The Murphy Method Blog

Folks, as you can tell from reading our blog for the last week or two, Murphy and I went over to Nashville last week for the big International Bluegrass convention. We had a great time at the Trade Show and FanFest (more about that later!), but I’ve been thinking about the good trip home I had, and thought I’d talk about that.

Murphy and I were in Nashville on different schedules. I was in Nashville for the first part of the week, and drove home to Winchester on Friday afternoon and evening. Now, I usually don’t drive a lot in the dark (especially for much of a 10-hour trip), but in this case it was no problem. I had a lot of CDs in the car, and listened to a bunch of them. Here’s a selection:

1. Nancy Pate, “Georgia in the Middle of June” — Murphy’s sister Nancy recorded this CD a few years ago with Murphy playing mandolin, Casey playing bass and banjo and our brother-in-law Mike Johnson playing fiddle. The disc features mostly Nancy’s original music, with a few numbers by Louisa Branscomb, Nancy’s bandmate at the time. The music is what you might call “gentle bluegrass,” but with a great deal of originality and feeling. Possibly the most evocative numbers are Nancy’s “Pray for Rain” and “A Slower Road,” along with Louisa’s “For Every Day that You Die Young.” Nancy also reprised her old composition “Two of a Kind,” as well as giving her own take on Murphy’s “M&M Blues” (with Casey playing am excellent Scruggs-style break). Very enjoyable listening.

2. Woods and Bridges, “On the Right Track” — Our old Florida friends Bill Baker and John and Joanne Rose and their band released this CD about a year ago. It covers a good selection of standard bluegrass, along with quite a bit of bluegrass gospel. I especially like Bill’s mandolin work on “Working on a Building” and “The Old Crossroad,” because he played bass with us for three years in the 1980s and I didn’t even know he played mandolin at all! John Rose plays solid guitar and knows more Carter Stanley songs than anyone I know— and is the subject of a story we tell on stage, about how he became a bluegrass fanatic! This CD is pleasant and entertaining.

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Here is a video someone put on YouTube. It has some scenes of performances and jamming from last week’s IBMA convention. About 2:35 you’ll see Chris Henry in a mandolin jam, picking “The Gold Rush.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQnPYBRLLiw

After an extremely slow afternoon tending our booth at the IBMA tradeshow, I popped down the street to the Hilton hotel to interview the band G2, on whom I’m writing a magazine article. I’m old fashioned and still use a cassette recorder to tape interviews. To my embarassment I had brought the recorder, a mic, and extra batteries…but no tapes! Luckily Erik, the mandolin player, had an iPod with a little recorder to capture our conversation. Wshew!

After that I headed down to lower Broad to Roberts Western Wear to catch the Bloggrass boys show. The single, if you can call it that, from the new CD is a hilarious song called “Democrat Ain’t a Dirty Word No More.” They had some great guests, including the amazing singer Jonell Mosser. And I had the unique experience of purchasing their CD from Suzy Bogguss, who sings on it.

L-R: Josh McMurry, (hidden Mike Witcher), Travis Stinson, Paul Kramer, Chris Jones, Jon Weisberger, Aaron Till.

My next stops were at after-hours showcases where I caught a wide variety of bands including:

Red Wine, from Italy.

Goldheart, a wonderful trio of sisters from Virginia. I first heard them two years ago and since then they have developed their musicianship by leaps and bounds. The 16-year-old sister, Jocelyn, writes some wonderful songs and picks the fire out of the guitar. 18-year-old Analise holds her own on the mandolin, while 13-year-old Shelby tears it up on the fiddle. Their trio is stunning.

I caught my brother Chris playing with former Two-Stringer and Winfield Guitar Champion Tyler Grant.

The above band tours Japan every year. Shin Akimoto, Andy Ball, Sammy Shelor, Maro Katawba (I apologize if I’ve misspelled names there…). When I stuck my head in the door they were picking a triple-mandolin version of “Golden Slippers.”

And once again to end up the night, G2. There were very few people in that 1:30 am showcase, so we clapped twice as loud to make up for it. L-R: Tobias Strömberg, Christoffer Olsson, Jimmy Sunnebrandt, Erik Igelström, Jens Koch.

Red and Chris played at the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival May 2nd through 4th in Florida. Here is Red’s account of the trip.

Went down to St. Augustine and had fun picking at the GambleFest. The folks liked it, and the band liked it too. Christopher and I traded off guitar and mandolin; we had expert picker Mike Johnson on guitar, Monroe veteran John Hedgecoth on banjo, and Barbara Johnson on bass.

We had good mandolin workshops on Saturday and Sunday, with plenty of folks attending and asking good questions.

The weather was warm and dry, and the music was hot. Thanks for our friends Michael and Andrea for the excellent picking party and supper at their house on Saturday night, and to the festival hospitality room for meals all weekend and lifesaving coffee on Sunday morning!

Here we are on stage, playing my tune ‘Helton Creek’:

Permalink for above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4OsCnjzBpg

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