The Blessings of Bluegrass

Sunday News
Published: December 31, 2006
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

Tonight, Del McCoury is coming home to York County ... sort of. The bluegrass giant hasn't lived here in more than a decade, but the hills and farms that fostered his young talent are not forgotten.In the 1950s and '60s, getting an invite to play with "Father of Bluegrass" Bill Monroe was just about every bluegrass picker's dream gig. It meant performing in front of large audiences around the world and maybe launching a successful stint as a bandleader.

When a young Delano McCoury joined Monroe's band in 1963, it was the pinnacle of his burgeoning career. And while McCoury's apprenticeship with the father of bluegrass was brief, it set the stage for his future successes, which have been many. "It's been amazing the way things have grown for us," McCoury said in a telephone interview from his home in Nashville, Tenn.

McCoury's accolades include no less than 24 awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association. The IBMA has named him Male Vocalist of the Year three times and Entertainer of the Year nine times (four of them consecutively) and has given him three nods in the Album of the Year category.

In 2005, he scored his first Grammy for the album "The Company We Keep." His first all-gospel collection, "The Promised Land," was released earlier this year on his own McCoury Records label. McCoury and his band will help ring in the New Year tonight at the Strand Theatre in York. Back in the cold February of 1964, California was calling McCoury, and he headed to the West Coast to join the Golden State Boys. After only three months, Del and his new wife moved back eastcloser to home. He grew up in York County on a Jackson Township dairy farm, and though Pennsylvania Dutch may have been the prevalent patois of his youth, McCoury's tenor voice bears all the hallmarks of the southern Appalachians.

Exposure to his older brother's 78 rpm Flatt & Scruggs records first sparked his interest in taking up the banjo. Careerwise, McCoury was in the right place at the right time. Partnering with Marylander Keith Daniels, he began to make a steady, if not stellar, living playing the honky-tonks in and around Baltimore. From the days of World War II through the mid-1960s, Baltimore drew tens of thousands of people from the hills and hollers of West Virginia, Virginia, western Maryland and Tennessee to fill manufacturing jobs.

The economic hardships that spread the blues northward from Mississippi and laid the groundwork for rock 'n' roll also pushed mountain music eastward. When the workers moved east, they naturally took their music with them. "And there were many places to play all over the area," McCoury recalled, "up along U.S. Route 1 and U.S. Route 40 east of the city, up Harford Road and in Essex. This was before the beltway (I-695) was built.

"We played The Stonewall Inn, The Carlton, Seagull Inn, downtown at a place called Jazz City that had music seven nights a week, the odd place along Broadway in Fell's Point." It was after several years in Charm City that McCoury was invited to audition for Monroe. Eventually, the scene began to taper off, and the bottom dropped out sometime in the 1980s when all the manufacturing jobs disappeared. The honky-tonks closed and turned into car dealerships, Waffle Houses and Dollar Stores. But as McCoury remembers, Baltimore was not the only city that supported a healthy roots-music scene.

"There were good homegrown bluegrass scenes in Washington, D.C., Detroit and Cincinnati as well at that time. Not just good places for national acts to play, but having great local acts." By the time he and his wife returned east, the scene had changed and music looked as if it might not be the magical calling it once was. Del got a construction job and did some logging as well to augment his meager music income - an income that had to support a growing family.

By 1967, he was fronting his own band, Del McCoury and the Dixie Pals, and he spent the next two decades as a mainstay in the mid- Atlantic. And though it was essentially a part-time gig, he recorded several albums for labels like Arhoolie, Rebel and Rounder, and toured extensively, sometimes traveling up to 1,000 miles to play weekend festivals. On the verge of a tour through Europe, son Ronnie, then 14, demanded his father let him join the group full time after sitting in with the group during summer vacation. "I said, No, you need to stay in school,' " McCoury recalled with a laugh. Oddly enough, it was Ronnie's principal that changed Del's mind.

"After he heard all the places we would be playing - Ireland, England, Germany, Sweden - he said Ronnie would probably learn more than if he stayed home." Ronnie returned the next year to finish his education, but the bug had bit. That was 1981. Six years later, younger brother Robbie took the bass chair before switching to banjo. Both boys have toured with their father ever since.

McCoury finally relocated to Nashville in 1992, as his career began to pick up steam, but he maintains a residence in Glen Rock. "We decided to keep it in case things didn't work out here. But we've stayed 14 years. Who knows, we may go back someday." It seems McCoury has once again landed in the right city at the right time. "This town is just booming," he said of Nashville. McCoury and his band are Grand Ole Opry regulars, enjoying the benefits of the weekly radio and television broadcasts that come with the gig. The band will play there throughout the month of January before going out on the road again.

"Back in the 1960s with Bill Monroe, there wasn't much happening in this town besides the Opry. There wasn't even a decent airport." There are countless places to play nowadays, "and you can go see music every night of the week." And musicians across the genres are feeding on the kind of collegiality that the music industry itself doesn't necessarily foster.

"A lot of these guys I've played with saw me performing years ago and now ask me to come on the road with them, and I'm happy to do it." McCoury's shared the stage with Phish, Leftover Salmon and the Yonder Mountain String Band. Consequently, a swarm of jam-band fans can always be spotted at a McCoury gig.

He's done songs by the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, Tom Petty and British folk-rocker Richard Thompson in addition to the traditional tunes in the picker's songbook and a healthy batch of original compositions. In 1998, Del solidified his name as one of the best in the business by teaming up with Mac Wiseman and Doc Watson on "Del, Doc and Mac" for Sugar Hill. An album with alt-country rebel Steve Earle called "The Mountain" further enhanced the careers of both men a year later. They played the odd gig together around Music City and went over big at Farm Aid that year.

The collaboration with Earle exposed McCoury to an entirely new audience. "It really amazes me to see so many younger people in the audience, far more than there used to be." The band's itinerary takes them from laid-back summer festivals to crowded, smoky rock nightclubs - a variety that was unheard of even 20 years ago - from Carnegie Hall to the Lincoln County High School gymnasium in Hamlin, W.Va. (both venues are scheduled in coming months).

"So many of our shows attract young listeners who are maybe seeing their first real bluegrass show or are regulars themselves. But then I look out and see guys my age standing there for the whole two hours. It's hard for me to do it sometimes."