The New York Times reviewed
the Country Music Association Awards that aired last week on November 1st.
The review shown a light on many issues that I saw and heard myself. I watched
the three-hour telecast, looking for among other things, the fiddle.
I counted just three acts using a
fiddle in the entire telecast. One song, the fiddle was silent – just used as a
prop. The 2nd song had a five-note solo that was a set piece of
almost no consequence. The 3rd song had a decent small fiddle turn
around and those eight measures alone, reminded me of the fiddle loving Nashville
that I was a part of 25 to 30 years ago. Basically one fiddle turn around solo
in three hours. I was shocked.
The reason I was shocked is this.
Between 1984 and 1990, I played fiddle on nearly every country star’s record in
Nashville. The CMAs were always a yearly celebration for me because I was
appearing on stage often and many band fiddlers were playing some of my licks
from the records. In a 4-year period, my fiddle playing was a major presence on
these country albums.
I am cherry picking here on this
list. Within a 4-year stretch, I played on each cut of The Trio with Dolly, Emmy Lou and Linda winning the CMA Event of
the Year in 1988. The same year my fiddle was prominent on Randy Travis’ CMA Album
of the Year. The following year in 1989, I was featured on nearly every track
on the “Will the Circle be Unbroken”
by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band wining CMA Album of the Year. In 1990, I played
on the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year’s album by Kathy Mattea, the CMA Male
Vocalist of the Year’s album by Clint Black and the CMA Vocal Duo of the Year’s
album by the The Judds. In 1991, my own New
Nashville Cats album won the CMA Event of the Year and I broke through winning
the first of an eventual six Musician of the Year awards at the CMAs, breaking
my hero Chet Atkins’s record of five in a row. The fiddle accomplished this!
What happened to the fiddle since I
left Nashville and country music twenty years ago? For about ten years, a
handful of fiddlers took my place, played the lion’s share of the sessions I
used to play. They largely kept my fiddle style and sound of rockin'/bluesy/bluegrass/newgrass/jazz/hoedown/country thing going. But then
obviously those fiddlers are not playing on records today like they used to. In the history of the Nashville recording
industry, the most prominent fiddler in the 1950s and 1960s was the great square dance country fiddler, Tommy
Jackson. In the 1960s and 1970s the most prominent was the great Texas Swing fiddle king Johnny Gimble
who racked up many CMA Musician of the Year awards. Gimble had a completely
different sound than Jackson. When I became the most prominent fiddler in
Nashville in 1985 through 1996 (the last year I won the CMA Musician of the
Year) I had a completely different sound from both Gimble and Jackson.
On November 1st , I was
curious to see what was going to be the new fiddle sound of country music for
this era. After all it has been over twenty years since I did my last Nashville
sessions and recordings. To my surprise, the answer was not a new fiddle style
or sound, the answer was to get rid of it and replace it with not just one rock
electric guitar in every band, but two rock guitars or more in every band! Rock
guitars 100% of the time. Wow!
Let’s see what the New York Times
says.
"Country music is a storytelling genre…But, in truth, country is ruthless, just like every other genre, and becoming more so, as was clear from the 46th edition of the Country Music Association Awards, which was broadcast live on Thursday night from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on ABC…A streak running through that show is anxiety about being aged out of the genre, and this year’s CMAs — with their pop arrivistes, their new gentry and their almost complete blindness toward the genre’s past — would have made for a good subplot.Sure, there was a tribute at the end of the night to Willie Nelson, but it was tepid and rote…This modern country has arena ambitions, but also an agonized relationship with pop, as seen in its pinched-nose embrace of Taylor Swift, its biggest star, whether or not she’s a genre faithful.9 of which are given out on television — to focus on performances. The best of these showed a creeping roots-minded traditionalism. (The CMAs might be just a couple of years away from offering Mumford & Sons a performance slot.)"
Kelly Clarkson “was one of the few performers to
engage in outright nostalgia” the New York Times writes, but with my old New Nashville Cats partner in crime
Vince Gill singing harmony with her, they couldn’t even toss him one verse to
sing. Why not? We have three hours!
Granted, Brad Paisley is the genre’s major country
music star today who knows country music forwards and backwards. But even in
his tribute to Hurricane Sandy victims, the New York Times writes, “he wove a
few bars of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” into the beginning
of his performance of “Southern Comfort Zone,” a song that flips country’s
reliance on regional pride into advocacy of travel and broad-mindedness.” For
me, it was just incredibly odd to watch a church choir walk through the isles
smiling and clapping while singing “Southern Comfort.”
