g g Saturday September 14, 1991 Ml z i ViewPOINTS Bluegrass not i for rednecks | rpg folk, a and gospel guaranteed to get everybody's toes tappin’ Catherine Shapcott SPECIAL TO THE NEWS Say it isn’t so — that bluegrass isn’t redneck music. If it is, I've got some serious soul- searchin’ to do. To think I had a moment’s hesitation about attending the 14th annual Bluegrass Mssie Festival in Coombs, B.C., all because somebody I hardly know said she wouldn’t go near the place. All because of too many rednecks. My neck doesn’t look red, and I craned it plenty during my one day at the three-day celebration just to make sure I wasn’t in a place I shouldn’t have been. It’s possible I’ve suffered a banjo overdose and can’t think straight, but my sense is I was right where I belonged. Leafing through a stack of Bluegrass Canada magazines, consulting business cards about where to buy a mandolin or a fiddle, listening to tapes of bluegrass legends, I can't help wondering: Where has bluegrass been all my life? I’ve heard it before, but you wouldn’t have caught me _ sitting through 10 hours of non- stop acts, followed by a midnight jam session in a crowded campground. Bluegrass jammin’ — otherwise known as tailgate parties and parking lot pickin’ — gives a whole new meaning to that old 60's tune, Feelin’ Groovy. Entertainment that comes as much from the crowd as from the stage is hard to find. Check it out: First thing I spy is a couple of bikers, each of whom is attended by a black leather version of the old-fashioned gangster’s moll. Like hood ornaments on vintage cars,, a biker's motorcycle is incomplete without one; these are the trappings of a tribe that celebrates gender stereotypes, r Out in the paddock, under sun so hot every tune is a boots that keep a guy safe from rattlers. guy, few eyes are on the stage. “Ni ” one Bikers aside, it’s ing to think this is a country crowd. Then a portly guy in a ponytail and hiking boots strides past the Sew Hot booth with its resident Iguana Lady — probably not to check out the spandex bikinis and beach cover-ups for Barbie dolls. Next comes a Mad Max lookalike, bald except for a Mohawk ridge, his sleeveless denim jacket exposing tattoos that aren’t course on a style of music that dates back to the late 1920s. “Bluegrass is a blending of deep rural grassroots folk music taken from oldtime gospel, fiddling, and the Irish and Scottish coal-miners who settled in the Virginias, Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee and the News photo by Catherine Shapcott Hamming it up: Cousin Goober, aka Roy Yeatman, prscnages of the B.C. Bluegrasss me to Association, clowns it up at the Coombs temporary. Over at the Temporary Tattoos booth, Noella is helping out a customer, someone she dubs Amazon Woman. _ “I should have ducked,” the t tells her, the bandages on her face. Festival on Island. Appalachian mountains,” he tells me. Originating from families who said “Grace” at the table, bluegrass has had a long country Bo. — he speeded it up, added more instruments harmonies, made it richer.” Five instruments are staples of a bluegrass band: banjo, mandolin, guitar, fiddle and bass. Yeatman tells me bluegrass festivals — of which the Coombs show is the longest running in B.C. and Western Canada — bill themselves as family entertainment. I can’t resist if this includes families with red necks. “Redneck boys and hillbillies” are part of the reputation that follows the music, Yeatman admits, but the stereotyped image is changing thanks to standards which exclude beer tents and gardens, brewery advertising, and require stage musicians to perform sober. Yeatman also contributes his own brand of entertainment, playing a variety of “surprise characters” who act as Clowns, fools and assorted comic relievers. Back at his home in Courtenay, Yeatman finds it hard to wind down from a three-day festival weekend in spite of oa fatigue. He entertains mygicians who haven't yet gone home, puts another tune by the Stanley Brothers or Mac Wiseman on the tapedeck, and eagerly awaits whatever’s next on the bluegrass circuit. “There’s not a bad festival in B.C.,” says the affable emcee. “They’re like French wines. Some are particularly good, depending on the year.” Yeatman can’t direct bluegrass musicians in the Kootenays, but that’s only because he hasn’t met them. A warm welcome to the bluegrass family fold awaits. Editor’s note: Catherine y for the Castl tradition of being d by families. Its bittersweet songs of life and death, broken-hearted lyrics about romance and Noella, who has applied y to derri is unfazed. Amazon Woman, who at six feet and change makes a striking smpeeenes in her white hot all tell a story, Yeatman This ‘sounds like country music, except for the distinctive bluegrass sound which — at its most rh a hi, —is black un ‘ies, ie looking for ith and “burner,” there's ac of i The mainstays are ae folk distinguished by _—ittheir Winnebagos and summer tela, the fancy jion of which appears at country hoedowns: square dancing skirts (without the crinoline), string ties, cowboy hats and g wi swords to blow away omy mother.” Noella has just the thing, a tough little decal that is as far away from flowers = as bluegrass is from heey eal. en they newly adorned dominatrix sashays back to her stirring listeners from foot- stomping to ecstasy. I ask Yeatman, president of the B.C. Bh A what the on Slogan Valley life since January, has moved to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island will no longer write for the paper. “I am grateful for the opportunity to write about my life adventures, as they interwove with the issues, lifestyles and people I met in the valley,” she said. “It has been a deeply enriching and difference is. “Country fans will hate me for saying this,” he says, “but country has a sort of dragged out twang. Bill Munroe (the grand-dadd atied ef bluegrass music) add: — to the writing My thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed, tomy , and to the editor and blisher of the . Shapcott can be contacted c/o General-Delivery, Courtenay, B.C, VON-6N2. 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