I think of Bluegrass as having been through two major phases. The first, the traditional phase, has been pretty well covered here by Mith. It covers the period from the beginning of the genre with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys in the mid 1940's through the late 1950's. This was the Golden Age of Bluegrass, when groups like The Stanley Brothers and Flatt and Scruggs were commercially successful acts that sold lots of records and made big bucks for Nashville. The emergence of rock and roll in the late fifties brought about the end to this classic period and although the musicians continued to play, and devoted fans began going to the first Bluegrass festivals, the style then became, and has ever since remained, a niche genre, usually considered a sub-genre of Country (a classification that I personally would dispute, but that’s just me).
I won’t say too much about the traditional style - like I said, Mith has given a good representation of it - but as to the question of what constitutes Bluegrass music, there is a simple answer (although certainly not the only answer). Unlike most forms of music, Bluegrass is one that really can trace it’s development back to one person- Bill Monroe. Yes, it’s true that Monroe did not spin Bluegrass out of whole cloth - he was working from the tradition of the Scots-Irish folk music that was prominent in the Appalachian mountains where he grew up and the blues of African Americans who lived there as well. But Monroe did set out to create his own personal style, and for most of the “classic” period of Bluegrass, when the question came up of what kind of music bluegrass was, the answer was simple: music played the way Bill Monroe would play it. And that is as good a starting place as any for defining it.
So how did Monroe play it? First of all, his band was a five piece acoustic string band consisting of mandolin, fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar and upright bass. The songs were traditional folk songs, played at a very fast pace, with a syncopated rhythm, and the guitar and bass forming the rhythm section with the other three instruments taking turns playing lead, each one playing an improvised solo during the course of the song. Vocals, if there were any, were high pitched and nasally, leading to it’s description as the “high lonesome sound”, and often included layers of two, three or even four part harmony. This was, for all intents and purposes, the definition of Bluegrass for most of its classic period. The only real deviations from this formula were one of the lead instruments might be missing, a steel guitar might substitute for the acoustic, and Monroe’s own belief that the fiddle shouldn’t play on gospels. Other than that, the elements of the Monroe style were the hard and fast rules of the genre during its heyday.
For me personally, though, while I love the old-timey stuff, I have really been more interested in the second, more modern phase of Bluegrass, which has reveled in breaking all of those rules. Bluegrass went through a renaissance during the late sixties and early seventies when its popularity began to grow again and expand to a new audience. Two things in particular lead to this - first the emergence of the band New Grass Revival. This was a group of instrumental virtuosos who really wanted to see how far they could push the boundaries of the genre. They did such unorthodox things as using an electric bass instead of an upright, and, horror of horrors, putting things like drums and keyboards in some of their songs. They were also long-haired hippie looking types who were as different from the looks of Bill Monroe as you could get. But they were well versed in the traditions of Bluegrass and could play a mean Foggy Mountain Breakdown when they wanted to. Their line-ups included two of the great legends of modern Bluegrass, Sam Bush, the originator of what came to be known as Newgrass, and Bela Fleck, who has gone on to establish himself as one of the most accomplished musicians in the world, not only in Bluegrass but also Jazz (he has won several Grammys for his Jazz work), Classical and World music.
The other thing that happened in the early seventies was the release of an album called “Old and In the Way” by a group of the same name. Unlike New Grass Revival, this band played strictly in the traditional style of Monroe, in fact two of their members had been in Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys band - guitarist Peter Rowan and fiddle great Vasser Clemments. What really set this group apart though was their banjo player, Jerry Garcia, yes that Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead fame. Garcia had actually started his music career as a bluegrass banjoist, and had made friends in the Bluegrass field before turning his attention to rock. In 1973 his friend David Grisman talked him in to doing a Bluegrass gig. They only played a handful of shows in 73, and it wasn’t until 1975 that they released a live album, but that record went on to become the best selling Bluegrass album of all time. It introduced the genre to a whole new audience of hippies and rock fans and to this day you can go to any Bluegrass festival in the world and see people who look like they just crawled out of Woodstock. Grisman went on to form the David Grisman Quintet, a breeding ground for some of the most influential modern Bluegrass artists.
There is a handful of people who have come to exemplify this new phase of Bluegrass, who I refer to as The Usual Cast Of Characters because they seem to make a living by showing up as guests on each others records. Whenever you see one of their names you are likely to see several of the others. Most of them came from, or were associated with, New Grass Revival or the David Grisman Quintet. Among them are:
Sam Bush - Mandolin and fiddle player, and the originator of Newgrass, Bush is a prolific artist who has recorded with everybody under the sun.
Playing a trditional Bluegrass number:
Ridin’ that Bluegrass Train
And a contemporary number with New Grass Revival:
Metric Lips
Bela Fleck - Banjoist, more known for his Jazz playing these days with his band The Flecktones (an awesome group by the way - their live shows will blow you away. It’s worth it just to see Future Man!), Fleck has made more recordings than I can count. While a member of NGR he put out a few solo Bluegrass albums before moving on to Jazz, but he returned to his roots in 1999 to record
The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From the Acoustic Planet Vol. 2 with The Usual Cast Of Characters including Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Vasser Clements and Ricky Skaggs. This is one of my favorite records of all time, from any genre. Here he is playing one of those songs at The Grand Ole Opry:
Major Honker
With NGR:
Deviaiton
And just for shits and giggles, a clip with the Flecktones et.al. - weird strangeness ensues:
A Moment So Close
David Grisman - Mandolin player, nicknamed Dawg by Jerry Garcia, Grisman has perhaps done more to foster the development of acoustic music than anyone else, and I don’t know of anyone who is more fun to watch perform.
