Bluegrass veterans team up.Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard Singer-songwriter Peter Rowan and flat-picking guitarist Tony Rice, both well known names in progressive bluegrass Progressive bluegrass, also known as newgrass (a term attributed to New Grass Revival member Ebo Walker), is one of two major subgenres of bluegrass music. Progressive bluegrass came to widespread attention in the late 1960s and 1970s, as some groups began using electric music, have teamed up on a new album, "You Were There for Me." Rice and Rowan also will be there for each other at the Shedd Concert Hall, where they will perform at 7:30 p.m. Thursday as part of the Now Hear This series presented by the Oregon Festival of American Music Oregon Festival of American Music is an eclectic, thematically-based two-week summer music festival that has been held annually in Eugene, Oregon since 1992. Produced by The John G. . Tickets are $34, $28, $24 and (with obstructed view) $20 through the Shedd box office, 687-6526. Just released Tuesday on Rounder Records Rounder Records, originally of Cambridge, Massachusetts but now based in Burlington, is an independent record label founded in 1970 by Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin and Marian Leighton-Levy, while all three were still university students. , "You Were There for Me" is the two musicians' first full-fledged recording together. The album features 10 songs written and sung by Rowan, with Rice on guitar. The promotional tour is scheduled to run through Nov. 20. On the road, Rice and Rowan perform with Bryn and Billy Bright, a husband-and-wife team on acoustic bass and mandolin mandolin (măn'dəlĭn`, măn`dəlĭn'), musical instrument of the lute family, with a half-pear-shaped body, a fretted neck, and a variable number of strings, plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum. . Both Rowan and Rice have won Grammy Awards. But their real distinction lies in who they've played with over the years and how much they've done to expand the style and reach of bluegrass bluegrass, any species of the large and widely distributed genus Poa, chiefly range and pasture grasses of economic importance in temperate and cool regions. In general, bluegrasses are perennial with fine-leaved foliage that is bluish green in some species. bluegrass music. Rowan has performed with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, with David Grisman in the folk-rock band Earth Opera, with Richard Greene in the bluegrass-rock fusion group SeaTrain sea·train n. Nautical A seagoing vessel capable of carrying a train of railroad cars. and in the bluegrass band Old & in the Way with Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Vassar Clements and John Kahn. Besides Rounder, Rowan has recorded for Elektra, Flying Fish, Sugar Hill, Shanachie shan·a·chie also sen·na·chie n. Chiefly Scots A skilled teller of tales or legends, especially Gaelic ones. [Scots Gaelic seanachaidh, from Old Irish senchaid, variant of and Tuff Gong. Yes, Tuff Gong, the celebrated Jamaican studios, where he recorded with a mixed group of bluegrass and reggae musicians. From time to time, he tours as Peter Rowan and Crucial Reggae, which includes musicians from the Burning Spear and Peter Tosh bands. Rowan's albums include a Tex-Mex project (`Texican Badman," 1981) and a tribute to Bill Monroe (`The First Whipporwill," 1985). Other releases in a string dating back to 1978, include "New Moon Rising" (1988), "Dust Bowl Children" (1990), "Tree on a Hill" (1994, with his brothers, Chris and Lorin), "Yonder yon·der adv. In or at that indicated place: the house over yonder. adj. Being at an indicated distance, usually within sight: "Yonder hills," he said, pointing. " (1996, with dobro ace Jerry Douglas) and "High Lonesome lone·some adj. 1. a. Dejected because of a lack of companionship. See Synonyms at alone. b. Producing such dejection: a lonesome hour at the bar. 2. Cowboy" (2002) Rice was a charter member of the Bluegrass Alliance, one of the earliest contemporary bluegrass groups. He later joined J.D. Crowe's New South, which included Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas, and then left that outfit to help form the David Grisman Quintet. After leaving Grisman, he formed a bluegrass supergroup that included Crowe, Doyle Lawson and Todd Phillips. Rice's albums, as a soloist and with the Tony Rice Unit, include "Mar West" (bluegrass treatments of jazz tunes by Miles Davis and John Coltrane) and such releases as "Cold on the Shoulder," "Native American" and "Me & My Guitar" (covers of songs by Ian Tyson, Phil Ochs and Gordon Light- foot). In 1996, he released "Tony Rice Sings Gordon Lightfoot" and "Tony Rice Plays and Sings Bluegrass." Paul Denison can be reached at 338-2323 or pdenison@ guardnet.com. CAPTION(S): Peter Rowan (left) and Tony Rice will play songs old and new Thursday at the Shedd. |
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