| Mark Greenberg | |
| Still
Picking after All These Years A Musical Bio in Pictures |
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REVEREND GARY DAVIS playing a 5-string at the 1966 University of Chicago Folk Festival banjo workshop in Ida Noyes Hall. L to R: JOHN COHEN (New Lost City Ramblers), the Rev., moi. I should have been paying better attention. (photo: Andy Sacher) |
Here I'm backing up the original Mr. Bean-- Dave Akeman a/k/a STRINGBEAN, at the 1965 U. of Chicago Folk Festival. This time we're on the main stage in Mandel Hall. "Stick with me, boy, and I'll take you to Nashville," 'Bean kept saying to his struggling college boy accompanist. Poor Stringbean. He met a tragic end.
Back to the 1966 banjo workshop (below). JOHN COHEN and yours truly engage in witty repartee while Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys' ALLEN SHELTON enjoys a pipe and picks the 5-string. (photo: Andy Sacher) |
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This (below, right) is from
the 1996 Champlain Valley Folk Festival, and the large-hatted, bearded,
and flower-shirted man is, of course,
DAVE VAN RONK, a/k/a Uncle Moose. I'd interviewed him
several times in the 1970s and '80s, and then nearly plotzed when I got
asked to produce his long-held fantasy jug band version of Peter
& the Wolf.
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The silhouetted gent with the hat is the  phenomenal
fiddler CLARK KESSINGER.
Steve Berlin, pres. of this 1968 U of C Folk Festival is in the background.
The photo is from the Hyde Park Herald. Kessinger was accompanied by Gene
Meade, perhaps the best fiddle tune back-up guitarist I've ever heard. |
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Me interviewing SONNY
TERRY (l) and BROWNIE
McGHEE (r), although it wasn't a good idea to get between
these two. This was backstage at Hunt's, in Burlington, in 1980. (Photos
: Marshall
Freedland) |
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Original New Lost City Rambler and master
guitarist/banjoist TOM PALEY
came to Montpelier several times in the '7
MIKE SEEGER (below)
in my American Vernacular Music class |
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| ODETTA with my daughter, LEAH (center) and her friend Jessica, at my house c. 1986, during my tenure as director of the Onion River Arts Council. Where am I? |  |
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In 1991, I went to Lafeyette, LA to produce Le Hoogie Boogie: Louisiana French Songs for Kids with MICHAEL and SHARON DOUCET. Lots of the Doucets's friends and colleagues participated, and I learned that Michael gets the royal treatment in every restaurant. |
| To many Vermonters, DON FIELDS was the premier VT fiddler from the 1930s through the 60s and DON FIELDS AND HIS PONY BOYS was the hot "cowboy" band at barn dances and on radio broadcasts. I interviewed and recorded Don in 1983--still a first-rate player and a wonderful man. Don Fields & His Pony Boys: Last Sessions and Historic Broadcasts (from 1941!) is now out on Multicultural Media/Rootstock Records. (photo: Marshall Freedland) |  |
In 1995,
JANE SAPP & I, with a lot of help from our friends
and Rounder Records, managed to
get 21 kids
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 My
next musical partner-and roommate-was DAVID
WEXLER. David turned me on to Van Ronk and worshiped in
the Church of Gary Davis, hence the Gibson J-200, the first of many of David's
fine and finer instruments. This was in our first apartment at U of C, 1964-5.
The year before we'd sold a fellow first-year named George Gruhn his first
old Martin guitar (an f-2; what folkie cared about f-hole guitars then?).
David was president of the Folklore Society in '66, and I was in '67. David
stayed in Chicago through his PhD and ended up a successful, respected psychologist
in California. He died suddenly in 2002, a week before Dave Van Ronk. We
drove each other nuts, and I miss him greatly. The picture below is from
our 25th U of C reunion in1992. |
The ORIGINAL SOUTHSIDE JUG BAND
(well, we were-at least as far as I know),  1964,
in the dorm lounge. I think we were playing "Mobile Line" ("hey, lordy,
mama, mama; hey, lordy, papa, papa talk about that Mobile Line") DAVID
is undoubtedly growling. ROGER BORGENICHT
is doing his laundry and PAUL SILVER
is taking a nip. I don't know what's with me, but apparently my banjo playing
was so appreciated that they made me put a shmatte behind the strings to
mute the damn thing. |
| I have no recollection whatsoever of having this photo taken of the LAKE COUNTRY STRING BAND, BOB "BEBOP" STOLTENBERG edition, post- and pre- Bob Hoban. Stolt's playing bass, which he then went off to Cremona, Italy to learn how to make. Now he's a bow specialist. The other guys are ANDY SACHER (mandolin), PETER McGRAW (pron. "McGrath," please; guitar, left), LARRY MARSCHALL (front left; banjo-take my word for it); and me (other guitar). |  |
 This
is the original LCSB-pre-Peter
and with fiddler BOB HOBAN,
described by the paper in which this c.1967 picture appeared as a "young,
startled Charles Laughton." I was described as standing "as upright  as
an Old Testament hippie." Yeah, right. Hoban left us for a while to play
with Steve Goodman and later worked with Vassar Clements and John Prine.
