Re: Surreal studio experience yesterday.....


Pat McDonald wrote:
I was in to the studio yesterday and had a moment of stunned amazement .....


Charlie called me to come over and play drums on a track he was recording
with The Scruggs family. Gary Scruggs on bass, Randy Scruggs on guitar
and the legendary Earl Scruggs on banjo. We cut a version of Dylan's
"Maggie's Farm" for a duets record we've been working on.

Randy is an AMAZING flatpicker and has been at the top of the Nashville
A-List for years. Gary played bass and sang and Earl, of course played
banjo. It was one of those "Holy ***!!! What am *I* doing here?!"
moments for sure.


Earl is getting up there in years and he's pretty frail but when they
handed him that banjo, he was 25 again. It was amazing. The instant he
started playing I thought to myself "There it is. That's the man who
INVENTED that axe." Prior to Earl's arrival on the music scene, banjo
players just fingered chords and strummed the rhythm. Earl came along
and, according to him, just kind of stumbled on that finger roll style one
day. He said when it first happened he wasn't even really paying
attention and he noticed he did it and thought "Now THAT'S different...." and
started exploring it. Charlie asked him how he felt when he first did it
and he said "It scared me." I think he knew he was opening a door that
had never been opened. Over the years, he refined it and built it into a
style that every banjo player since has adopted. There are guys playing
now who don't even know that it was ever done any other way. All the
things that guy like Bela Fleck do might have never happened if it were't for
Earl years ago. And he still does it like no one else. Amazing.


There was a videographer walking around filiming it all and I walked right up
to the camera and said "There is ONE person in this room who is totally
unqualified to be here. I'll give you a hint......he's bald and he looks
alot like me!" It was just amazing to sit there in a roomful of legends
and look around wondering how the hell I ended up there. When you think
about all the things they've all done and how much they've influenced music
over the years it's just mind boggling. And I was sitting there in the
middle of it all. What a job I have......it's just crazy sometimes.




Pat

I love bluegrass, and I love Earl Scruggs. Earl is the original
metaphorical Hollywood stuntman. Maybe you remember that old song:

You can set him on fire or hit him with a truck or shoot him in the can
with a shotgun, and, heaven knows, he won't hold a grudge. He'll just
jump back up and do it again and lookin' at you with a grin, he'll say
"There ain't nothin' like the life of a Hollywood stuntman.

I think that's the theme song from "Hooper"

God bless America, and Earl Scruggs, and the Scruggs family also, of
course.

.

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