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I love Del McCoury. I honestly think his band is the best live music there is these days.
Vassar Clements joins the band on fiddle. This performance was taken from a Bill Monroe tribute show, and I'll spare you another go-round of my armchair Bill Monroe.
Vassar's role in John Hartford's Aereo-Plain band can't be overestimated. He really was the most forward-looking musician in that ensemble, but in some ways also the most closely related to bluegrass tradition. His improvising was less in your face than Benny Martin's, but he was a true extrovert. Bluegrass fiddle guys have to be. They lead the charge, so it's no place to be Bill Evans.
But Vassar understood the Bill Evans notion of how to improvise with the rhythm section than over top of it all while remaining true to the artistic pulse of bluegrass music. He participated in three of the most important bluegrass records of a generation: Aereo Plain, Old and In The Way, and The Nitty Gritty Dirtband's vastly influential Will The Circle be Unbroken?
Old and In the Way was a supergroup that featured Vassar, Peter Rowan, Grisman, and Jerry Garcia. They put out a self-titled album that helped establish a song stash for the upcoming generation of bluegrassers (including the guys who taught me the stuff). Those three albums (plus certain stuff by the New Grass Revival and Norman Blake) were the bylaws of the new generation. For fans of Chris Thiele, each of these is like the How To Grow A Woman From The Ground Up of a generation.
Del McCoury's band is the perfect traditional bluegrass outfit. Del is one of the most incredible singers, and he and his son Ronnie (the mandolin player)are one of the great harmony teams ever, right up with Jimmy Martin and Bill Monroe (for my money).
This clip is from a Bill Monroe tribute concert (John Hartford did a great "Little Cabin Home On The Hill"). Vassar's lyricism is off the charts, the band powers this song like a train, and the McCoury's hit the high lonesome hard.
My kinda muisc.