Of course, even as reviews can be enlightening, there
is no mention to where the fiddles and steel guitars went? I think it will take
a fiddle player to come along who dared to believe that their fiddle should be
on all of the records, journeying to Nashville with something new to offer that
no one had imagined before. It will take a fiddler who is creative with new
ideas and not just playing it safe in order to hold on to their job. Not just
rehashing our old licks and sounds. I know some of those producers who are
still there in Nashville as well as new producers who used to be my session musician
cohorts. They want to see something new that will knock them over the head
regarding the fiddle or other instruments that could now be considered novelty
again. If they are not knocked out with something new that they consider great,
a new style, new sound, new approach, a huge talent, it will be rock and pop
formulas ongoing for country music. The very same kind of formulas I faced down
when I came to Nashville. The 1983’s version of those rock and pop formulas
were chorused and flanged rock guitars and Yamaha’s new DX-7 synthesizer. I had
to deal with them, prove that the violin could be just as cool and both play along side them or push them to the side in order to find a place for the
fiddle to reappear.
By 1984, I figured out how to make my presence on
country music’s recordings. Someone will have to do that again now some 30
years later and in a way that was as unique as I was to Nashville, or that
Gimble was to Nashville 20 years before. Or, it will be me saying the very same
thing that Buddy Spicher, a great and prominent session fiddler told me when I
first moved to Nashville in 1983. Buddy said, “Mark, you have come too late. The fiddle has gone out of country
music.” It is time for players to start making their move. It is nearly gone,
and someone must step forward to revive it. I am doing things elsewhere in the music scene and left Nashville for others to fiddle. It
has to be somebody new.
For past CMA winners:
I welcome your comments.
-Mark O’Connor
I believe that most of great fiddle players in Nashville are currently at Belmont University. Belmont has an awesome music program for musicians studying both classical and alternative styles. Maybe this next generation of great fiddle players will come from Belmont! This is where Buddy is teaching some of the students. You should go to visit the students there!
ReplyDeleteShauna, you are right. And you (being one of my students from my string camps) are one of those enrolled at Belmont University! Go get 'em!
DeleteActually that is Jessica who is at Belmont, and loving every minute of it!
DeleteWe were both your students at both camps in Tennessee and New York, and we just loved it! In fact Jessica's roommate Sarah Yingst, was also at your camp in Tennessee. We were all inspired by you and the other teachers at your camps. Jessica is currently majoring in classical violin, but also plays fiddle and has Buddy as her fiddle teacher for one of her classes. And she just loves learning from him! He is so great! Sarah is majoring in alternative violin! And there are many other really great fiddle players there! Every time I visit Belmont, I am in awe of the talent there by the student musicians in their concerts and jam sessions! She has a viola friend who is playing for the CMA Christmas show. So I wrote that to let you know hopefully we will see more fiddle players coming from Belmont and moving out into the Nashville scene and hopefully more with the CMAs, as well as elsewhere in our country. They are having a Christmas concert called Christmas at Belmont you should come to see! It showcases a variety of the talent there at Belmont. This year it is Dec. 1 and 2, in their new hall at Belmont! Every year they always select a celebrity musician to host this event. It would be so great if you could be the host one year! I know the students would love to have you come there and perform with them! :)
Absolutely, I was a friendly to Belmont University when I lived in Nashville, long before they had any fiddling and other violin styles on board. I was good friends with their classical violin instructor, she was the only violinist on faculty, Elizabeth Small. When I lived in Nashville they had a music industry business school course and recording engineering. The engineer I used a lot Kurt Storey, ran the studio there for a while. My A&R man at Warner Bros, Doug Grau who worked with me for New Nashville Cats graduated from the music business program there. They were ahead of the curve for Nashville in those departments. It is wonderful to see the music poor out of there now! Of course both Buddy Spicher and Tracy Silverman teach at my string camps as you know! Put my name on the short list to be a special guest!
DeleteMark, you are so right! The fiddle is disappearing in country music and that is so sad to watch. But, our music has taken this turn before. I hope that country music will turn itself around soon, because what plays on the radio now doesn't sound like country anymore. What has happened to doing things right instead of what is easy? The sound you created was wonderful to listen to and I miss it!
