Del McCoury remains the most direct link between bluegrass architect Bill Monroe and the modern jamband scene. As a guitarist and singer in Monroe’s band, McCoury literally helped define the genre in the ‘50s, and the 72-year-old icon has continued to collaborate with the likes of Phish, String Cheese Incident and many others since the ‘90s. As roots-oriented music returns to prominence in the mainstream, he remain current, too: this May McCoury will host a mix of bluegrass, jam and nu-folk acts at his DelFest in Maryland and this June McCoury will be one of the only performers who performed at the first annual Bonnaroo to return for the festival’s 10-year celebration. Del McCoury Band also recently released a collaborative album with another national treasure, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the progressive American Legacies. Shortly after performing with the likes of Preservation Hall and Jim James at Austin’s SXSW music conference, McCoury discussed his new studio album, DelFest’s lineup and his first impressions of the original Bonnaroo.
Let’s start by talking about your new album with Preservation Hall Jazz Band. How did that collaboration start and eventually result in American Legacies ?
I went down and did three songs with them for a benefit album. That was by myself. While we were doing that we started talking about what it would look like to get the two bands together. The CD came out the 12th of April but we played some dates before in Austin [including one with Widespread Panic]. We did our show there with our new songs and it really turned out good. Of course, we’ve been doing that before the record ever was ever out so we’re kind of practiced up on this stuff already.
But the collaborations on the album are actually the first time you played some of these songs, right? Since you recorded American Legacies before you toured, right?
That’s right. Yeah actually, when we got to the studio—for the most part—I think there might have been a couple that we’d done before, but for the most part we just ran through them in the studio there and recorded them—I got to kind of brush up on the lyrics. But both bands are very excited about it. It’s something new for both of us, you know? They go well together because there’s a lot of improvising and jazz in both our music. It just kind of seems to fit.
The bluegrass world isn’t traditionally known for its brass sections. What is it like singing in front of a large horn section on the album and on tour?
I like to sing hard because you can put more in it if you sing that way—if you really put out, you know? Those horns, they’ll make you put out. You put out or you won’t be heard. It’s an experiment. And you know, we’ve told our agents that are going to book us on these things that we’re committed to doing this. It’s just not something that we’re just going to do for a week or two and that’s it. We’re committed for it to run its course.
Speaking of all your collaborations and festivals in general, you are hosting your fourth annual DelFest festival this May. From your perspective, what’s it been like to curate that? Do you have a say in some of the bands that play? Is there anyone particular this year that you really wanted to book? This year’s lineup It is a nice mixture of some of the more traditional bluegrass bands and some of the jambands that you’ve rubbed shoulders with in the last few years.
I kind of leave it up to my boys—at my age I just don’t pay that much attention to other bands. But the boys do. My sons and the rest of the band have a little input, and I have some input myself. Then Roy Carter who runs High Sierra out there in Northern California books a lot of the bands. He’s been running High Sierra for over 20 years now, and we’ve been out there. In other words, I played for him, and we partnered on this festival here, and he does the actual bookings. He’ll call and say look, “Do you think we should get so and so and so or try to?” Everybody has a little bit of input, but most of the people that we have on the show we have contact with. In other words, we’ve worked with them before. I probably should do more than I do but we try to do a good mix of bluegrass and other music. I want to get all my bluegrass buddies out there eventually, and we have had a lot of them come so far. This year we got Jesse McReynolds. He just put out an album of Grateful Dead songs. He went out and played on an album with The Doors, too—he’s got that kind of playing that kind of transcends bluegrass. It’s really different. He’s got his own style of playing the mandolin. I mean it’s completely different than the Bill Monroe version of mandolin playing.
This year we’ve got The Infamous Stringdusters, who are a [young] bluegrass band, Punch Brothers, who are a progressive bluegrass band, and Emmitt-Nershi Band, who are sort of bluegrass and a jamband. And we’ve got Sierra Hull, who’s this new girl—she’s really good, and she’s got her own record out. The Davisson Brothers will be there—they have their own style. They’re just really good. Trampled by Turtles will be there—you know those guys?
