The Del McCoury Band has just released their new studio album, The Streets of Baltimore, a focused ensemble piece which finds the band cutting tracks without too much prior rehearsing or fine-tuning. That attention to the live experience, such a hallmark of their stagecraft, translates well to the studio on this extraordinary work. The thirteen-track collection also features an impressive roster of songwriters, while giving their legendary leader a chance to acknowledge some past influences and inspirations, work with some material written by old and new friends, and present an old image within a fresh framework.
Jambands.com caught up with Del McCoury after a two-night stand at the Gentlemen of the Road festival, an event hosted by a handful of acts, including Mumford & Sons. It is fitting that the McCoury Band continues to build a bridge between generations. Indeed, their timeless music—both on stage and in the studio—has been equally inspiring in 2013, as it was so long ago when the frontman first began his musical journey in the 1950s, a time which saw Baltimore, itself, playing a key historical role in the development of not only McCoury’s career, but the bluegrass genre, too. As always, the bluegrass artist himself is jovial, lively, and always warm and humorous, as evidenced by his numerous breaks to offer a witty aside, comment, or guffaw. He is also a master of his craft, and he does not show any sign of slowing down, even as he sails along at 74.
RR: How are you, sir?
DM: Doin’ good. I just got back from playing in Oklahoma at a show out there with Mumford & Sons. We were there for about two days in Guthrie, Oklahoma. (laughs) They had a big crowd out there, man.
RR: How was the reception for you and the band?
DM: It was great; it was. They let us come in town. They had a couple stages, one out and one main stage. I never did get out to where the main stage was; it was out in a field and it was big. I think the boys went out there. After Mumford & Sons got done, both nights, we came on around 11 o’clock, and they went off about 10:30, and we went on from 11 to around 12:30, I think it was both nights, and, of course, Marcus [Mumford] would urge everyone when they got done to come up to our show—it was around the Main St., kind of in the middle of town. People as far as you could see, man. There were a lot of folks there. (laughs) Marcus came up the first night—we played there Friday and Saturday nights—and he came up with his fiddle player, Ross Holmes, who lives in Nashville, I think, and he got up and sang one with us [“Angel Band”]. Jeff [Austin] came up to play with us, as well, as did Larry Keel and Danny Barnes. The Keels were on this program, too, so I had them get up with us that first night.
RR: You had Keller Williams out there that weekend, too.
DM: Sure, my boys and Keller. They did a show both nights. They sure did.
RR: Let’s talk about your new album, The Streets of Baltimore. It is your third album in a row that, in a way, makes a different personal statement. In 2011, you had the collaboration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on Legacies. In 2012, you recorded a tribute album to your early mentor, Bill Monroe – Old Memories. This new album is not as concept-driven, but it does get its title from an important American city in your development. How did Baltimore play a role in your history?
DM: Randy, I would say it is because I got my break there to play with Bill Monroe in that town. I was playin’ there and he came to town and he was goin’ to New York City back in 1962, I think. I was playin’ in a band and Jack Cook was the leader of the band and I was playin’ in Jack’s band and he was the bluegrass guitar player/lead singer, so I was playin’ in his band and [Monroe] needed Jack to go with him to New York City, and it just so happened that they didn’t have a banjo player, either, so he took me along and he offered me the job. As you know, that’s how I got to know Bill Monroe.
It’s actually quite a big thing for me, but I played quite a bit in that town, too, probably with my own band after I quit Bill than even before I went to work for Bill. It was a town where a band could get work in the clubs and bars. I lived in the country, in York County, PA, and I was out there in the country. You almost had to go to the city to get work playing music. (laughs) And, you know, the first bluegrass band to ever play Carnegie Hall was there in that town, Earl Taylor & the Stoney Mountain Boys. He was playin’ seven and eight nights a week, man. They went up to New York City and played Carnegie Hall and they got put them on Folkways. They didn’t have a record deal or anything, and, so he got a big break but he never really did well. He left Baltimore and went to Cincinnati. He was kind of a guy that just moved around a lot. (laughs)
That town was really big for bluegrass in the day. I think a lot of musicians migrated from the south, or they came up there to get work during the war in the airplane factory, or the steel mill, or the shipyards, and they would get work there during wartime. A lot of them were musicians. They would work and, sometimes, play music at night. Sometimes, they didn’t; they just came—the musicians migrated with the workers. (laughter) The same with Washington, D.C.—they were both popular with music in the 40s and 50s. I guess I started playin’ there in the 50s.
