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ATTRACTIONS
Bluegrass grows in
nation’s capital
Local group, the
Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band, performs Wednesday at Kennedy Center
BY ROGER MOON roger@tmnews.com
October 9, 2010
The
joke’s on Kent Todd.
He
knows that now, but he didn’t know it as a teenager growing up and playing his
fiddle in Lawrence County.
“I
used to have this list of places I wanted to play, when I was a kid, and I put
the Kennedy Center on there just as a joke,” Todd said. “Now, it looks like I’m
going to play there.”
Todd,
from Heltonville, is a member of the Not Too Bad
Bluegrass Band, and will join fellow band members Brady Stogdill
also from Heltonville, Greg Norman of Bedford, Brian Lappin of Bloomington and Doug Harden of Nashville in
playing at the Kennedy Center Wednesday evening.
The
band, locally popular for many years, hadn’t really expected its music would
ever take the group to the nation’s capital. But all of that changed when Jon
Kay, folklorist and director of Traditional Arts Indiana, placed the band in
the running for a chance to perform at the American Folklife
Center at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. It’s
part of the center’s 2010 Homegrown Concert Series. The Library of Congress
performance will take place earlier in the day on Wednesday.
Anticipation
high
“We
found out in March we had been accepted,” Harden said.
“Jon
felt like we would be a good representation of the bluegrass heritage that
Indiana has,” he said.
Anticipation
runs high as band members begin making their way to Washington.
“The
honor of being able to go and play in your nation’s capital is obviously
something that not too many bands get to do,” Harden said.
“It’s
hard to wrap words around it,” Todd said. “We were pretty surprised when we got
the word we were going to play there. ... To get to represent bluegrass and the
state of Indiana is a pretty big deal.”
Merging
paths
Stogdill shared similar thoughts. “We feel like we’re kind of
honored that they chose us to represent the state of Indiana and represent
music and especially bluegrass music,”
Lappin and Harden, as founding members of the band in 1987, lend
their banjo and mandolin picking to Norman’s bass playing, Todd’s fiddling and Stogdill’s guitar talents. (Other original members of the
band were Jeff White, Rick Ferguson and Lisa Germano.)
Each
band member traces a different path into bluegrass, through families, friends
and festivals.
Todd
is named after Norman, whose middle name is Kent. When Todd was 16, Norman took
him to the Norman Conservation Club, where bluegrass was played regularly.
That’s where Todd met Stogdill, the son of the late
Dean Stogdill, a banjo player.
It
was through Norman that the two younger men became involved with the band, a
connection that’s turned out to be not so bad over the years.
“They
started coming around,” Lappin said in a Times-Mail
interview a few years ago, “and you could tell right away, there was something
really good happening.”
Stogdill said, “I’ve been playing with them for about 15 years now.
I’m 30. I actually started playing when I was 15. Greg had to drive me to a
couple of the gigs before I had my driver’s license.”
The
band melds inspired instrumentals and vocal harmonies. At performances, the
band is prepared to take audience requests, following in the tradition of
Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe.
At
the Hilly
The
group’s new CD, “Head Full of Memories,” pays tribute to classic bluegrass
songs and includes original music invoking love, whiskey and memories of home.
The Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band’s first CD was called “Butcher Boy.” The groups has played at clubs, corporate functions, festivals
and the Mitchell Opera House.
“We
are not doing a weekly or monthly happy hour like we used to,” Harden said. “We
decided just to do specialty concerts. We’re still doing everything from
weddings to the Hilly Hundred.”
He
said the band is doing a four-hour gig at this weekend’s Hilly Hundred and will
draw from that performance in determining what sets they will play on
Wednesday.
Norman
said that, as part of Wednesday’s early performance, the band will do an
interview.
“Our
(newest) CD and our interview will be archived at the Library of Congress,” he
said.
Some
of the band’s members are combining the performances with some vacation time
and sightseeing and are making the trip in their cars.
“When
you play an upright bass, it’s hard to fly with it,” Norman said, suggesting he
perhaps should have taken up playing the harmonica.
