AUGUST 1 UPDATE: The Kathy Kallick Band has regretfully cancelled the concert planned for August 3 due to COVID-19. There’s a free bluegrass concert that same evening if you’ve still got an itch for pickin’, grinnin’ and fiddlin’: Miskey Mountain Boys at Farnsworth Park in Altadena. If you purchased tickets for the Kallick concert check the www.pasadenafolkmusicsociety.org Web site for details regarding refunds through the Caltech ticket office. Get well, Kathy Kallick and band!
The Pasadena Folk Music Society presents Grammy-winning bluegrass alchemist Kathy Kallick and the Kathy Kallick Band, who will strum, pluck, pick and bow up a mess ‘o tangy, twangy originals like Kallick’s new release “This Old Lonesome Song,” tasty covers, and re-imagined standards on guitar, with Annie Staninec on fiddle, Greg Booth on dobro and banjo, Tom Bekeny on mandolin, and Cary Black on acoustic bass.
The gig is set for Saturday, August 3 at 7:30 PM at Knox Presbyterian Church just a few blocks north of Caltech, across Hill Avenue from Pasadena City College.
Kallick is based in the Bay area and has been writing and recording bluegrass for four decades. Unlike the Delta’s gutbucket blues, bluegrass may bury emotional pain in rollicking time-signatures and sparkling flourishes, often anchored in major keys. In this sense, bluegrass and its best practitioners are alchemists, summoning surprising attributes out of familiar elements.
One of the most curious aspects about bluegrass is that it often sounds as happy as a dang June bug although the words and story are quite dire. Much of the time, pickers and singers pride themselves on working up a furious head of chugga-chugging musical steam worthy of the Orange Blossom Special herself.
And the pure mirth of the sound often disguises lyrical content which is downright dee-pressin’: Maw run off with the preacher again, Paw got drunk and was run down by the Double-E, baby’s got ringworm, hound-dog’s got fleas, rain’s a-comin’ down through the hole in the roof and waterlogged my best Bible, flies in the buttermilk, shoo-fly-shoo, and, to fold in a bit of Warren Zevon, “…the County won’t give me no more methadone, and they cut off yer welfare check.”
Kallick and her bands have released 21 albums thus far, “The Lonesome Chronicles” being the latest. Needless to say, Kallick’s bound to ramble, on the move, and gathering no moss on her boot heels, to mix metaphors. But we were able to snag a few minutes with her via email:
LNP: Why is bluegrass music relevant in 2024?
KK: Bluegrass has had a resurgence of popularity and I think that it’s inspired by the young musicians who have burst onto the scene full of their new interpretations of this classic music and writing their own music while referencing the traditional styles. I also think that the recognition of the Black roots of bluegrass and old-time music has energized the whole music scene with the welcoming of people of color into performance venues.
LNP: Given the divisiveness in the U.S., does bluegrass run the risk of entering MAGA territory? Is that okay with you?
KK: The roots of bluegrass definitely are in a southern rural white people’s world. That said, there are just as many people from outside that area and that scene that have been in love with this music for the last 50 or 60 years. It spread across college campuses and folk music clubs all over the country, and I, as a young person growing up in the Chicago area, was exposed to a lot of southern rural roots music through the University of Chicago Folk Festival and the city’s thriving folk scene. Many of my contemporaries were also drawn to the sounds and the feel of the music, and started playing it, then began writing their own songs, expressing their own experience. For me, this was writing songs about being a Jewish girl from Chicago and learning how I could put my story into the form of bluegrass music.
Yes, there are a lot of people with differing political perspectives in the bluegrass world. Music has always been a bridge between people, and hopefully that will continue to be true. It’s particularly challenging at this time, but the music reminds everyone that we’re not only our political viewpoints; we can love common things, and we can love this music, even coming from such radically different points of view.
LNP: How have your repertoire and approach evolved?
KK: When I first began playing bluegrass, my focus was learning the traditional songs and trying to sing just like the people who wrote that music, so I steeped myself in trying to sing like Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin and Lester Flatt and Carter Stanley and other first-generation musicians in bluegrass, and learning as many of those songs that I could. But fairly early on, I recognized that none of these songs were expressing my point of view, and I started writing my own songs and introducing them to bandmates. I’ve had the good luck to play with musicians who really want to play the songs that I write, and my original songs have become a core part of the repertoire of any band I’ve been in.
LNP: Who are artists you’d most like to jam with?
KK: Are we talking about dead or alive? I did get the chance to play music with Bill Monroe, but I didn’t get to do that with many of my heroes. What a thrill it would’ve been to sing a duet with Jimmy Martin! I would love to get a chance to sing these days with Del McCoury, who’s still one of the most powerful musicians in bluegrass. I have played a lot of music with Molly Tuttle and Tristan Scroggins and other great young players, but I’ve never jammed with AJ Lee, and I think that would be fun.
I’m really lucky to be in a band with four of the greatest musicians I know, four of the strongest musicians I’ve ever played with, and it’s always exciting to jam with fiddler Annie Staninec, Greg Booth on dobro and banjo, mandolinist Tom Bekeny, and bass player Cary Black. They push me every time we play; the breadth and depth of experience of those four is dazzling, and their mastery of such diverse styles as old time, Cajun, country, jazz, and various forms of folk, as well as bluegrass, has had a huge influence on me.
LNP: Who are some artists you admire — and why?
KK: I’m currently “et” up with admiration for Alice Gerrard, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday. She’s one of the first women to play in the bluegrass realm, with her partner Hazel Dickens, and they were encouraged by Bill Monroe. Alice has written her own songs, played old-time and country music, as well as bluegrass, for most of her life, and is definitely a hero and a role model to every woman playing this style of music.
DEETS
- Kathy Kallick Band
- Saturday, August 3
- 7:30 PM
- Knox Presbyterian Church
- 225 S. Hill Avenue
- Presented by Pasadena Folk Music Society
Ticket prices are $25 for adults, $10 for Caltech students and bluegrass lovers age 16 or younger.
Tickets are available online, or call the Caltech Ticket Office at 626-395-4652. Note that when purchasing a ticket using either of these methods, a $4 service charge will be applied.
Tickets purchased in-person on the Caltech campus at the Keith Spalding Building, 1200 California Boulevard in Pasadena, are not subject to this charge. Call ahead before you go to purchase tickets because the box office hours are wonky, only occasionally adhering to the published Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM schedule.
Thank you for a fine article, not just letting people know about the August 3 concert, but putting bluegrass music into a social context and providing interesting insights from Kathy Kallick. Well done!