Pickin’ In the Indiana Hills
The tales of the pickers who first began gathering at Dale Whiteside’s farm outside Anna, Illinois some thirty years ago is likely never to be told all in one place. I made one trip there back in the Seventies with a woman I was interested in; she was going to chase a taxidermist. It was mostly a bluegrass crowd, with a strong representation of old-timey musicians but in any case, it was a big festival spread out over several acres. I didn’t go back there but in time, some of the group began coming to Southern Indiana once or twice a year, including Whiteside. My friend Kyle the banjo player had a connection with a psychologist from Kleburn, Texas who had invited the group first to his farm in Southern Indiana and later to the Wynadotte Woods State Park. After several invites, I made a day trip to the psychologist’s farm and picked some, along with my friend Michael P., who was learning to play the bass.
The group gathered again at Wynadotte Woods over the April 13-15 weekend and Kyle invited all his picking buddies to come up. It was, unfortunately, a cold and rainy weekend, so attendance was down. I went up on Saturday afternoon, played a little with the group before the session broke up for dinner. Afterwards, the players again assembled in the activities building, where one room was suitable for playing and a bit of picking proceeded. As I had to return to Louisville early, I only managed to play five or six tunes before leaving.
Usually, a post of this sort is most reportage and of interest to only those directly involved and that’s still mainly true. However, I found that the notion of the importance of niche in-group/out-group was reinforced by this visit. These folks are mostly in their late forties to early sixties (except for Date, who’s 73) and they generally like old, familiar bluegrass and old-time music. This is entirely common and ordinary; it’s a matter of age and choice of music that also is reflected in commercial radio formatting (The Music of Your Life, All Eighties Hits; Classic Rock, etc). Unfortunately for me, I’m a songwriter, and while my songwriting is mostly also within the acoustic genre, the tunes are new or at least unfamiliar to this particular group. Hence, I was an out-group of one, as far as the music was concerned. While I know a modest number of standard Bluegrass tunes, I’m not terribly fond of performing them; they are the required material to play out in the world. Consequently, I was not unhappy to leave.
Of course, I must say here that all these folks are perfectly nice and good company in the normal course of things. Most of them at one time probably considered themselves ‘radicals’ or at least leaning in that direction, as bright young folks often are and eagerly sought out new music. Age slowly closes the doors to newness; it becomes more pronounced and noticeable after fifty or so (or earlier)
The other reason for paying particular attention to this was that on the previous Thursday, John Whitaker, one of the performers on “The Player’s Spot” TV spot I’m involved with was a 29-year-old fellow who was simply wild about new music, particularly Brazilian and African. After the interview that my co-host Brian White and I do with each artist, we talked about what we were listening to, exchanging artists and websites and going on about why we liked what we were currently into. It was quite so college bull-session-ish, although when I was in college, world music was very hard to come by. It certainly contrasted sharply with my experience two days later.
In any case, I’m quite certain that I wish to continue to hang around with much younger players whenever possible; I’ll also likely decline any additional invitations to Anna.