonna hang in there.” And everybody was really feelin' like, “I want to maintain that vision of being a musician.” And this was the most likely success run, I think. We were still workin' with the radio show. There was a lot of that. Individually in any ensemble, for any musician, keeping it together emotionally, and keeping five or six people who do end up being like a family for all of its dysfunctions, and I think it's very hard to be the only woman in an all-guy band and be on the road as much as we were, and all those dynamics play out, but it wasn't just those, it was just the family dynamics of spending that much time together.

PN: I want to ask you a bit about the Minnesota thing, being from Minnesota and playing Bluegrass. Did you encounter any Minnesotans feeling like they should be from some other place, or just feeling a lack of confidence because they're from Minnesota?

KB: Not so much, really. Sometimes, I think, with younger-generation people it was…I didn't sense that at all from Al Jesperson, or Rod Bellville, or a lot of that generation of players. I think there was a lot of 'em had traveled to Bean Blossom, so they'd been to the south a lot to hear the music and stuff. They'd always joke that there's a certain way that they play it down there that's different than what we do, but it was almost like self-deprecating, it was sort of a joke, I never really sensed any tension over that. I felt like people were just sort of who they were. I think, in my generation, people my age, who were 20s at that time…there was a little bit of, “Well, I'm from here, I can't really play the music.” And I don't think that's true. It doesn't matter where you're from, if you really, truly internalize the music, you can play it. Once we did a Japan tour in '86, and hearing all these Japanese bands play, and there were guys who're gettin' up and singin' and man, they sounded just like Peter Rowan, there was no accent - it was nothin' but great Bluegrass. They were so studied, but so free at the same time; I really felt like, “This isn't a matter of them just copying, they're doing it their way…” But, that did change my head, because I came back and I said, “You can be from anywhere and play good Bluegrass.” I didn't run into

16

that that much, it wasn't at all with older generation. I think that they were just authentic, and they were who they were, and they did the music 'cause they loved it. But I think in our age group, there was a little more, “Oh, I don't know, I'm not really from there, I don't know if I can play the music like Kevin can, 'cause he's from Louisville.” I don't think that's true.

PN: We talked about a little bit about a northern approach that's a little different than a southern approach. Is there a collection of ways of playing in the north or the south that gets considered Bluegrass, but you wonder, “Well is that really…?” I hear bands sometimes, and I think, “That's not really Bluegrass.” It isn't, because of the way they play. I don't know if that's a northern thing or a southern thing.

KB: We've talked about, I think there is a way of working the beat - the rhythm is the key - and we've talked about this before, certain accent points on the way the guitar will hit and accent certain downbeat points, and I can remember talking to…early when I was here, I would say that I could hear in my head and sense from goin' and watching J.D. Crowe in the south, and watching a lot of these bands and seeing them a lot, that they had a way of playing that was distinctive and it was, to me, what defined the Bluegrass beat. There was bounce, there was ways of hitting, there were counterpoints, there were dynamics - it was like being able to say, “Well, it's not just playin' the tune, how do you go from soft to quiet, from soft to really, really strong, and then pull it back.” So, I can remember, before we ever started Stoney Lonesome, sittin' around with the practice with Minnegrassco and we'd talk about that, “We gotta work our dynamics more. So it's not just kind of a straight line, but it really has a dynamic range.” That, to me, kind of defines good Bluegrass, and good music in a lot of ways. The beat, the rhythm, Grass, Food and Lodging had that… they got dynamics, they got the beat, I felt, anyway, but we definitely talked about it a lot in Stoney Lonesome early on how do we get that thing. Brian, my brother, playing guitar with bands down in Bloomington (Indiana), straight-ahead Bluegrass bands, you remember Brian Lappin?

PN: Yes.

KB: …banjo guy…Brian was very insistent on it. Brian had worked with Jimmy Martin. So he [Brian Lappin] schooled Brian [Barnes] in the Jimmy Martin way of playin' guitar. Brian [Lappin] would sit him down and say, “You gotta play it like Jimmy Martin would play it. There's a way of playin' guitar that is…” that was a thing, “I know how to play Jimmy Martin- style guitar.” Do you hear anybody ever say that anymore? used to talk about it…there's definitely a way that Jimmy Martin played guitar. It was very distinctive…

PN: Yes it was…

KB: …and it worked with J.D. Crowe comin' in on the banjo with Jimmy Martin, that established to me a certain…that Good and Country Bluegrass style, and I think that that's where it got maybe more the southern style became really identified, even more than Bill Monroe or anybody, became identified with Jimmy Martin and what he called “Good and Country.” Ya

17 know what I mean, 'cause J.D. Crowe used to talk about that, too. And so, I think, a lot of people, when would say, “the southern style,” they're sort of thinkin' about that Jimmy Martin style, there's a way that you play guitar, there's the way the banjo works with the guitar, there's, I don't know, maybe that's part of it.

PN: Is there something you'd like to address that's not been addressed?

KB: No, no. To me, Minnesota was a great place to be to try to make a living playin' music. I'll always be thankful that I ended up here, not just meetin' my wife, but everybody I met and played music here, meetin' Kate, workin' with Joe, workin’ with so many great musicians who are right here, man, it's like, this has been, I think I was fortunate I was on the West Bank, and just, kind a, the timing of getting to meet everybody has been so great, and really enriched my life.

PN: All right. Thanks, Kevin.

KB: Thanks, Phil.

PN: Great interview.

18