Yo, Hoban, where art thou? |
| A year after I moved to Vermont, I got a call from NORMAN DAYRON, who had produced a demo for the LCSB shortly before I left Chicago. (We had recorded it at night in the old Chess Records studio.) Now Mercury Records was interested, so back I flew for promo photos and a meeting with a Mercury VP. The meeting came to naught, and the photo . . . well, judge for yourself. From left to right: LARRY, ME, PETER, CLYDE STATS (who had replaced Stoltenberg on bass), ANDY, and HOBAN (who had returned for the demo and chance at the big time). |  |
 In
1970 I left Chicago and academia for Vermont and cold, long winters-out
of the ice box and into the freezer, I suppose. Here I'm actually playing
outside without a parka and mittens, sitting in with my friends in
SHADY GROVE in Hardwick, fittingly known as "Little Chicago."
MIKE YATES has the hat and bass. Local legend GARY
BARR'S playing guitar. And that's ANDY
and MARSHALL, along
with me (funny how I'm in all these pictures). |
I met COCO KALLIS
in 1972. Our first musical venture was Coco & Friends, hastily formed
for a gig at perhaps the most beautiful venue I've ever played in- a field
at Indian
 side
of Montpelier, where we played our "up-home country music" every Thursday
night to growing crowds of locals, legislators, and back-to-the-landers,
soon graduating from the basement to the banquet room upstairs. Today,
the LVH is condo apartments. (Photo:
Lafe)
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Another LRB promo shot
(left): Rob, Coco, Paul, me. (Congrats to Dave Monahan & Casey Dennis for correctly identifying it [see contest, below]) On and onward: the two lads gazing off into the distance are JEFF SALISBURY (center), drums, and TIM "TINY" GLASGOW (far right), pedal steel. The beagle at Coco's feet is ASKER (what's her name?....). |
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1975 I finally made it to Nashville with the LRB.
We recorded a bunch of songs for Mike Figlio of Music City Workshop, and
this (rt) was the result. "NEW ENGLAND SONG"
was a Billboard pick, made it onto a few charts, and got Coco the Maine
(her home state) Country Songwriter of the Year honors. "She'll sing you
a song about New England..." |
After playing in various local country bands, I returned to my folkier
roots when BOB YELLIN,
formerly of the Greenbriar Boys, the first urban bluegrass band to emerge
from the Folk Revival and an early favorite of mine, moved
to Vermont, and we pulled together BOB
YELLIN & THE JOINT CHIEFS OF BLUEGRASS. The names of
my bands kept getting longer. At the  1986(?)
Midsummer Festival, ELLEN POWELL
filled in on bass for the absent WILLY
LINDNER. Ol' ANDY SACHER'S
back on mandolin, and DANNY MAHONEY'S
playing Dobro and wearing shorts, possibly breaking new bluegrass ground.
Oh yeah, that's BOB YELLIN
on banjo. (photo: Marshall
Freedland) |
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A few years later, Danny has moved south, Andy has moved on to the up-and-coming Breakaway, and WILLY has moved to mandolin. PETE TOURIN (far left) inherited the bass spot, and David Bromberg Band alum NEIL ROSSI joined us on fiddle & mandolin. |
After recording Peter
& the Wolf, as the KAZOO-O-PHONIC
JUG BAND,
This brings us up to the mid 90s, when the Joint Chiefs dis-jointed. For some more recent images and info, go to the Upstreet Booking page. |
Contest winner:
Peter Craig has correctly
identified: Neil Rossi (fid.), Phil Zimmerman (mando.), Larry Marschall (banjo).
The 4th guy (guit.) is me.
Y'all come back soon. New contest as soon as I can get to it.
| Previous contest winner: Bill Moulton correctly named all of the original Joint Chiefs of Bluegrass and identified the site: the Vermont State House |  |
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Mark Greenberg markgvt@yahoo.com Copyright © 2004 Revised 8/21/09 URL: http://upstreetproductions.com
It
was an incredible experience, and Dave and I became friends. He even became
something of a staple at Goddard College, where I was then teaching. Dave
died on my birthday in 2002. We never got to the opera.
0s
and '80s. This was one of them. I'm trying to back him up here, probably
on a Swedish fiddle tune, his obsession at the time.
ranging
in age from 8-16 from 6 states into a studio to record 
Summer
farm at the top of the Danville Hill Road in Cabot, VT. After 
we
became the