[dcab-l] Re: venues and then some

Thanks for the insight, Tom!

On Tuesday, July 23, 2013 2:13:54 PM UTC-4, Tom Gray wrote:

The last DCAB digest brought back lots of happy memories and pointed to a good future for OKOM (Our Kind Of Music).  I've been blessed to have been a part of much of DC area bluegrass from the 1960s thru the 2010s.  True, today's house concerts are a much more pleasant experience than the barrooms of the mid-twentieth century.  I feel old to talk that way.  But when I was young, most musical gigs were weekly.  the same band played the same nights of the week every week.  That went a long way to develop your musical chops and repertoire.

 

At The Red Fox Inn in Bethesda, the Seldom Scene had one night per week, the Country Gentlemen had one night, Emmylou Harris had a night.  Others with nights there included Cliff Waldron, The Grass Menagerie, None of the above, John Lyon and Gross National Product, and Stars and Bars.  Walt would book one-nighters for well-known visiting groups like Ralph Stanley, Del McCoury, the Osborne Brothers, even the Lewis Family.  When the gospel-singing Lewises played there, none of them ventured to walk back to the bar.  Walt opined that they don't know how to behave in a bar.

 

For a while, in the 50s and 60s, there were two communities of bluegrass players and fans.  I was a part of the one centered in the western city and suburbs, where many of us were born and bred in the city and discovered bluegrass on our own.  That group included Duffey, Kuykendall, and Emerson.  We played clubs in Virginia and Georgetown.  On the eastern side, there was a group that included many transplanted southerners who grew up with the music.  That group included the Stoneman Family, Buzz Busby, and Bill Harrell.  They played the big nightclubs downtown like the Famous, the Ozarks, even the Casino Royal, at times.  For a time around 1970, Don Reno was a part of that community, when he partnered with Harrell.  The two communities merged long ago, and we are all one big happy family, right?

 

When I joined the Country Gentlemen in 1960, we played four nights a week at The Crossroads Restaurant at Baileys Crossroads VA.  Our pay, which we split evenly, ways was $36.00 which was supplemented by whatever tips people would throw in the "pitch pot".  We went from there to two nights a week at The Shamrock on M Street in Georgetown DC.  To that, we added some other joints on other nights of the week.  We had 6 out of 7 nights of the week booked in local clubs around 1963.  None of those places charged a cover charge.  Of course we would have to beg off of some Friday and Saturday gigs for some concert appearances.

 

TG

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