Yeah they’re kind of like a rock band with a little roots orientated vibe to them.
They amaze me, those guys. Boy they fly when they start out, and they’re sitting down! It looks like they’re playing so fast that they almost have to be standing to do that. But they’re not. They’re sitting down—I And this year we’ve got Chris Robinson. I saw him at that big blues club in New Orleans.
The House of Blues?
The House of Blues, yeah! I went there to see him, and I sat by this actor, oh God what’s his name, now? We were sitting there together watching the Black Crowes [laughter]. Chris wants to come do the festival acoustic and Warren Haynes is coming. We’ve also got Old Crow Medicine Show—those guys used to open for us. We were both working with same agent at the time and our agent said, “Look I want to send these guys out to open shows for you know.” They opened a bunch of shows for us and they were really struggling. And now man they’re hot! Of course there’s Yonder Mountain String Band. They’re going to be there. They’re really hot too right now.
We’ve been fortunate to have good lineups every year. We had bad luck one time. Not as far as the crowd was concerned but we had a tornado hit there, man—it’s unbelievable because this place it’s in Maryland at the Cumberland—at the fairgrounds there—it’s real flat right there where the fairgrounds is, and the Potomac River goes right around the Fairgrounds and on the other side of that Potomac River is mountains. It’s just straight up. It’s West Virginia. It’s only maybe 500 feet across there but you can see the rock cliff. This tornado came in there, buddy, and it just picked tents up and put them in the Potomac River. Oh it was terrible, you know?
Yeah that’s the type of thing that you can’t control no matter how much you prepare.
I thought, “This is crazy that that would come over these mountains like this.” Usually, with mountains, you don’t get a tornado or anything like that. But this is what happened, it got locked in right there in that little flat spot where we were and it couldn’t get out. It did so much damage to us, you know? There’s a guy that worked there—grew up on the Fairgrounds there—he was born and raised in a little house on the fairgrounds, and he still is working there. He said, “As long as I’ve lived here I have never seen a storm like that.” And he’s about middle 50s.
He said, “there’s a waterfall coming off of that rock cliff over there, and I have never seen that because that’s up high.” He said, “I hope you guys don’t bring that back here next year” [laughter]. Well, we’ve been there two years since then. We got rain but it wasn’t bad. But we’re really looking forward to it year. It’s really a really good mix.
Speaking of Jesse McReynolds, you mentioned he has an album of Grateful Dead songs, which has been getting a lot of airplay on radio stations. I actually read an interesting story that he actually had never really even heard the Grateful Dead’s music until they approached him about doing the record.
No kidding. Well, you know, I’ve known Dave Grisman a really long time. In fact, I knew him before he started playing music, I think. When I was working for Bill Monroe in 1963, they had us stay at David’s parents’ house. We were playing up in that part of the country so we stayed there. And the only person that was there was David and the maid. And David was just a kid—oh he was a mischievous little kid. When I was working for Monroe, Garcia and him came to see me since he wanted to be a Bluegrass Boy. But he did better with what he started than if he had been a Bluegrass Boy [laughter].
David has moved now from where he had his old studio. He moved up to another town. He was there in, oh gosh what’s that valley there? I’ve been to his house several times and recorded stuff right in his house when he had his studio in Mill Valley. He and his wife divorced and he moved on up north of there, about 30 or 40 miles north of there. And he’s got a studio in that house too now. And I recorded in there too. I recorded in that studio. We’ve been great friends. And he’s played my festival twice I think since we started.
In terms of festivals and the jamband scene, this year is the 10th annual Bonnaroo and you will perform with Preservation Hall. You actually played the first Bonnaroo in 2002. Do you have any specific memories or favorite moments from that event?
Yeah, I do. For one thing, it was hot [laughter], and we played in this tent. We were out on the West Coast and flew home, and I think we played Sunday. We were worried about getting into the place because people were talking about oh this traffic jam on I-24. We thought, “we may not even be able to get in the place.”