With this record, I thought I should do that song [“Streets of Baltimore”], which was written by Harlan Howard and Tompall Glaser, because he wrote about the streets, and I felt that I need to record that song because I owe a lot to Baltimore. (laughs) I had most of the material for the record collected before I even thought about Baltimore, but, in the end, I thought I should put a song on there about Baltimore. I think if I had thought of it earlier, I would have probably did more songs that I used to sing in the clubs of Baltimore. (laughs) That was kind of the way it came about. My manager said we should just call the CD Streets of Baltimore. He got pictures from the archives of the city. Of course, the one big sign with my name on it is not real, but all the rest is. The clubs we played in—if it had a marquee, you were lucky. (laughter)
Baltimore was a place where longshoremen would come in after being out on the water for a year and, man, it was dangerous. Of course, when you’re young, you don’t think about that. But those guys were shootin’, throw knives, and everything. (laughs)
RR: Do you ever get to those sections of the city these days?
DM: Well, you know, one time I did play a place downtown there somewhere, but it wasn’t anything that I had played years ago. (laughs) But, no, I really don’t. For the most part, I don’t play anywhere that I can think of around Baltimore anymore. I’m playin’ at a place called the Hamilton that I believe is in D.C. soon comin’ up [November 30], but I’ve never played there, either. I used to play at a place in Annapolis, but I haven’t played there in a long time, either. We’re just all over the place.
I don’t think Baltimore is as big for bluegrass as it once was. That’s my opinion, but back in the day, I used to know all the bands that were in that town. It’s funny; they were all cutthroat musicians. One guy would be playin’ a bar, and another guy from another band would come in and tell the owner, “Look, how much are you payin’ these guys? I can play cheaper than them.” (laughter) It was a cutthroat business.
RR: Does the scene appear more collaborative these days, with musicians working together, or it is just a different world in 2013?
DM: I think it is. I don’t think it is like it used to be. (laughs) But I tell you what, a lot is owed to a D.J. that was in that town named Ray Davis. He had a radio show on WBMD, which is a Baltimore station. He worked for a car dealership up on U.S. Route 1, Harper Rd., that went through Baltimore. U.S. Route 1 and U.S. Route 40—they both went through that town. Back in them days it was before beltway, too. Anyway, Ray had this dealership as a sponsor and he had his radio show up above the showroom. That is where he did all of his broadcasting from. He had recording equipment and he would record bands—mainly bluegrass, he was into that—but, he booked a lot of the Opry acts, also, all around that city. The thing was that he had the outlet for advertising because he had a radio show. He had a lot of listeners. It was a great thing, really. He would book Bill Monroe, he’d book Don Reno and Red Smiley, he booked the Stanley Brothers, and he would record the Stanley Brothers. They did a lot of records for Ray back then. I did one myself for Ray after I quit Bill Monroe, and it was never released. I can’t remember why, but it wasn’t. That was part of the success of bluegrass in that town, also, you see. There was a guy there that really pushed it on the radio and he would book shows. He was probably not legal. (laughter)
RR: He was a D.J. and a publicist, and a producer and a promoter, too.
DM: (laughs) That’s everything he was into, you see. I’m sure there was a conflict of interest somewhere. One thing he didn’t get into—I don’t think he ever got into managing a band. (laughs) I think that was the one thing he never did. He did a lot of other things as far as music goes—radio and the live performances—but he would book these bands. He’d book them in clubs and parks, like New River Ranch, which is north of Baltimore, up towards, almost to the PA line, goin’ up Route 1, and he would book bands into that place: George Jones, you name it, everybody from the Opry, including Bill Monroe, and Flatt and Scruggs and Reno and Smiley and Jimmy Martin and the Osbourne Brother and just everybody. They could depend on him. Mac Wiseman played a lot for Ray. He provided a lot of work for bands. Also, if he had one of those major bands, he’d get a local band for openin’ the shows. That was really great.
I sang on Charlie Louvin’s last record [ The Battle Rages On ] on “Weapon of Prayer.” For some reason, somebody mentioned the parks in that part of the country, and he said, “Me and my brother [Ira] were playin’ at New River Ranch, and it was only ten miles to Sunset Park, which is up in PA on the same highway, Route 1, and he said this other Opry act cancelled on account of sickness or somethin’ that was gonna play the Sunset Park, and it could have been anybody from Ray Price to Loretta Lynn to whoever. I don’t know. He said they had to cancel, and Sunset Park called him and wondered if he could do a doubleheader—play one park in the afternoon and then come up there at night. They always had two shows—one in the afternoon and one in the evening. So, they did a doubleheader there. They played and ran ten miles down the road and did another show later. (laughs) They did one in Maryland, then they drove ten miles to PA and did one. Then, they drove ten miles and did an evening one, then they drove ten miles back up to PA and did another evening show. (laughter) They needed somebody from the Opry because they had booked an Opry act that couldn’t make it. They figured, “Yeah, we’ll do that,” but they were pretty young then.
