Cecil Sharpe, the English musicologist who collected and recorded the music of Appalachia in the 1920s, predicted that the unvarnished old-time style would be a thing of the past a generation later. But this weekend's Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention in Berkeley CA proved again that he was wrong.
While the style has given birth to a variety of derivative styles—from string bands to bluegrass to folk music to mainstream country—the original old-timey sound remains a vibrant form with plenty of practitioners and even innovators keeping the tradition alive.
The convention demonstrated that in a series of performances and dances at The Freight & Salvage and other Berkeley venues featuring artists such as Sheila Kay Adams, The Brandy Snifters, The Stairwell Sisters, Rayna Gellert and Foghorn Stringband. But the panel discussion with Adams, Gellert and Lyle Lofgren provided the best context for why old-time music remains relevant today. Read more »
Among the highlights of the upcoming Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention are the instrumental workshops led by the featured festival performers. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. The instructors include Rayna Gellert (fiddle), Paul Brown (banjo), Evo Bluestein (autoharp) and more. Read more »
The Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention has roots that go back to 1968, but the modern edition of the event has been running each September in the East Bay university town since 2004. The event's mix of concerts with national artists, square dances, band contest, panel discussion and more makes it an important event for old-timey, string band music, as distinct from related music styles such as bluegrass.
The 2008 convention, running September 11-14 at venues around Berkeley, features 88-year-old fiddle master Benton Flippen, ballad singer and storyteller Sheila Kay Adams, Uncle Earl fiddle star Rayna Gellert, local old-timey favorites The Stairwell Sisters, a duo comprised of members from Foghorn String Band, multi-instrumentalist Evo Bluestein and more. Concerts run Thursday and Friday evening at Berkeley folk hangout Freight & Salvage. Read more »
Even though the breakout old-time band Uncle Earl was not in the MerleFest lineup, fiddler Rayna Gellert, who lives in nearby Asheville, came to hang out and jam with her many friends who were performing. (MerleFest was one of the few major roots festivals Uncle Earl is not playing this season. I've already seen them at Wintergrass and Old Settler's, and will catch them later this summer at Grey Fox and Rocky Grass.) I had a chance to sit down with Rayna for a short chat.
"Hey, I'm on vacation," she said. "It is really fun just to attend and hang out and see so many friends."
The band did one set here last year as a last-minute fill in, but has not yet been slotted as a featured band, which seems to me to be an oversight on the part of the MerleFest bookers, considering that the "gearls" are getting headline billing at so many other festivals. I wondered whether having a local connection can actually be a disadvantage.
Gellert said she didn't think so, and anyway that Uncle Earl is usually thought of as a Colorado band, despite several members living in North Carolina and Tennessee. "We're from all over, but we think of Lyons (Colo.) as our spiritual home," she said.
I had seen the band a week earlier at the Old Settler's Music Festival in Austin, where they played three sets as an ensemble, while member Abigail Washburn also performed twice in a duo and they reconnected with former member Sharon Gilchrist, who sat in with Uncle Earl as well as playing in Peter Rowan's several configurations.
"Festivals have been really huge for us. At this point, it seems like that is mainly what we do. We like to work hard when we do a festival," Gellert said.
