McCoury’s Big Break, Part 2

Of all the forms of popular music, perhaps only in bluegrass could the hot “new” face be that of a 60-year-old veteran who’s been playing music for half a century.

But ask just about anyone in bluegrass circles who’s the fastest-rising name on the circuit now, and most will answer Del McCoury.

This despite that fact that the North Carolina-born, Pennsylvania-reared singer, songwriter and guitarist got his first big break some 40 years ago. That’s when the father of bluegrass himself, Bill Monroe, drafted McCoury for his Bluegrass Boys band, and persuaded the young banjo player to switch to guitar and start focusing more on his singing.

In the last two years, however, McCoury’s career has been on an upward arc that shows no sign of leveling off in 2000.

He teamed with bluegrass and folk greats Doc Watson and Mac Wiseman--the latter also an alumnus of Monroe’s band--for “Mac, Doc & Del,” a lively album that yielded one of the three Grammy nominations McCoury received last week. (The track “Black Mountain Rag” is up for best country instrumental performance.)

He’s also in the running for best bluegrass album with “The Mountain,” the Del McCoury Band’s collaboration with outlaw country-rocker Steve Earle on a group of traditional-style bluegrass originals that Earle wrote. One of the albums “The Mountain” is up against is “Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza,” an all-star outing featuring Sam Bush, David Grisman and . . . Del McCoury.

McCoury suggests good-naturedly that those efforts may have kept his own group’s 1999 album, “The Family,” on Ricky Skaggs’ new Ceili label, from receiving any Grammy attention this year.

“This kinda has been the busiest year I can ever remember,” the Nashville-based musician says. “I changed booking agents, signed with Rick to record, and at the same time signed with Monterey Peninsula Artists, and also Stan Strickland, Ricky’s partner, is now my manager.

“A lot of things changed, and a lot of times if you make drastic changes the effect is that things slow up drastically because people don’t know what to do.” says McCoury, who plays Friday at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, then returns to the Southland Jan. 26 to open for Ricky Skaggs at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. “But it wasn’t that way with us--things just got bigger.”

For all the respect McCoury has built in the bluegrass community--the International Bluegrass Music Assn. recently voted his band entertainer of the year for the fourth straight time--he’s never been a musical traditionalist.

Emphasizing ‘Blue’ in Bluegrass

Years before he teamed with Earle on “The Mountain,” he had recorded one of Earle’s songs (“If You Need a Fool”). His 1996 Grammy-nominated album, “The Cold Hard Facts,” included his version of blues man Robert Cray’s “Smoking Gun,” as well as a breakneck run-through of rocker Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road” that only a Petty fan would immediately recognize as anything other than a bluegrass classic handed down through the ages.

Clearly, musical borders have little meaning for McCoury, although he also credits his sons and the other younger members of his band for exposing him to a wider range of music than he might hear playing only with his contemporaries.

“In my book,” he said, “music is all so interrelated. Sometimes I wonder what defines bluegrass. We play certain instruments that define it as bluegrass, but a lot of it is so close to some other kinds of music, it’s hard to define any of it.”

Indeed, another quality prized by McCoury aficionados is the depth to which he emphasizes the “blue” in bluegrass, his yearning vocals often sounding uncannily like those of rural blues singers.

“It’s the way I’ve always sung,” McCoury says. “My mother sang mountain songs, and a lot of those have blues in them. And another thing--the records Kenny Martin and Bill Monroe recorded in the early ‘50s had a lot of what I really liked about Bill’s singing. That was really bluesy stuff. I came [into Monroe’s band] about 10 years later and I sang a lot of those.”

During his tenure with the man widely credited with inventing bluegrass music, McCoury says, “I learned a lot from him, but he never said a thing to me about singing--I just sang to what he did. I figured if I did that, I couldn’t go wrong.”

BE THERE

The Del McCoury Band, Friday at McCabe’s, 3101 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. 8 and 10 p.m. $18. (310) 828-4403. Also Jan. 26 with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. 8 p.m. $37-$47. (800) 300-4345.