After 5: Bluegrass, Newgrass and a Drury Professor

There's a revival taking place in our backyard and we may not even know it.

This isn't a revival with a fanning crowd and sweaty preacher. This one features a banjo, mandolin, fiddle, upright bass and an acoustic guitar - and your musicians could be moonlighting as a Drury University professor or a Silver Dollar City office employee.

This is bluegrass music and its offspring, "newgrass."

Bluegrass roots

Guitar is the instrument of choice for Dudley Murphy, Drury graphic arts professor. Murphy specializes in flatpicking, a widely used technique in bluegrass music. Using an acoustic guitar, the musician strikes the string with a flat-edged pick. Individual notes are accented, whereas traditional playing is strummed.

Bluegrass music is the convergence of country, blues, gospel and folk music. Bill Monroe is considered the father of bluegrass, and it's from this Kentucky native that the genre received its name. Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys formed in the late 1930s. Their appearance on the Grand Ole Opry in 1939 brought them acclaim, and band members honed their acoustic instrumentation to eventually include the five instruments that would be known as the base of bluegrass music.

Drury's Murphy began to make his name in bluegrass flatpicking when he won the very first International Flatpicking Guitar Championship in Disney, Okla., in 1971. According to Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, which features Murphy on its May/June cover, two years later, Murphy placed second in the Winfield, Kan., Walnut Valley Festival's 1973 National Flatpicking Guitar Championship. He continues to be a judge, performer and instructor in the annual festival held every September.

Murphy, who is called "one of flatpicking's early masters" by Flatpicking Guitar Magazine's editor, has played with County Line, which opened for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils in 1976 and 1977, and Radio Flyer, which performed together for 18 years.

Since then, Murphy and original band member, David Wilson, play on as Wilson & Murphy. About half of their songs are written by the duo, which will perform next month on Drury's campus with renowned bluegrass guitarist Steve Kaufman (see box).

"Writing music and hearing your ideas come out in a performance and receiving acceptance, that's a joy," Murphy says.

The relationship between musician and audience is part of what keeps Murphy playing.

"The audience catalyzes the ... music into something that's bigger than just the performance," he says. "The audience is an essential catalyst for an inspired performance - (what) everyone comes to hear."

While flatpicking has its slower ballads, the play can become frenetic and require a great deal of skill. As a longtime flatpicker and bluegrass musician, Murphy says that inspired performance becomes exciting. "It's encouraging (and) confirming," he adds.

While flatpicking does have its slower ballads, the playing can become frenetic and requires a great deal of skill.

Bluegrass boost

More recent boosts to bluegrass popularity have included the celebrity of Alison Krauss and the 2001 Coen brothers' movie, "O Brother Where Art Thou?" The film soundtrack features, among others, Krauss and The Soggy Bottom Boys with Dan Tyminski (singing voice for George Clooney, guitarist and vocalist for Krauss' Union Station band). The exposure of the film brought in many new fans, while the soundtrack received acclaim with a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002.

More recent to the bluegrass scene is what's been dubbed newgrass. Casey Grimes, a local singer, describes it as "free form jazz ... sound, without the jazz instruments."

Grimes works in the public relations office of Silver Dollar City by day, but nights and weekends she's lead vocalist for Fly By Night and frontrunner for Casey Grimes and the Atta Boys. Grimes grew up in a musical family, and bluegrass is part of her life.

"If you really want to find bluegrass music, you can always find it because there are always people in the communities that are playing the music," she says. "You just have to search for it a little bit."[[In-content Ad]]