Buddy Greene - GRASSHARPER

Last Spring, after a long, hard winter, I found myself spending lots of time in the man cave playing my harmonicas. It’s always good therapy to play this instrument I love so much, and one day, after about 3 hours of playing one bluegrass tune after another, I thought to myself, I wonder how long I’m going to be able to play this demanding, muscular style of music on this equally demanding mouth harp at any sort of a decent level? This is the kind of morbid thought that can plague the mind of an aging harmonica player. However, based on that day’s performance, I was still able to play some pretty good versions of fiddle tunes and could still hang in there on a few rip snorters like Foggy Mountain Breakdown or Pig In A Pen. So, with that question dogging me and a bit of hope springing eternal, I picked up the phone and called my old friend Bryan Sutton and asked:

Hey Bryan, what if I were to hire a bunch of thoroughbred pickers, yourself included, and a studio and an engineer for a couple of days, and let’s see how many bluegrass tunes - featuring the harmonica, of course - we can record?

Bryan: Sure, count me in.

Also, would you be willing to produce it?

Bryan: Sounds like fun.

And just like that, we were off to the races.

Within a week or so Bryan and I were going over a list of about 30 tunes, bluegrass and old time favorites of mine, and were able to quickly whittle those 30 down to a manageable dozen. Bryan booked the musicians, studio and engineer for 2 days in early May, and I kept woodshedding.

The band was a dream team: Dennis Crouch on bass, Casey Campbell on mandolin, Justin Moses on banjo and dobro, Bryan on guitar and clawhammer banjo, and Michael Cleveland on fiddle. We recorded at The Tractor Shed, located in the woods outside of Goodlettsville, TN, with Sean Sullivan engineering. At the beginning of the first day I was nervous as a cat, but by the time we had laid down the first song, my nerves had settled and for the rest of those two days, it was nothing but a good time.

The songs we recorded were mostly standards like Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Way Downtown, Pig In A Pen, Reuben’s Train, the kind of stuff we all learned from listening to Flatt and Scruggs and Doc Watson and Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs and Buck White and so many more great masters. They’re the reason we love this music and play it the way we do. They’re the reason I’m a grassharper, because once I heard those giants playing that music, that well, I never got over it. It ruined me.

After two days of sessions we had a dozen tracks, most of them complete. Within a few months we had found a couple of days to fix a few vocal and harp lines of mine and record BGVs with Bryan, sisters Sharon and Cheryl White, and Dan Tyminski. Sean mixed the project in December and I was thrilled with the result. A couple of months later I had it mastered by Mike Monseur, who did an outstanding job, and finally called in my old artist friend and past collaborator Paul Soupiset to illustrate and design a CD package.

As for the title, it occurred to me one morning as I waking up from some dream I can’t recall. It seemed kind of silly, but it described my role pretty accurately. I ran it by Bryan Sutton and Casey Campbell one day and they both smiled, and Bryan said, “Sometimes silly is good.” Then I remembered reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka as an English major way back in my college years. I found my old text book and read the opening line: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed…into a gigantic insect.”

That was it! The clincher! The sign I’d been looking for:

GRASSHARPER -

IT’S BLUEGRASS! IT’S HARMONICA! IT’S KAFKAESQUE!

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GRASSHARPER - epilogue

Unlike 99% of the diatonic harmonica players out there who just naturally take the blues path, I chose the bluegrass way. Made no difference to me that I never heard or saw a bluegrass band with a harp player and hardly ever ran across other harp players with my affliction. All it took was hearing some masters like Charlie McCoy, Jimmy Fadden, PT Gazelle and a few others playing bluegrass or bluegrass-y songs to realize our little instrument could hang in there with the fiddles and the banjos if given the chance. All it took to be ready was playing your butt off learning dozens of fiddle tunes and breakdowns, hyperventilating all the way, and always with the goal of finding the right notes, the right time, and some good tone.

In my long recording career, I’ve recorded many songs that were bluegrass or bluegrass tinged, or old time, Celtic, or what might otherwise be classified as roots music. But Grassharper is my first and only fully dedicated bluegrass and old-time project. Why did it take so long? I guess I was never quite sure I could pull it off. It’s not that I didn’t know what to play; I just wasn’t sure if there was anybody other than myself that would want to hear a bluegrass album that features the harp on every song. But these days music is more of a hobby for me than a vocation, and I just thought I might as well give it a shot. After all, I’m not getting any younger.

Anyway, I’m glad I followed through. Many thanks to Bryan and everyone that helped make this little uneasy dream of mine come true. I was blessed to have such a great team to work with, it was an honor to be in the band, and I love the record we made. Hope you enjoy it too!

Personnel:

Buddy Greene: vocals, harmonica, thumb-picked guitar

Bryan Sutton: guitar, clawhammer banjo, vocals

Casey Campbell: mandolin

Michael Cleveland: fiddle

Dennis Crouch: bass

Justin Moses: banjo, dobro, rhythm guitar

Dan Tyminski: vocals

Cheryl & Sharon White: vocals

Produced by Bryan Sutton

Recorded & Mixed by Sean Sullivan at The Tractor Shed

Additional overdubs by Bryan Sutton

Mastered by Mike Monseur, Nashville, TN

Art Direction, Design & Illustration by Paul Soupiset

Buddy plays and endorse Hohner harmonicas, customized by the incomparable Joe Filisko (www.filisko.com)

BUDDY GREENE - GRASSHARPER