RR: How did you gather the other material for The Streets of Baltimore?
DM: Randy, I’ll tell you, a lot of times I’ll think of a song that I remember from years ago. Now, there’s quite a few new songs that have never been recorded on there. There’s a lot of writers in this town, and they’ll send me demos all through the year. Some of them have been layin’ around for a couple three years that I never did record. But, at the same time, I’ll think of somethin’ from years ago and I think, “Man, I’d like to record that song.” I would just find a key that I could sing it in and a tempo and whatever and, sometimes, I’ll lay it aside, thinking, “No, this won’t work.” But then there is some that I do that I keep my interest in ‘em. (laughs) For the most part, we didn’t do any rehearsin’ for this record. We just go into the studio and I present this song to the boys and they would get their instrumental parts and maybe their vocal parts, or they would work on their instrumental parts and overdub their vocal parts because it’s a completely different thing. My son, Ronnie, is pretty good at arranging instrumental stuff. Of course, they all are, but I think Ronnie takes more interest in arranging those instrumental parts. That’s just the kind of way it would come together.
I know that old song, “Misty,” was a hit and I always like it. It’s so different. Also, the Platters number [“Only You”], I told my grandson one time (he’s in UT college, but he was here at home then, but I think he was on his summer vacation), “Can you download that song for me by the Platters?” So, he did, and I had not heard it in years. (laughs) I thought, “Oh, man, I can’t record this song. That’s not going to suit me,” but what I did was that I remember, “We could do that double time; we could play the instruments faster than the vocal,” and it worked out good. It was really good for the bluegrass instruments. It was one of those songs that had a great melody that’s a little different. (laughs) That’s kind of the way that I come up with all the stuff.
Usually, my son, Ronnie, will have sent me or gave me some of the demos that I have here sometime during the year. What happens is that I will get this little brown envelope in the mail—I’ve got a post office box—and it’ll be a demo, a record demo, from several artists. A bunch of artists will put out several songs on one CD and I’ll listen to them. Most of the time, what I do, is that I’ll just lay them in a box, put them in a box, until it is time to do a record and go through all that and listen to all that stuff. That’s the process. I try to see if there is anything in there that I’d like to record.
It’s funny. I had written a song for this record and completely forgot I had it. I wrote the song about the same time that we were doin’ the record. For some reason, I laid it aside and I never thought of it again. (laughs) I ran across it the other day, and I thought, “Well, when did I write this song?” I do that a lot, though.
RR: You actually wrote one that does show up on the record, “Free Salvation.”
DM: Yeah, it did, the gospel. I wrote that right about the time we recorded the album—just a little bit before.
RR: It’s good you didn’t forget that one as it suits the album well.
DM: Thank you.
RR: The track I keep returning to over and over again is “I Need More Time,” which was written by Verlon Thompson. That’s an example where I find it hard to believe that the band didn’t rehearse much before recording as it is quite moving.
DM: Yeah, that’s funny. For the most part, those guys had never really played that stuff until we got into the studio. Of course, we work them out good in the studio. A lot of times, we used to rehearse all the stuff before we went in, but, then, I tell you, we were so busy at that time—I remember that—because both of us were busy as a lot of times, the band has their own things that they are doing. Of course, I have a lot of things that I do with the band. But, they were just so busy that I decided that I wasn’t going to ask them to rehearse and when it comes time, we’ll just go in the studio and rehearse it right before its cut, right then. (laughs)
“I Need More Time”—I just saw Verlon. What happened is that I played the Grand Ole Opry on a Tuesday night, I think it was, about two weeks ago, and Alan Jackson had a record release party down at the station [for The Bluegrass Album and what he was goin’ to do was he was going to sing all the songs that he had on the record at the station. After the Opry, me and my wife went over there and I saw Verlon. By the way, it’s a good record; Alan said it is something he always wanted to do—a bluegrass record. In fact, that is what he wanted to do first, but he wound up being a country singer.
