Fiddlin’ Around

It’s autumn, and the fiddles, mandolins and banjos are breaking out and gearing up for a season of bluegrass. The hills and valleys are alive with the sound of music.

Bluegrass in the San Fernando Valley? Trendy enclave of metal, rock, blues and line-dance discos?

Well, yeah.

Actually, the oft-called “redneck blues,” that harmonious interplay of instruments as formulated by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, has a long tradition here. In the ‘60s, the Dillards played the Palomino, as did Chris Hillman, in his pre-Byrds days, with the Hillmen. Through the ‘70s and ‘80s, California native and now-Nashville superstar Vince Gill was often seen pickin’ and singin’ bluegrass onstage there.

Later, the music crept into hiding, confined largely to bluegrass mainstays like the annual Topanga Canyon Banjo and Fiddle Contest.

Suddenly, though, bluegrass seems to be popping up everywhere, from a Newhall pizza parlor to a Burbank Mexican restaurant, a library and even a church, as well as a Ventura Boulevard blues club.

The last would be Smokin’ Johnnie’s, which has started the “Sunday Mostly Bluegrass Showcase” in conjunction with Traditional Music, a nearby instrument shop. It started out by alternating Irish, folk and other acoustic music, but it quickly became apparent that bluegrass was what turned the crowds on,” said club manager Bobby Cottonwood.

Respected L.A country veteran Herb Pedersen, who recently went back to his roots to form a bluegrass band, the Laurel Canyon Ramblers, may know why.

“I find in bluegrass a sincerity that doesn’t exist anywhere else in music today,” said Pedersen, whose producing and playing credits include Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and even Diana Ross, as well as founding the late Desert Rose Band with Chris Hillman.

“As country has moved toward the pop end of the spectrum, bluegrass is becoming the true country, a home-grown type of music,” Frank Javorsek said.

Javorsek is co-owner, with his wife, Tammy, of the Blue Ridge Pickin’ Parlor, a venerable bastion of bluegrass in Canoga Park, and he’s the longtime host of “Bluegrass Express,” a Saturday morning show on KCSN-FM. Javorsek thinks bluegrass is on the rise.

“There was a time when they wouldn’t play a record on mainstream radio if it had a banjo on it,” Javorsek said. “But with the advent of artists like the Dixie Chicks, Ricky Skaggs and Alison Kraus bringing a more contemporary sound to it, it’s breaking down. If you watched the CMA [Country Music Assn.] Awards, you even saw Vince Gill and Randy Scruggs (son of Earl), open with ‘Soldier’s Joy’ .”

Back at the “Pickin” Parlor,” Javorsek has kept bluegrass alive for 17 years, selling and fixing stringed instruments and providing a teaching staff of ace players such as guitarist Howard Yearwood and banjo expert Bill Knopf. And Javorsek offers an array of concerts, workshops and Saturday night jams.

“Some of the greatest players on the West Coast have evolved from those jams,” he said, adding that the beginners’ early jam is really a workshop on ensemble playing, followed by the “Big Dog jam” with the “hotshots.”

The shop also hosts teaching workshops, such as one Sunday with Nashville mandolin maven Butch Baldessari, who has a CD called “Bluegrass Classics for the Mandolin.”

Five years ago, in order to spread the gospel about bluegrass music, Javorsek and friends formed the Bluegrass Assn. of Southern California.

“We wanted to do something more for the music than just get together and play,” said BASC President Marshall Andrews. “We felt we had a mission to protect and preserve bluegrass as one of the country’s indigenous musics, and, in fact, an original American art form that is still viable.”

One feat accomplished by BASC was to bring bluegrass to an amphitheater setting. The most recent was August’s night of “Bluegrass at the Ford,” headlined by the Laurel Canyon Ramblers and featuring two other nationally touring bands.

A couple of weeks ago, BASC and the Blue Ridge Pickin’ Parlor presented the first “bluegrass festival” at the Mid-Valley Regional Library. “We had about eight players who performed the various styles of bluegrass and talked about its history,” Javorsek said.

Most popular, perhaps, is the monthly Tuesday “BASC Bluegrass Night” at Baker’s Square Restaurant in Granada Hills, a standing-room-only showcase of regional touring bands. The last concert, last week, featured the Witcher Brothers, a group that represents a growing trend toward a more contemporary bluegrass sound.

“We try to break from tradition, without totally abandoning it,” said lead singer and mandolinist Dennis Witcher, who formed the band in 1986 with fiddler son Gabe, who was then only 6.

He described the band sound as a blend of western swing, blues, country, and original and traditional bluegrass.

