Hot Bluegrass Just Isn’t A Hot Ticket
No beefy crowd-control goons were needed to keep fans from mobbing this music star.
No one waited in line to see him play. A pitiful 125 tickets were sold for Sunday’s Met appearance of Greg Cahill - one of the best banjo pickers on the planet. Cahill’s Chicago-based band, Special Consensus, is nominated for three Grammys.
Bringing world-class bluegrass talent to Spokane can make a guy so lonesome he could cry.
“We’re basically fronting the band. We’ll have to cover the Met rent and the sound system ourselves,” says Wes Hughes, the affable president of the 125-member Inland Northwest Bluegrass Association.
Hmm. I guess that explains the number of tickets sold.
“It’s a cliffhanger every time we put on a show,” Hughes adds. “We start off with all kinds of enthusiasm, but a week before the show, our fingernails are all chewed off.”
What a shame.
America’s down-home Southern roots music is the rich river that helped spawn just about every popular genre you can name: country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, folk, pop …
It sadly doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Bluegrass still suffers from a hayseed stereotype.
Say “bluegrass” and most people will think of buck-toothed hillbillies singing in insufferable whiny voices about ol’ yeller or granny getting chopped up in a thresher. Or, even worse, that in-bred kid in the movie classic “Deliverance.”
In Spokane, the situation is even worse. Say ‘bluegrass” and everyone thinks of burning fields and asthma.
But at its best, bluegrass the music is as complicated and precise as any Bach fugue. Cahill plays his instrument with the technical virtuosity of a classical soloist, ripping out riffs and flashy leads with dazzling, flawless skill. And not always under the best of circumstances either.
Spokane will be etched in Cahill’s psyche - and not for the dismal crowd. Hours before taking the stage, he accidently backed his Ford van over his banjo.
Kee-runch!
“I don’t want to even think about it,” says the soft-spoken Cahill, who ended up performing with his Gibson’s headstock clamped together with bailing wire.
The low-key bluegrass association may have to liven things up a notch if it is to ever attract an audience not predominantly populated with gray hair and bald heads.
This was my first concert where a bake sale and quilt raffle were the big intermission excitement.
It was a swell quilt, don’t get me wrong. But maybe the bluegrassers need to come up with something to attract some younger blood. Maybe raffle off a skateboard or two.
Scanning the audience for wrinkle-free faces, I spotted only two teenagers in attendance. One actually was clutching a skateboard.
Unfortunately, the lads were captive audience members rather than budding bluegrass fans. Their father, Jim Faddis, sings in Windfall Plus Two - the Spokane band that opened for Special Consensus.
“I can’t really stand bluegrass,” says Colin Faddis, 14, shuddering. “It’s just that kind of twangy.”
“The thing I don’t like is the ukuleles or the banjos,” adds Colin’s brother, Jackson, 16.
“It’s not my gig.”
A sour testimony.
A sergeant with the Spokane Police Department, Faddis was the surprise hit of the entire show.
The short, stocky man with a graying beard has an absolute killer of a singing voice. He was far better than the Randy Travis look-alike singing lead for Special Consensus.
Get this cop a recording contract.
“My mom and uncles are all from Arkansas,” explains Faddis of his bluegrass affection. “It’s the real country.”
Maybe so. But in Spokane, bluegrass is in dire need of some real ticket-buying fans.
, DataTimes