Pickin' and Grinnin' on the River
Owensboro museum has become a musical Mecca for bluegrass-lovers

Though not a professional musician, my father could pick guitar like nobody’s business. Because he loved bluegrass, our family would gather around the boxy Motorola television set every Saturday night. By way of the Grand Ol’ Opry, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys would then pick their way into our living room.

“You bake right with Martha White….” They’d sing, and toes would tap for an hour, both ours and thousands more. Martha White called the duo “the world’s greatest flour peddlers,” due entirely to the widespread grassroots appeal of bluegrass music.

Many historians date the birth of bluegrass to December 1945 when those Bluegrass Boys hit the Grand Ol’ Opry, then-band member Earl Scruggs laid down his first banjo break, and the Ryman Auditorium audience went wild.

“I think the excellence of its musicians is what makes bluegrass irresistible,” says musical composer and former classical violinist Gabrielle Gray, the new executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum (IBMM). “You have to be a real fine musician to be a good bluegrass player. It’s as difficult in its way as classical.”

Located on the Ohio River next to RiverPark Center in downtown Owensboro, the museum is also a “real fine” place to immerse yourself in this exhilarating music. From its down home origins, infectious tunes, honored greats, hopeful up-and-comings, and mesmerizing mystique, even if you don’t know much about bluegrass when you come in, you’ll leave with a fair idea of what it’s all about. This musical Mecca is that good.

Formed by the city of Owensboro as part of a 1985 bluegrass music project, the International Bluegrass Music Association (whose current members hail from all 50 states and 30 countries) began the museum’s “preview exhibit” in 1997, then free and only open on weekends. By the next year, it was open full time with an admission charge. Finally, after a $3 million renovation and with Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe’s son James in attendance, the IBMM had its grand opening on April 11, 2002. Fans, musicians and stars have been pouring in ever since.

Located only 30 minutes north of Bill Monroe’s birthplace of Rosine, the 22,000-square-foot museum offers guided group tours and guaranteed uplifted spirits for everyone. With more than a dozen “listening domes” throughout its two stories, visitors can hear original recordings by such greats as Dr. Ralph Stanley and His Clinch Mountain Boys, Mac Wiseman, Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and of course, “Big Mon” himself.

Fittingly, a whole room is dedicated to Monroe, with old photos, histories, performing costumes, his 1980 datebook, and a display of the instruments preferred by the Bluegrass Boys, with whom he played for 53 years. Elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, and among the first artists awarded a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, Monroe is also remembered for putting on the first bluegrass festival in 1967 in Bean Blossom, Indiana. This event spawned Bluegrass gatherings around the world and is commemorated in the IBMM’s “festival room” where visitors can plop into a folding lawn chairs amid coolers and instrument cases to watch a stage-screen presentation of the 1999 Bean Blossom Festival on film starring such greats as J.D. Crowe, Jimmy Martin and Tom T. Hall.

Upstairs, a fat, neon-lit Rockola jukebox blares ’60s bluegrass classics in a mock roadhouse, and an absorbing “Walls of Time” display traces the genre from its beginnings with the Bluegrass Boys’ first Columbia Records’ recording session and its roots in mountain music, gospel, blues, jazz et al through old time string bands, camp meetings, ethnic influences and the folk revival of the ’60s. Black-and-white photos capture the essence of the greats, like Newgrass Revivalist Sam Bush chatting with Ralph Stanley.

Nearby, six interactive computers allow you to compare different recording styles of the same song – Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” recorded in 1945 and Elvis’ 1954 version. You can even create your own bluegrass mix, bring up the vocals and tone down the banjo before admiring the best of the best in the IBMM Hall of Fame.

In the near future visitors will be able to watch the first in a series of oral video histories, part of an ongoing documentary film project that will record the lives of 223 living pioneers of bluegrass music from 1940 to 1954. Each January, new segments will premiere at a Bluegrass Masters Film Festival in tandem with live concerts.

The Museum has tons of other great events in the works as well. Come August, third through fifth grades in 26 area schools will receive a set of bluegrass instruments complete with musicians to pass along expertise in a “Bluegrass in the Schools” program. During “Bluegrass Club” on Saturday mornings at the museum, volunteer instructors will teach instrument technique anyone who wants to learn to play.

Already in progress is IBMM’s bluegrass stage, a part of Downtown Owensboro Corporation’s 7th annual Friday After Five free concerts at RiverPark, a program that runs from Memorial Day through the third week in September.

For more museum info, cruise its excellent site, www.bluegrass-museum.org.

Watch for a major international festival, River of Music, at the museum in 2004. Bluegrass fans will want to visit IBMM in April during the annual Bluegrass Weekend at the Executive Inn Riverfront and in May for Bill Monroe Memorial Day Weekend and the Bluegrass Boys Reunion at Rosine.

Since all that foot tappin’ will make you hungry, shuffle across Second Street to the Bistro, a cozy, Greek family-run eatery that owner George Skiadas says “draws from a full palate of Mediterranean – Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Moroccan and Lebanese – fare” that includes hot oven grinders. Save room for melt-in-your-mouth baklava.

If you’re staying for a late concert, put up your feet overnight at the Helton House Bed and Breakfast, right in downtown Owensboro, where Saturday’s Special is an eye opener of country ham, buttermilk biscuits with gravy, and fried apples with a side of Southern hospitality that’s every bit as friendly as Bluegrass.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
editorial@lanereport.com

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