“Bluegrass has grown more sophisticated, and we want some spontaneity--an edge,” he said.

Interestingly, Gabe Witcher--now a teenage fiddlin’ phenomenon--also does sessions with Bernie Taupin, Randy Newman and Lyle Lovett, as well as playing with the Laurel Canyon Ramblers, often lauded for their highly progressive West Coast sound.

And perhaps typical of bluegrass interplay, “Rambler” bassist Bill Bryson does time in Newhall at Vincenzo’s Pizza on Saturday nights, fronting an amiable aggregation called the Grateful Dudes, featuring fiddle veteran Dennis Fetchit (like Bryson, a former Bluegrass Cardinal), banjo pickin’ chiropractor Roger Philips, and guitarist, and engineer by day, Scott Micale.

They play a mix that ranges from Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline Rag” to “Streets of Laredo.”

But it’s down at the other end of the Valley, in Burbank at Viva Fresh restaurant, on Thursday “Fiddle Night” that the most outrageous scene can be found.

There, an audience of audio engineers, musicians and equestrians share an evening of backwoods American fiddle-based music and more. Club booker/bandleader Cody Bryant describes it as “fiddle till you drop.”

Bryant said he hit on the idea months back, while seeking something different for a sixth night of country at the club. “It’s simple mathematics. In bluegrass, you get one fiddle solo per song and one feature per set, and that’s not enough for this audience,” he said.

Each Thursday--backed by a handful of buddies on bass, guitar and what-have-you--one of three fiddlers makes his own joyful noise.

One is Tom Sauber, singer, folklorist and multi-instrumentalist who is heard playing guitar, mandola, Jew’s-harp and fiddle on Ry Cooder’s “The Long Riders” soundtrack album. He takes the music way back.

Onstage, often accompanied by 15-year-old banjo-playing son Patrick, Sauber transforms the room into an old-time camp meeting, as he saws his way through a series of infectious Appalachian jigs, reels and mountain dance tunes with names like “Step up Cindy,” “Snag Tooth Sal” and that big hit from 1860, “Gumtree Canoe.”

On the other hand, Brantley Kearns, Dwight Yoakam’s first fiddle player, a brand name on the Hollywood roots-country scene, moves the music into the progressive bluegrass he saw back in North Carolina on Flatt ‘n’ Scruggs ‘50s TV shows.

Kearns, a witty master of ensemble playing, makes deft work of such classics as Vassar Clement’s “Lonesome Fiddler Blues,” “San Antonio Rose” and Roy Acuff’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

Craig Eastman, a newcomer from the Northeast, takes the fiddle furthest into the future. Hair flying, the former prodigy cuts loose with dazzling improvisational flights of fancy that start with a 15th century Celtic waltz, segue into an Appalachian rag and end with Django Rheinardt, blending it all into a symphonic whole.

“Early bluegrass was like the rock ‘n’ roll of country music. It had that cutting edge,” said Eastman, who also plays with the Cousin Lovers, a Hollywood “neo-punk bluegrass band,” and records with Dr. John, Iris DeMent and Motley Crue.

So is that the bluegrass wave of the future? Frank Javorsek might think so.

“Elvis Presley’s first hit, you’ll remember, was Bill Monroe’s ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’ Even Buddy Holly was influenced by bluegrass. Bluegrass has influenced more people than anyone realizes, and it’s still influencing them,” he said.

“The thing about bluegrass is, despite all the commercial resistance, it’s alive and well, and it crops up its ugly head whenever you’re not looking.”

BE THERE

Blue Ridge Pickin’ Parlor, 20246 Saticoy St., Canoga Park. Jams every other Saturday. Next, Nov. 1. (818) 700-8288

Bob Burns Restaurant in the Woodland Hills Promenade. The McPossums, Irish, Scottish, old-timey and bluegrass, the first Sunday of the month. Free. (805) 376-2060.

Smokin’ Johnnie’s, 11720 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. The Every Sunday Mostly Bluegrass Showcase, 6-10 p.m. $5 cover and one-drink minimum. (818) 760-1623

Vincenzo’s, 24500 Lyons Ave., Newhall. The Grateful Dudes, every Saturday, 7:30-10:30 p.m. (805) 259-6733.

BASC Bluegrass Night, at Baker’s Square Restaurant, 17921 Chatsworth St., Granada Hills. The third Tuesday of the month, with featured band. Free. Jam afterward. (818) 366-7258 or (818) 700-8288.

Viva Fresh Mexican Restaurant, 900 Riverside Drive, Burbank, by the L.A. Equestrian Center. “Fiddle Night” every Thursday, 8-11 p.m. (818) 845-2425.