DANG IT ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER
by m.s.wardrip
“Late in the evening just about sundown, high on the hill and above the town, Uncle Pen played his fiddle, Lord, how it would ring.” Written by Bill Monroe, The Father of Bluegrass Music, born and raised in Rosine, Kentucky, far South of here. Another of my favorites is “In The Pines” —” where the sun never shines and it shivers when the cold winds blow.” Bill was real, not fake.
There is a struggling little backwoods Midwestern town that is hanging it’s hopes that they can throw some money at a project that will bring tourists and boost the local economy. They are spending millions and expect a return on the investment. My Common sense tells me after being in the Bluegrass Music Industry for life, that it will be fraught with misfortune for the duration. It’s a bad business to be in. Not enough people are interested in supporting it. There will be an occasional expensive concert where he city can sell some tickets and beer. They will most likely moniker it with “Bluegrass With Class” trying to attract higher paying patrons of the local and international fanbase. Again, personally, albeit my hometown, I am so sure this disaster will continue. Mark my words that the place will fail. Very few people will come here with any dreams of becoming a Bluegrass success, when there is no reason to do so. Fans will not flock there to see old instruments, old stories and new twisted versions of classic old Bluegrass songs. America doesn’t have any nostalgia left. The cold grey iron, stacked up steel beams support nothing except more long term maintenance contracts for the impoverished city. The downtown forces that be are delusional. This is not Disney World and the little town does not have deep pockets. Potholes are rampant, urban decay is on every corner and the general attitude is sour, judgemental. Society, as a whole does not enjoy Bluegrass Music. It denotes backwards hillbillies for which the state has always been famous. Very few Bluegrass fans will go there because it is an expensive downtown thing, parking is difficult, prices are high, the multi-million dollar riverfront park the city just overspent on is a tangled, confusing mess that is hard to navigate with so much plastic, concrete, fences, restrictions that it difficult to have a good time. The city banned outdoor and indoor smoking but yet, sits up beer and alcohol sales and throws a very expensive free concert each Friday where you can bring your children to play on the playground when the adults walk the streets drink alcohol listening to everything but Bluegrass. This is supposed to attract new industry and jobs. All it’s done so far is give pathetic social seekers a place to go, to waste money and be seen by their peers. I’ll never forget the Friday afternoon spokesman, a local outspoken ass-kissing blowhard, when he jumped line in front of me, was rude and obnoxious. After standing in line for the city beer vending stand (limit of two with proper ID and I’m 64) for what seemed an eternity, the jerk jumped in line and started sucking up to the people waiting in line in front of me. In front of me now, he ordered 6 beers and was given them free of charge without and ID check. It’s not anything other than who you blow. Dirk Dimpledick is a sick puppy and I don’t want to be around his ilk. The multi-millionaire, Barry Woodturd, a second generation hand-me-down businessman from his successful Deejay, music distributor Father’s business, heads up the debacle. The man goes home and lies on his sofa hugging his little stuffed teddy bear and weeps. I was there doing service work for one of his crony cousins and witnessed it for myself. I would be crying too if I was mixed up in that mess. The sheriff lived next door and in the parking lot, his undercover officers were staging a drug bust. One approached me and asked if I was part of the sting. I laughed in his face, “No, I’m not that kind of person.” He walked away dismayed and disappointed. So much for professionalism. Backwoods hillbillies wannabe cops do not impress me. Sorry sonny, go back to school. Same with Bluegrass musicians and fans. If you are a city-slicker, remember that Bluegrass is not. Bluegrass is dirty, backwoods tough, real and unrelenting in it’s independence. Bluegrass is not for twisters and Newgrass is fake Bluegrass.
The International Bluegrass Music Museum that was being built at great expense is shut down for the time being. City attorney and assistant city manager Ed Ray told the one and only local small time newspaper on Monday that the city is waiting for a bankruptcy court to declare that the contract is in default before an insurance company decides how to move forward with the project. Failure after failure, which was how the project was started, remains the total atmosphere of the cock-sure, former Mayor Don Pain. The new mayor Dom Watsup, says the city has overextended spending and is on shaky footing financially. As they pour borrowed money into the new downtown development district there is aloud sucking sound of hard working dollar floating down the river. They are all holding hands with the bank and the bank wants their money back. Security bonds will pay more and more. The taxes will raise and no one will come. It’s sad to live in the past and repeat the same stupid mistakes, but that’s how they do business here. The corruption and good-ole-boy camaraderie is still prevalent. One old local businessman has spent millions of his own money on the failed project. Sadly, others have fallen in the same footsteps.
