CDs capture Monroe's spirit; Earle, Skaggs offer different tributes
LARRY NAGER
* 02/16/99
The Cincinnati Enquirer
(Copyright 1999)
* The influence of Kentuckian Bill Monroe and the bluegrass music he
created has only grown since his death in 1996, as two new CDs
eloquently attest.
"I wish I was as sure about anything as Bill Monroe was about
* everything," Steve Earle writes in his notes to The Mountain, out
today.
Ricky Skaggs got the title for Ancient Tones from a Monroe parable
* related by Peter Rowan, a mid-'60s alumnus of Mr. Monroe's Bluegrass
* Boys. The bluegrass patriarch once hummed a tune, then told the
young musician, "Did you hear that? Those are the ancient tones."
Both new CDs draw from the deep well of Mr. Monroe's 60-plus years
of music. But the real proof of the musical pioneer's enduring
power is how different they sound.
Playing with the rules
Mr. Earle is the best songwriter to
emerge from Nashville's youth boom of the mid-'80s, and he focuses
on Mr. Monroe the composer. Mr. Earle wrote 14 songs for The
* Mountain, reworking classic bluegrass themes.
There's nostalgia in "Texas Eagle," peppered by a disdain for
modern times: "Nowadays they don't make no trains, just the piggyback
freighters and them Amtrak things."
"Yours Forever Blue" is a regretful lover's lament; "Carrie Brown"
is a jaunty tune about jealousy and murder. "Graveyard Shift"
harkens to the bluesy, proto-rock 'n' roll Mr. Monroe did in the late
'40s. "Leroy's Dustbowl Blues" pays tribute to another hero of Mr.
Earle's, in a Depression-era song reminiscent of Bob Dylan's
"Tombstone Blues."
Much credit for the album's success goes to the Del McCoury Band.
Mike Bub's slapped bass, Robbie McCoury's Scruggs-style banjo and
Ronnie McCoury's Monrovian mandolin bring these songs bristling to
life.
The raw-boned Ozark tenor of guest Iris DeMent powers "I'm Still
in Love With You." The finale, "Pilgrim," brings together a mob of
Monroe fans, including Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, John Hartford,
* Peter Rowan, Sam Bush and first-generation bluegrass fiddler Benny
Martin.
Though this is a tribute, Mr. Earle is never so reverential that
he won't mess with the rules. He puts a new spin on the timeless
themes, as he once did in his gunfighter ballad "Devil's Right Hand"
or his bootlegger anthem "Copperhead Road."
But in recent years, struggling with addictions and recoveries, he
seemed to have lost that knack.
On The Mountain, Mr. Earle is back in peak form.
More orthodox approach
* Ricky Skaggs, raised on bluegrass in Eastern Kentucky, first
* guested with the Bluegrass Boys at 5. He grew up to fit the mold Mr.
Monroe forged - the mandolin-picking, tenor-singing bandleader. Not
surprisingly, his Ancient Tones takes a more orthodox, less gritty
approach to Mr. Monroe's music.
* Mr. Earle aimed for the mythic heart of bluegrass. The focus here
is on the finer details, singing, picking and arranging.
Mr. Skaggs' smoother version of Mr. Monroe's mandolin style opens
the 11-song disc with "Walls of Time," the eeriest song Mr. Monroe
ever wrote. "I hear a voice out in the darkness. It moans and
whispers through the pines. I know it must be her that's calling.
I hear her through the walls of time."
Mr. Monroe was also the source of "It's Mighty Dark to Travel," "I
Believed in You Darlin" and the instrumental "Boston Boy." Mr.
Skaggs' other idols, Ralph and Carter Stanley, who recorded here for
King, are represented in three songs. Mr. Skaggs wrote the
instrumental "Connemara" (coincidentally, The Mountain features
another instrumental, "Connemara Breakdown"). Banjo player Jim Mills
contributed "Coal Minin' Man."
* It's all state-of-the-art bluegrass - great, sou{lful songs
interpreted with jaw-dropping skill.
* But Mr. Monroe's music was never this neat. The Bluegrass Boys
were rough-edged, even a bit sloppy.
For many Monroe fans, myself included, that rawness was at the
* heart of his music's power. Mr. Earle, coming to bluegrass as an
outsider, immediately recognized that. But it's a virtue that Mr.
* Skaggs, having played and refined bluegrass for his entire life, has
lost sight of.
