This is kind of a rant and a discussion. I’ve been getting more into bluegrass recently and keep getting demotivated by how niche it is. I’ve loved bluegrass since I was a teen, but now that I’m actively trying to play it, it’s very demoralizing.
Granted I live in a more urban area, but it’s very hard to find jams, and even just other players, around unless I drive at least an hour.
It also feels like there aren’t many “masters” to study. For guitar it’s basically Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, and Clarence White.
Then to top it off, even the “big” acts still aren’t well known so your chance of jamming to some Billy Strings or Molly Tuttle is next to nil. Bluegrass players only want the standards, non bluegrass players won’t even know the artist at all.
I do hope this newer generation makes the genre a little less rigid, but even then, that’ll be 10-20 years down the line. Anyway, rant over. Figured it was worth posting just for some activity here.
My wife is the bassist for High Lonesome, apparently there’s a bluegrass Renaissance happening up in North Colorado. I don’t know much about the business myself, but from the way she talks about it, there’s some pretty exciting stuff happening with it up there.
Yeah there’s definitely some areas it’s thriving, but since I’m not professional and it’s just a hobby, moving just for that reason seems a bit much.
I’ve since gotten into oldtime which is even more niche. How are you looking for players? There are a bunch of jams for bluegrass in my region. I do gree that bluegrass can be a bit rigid. Oldtime players find it kind of funny that bluegrass only musicians are such sticklers for a tradition that really only exists post wwii. I play fiddle, so I really dont have a problem of not having many masters to study so much as a problem of playing the damn instrument right.
I’ve found some on social media that are a bit far, but I plan to go once I’m working less overtime. Otherwise, just asking any musician I know or meet if they know anyone haha.
I’m just in a bluegrass desert for some reason. Go an hour or more in any direction and there is some community going.
That’s the way to do it. You may have to start your own out of a group of non bluegrass musicians.
Standards are a blessing and a curse. It can get boring after a while playing ‘old home place’ for the 100th time. The flip side is standards allow a group of bluegrassers to jam together even if they’ve never played together before.
One thing you can do is learn tunes that use the same old chords, but are more obscure. Mostly people will be fine with that, and at least the words are different.
Nice thing about a more advanced jam is people will pull out tunes with a bunch of chords like the Hobo Song. If you can, try to recruit people that want to play jam busters and have a jam of your own where you play that stuff. Might find you’ve started a band that way!