Ray says the city still hopes to have the bluegrass center open in by the late spring or early summer of 2018. They are looking for a signature upscale restaurant to locate here. They offered it to at least three local Barbeque restaurants who turned them down. Why don’t they open a greasy spoon called The Blue Moon and get it over with. Or how about “Fiddlers?” No tellin; what Bill Monroe would call a Bluegrass restaurant… maybe “Bill’s Fried Chicken!?”
Being a local resident for the last 64 years reminds me of how Bluegrass music and Bill Monroe who originated Bluegrass Music in the nearby town of his homeplace, Rosine, Kentucky, never was appreciated here. As a musician playing in bars when I was 16, I found out that this town, as a whole, never supported Bluegrass Music. That was before a popular American film was filmed and released. A huge hit for a little while, the movie, “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?”, bolstered some interest in the musical genre. Years before that locals tried to have Bluegrass Jamborees at a local lake resort. Beer drinking, picnics and Bluegrass foot-stomping festivals were somewaht popular and were ro an amatuer degree were intersting. It’s not like that anymore. Now tickets are in the hundred of dollars to go hear underpar entertainers do sound checks, act unorganized on stage and sound like experiment acoustic twangers, yodelling as hillbilly style stylish hippies who stink. I sat through a disgusting, wet and miserable suffering at my friends great expense who invited me. I won’t be back to that river of music party.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Kentucky is still and will always be a backwards, ignorant and apathetic state with local yokels trying to keep podunk right where it is. Of this endeavor, they are excelling. I’m moving away to a place less unpretentious. Do I want a following? No, just stay there and pick and grin like the ancient television program, HeeHaw in it’s heyday. Maybe Dandy Fatham and his other brother clogger will get your foot stompin, and hey, it’s only set you back a $1000 or maybe even less. Take you kids, drink beer, hope they don’t fall over the 3 foot fence and drown, or fall off the elevated playground walkways, or get abducted by the Deliverance people, and enjoy the hell out of the electronic remnants of Bluegrass past.
I will suggest you go to Rosine, Kentucky Barn Dance on a Friday night about 6pm, “The Home of Bill Monroe, The Father of Bluegrass. It’s still the real deal and you can visit the real restored homeplace high on the hill, up above the town. Late in the evening just about sundown is the best time to be there and you can visit Bill’s gravesite across the road. Rosine Kentucky Magazine quotes the population in 2013 at 113 people. Each Friday night, year round, musicians converge on the town of Rosine to play Bluegrass music. The musicians play in the small general store, outside the store and in a weekly stage show in the barn next to the store. An annual Bluegrass Festival is held in the town and another annual festival is held on the nearby Jerusalem Ridge where Monroe was born. Bill’s musician brothers Birch Monroe and Charlie Monroe were also from Rosine.
I think Ownsbur and their brand of Bluegrass Music is on the way down the river. Come visit Rosine, Kentucky for the real deal. Props to local Veterinarian Campbell Mercer, TV Star on Rural TV programme “Crossing The Cumberland” with the Cumberland Highlanders, who is an ardent Bill Monroe supporter, organizer and huge life long fan. They need more people like him and we are fortunate to have him. Keep it local and don’t ever try to be something you are not. Bill Monroe's, Bluegrass Music is a great American genre of music, please don’t twist it into a young urban professional social folly, as it would on help destroy it. We don’t want it to go down the river with the beer swilling irresponsible parents with the Ownsburr crowds.
Keep authentic original Bluegrass Music alive by supporting the new real Bluegrass Museum we are building in Rosine, Kentucky. Bill would be proud.
Here is the real deal in Rosine. Put your hard-earned money and support here: http://www.billmonroemuseum.com/#home-2