Times-Mail Staff Writer Roger Moon welcomes comments at
812-277-7253 or via e-mail at roger@tmnews.com.
The Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band will perform at the Library of Congress in its
American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C., Oct.
13. (Courtesy photo / INDIANA UNIVERSITY)
Copyright: TMNews.com 2010
Indiana
Daily Student - IDSnews.com
Bloomington’s Finest Bluegrass is ‘Homegrown’
By Corinne Lambert | IDS | September 30, 2010
Though the
Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band claims they are not out for notoriety, notoriety has
certainly found them.
As Indiana’s prime folk artist,
the band has been selected to perform for two concerts as part of the 2010
Homegrown Concert Series put on by the American Folklife
Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
The first concert will take place
at noon Oct. 13 at the Coolidge Auditorium in the American Folklife
Center. Another concert will be at 6 p.m. the same day at the Kennedy Center
Millennium Stage.
Doug Harden, a mandolin player,
wasted no time diving into stories of past band mates and their graduation to
“bigger and better” bluegrass endeavors.
“Bluegrass is all about everyday
folks, even though we don’t get a lot of radio play,” said banjo player Brian Lappin.
Early members of the Not Too Bad
Bluegrass Band have gone on to play with bluegrass singer-songwriter Alison
Krauss and Bloomington native John Mellencamp.
“We have all had our own
opportunities to tour and move up, but that has never been the main focus for
our band,” Harden said. “We are just a group of good pickers who like the
slower pace of making music.”
The band started with weekly jam
sessions, which Harden said, “really brought the neighborhood together.”
But the band’s level of talent
soon catapulted them to perform at the Bluebird Nightclub in Bloomington.
“The Bluebird is where we got our
start. From there we played other clubs and bars in the area, but most of them
have closed down since then,” Harden said. “Our band’s inside joke is that we
have closed down more bars than Prohibition.”
Playing together for more than 20
years, the band attributes their musical start to their families. However, that
does not mean every member was always an avid bluegrass fan.
Guitarist Brady Stogdill claims his early influences were more of the
Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails variety.
“I wanted to learn how to play by
ear, and my father agreed to teach me,” Stogdill
said. “My focus was learning how to play rock songs, but after my first
bluegrass jam session, I was hooked.”
The camaraderie of these seasoned
artists was unmistakable. But according to Stogdill,
that is exactly what bluegrass is all about.
“It is not uncommon to meet other
players at a festival and just sit down to jam with them, famous or not,” Stogdill said.
Stogdill said for
most of these artists, bluegrass is considered a family affair, and all of the
artists keep in touch with their roots.
“It isn’t age- or income-
specific either and really is growing to touch a wider range of people,” Harden
said.
Copyright © 2011 Indiana
Daily Student
Bluegrass Boys
The Not-Too-Bad Bluegrass Band make fun a
priority
By Roger Moon, Hoosier Times
|
Staff
Photo by Stefanie Davison |
Maybe it's a stretch to call them men of constant joy. But the five
members of south central Indiana's Not-Too-Bad Bluegrass Band are finding that their periodic
stage performances are bringing them plenty of pleasure.
Last
year's hit movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? has
heightened awareness of bluegrass music by reviving such traditional pieces as
"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow," "Keep on the Sunny Side,"
"I'll Fly Away" and "Angel Band."
But
an interest in the music genre is, in itself, a constant in the lives of the 'bluegrassers' in the NTBBB.
Four
of the five band members — Bedford's Greg Norman, Kent Todd and Brady Stogdill and Nashville's Doug Harden — were brought up in
the bluegrass tradition.
"I
wasn't," Brian Lappin, the fifth and a founding
member of the band, said. "I'm from Buffalo, N.Y., and the musical
instrument was the radio, and it certainly wasn't bluegrass on that."
Lappin, broker/owner of a Bloomington real estate
company, developed his interest in acoustic guitar and banjo in the early '60s,
he said, "when commercial folk music was popular." At folk festivals,
the headliners were such artists as Peter, Paul & Mary, the Kingston Trio
and Bob Dylan.
