Harry Bickel’s place in Louisville - The Bluegrass Hotel - Dec 14, 2008
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Tony Rice, Curtis Burch, Dan Crary, J.D. Crowe, John Cowan, Sam Bush
May I have some Good Woman’s Love with a major dosage of John Cowan vocals? And could I have that peppered with Sam Bush, Tony Rice and Curtis Burch? And some J. D. Crowe and Dan Crary sprinkled in there too? How about former Bluegrass Alliance and New Grass Revival band members playing all night Sunday?
Rudyard Kipling - Louisville, KY Dec 14, 2008
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Dan Crary, Sam Bush, John Cowan, J. D. Crowe, Tony Rice - Curtis Burch is off-camera
I lived at Bickel’s place during much of the period from 1975 to 1977. I was the hippie soundman and taper. Bickel’s place - for Bluegrass and Newgrass musicians - was the equivalent of the Grateful Dead house in Haight-Ashbury in the '60s. I must have seen Sam, Curtis, Courtney and John perform Good Woman’s Love on stage 30 or 40 times in the mid 70s. John sang a better version this Dec 14. I told him so and he didn’t disagree with me. He said he is 55. I asked J. D. Crowe how you all liked him and treated him at his first Rocky Grass this past July. He said you all were great and he enjoyed performing there. J. D. is a living legend. I think Dan Crary told me he will be performing at next year’s Rocky Grass (perhaps his first time) - another living legend.
peace,
Monte
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Curtis Burch, Dan Crary, and Vince Gill at Gruhn Guitars 10.1.08
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Tony, John, Sam, Curtis, JD, Dan
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Bluegrass musicians promote project
Effort traces music roots in Louisville
By Katya Cengel • kcengel@courier-journal.com • December 14, 2008
J.D. Crowe looked around the Jockey Silks bourbon bar yesterday at the Galt House.
There were a number of men with white hair like his, a number of musicians he knew from the 1960s and '70s, when bluegrass music was strumming strong in Louisville.
“We made funny looking old men, I tell you what,” he said.
Crowe and more than a dozen other musicians – who have played with The Bluegrass Alliance and the New Grass Revival – were there for a news conference to announce The Bluegrass Hotel project, a documentary about the bluegrass movement in Louisville.
Named after the Bluegrass Hotel, the Victorian mansion in the Cherokee Triangle where many of the musicians used to stay, the project will highlight a time and place when musicians from around the country were flocking to Louisville to play bluegrass.
The project will include a two-hour television documentary to be broadcast this time next year, a CD, a DVD and a book.
Former Bluegrass Alliance member Bill Millet is the project producer.
Sam Bush, one of the musicians on hand yesterday, said that he had his own place to stay when he moved to Louisville from Bowling Green at age 18, but he stayed some nights at the Bluegrass Hotel.
He said he and the others came to the news conference “because we all had a great experience when many of us moved to Louisville in the early '70s.”
Back then, he said, the Bluegrass Hotel was a place to go, a place to jam and a place where occasional White Castle-eating contests broke out.
Harry Bickel, owner of the famed Cherokee Triangle mansion, invited all the musicians back for a jam session, jokingly warning those who still owed rent to come in the side door.
As part of the project, there are plans for the musicians to compose new music and stories and to perform at a concert and festival at the Galt House on March 6.
Bluegrass Alliance co-founder Dan Crary said he was amazed “everyone was still vertical” after all these years.
Music, he said, means more to people than entertainment – there are people whose lives it has changed.
Reporter Katya Cengel can be reached at (502) 582-4224.