Here he is with the David Grisman Quartet:
Eat My Dust
One of the Old And In the Way tunes:
Pig In A Pen
And the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience
Gray Fox 08
Jerry Douglas - Steel guitar, Douglas is another one who has played with nearly everyone under the sun (Wikipedia says he has played on over 1600 albums), he is currently known for playing in Alison Krauss’ band Union Station, but has also been in such notable bands as J.D. Crowe and the New South and the Bluegrass Album Band (with The Usual Cast Of Characters).
With Bela Fleck - this looks to be in the mid 70's sometime:
Cincinnati Rag
At Merlefest with his own band:
Patrick Meets the Brickbats
With Allison Krauss and Union Station
My Poor Old Heart
Tony Rice - Acoustic guitar - a David Grisman Quintet alumni, Rice is known as one of the world’s greatest flatpicked guitar players, a style he has refined over his nearly 40 years of playing. He has a lengthy list of accomplishments, but I was nearly brought to tears the first time I heard this recording, which was shortly after he returned to performing after learning that throat problems would leave him unable to sing:
Shenandoah
Edgar Meyer - Bass, Meyer is as well known as a classical and jazz player as he is for Bluegrass.
With Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas at Rockgrass (wave to Ellie!):
Rockygrass
With Chris Thile playing really fast:
Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile
Darol Anger - Fiddle, another DGQ alumni, and another multi-genre player mixing jazz, classical and bluegrass.
With his band Republic of Strings:
Duck River Medley
Playing Psychograss with the usual cast of characters:
Psychograss
Mike Marshall - Mandolin, one more DGQ member and a frequent collaborator of Darol Anger (see the Psychograss clip above), Marshall is known for his forays into world music, especially Brazilian music. He also has done a few albums with Chris Thile, another mandolin virtuoso. I got to see them play a few years ago - they were unbelievable, just two mandolins, nothing else. It was awesome.
With Chris Thile:
Fisher’s Hornpipe
With a bunch of hotshot mandolin players (Marshall is the one closest to the camera:
Hot Mandolin Picking!!
Tony Trischka - Banjo, Trischka was Bela Fleck’s banjo teacher and he also played with Marshall and Anger in Psychograss.
Here he is with Steve Martin and Bela Fleck playing on the David Letterman Show:
The Crow
Some other names in this group to look out for are Mark O’Conner, Dan Tyminski, David Bromberg, and John Cowan. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. These were all people who came into prominence in the 70's and 80's, and they have all worked together and on other Bluegrass artist’s projects. A few notable pieces to look for are Natalie MacMaster’s
Blueprint with Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas and John Cowan, and I believe Ang already mentioned The Chieftains
Down the Old Plank Road and the follow-up
Further Down the Old Plank Road. The Chieftains, by the way, are also spectacular in concert, if you ever get the chance to see them, go. You won’t regret it. Another spectacular album to look for is The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s
Will the Circle Be Unbroken.
Ricky Skaggs should probably be mentioned along with this group, although he switched over to mainstream Country at one point, he has come back into the fold of Bluegrass in recent years. And of course Allison Krauss is very well known for her Bluegrass work, although she too crossed over to more mainstream pop oriented version of country in recent years. And her recent project, which I’m getting to.
One of the stellar newcomers on the scene has been the band Nickel Creek, who have already been mentioned. They are a threesome, brother and sister Sean and Sara Watkins on guitar and fiddle and Chris Thile on mandolin. They are all incredibly talented musicians, but Thile in particular is just insanely good. I’ve seen them play several times, once in a formal opera hall, and the last time in their farewell concert (they are on hiatus right now) with Fiona Apple, which was surprisingly apt somehow. And of course I got to see Thile and Mike Marshall together, which was just mind bogglingly good.
On a personal note, I did not come to Bluegrass naturally. I didn’t grow up with it, never heard it as a child, my parents didn’t listen to it. I just fell in love with the sound of it the first time I heard it and have never looked back. The ironic thing, or so I thought, was that the first place I ever heard that sound, of all places, was in a live recording of Led Zeppelin playing their song
That’s the Way. There was a mandolin solo, couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen seconds long, but it mesmerized me, and I spent years looking for something that replicated that sound. I finally found it in Bluegrass. I always thought how odd it was that I came to Bluegrass through a rock band like Zeppelin.
Turns out it wasn’t so odd after all. In 2003 John Paul Jones, the bass player for Led Zeppelin (he also played mandolin on that solo bit I loved so much) showed up unannounced at the Merlefest Bluegrass festival in North Carolina and jumped up on stage with Nickel Creek and started jamming with them. That lead to a collaboration that is still going on today. In 2004 Jones toured with the members of Nickel Creek and Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket as part of a project called
Mutual Admiration Society. Just recently he produced the new solo album by Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek.
And then there’s Robert Plant, Zeppelin’s lead singer, who just this year turned down the chance to reunite with his old bandmates and make ungodly gazillions of dollars so that he could go back into the studio and record another album with Allison Krauss. Their 2007 album
Raising Sand, which won several Grammys last year, was not in any way a Bluegrass album, but Krauss certainly brought her sensibilities for traditional Americana to the project, and even helped Plant learn how to sing harmony, a staple of Bluegrass.
Music does form a circle.
[Georgia Pineywoods, Don't Let the Smokey Mountain Smoke Get in Your Eyes, Country Roads, and Little Cabin Home on the Hill] http://www.youtube.com/user/plunky123 
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