I came away from the Suzy Bogguss show last Thursday evening with a renewed appreciation for her artistic sensibility, pure vocal style, virtuoso instrumental sidekicks, hip and rootsy setlist, and the easy manner in which she fuses folk, country, blues, and jazz.
She was also the only scheduled performer at this year’s Heber City Cowboy Poetry Gathering and Buckaroo Fair able to get me out of the house. Now, this is more of a reflection on my somewhat-exclusive musical wheelhouse than on the talent level of the performers involved.
Going in, I was hoping we’d snare an Ian Tyson or Tom Russell or Asleep at the Wheel or Hot Club of Cowtown like in years past. But, alas, no such luck. Obviously I’m in the minority. It’s just that a straight diet of Michael Martin Murphey has never done much to satisfy my music “jones.”
Suzy Bogguss, however, very much filled the void! Weaving selections from her latest CD, American Folk Songbook, along with classics from past recordings such as Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon” and the Nanci Griffith-Tom Russell penned “Outbound Train,” Bogguss had little problem keeping the buckaroo crowd singing along until the last cows came straggling home.
A guest shot on a 2008 Garrison Keillor Prairie Home Companion tour brought on the epiphany that led to her thematic approach to this latest album. Thoroughly enjoying her part in the communal sing-a-longs which are part-and-parcel to Keillor’s live shows, Bogguss noticed that the younger set wasn’t joining in on “Red River Valley” because they didn’t know the words to the traditional song catalogue with which she herself had grown up.
Resolving that her next trip into the studio would involve the recording of “these timeless songs in an updated but reverent way,” she set about culling a list of her childhood favorites and assembling an ensemble whose musical sensibility would best lend itself to such a personal endeavor.
Joined onstage by the exquisite guitar and harmonica virtuosity of Pat Bergeson, the plucked and bowed bass-fiddle antics of Charlie Chadwick, Suzy provided a quite decent sampling of her American Folk Songbook album: “Shenandoah,” “Froggy Went A-Courtin’,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “Careless Love” (my favorite), “Wildwood Flower,” and, of course, “Red River Valley.”
The CD also features “Shady Grove,” “Banks of the Ohio,” “Ol’ Dan Tucker,” “Rock Island Line,” “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” “Git Along Little Dogies,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and others. And, of course, fawning around her in the studio were the usual suspects and cream of the Nashville acoustic crop, Jerry Douglas on Dobro and Stuart Duncan on Fiddle.
You could file all this under educational materials in a library or classroom. While you’re at it, toss a copy onto the history shelf and maybe file others under geography, biology, philosophy, psychology, and gospel. And for those with an abiding interest to always dig a bit deeper, Bogguss makes available a 96-page hardcover volume replete with sheet music and song genealogies.
Her entire shtick also proved to be a great lead-in to the ethnomusicology-rich PBS documentary “Give Me the Banjo” which aired the following evening — without me, I should mention. Opting for live music over Park City way, I missed the original broadcast — spending every day since patiently coaxing the program out of my steam-driven laptop.
Well worth the extra time, I might add, even when working with glacial-like download speeds. Featuring such iconic practitioners as Gus Cannon, Charlie Poole, Doc Boggs, Uncle Dave Macon, Roscoe Holcomb, Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, Bill Keith, Mike Seeger, Tony Trischka, Taj Mahal, and Bela Fleck, the film follows the evolution, both culturally and stylistically, of that most joked-about of all instruments, the banjo.
The film, which, basically, traces the original gourd-instrument that arrived from Africa through it’s quite influential forays into minstrel shows, ragtime, traditional jazz, blues, old-time, folk, bluegrass and country music, also showcases that wild-and-crazy 5-string picker Steve Martin, long a defender of the inherent nobility of his chosen “axe.”
If you’re musically active at all and didn’t get a chance to catch “Give Me the Banjo” last Friday evening, download the video and treat yourself to a quite informative musical documentary. And if Suzy Bogguss comes back to town, check out her act also!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.