Kip Lornell has written an outstanding book documenting the history of bluegrass music in the Washington, D.C., area. It is called Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Meets Washington, D.C. In the book, which is illustrated with well-chosen photographs, Lornell weaves together many narrative strands into a cogent work that keeps the interest of readers. The book divides the time-frame extending from the 1920s to 2019 into six chapters, in the region also known as the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia area (DMV). We learn of performing bands and players, as well as of music parks hosting bluegrass music, clubs, concert halls, media outlets, and promoters.
Through the 1950s, bluegrass music was played primarily for Appalachian people by Appalachian people. As time went on, the bluegrass world expanded stylistically and geographically. It became an international style located in numerous communities. Each community supports the music through some combination of concerts, jam sessions, informal social occasions, venues, publications, electronic media, local music stores, and non-profit groups.
In Capital Bluegrass, Lornell shows how the music has had appeal as heritage music to some of those who arrived in the DMV area from places in the South to seek employment, and also, quoting Dick Spottswood, to D.C. kids who “inexplicably learned to love Country and Bluegrass” (66).
While seemingly every region has venues and bands supported by local bluegrass cultures, DMV bluegrass activities are laden with significance for the bluegrass world. The Washington, D.C., area has often been considered a hotbed of the music, the home of full-time professional groups and talented part-time bands, and with rabid fans for whom to perform. The book tells of venues such as the Shamrock, the Birchmere, and the Cellar Door, all well-known destinations throughout the bluegrass world. These venues provided stages for influential groups and players such as the Country Gentlemen, Emerson and Waldron, The Seldom Scene, the Stonemans, Buzz Busby, and many others. The Washington, D.C., area, like many other bluegrass world places, has supported a bluegrass press. However, Washington spawned the most important print publication in North America, Bluegrass Unlimited, and we learn of the magazine’s development in detail in Capital Bluegrass. Many places have had bluegrass radio and television outlets; but Washington is home to WAMU-FM, a major public radio station that for extended periods devoted a lot of airtime to bluegrass music. WAMU bluegrass programming later morphed into the fulltime internet-based radio station, Bluegrass Country.
Capital Bluegrass gives precise details regarding the history of bluegrass radio and TV in the DMV from the 1920s onward, including WAMU-FM and Bluegrass Country, and radio stations such as WTFF-AM and WARL-AM and key figures such as Don Owens and Connie B. Gay. Over time, these figures and others combined to aesthetically curate bluegrass music for the benefit DMV audiences. How things are done in the DMV frequently serve as exemplars for bluegrass-related activities in other places, or at least serve as key reference points in the wider bluegrass world. Capital Bluegrass recounts the histories of all of these bluegrass music-connected entities, and shines its light on the work of individuals who made providing public access to bluegrass music, a personal priority.
Lornell’s narrative throughout the book makes clear what he writes specifically on page 299, that bluegrass music in the Washington, D.C., area was not nearly as prominent at the time of the book’s publication in 2019 as it was in the period 1975-85. Also, thinking about the older demographic of bluegrass consumers might make one unsure of the future of the bluegrass style. Providing ways to perpetuate bluegrass is outside the mission of Capital Bluegrass. However, in the last few pages of the book, Lornell suggests that bluegrass preservation in 2019 and beyond might best reside in some kind of connection with the field of music called Americana.
In his introduction, author Lornell reveals that it first occurred to him in 2008 that a book about D.C. bluegrass was in his future. From that point, it was about a decade of conducting interviews, transcribing them, scribbling down observations, and taking notes from and making copies of printed sources, that led to an extremely well-documented final product. In the process of arranging the data convincingly, Capital Bluegrass includes many colorful and entertaining anecdotes. In that regard, readers are directed to pages 205-210 for an amusing and telling segment based on stories from the oral tradition about the flamboyant John Duffey. Duffey was a member of two very influential bluegrass groups based in the DMV, the Country Gentlemen and the Seldom Scene.
Capital Bluegrass focuses on bluegrass in a specific area, but the book’s implications are wide ranging. Throughout, Kip Lornell provides information regarding the evolving relationships between the DMV bluegrass community and the general American culture, and also between the DMV bluegrass community and surroundings and country and folk music industries. Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Meets Washington, DC will appeal to scholars of bluegrass music as well as to bluegrass fans in search of a good read about an important location for the music.
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[Review length: 830 words • Review posted on May 21, 2020]