But
Lappin was drawn to the bluegrass sound after
attending a Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in the mid 1960s, where he
was exposed to authentic bluegrass. "I could tell that these bluegrassers … were just way deeper and much more
intense." He purchased bluegrass recordings while still in New York. He
later went to Tennessee, and in the 1970s, he played music with bluegrass
greats Earl Taylor and Jimmy Martin.
Lappin observed that musicians playing bluegrass
around Nashville also were doing such day jobs as cleaning carpets. "I didn't
think I wanted to do that, so I left," he said, "I came back to
Bloomington."
He
had been in Bloomington originally because he had met performer Bob Lucas and
the two of them were in a band together, traveling throughout the Midwest.
Lucas joined Lappin and Harden as members of the Not-Too-Bad Bluegrass Band when it
formed in 1987. Others from the original line-up were Jeff White, Rick Ferguson
and Lisa Germano.
Members
of the band have come and gone over the years, with some of them going on to write
for or perform with such big-name acts as Vince Gill, John Prine,
Allison Krauss and John Mellencamp. David Steele,
formerly of Bedford, is another who played for a while with the NTBBB before
going to Nashville.
Various
connections have drawn the band members together over the years. The current
line-up, with its three Lawrence County musicians on the stage with Lappin and Harden, came about because the performers grew
up in a network of families that played music.
So
intertwined are their lives that the 23-year-old Todd said, "Actually, I'm
named after Greg. His middle name is Kent. He and my dad are best
friends."
Todd
said, "I was classically trained … I played some country with my dad. He
plays guitar and sings."
When
Todd, now the fiddle player for the NTBBB, was about 16, Norman took him to the Norman Conservation Club,
where bluegrass was played regularly.
"Greg
got me started in the whole bluegrass thing," Todd said. He ended up
playing in a number of bluegrass circles, including touring with a group out of
Louisville for about a year and a half.
Todd
and Stogdill, 21, also met at the Norman Conservation
Club. Stogdill is the son of the late Dean Stogdill. '"My dad was a real good banjo player,"
Stogdill said.
"I've
known Greg Norman ever since I first started playing guitar," Stogdill said. "That was about 11 years ago, when Dean
taught Brady some chords on the guitar. The younger Stogdill
established some credentials in bluegrass by touring for a while with young musicians
from around the country as part of the Bluegrass Youth All-Stars and performing
for the International Bluegrass Music Association.
It
was through Norman that Todd and Stogdill came to be
involved with the NTBBB.
"They
started coming around," Lappin said, "and
you could tell right away there was something really good happening. It's only
gotten better. They're still young guys, but they're really talented."
Lappin said the band performs an average of two to
three times a month at such venues as clubs, corporate functions and Oliver
Winery. The NTBBB has an
annual engagement at the Mitchell Opera House.
Todd
said he particularly likes the venues that are family oriented. Sometimes the
setting lends itself to the audience singing along. Sometimes audience members
request songs, and the band is prepared to perform songs in the tradition of Flatt and Scruggs and Bill Monroe.
Todd
said "Man of Constant Sorrow" is particularly popular now. "It's
an old tune," he said. "The Stanley Brothers did it several years
ago. It's always been around, but since this movie (O Brother, Where Art
Thou?), it's now a bluegrass super hit."
As
original band members, Lappin and Harden have worked
to sustain the group. But the nature of the performing business ensures there
are frustrations.
"To
keep the band alive," Lappin said, "you
need to be playing venues, environments that are positive for the band members
… It's frustrating that you can go from playing a wonderful venue where it
sounds good, you're appreciated, maybe the pay was good, as well. … Then you
have another gig where it doesn't sound as good. People's energy level may not
be up. There may not be much audience support. … By comparison, you walk away
feeling differently."
Among
the group's latest projects is the release of the group's first CD, which came
out in September and features original compositions by Lappin,
Todd and Stogdill. It also includes the band's
rendition of some bluegrass classics, including the Lester Flatt
and Earl Scruggs piece "I'll Go Stepping Too" and Gillian Welch's
"Red Clay Halo."