The Curmudgeon: A Renaissance For the Acoustic Guitar at Merlefest
Photo by Jim Gavenus
When Arthel Watson was growing up in Deep Gap, North Carolina, his chosen instrument, the acoustic guitar, was an afterthought in the string bands of Appalachia. It just wasn’t loud enough to be heard next to a fiddle or a banjo if there was no microphone on stage—or even only one. As a result, the guitar was rarely given a solo and mostly relegated to rhythm chords. But Watson, nicknamed Doc after Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick, wasn’t satisfied with a secondary role. He joined a band without a fiddler and learned to play fiddle tunes on an electric guitar as briskly and as crisply as any violinist. And when he got a microphone of his own, he could play the same licks on an acoustic guitar, giving them that hollow, wooden sound that somehow resonates better with mountain music.
It was a revolutionary moment that freed the acoustic guitar from background duty in string bands and moved it to the foreground. Soon steel-string guitarists such as Tony Rice, Clarence White, John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Chris Smither, Norman Blake, David Grier, David Bromberg and Jorma Kaukonen were enjoying robust careers in the ‘60s and ‘70s. That boomlet petered out eventually, but now we’re witnessing a resurgence of younger acoustic-guitar soloists. Molly Tuttle, Bryan Sutton, Uwe Kruger, Dan Tyminski, Billy Strings, Yasmin Williams, Cody Kilby and Trey Hensley are not only technically dazzling but they’re also putting new twists on an old tradition. Many of them were on display at this year’s Merlefest, the annual Americana festival co-founded in 1988 by Watson himself and named after his son Merle, a gifted guitarist who had died in a 1985 tractor accident. (Merle was named not after Merle Haggard but after the great country guitarist Merle Travis).
Except when a pandemic is raging, Merlefest is held on the steep, hillside campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, the last weekend in April when the dogwoods are blooming. While country, rock, blues and singer-songwriter acts are sprinkled in, the emphasis remains on bluegrass and old-time string-band music. Even though Doc Watson died on May 29, 2012, exactly a month after his final performance at Merlefest, his presence was still felt throughout this year’s festival. Old-timers such as Roy Book Binder and Steve Lewis spoke from the stage about playing with Watson and his openness to all genres and sounds. Baby boomers such as Sam Bush and the Kruger Brothers fondly recalled the times Watson invited them to his house for iced tea and hours of picking.
Youngsters such as Presley Barker and Liam Purcell admitted that growing up in the same area as Watson had nudged them in the direction of string-band music. And Old Crow Medicine Show remembered their early days busking on the streets of nearby Boone, North Carolina, when Watson came to hear them and give them some much needed encouragement. The band tried to recreate that pass-the-hat experience by inviting Boone’s veteran tap dancer Arthur Grimes to join them on stage. “If you think your music has influenced other musicians,” Watson told us at a 2001 press conference, “that’s like the applause when you walk onto the stage. If an audience responds—and you can tell by the reaction if they’re listening or not—it doesn’t matter if it’s 20 or 10,000 people out there. Of course, it might be different for a sighted person.”
An eye infection robbed Watson of his sight before he turned two. But he never used it as an excuse for anything—instead thinking of it as something that bonded him with others in a similar situation. During the press conference, for example, he spoke how excited he was to play with a young blind fiddler named Michael Cleveland. 23 years later, Cleveland returned to Merlefest as a member of banjoist Bela Fleck’s all-star band, My Bluegrass Heart. Cleveland’s virtuosity had only grown since his days as a young prodigy, but more importantly his playing has gained an emotional depth it had never had before. Now, when given a choice between playing fast and playing a slower, darker harmony, he is more likely to do the latter.
Standing nearby on Merlefest’s Watson Stage was Bryan Sutton, the tall guitarist who made his name with Ricky Skaggs’ band before becoming a top Nashville session musician. But he is clearly a Watson apostle, a flatpicking expert who can articulate each note and put it in the proper sequence to tell a story. Sutton, Cleveland, Fleck, mandolinist Sierra Hull, bassist Mark Schatz and dobroist Justin Moses devoted the first half of the set to Fleck’s compositions, which mixed bluegrass and chamber-music elements into a challenging whole. The second half showcased the title track of their latest album, Rhapsody in Bluegrass, Fleck’s arrangement of the George Gershwin classic for bluegrass instruments. It sounds like a gimmick, but it worked much better than expected. The string band gave the robust melody a much different tonality but with the same anthemic lift of majesty.
“I might play Kris Kristofferson’s ‘For the Good Times,’” Watson said in 2001 when asked about interpreting well known compositions, “but I won’t try to copy Chet Atkins on the Ray Price version. I just play what comes to mind. If you play what you feel, music is a conversation between people who respect each other. You’re feeling the song or you’re feeling the idea of the song—it’s the same thing.”
That kind of conversation was happening when Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway played the first night of Merlefest this year. The five gifted musicians also interpreted well known pieces (the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”) by passing the familiar hooks around and adding a new twist with each solo. One long medley began with “Alice in Bluegrass,” Tuttle’s own telling of the Lewis Carroll story, then shifted into the Airplane version, “White Rabbit.” That evolved into an extended psychedelic jam before segueing into a straightforward version of the traditional bluegrass number, “The Train That Carried My Girl from Town.” The medley seemed designed to prove that originals and standards, recent rock influences and ancient string-band influences are all necessary ingredients in the stew.
Tuttle looked over her left shoulder at the smaller Cabin Stage—an actual log cabin porch, where supporting acts play while there’s a changeover on the main stage. She had first played at Merlefest on the Cabin Stage when she was competing in the festival’s songwriting contest as an 18-year-old girl playing with her father. She won the contest, and she has kept growing as a writer. Her songs about heartbreak, cannabis and the American landscape were highlights of the set as they have been on her recent albums. “She’s writing the songs,” banjoist Kyle Tuttle told the crowd. “She’s singing the songs, and she’s paying tribute to Doc Watson by playing the snot out of the guitar.”
Among the most reliable treats of Merlefest are the Kruger Brothers. Jens and Uwe Kruger grew up in Switzerland, led a blues-rock band in Germany and followed their interest in American roots music to the northwest corner of North Carolina in search of Doc Watson. “Our first Merlefest was in 1997,” Jens told this year’s audience at the college’s Walker Center, “so this is our 25th. We met Doc Watson there. He invited us up to his house, and we played all day. We liked this area so much that we moved here. Now I play on my back porch, and the raccoons come to hear me play, and sometimes they sing along. One I call Stripey and the others I call Stars—Stars and Stripey. But that sound of the woods and the raccoons is what makes Doc’s music to distinctive.”
The brothers then played “The Cuckoo Bird,” the traditional American folk song that Watson recorded so definitively. The Krugers took it at a brisk tempo, with Uwe’s guitar solo nearly matching Jens’s quicksilver banjo runs. And it was Uwe’s relaxed baritone voice that lent plausibility to the strange but compelling lyrics: “My horses, they’re hungry, and they won’t eat your hay. I’ll ride on that little bird, and feed ’em on my way.” No wonder Watson has been quoted as saying, “I love playing with the Kruger Brothers.”