We flew the evening before or that morning from the West Coast, and we bussed it from there, and we got down there and it was nothing man [laughter]. We just pulled. The bands are registered at the Holiday Inn just off the Interstate there and they said, “Oh no, the traffic jam is always like in the middle of the week when the festival starts—there’s nobody going in there now, they’re already in there.”
They had us pull our bus right up to the tent that we were going to play in back then—. it’s a little different now, but I thought, “I wonder what this is going to be like.” And you know, we got in time for show time, and we got up on stage, and we saw people gathering in real fast. Man, before any amount of time there were people out in front of that tent as far as you could see!
I always do requests so I started telling folks, “Now, if you got any requests just holler them up here.” Well, they were so loud man. You couldn’t tell—I couldn’t tell what they were saying. So they start holding up signs with the name of the song they wanted to hear and so we still did an all-request show. That was really great. And I found out all those young people that requested songs requested songs that I recorded maybe 30 years ago.
It keeps you on your toes. Yeah, they go back and listen to old records and then makes you want to revisit the old catalogue.
Sometimes they’ll request something that I’ve completely forgot [laughter]. But for the most part the band will know them. They’ll know the kick off or whatever, the introduction to the song. A lot of times that helps. After you hear the intro of the song it will kind of click up in your head like, “I know what the first verse of this is.” So we do a lot of obscure stuff, really.” I introduce the four guys in the band and then I just do requests a lot of times, you know? I’ll try to get something from the newest album that we have out sometime during the show but for the most part the rest of the show is all-request show. It fits 90 minutes that’s mostly requests.
It keeps you on your toes. It keeps the band on their toes, and it keeps the show pretty fresh. And it’s exciting for me because I am worried about remembering all these songs. But I don’t like to get settled in—I don’t like to get too comfortable, you know? I think if you do, it’s kind of boring for everybody concerned you know.
Yeah, that goes back to the idea of improvisation.
It does, yeah. It’s true. And that way too, people they come to the show, a lot of them get to hear exactly the song that they want to hear. Which the fan kind of dictates what you should do I think anyway.
Right and as you said you know it’s such a breadth of material now especially now with all the different stuff.
Yeah. Yeah there’s some things we can’t do but then most, for the most part we can you know.
You have also always embraced collaborations with musicians from different backgrounds.
The last time I was in New York was with Dierks Bentley. He put out this album of bluegrass songs, and he had me sing that song with him called “In the Name of Love”—that was my line in that song. Anyway, he recorded all his bluegrass numbers and wrote some stuff. And my boys, my band just so happened wasn’t working for like a week because I was off the road so they went on tour with Dierks and did all these bluegrass numbers. I think this was one of the dates. I can’t remember the name of the place but he played there in New York. And he wanted me to come and do that one show with him. They did all the other stuff.
The first time I played New York was with Bill Monroe. He hired Bill Keith on banjo and me on guitar. Bill Keith remembers things that I forgot and I remember things that he forgot, cause it’s been a while. He had been playing all these country shows before this. He started playing the folk festivals then and eventually bluegrass festivals. I played Newport Folk Festival with him. He played Chicago Folk Festival, several places. But Ralph Rinzler was the guy that got him kind of away from the country music scene. Ralph was starting to manage Bill about the time I started playing for him. And he started booking him in you know like NYC, Newport, California and some of the folk clubs and folk festivals. And then eventually some of the bluegrass festivals and then he had his own venues. Ralph was really good. He was good for Bill Monroe and good for bluegrass music. Because he was the one, Bill recorded for Decca Records then and on all of Bill’s records, there’s no personnel, the personnel played on those records was not listed on the records. It was on file but it wasn’t n the records. Bluegrass musicians wanted to know who all played on, who played the fiddle and banjo. So they reissued a lot of it and Ralph Rinzler was back in the files and got all the names of the people who had recorded all that good stuff before that. They put it on the record. We owe a lot to him. We really do.