I gotta tell you this little side story on that. Years ago, he recorded this song called “Mercury Blues” about that car. Well, the first company I recorded a record for was Arhoolie out in Berkeley, California, and I was out there one time right after Alan Jackson recorded that “Mercury Blues” song, and Chris Strachwitz, he’s Swedish and he’s the one that own the label, and anyway, they had a party there for him, and I was playin’ in California, and I said I’d go to his party. He told me that night, “You know, there is some guy named Jackson that recorded a song that I published years ago and, boy, the checks are really comin’ in.” (laughter) He asked, “Do you know this guy Jackson?” I said, “Yeah, he’s a big country star.” It was funny. He knows all the Cajun stuff and all the stuff down in New Orleans, but when it comes to country, he don’t know nothin’ about country.
Anyway, I saw Verlon at this show that Alan had, and he said, “Man, I’m glad you recorded my song. I would never dreamed in a hundred years that you would have recorded that song. That’s why I never demoed it to you.” It got to me some other way; I don’t know how it got to me. He said, “If I was going to send you a song, I would never send you that song.” (laughs) I said, “Well, you know, when I heard that song, it just struck me—now, this is really different.” And I like things that are different. When we were recording that song…I don’t think the demo had two different speeds in it from what I remember.
RR: You created those two different tempos in the song?
DM: I think I did. I told the boys, “Look, I’m going to sing this part real slow here, but in the instrumental break, just pick it up a little bit and play at a comfortable tempo.” We did that a couple of times and the bass player [Alan Bartram] said, “I don’t think this is going to work. We need to play it all the same speed.” I said, “No, man. This is not a hardcore bluegrass song.” He likes it now since he heard how it comes together. And it’s a great song with a great story. Verlon said the reason he wrote that song was that his dad is at that age where he needs more time. He’s pretty feeble now, and he said that is what inspired him to write it. He’s a great songwriter. I’ve recorded quite a few of his songs.
Shawn Camp had a waltz on the demo [“I Wanna Go Where You Go”], and he’s such a great singer, along with being a great writer. I thought, “I need a waltz on this record,” so
that’s why I recorded that one. And I liked the message, too—the guy’s wife, she’s packin’ up to leave him, and he said, “I’ll help you pack, as long as you take me along.”
RR: And I love a variation on that theme with “I’d Love to Do Some Living.”
DM: Oh, yeah. Larry Cordle had a hand in writin’ that song. Yeah, that’s the way it is with a lot of guys, isn’t it? They just (laughs)…they love to party, but they gotta go to work on Monday. There is no two ways about it. (laughter) Life gets in the way.
RR: I would like to finish our conversation with some discussion about your current work on a Woody Guthrie project.
DM: I would love to. Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, got in touch with me and wondered if I would put music to some of her dad’s lyrics. She also got other people to do this, too. She had a lot of songs, man. She said, “If my dad could afford it, he would have loved to had a band like you’ve got.” Of course, we played somewhere for her before; I don’t remember where it was at now. I said, “Yeah, I’d love to do that.” She sent me 19 songs, and I got the music written to 12 of them. We debuted it in New York [June 29 at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts—Venetian Theater]. We did the whole record there of his songs. They videoed the whole show, and then I did my own show of my own songs that same night. These songs—I could look at ‘em and I’d think, “I believe right here is how he would do this.” I should get you a copy of the record. It’s not released yet. It hasn’t even been mastered. I’ve got a CD of all the songs. They are rough mixes. The mixing is all done, but the mastering isn’t done. I don’t know when we’ll release it, but it’ll be soon.
There’s one song on there called “Women’s Hat,” and, you know what, a lot of these songs are written in his own handwriting. That’s the way I got ‘em—in his own handwriting. He spells women’s w-i-m-m-i-n-s. That’s the way it sounds. (laughs) And, you know, he’s actually a country boy. I don’t know how much education he had. The songs I have were written from 1935 to 1949. I look at the songs and I just kind of vision the timing and the tempo that he would put with that song. It was the easiest thing in the world for me to put the music to that stuff. I just couldn’t believe how easy it was. Of course, now, if the truth be known, the melody I put to something might have been completely off of what he would. (laughs) I just thought it would work. There’s some great songs in there—one about gold about some guy that went out to California and struck gold, and, then, this woman he married wound up with all of his gold and the mansion up on the hill and all of that stuff, you know. (laughs) He’s a great writer.
RR: I think your unique ability to select a melody is pretty special, too.
DM: Thank you. I really did enjoy that project. I did 12, and I had seven more to do, but I just ran out of time. Things just got so busy. Well, I’ve got my own festival now. I was talking with my wife and my manager, too, “Well, if I get the band out on the road, these
guys, doing something on their own, in case something happens to me, they’ll have it goin’.” They can just go with it, the band can do that. You never know because I’m 74 now. But, I feel good. (laughs)
