Tuning In to Tradition : Acoustic music hasn’t lost its charm. Today it blends old-time with modern styles.4

After the band, the Laurel Canyon Ramblers, finished their first song at a recent performance at the Palomino in North Hollywood, bass player Bill Bryson spoke to his audience. ‘If you like this music, then it’s called bluegrass,” he said in the self-deprecating tone only accomplished musicians can master. “If you don’t, it’s country music unplugged.”

Musical fads and fashions come and go, but simple music played on non-electric, easy-to-carry instruments literally has been around for centuries. And the San Fernando Valley has its share.

Besides being the home of many celebrated acoustic musicians, the Valley has a robust coffeehouse scene, one of the most prominent acoustic music stores in Southern California, and two nearby acoustic music festivals: the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest Dance & Folk Arts Festival and the Summer Solstice Folk Music, Dance & Storytelling Festival.

The scope of unplugged music today ranges from singer-songwriters in coffeehouses chronicling their personal growth accompanied only by a guitar, to someone performing a 300-year-old melody on a Celtic harp at a music festival, to a professional bluegrass outfit such as the Laurel Canyon Ramblers making records for the Sugar Hill label.

The scope reflects the reason behind the music’s popularity. This music is participatory. Not only is it simple and appealing, but the skill threshold required to play it is relatively low, which means that almost anybody can do it. Reaching a virtuoso level of performance, however, is as difficult in this as any art form. In other words, it can be as difficult or simple as the artist wants to make it.

Frank Javorsek, owner of the Blue Ridge Pickin’ Parlor in Canoga Park, says that simple music has a beauty all its own.

“A 16-bar fiddle tune with a simple melody can captivate the imagination,” says Javorsek. “It may have been around for hundreds of years, but people still enjoy hearing and playing it. . . . The majority of today’s pop music has a limited appeal and then it fades away.”

Javorsek’s store is an unofficial center of Southern California’s bluegrass community. The store specializes in acoustic music, offering lessons in guitar, fiddle, mandolin, upright bass, Autoharp, and hammered dulcimer in bluegrass and other playing styles. The store repairs and sells instruments too. Javorsek also has a radio program, “Bluegrass Express,” which can be heard Saturday mornings on KCSN-FM. He was named 1994 Bluegrass Broadcaster of the Year by the Bluegrass Music Assn. in Danbury, Ky.

Today’s acoustic music balances change with tradition. Many players tap a variety of styles--including traditional folk music, old-time mountain music, bluegrass, ethnic folk music, blues and more modern musical styles such as jazz and rock--to create some new musical hybrids.

Bluegrass itself is a relatively new style that dates back only to the 1940s, but its roots can be traced to Southern Appalachian music and folk songs of the Celtic, Irish and Scottish traditions.

Bluegrass was born at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville at a time when other country music artists were incorporating electric instruments into their performances. Mandolinist Bill Monroe formed an all-acoustic band that most consider the prototypal bluegrass band. Monroe was from Kentucky, so he called his band “The Bluegrass Boys,” and thence the name, bluegrass.

Earl Scruggs, Monroe’s banjo player, had developed a three-finger picking style that became the signature of the bluegrass sound. Previously, banjos, which originated in Africa, were played in what is called a “claw-hammer” style. Many times, bluegrass bands play the same folk songs as old-time musicians but the Scruggs’ style banjo gives the music the frenetic bluegrass sound.

This bluegrass sound is just one of the many that fiddler Bryon Berline has performed around the world. He has recorded on million-selling records with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Henry Mancini and many others. Berline, who lives in Van Nuys, grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and learned to play fiddle tunes from his father.

“They [the tunes] go way back to the settlers’ times,” Berline says. “By the time 100 years passed, the language changed and the music changed too.”

Berline says some of the older fiddle tunes, like “Devil’s Dream,” have changed over the years, but are still widely performed.

“Even [among] the Scottish and Irish fiddlers today, [their] playing changed from 200 years ago,” Berline says. “The fiddle, as it is today, has only been around since the mid-1500s.”

North Hollywood resident Herb Pederson is a Los Angeles pop music scene veteran. He’s worked as a session player and singer with some of the top names in the recording business, including John Denver, Diana Ross, James Taylor, the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. From 1986 to 1994, he and Bill Bryson were integral parts of the Desert Rose Band with former Byrd Chris Hillman. The group was nominated twice for Grammys and named the Country Music Assn.’s Best Vocal Group in 1989 and 1990.

Following the breakup of that band, Pederson and Bryson decided to go back to their roots. They formed the Laurel Canyon Ramblers with guitarist Billy Ray Lathum, mandolinist Kenny Blackwell and 16-year-old fiddler Gabe Witcher, all San Fernando Valley residents.

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“Bluegrass was my first love. It’s the people’s music,” says Pederson. “In pop music, you have to satisfy so many people on a corporate level.”

The Laurel Canyon Ramblers feature a modern bluegrass sound with stunning three-part vocal harmonies. But the music is more than just a way to make a living to Pederson.

“When I’m down in the dumps, I can go to my banjo or guitar, and I’ll feel a lot better,” Pederson says. “It’s a portable psychiatrist.”

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Some bluegrass players expand their artistic horizons by experimenting with musical styles not usually associated with the banjo. Banjo player-teacher Bill Knopf, who lives in Panorama City, started playing banjo back in the mid-1960s. His early influences were bluegrass performers such as the Dillards, Lester Flatt, and Scruggs. But he has expanded his repertoire beyond bluegrass. In 1990, Knopf recorded an album of Scott Joplin rags, and last year he made a record of Sousa marches.

“All my recordings have elements of jazz,” Knopf says. “By using written scores, I can make faithful arrangements in banjo styles.” Knopf says he got letters from DJs and rave reviews from critics for the albums, but sales were not as great as he’d hoped. “It didn’t take off like I thought,” Knopf says. “It’s very eclectic.”