ReplyDeleteYes it has. I will write more about it, but there was the "Nashville Sound" in the 1960s that came in with Elvis when he signed to RCA out of Nashville. The fiddlers had to battle that one, being typecast as simply "honky tonk fiddlers." That is the battle that Gimble fought and won!
DeleteI am Alex DePue and I approve this message.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I know you spent time there about 10 years ago and you had the kind of talent to have pushed through there. I knew you were on the road with Chris Cagle - which is the wrong way to become a session player. You have to turn down all road jobs. There is a clear division in Nashville (session players and road players). All this will be in my upcoming book. You may have been a few years too soon as well anyway, as I am sure that they were still looking for copies of my style at that point. But now, they need a new force of energy and will. A successful session fiddle player must appeal to most all the main producers there, since it will be likely used on a few songs at first and not every song like guitar/bass/drums/keys. It makes it harder for the fiddler to make an impact because a guitar player could have a successful session career just having one or two labels for their accounts. A session fiddler player, to make an impact, would have to have all the labels as their accounts. It is a tall order, I know.
DeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteIs part of this a result of a divergence between bluegrass and country? I've never been much of a fan of country music, and what I do enjoy (usually where the fiddle takes a primary role) seems to be classified instead as bluegrass.
Bluegrass and country music have always been quite separate. When I broke into session work, I had already knew that bluegrass was a dirty word to all the country music giants like Johnny Gimble, Chet Atkins, Owen Bradely, Billy Sherill and so many more who created the industry. When I got there, Jim Ed Norman, Jimmy Bowen and all of the leaders of Nashville had the same view. Almost never did one hear a bluegrass song on country radio going all the way back to the 60s. The very few breakouts like Beverly Hillbillies, Deliverance were unique. Then a couple of hints at it from Ricky Skaggs' Highway 40 Blues for instance, but most of his hits were straight country. Then Alison Krauss, but her biggest hits mostly were duets with very country like productions, even the one with Keith Whitley was very country. But she did get her bluegrass band on the radio and on the CMAs like no other bluegrass act in history. That is a one and only. As hard as Nickel Creek tried, they never got on country radio, and never got on the CMAs, even with Alison producing their first two records. Interesting! I suppose the projects I was on like The Trio, and Will the Circle...those were considered more bluegrass than anything else on country radio. Especially "Those Memories of You" which had my double fiddle solo in the middle!
ReplyDeleteInteresting article! I miss the fiddle in country and also the individual sounds of the players you mentioned, including yourself. Thanks for writing it.
ReplyDeleteMark, I am a working road musician. I play both fiddle and keys and sing. I have been playing professionally for over 30+ years. I have noticed a diminished fiddle presence too, especially over the past 10 years or so.
ReplyDeleteI believe part of the problem lies in the fact that the economy doesn't allow for live road bands to have many members. Scaling down has been an unfortunate necessity.
Newcomers (writer and artist alike) are going to Nashville having little or no knowledge of what a fiddle in the mix would add. I know that the producers are the big influence in the studio, but the fact that fiddle is not prominent in recordings and live music both must somehow go hand in hand.
I still get a great response when I play the fiddle. It is as rare in live venues as it is in recorded music. Rarer. The one thing that gets peoples interest the most are the showy tunes. Obviously CDB's Devil Went Down To Georgia tops the live performance list. But the other songs that get massive attention is a bluegrass tune (Orange Blossom Special) and a band that I believe you were a part of, The Dixie Dregs (Bash - with Allen Sloan on fiddle). These always bring the house down.
I guess maybe what I am saying is that it may take a fiddler with the knowledge of what has preceded him/her to go to Nashville. Some things are indeed cyclical. Bringing the fiddler to the front of the stage instead of leaving him behind the two distorted guitarists would be a start.
That is what I would like to see. For this fiddle player, it is a shame that the industry has left fiddle out in the cold. I do enjoy playing the instrument and would like to do it more than a few times a set.
Thanks for your article, and keep them coming.
Ramon Gonzalez
Musician and Band Leader with The Great Outdoors
http://ramongonzalezmusician.wordpress.com/
Yes, that is an interesting point, but I really do think that one side jump starts the process and it usually is the creative side. To take your scenario, for instance say a young 23 year-old comes into Nashville and only knows rock guitars from the club he had been playing for the last couple of years, and that is what informs his songwriting, then gets signed. That young artist will still be guided by a producer and a label and be assigned songs, and songwriting partners. The young artist will not be allowed to produce their own albums. There are many stories like that from my era. Randy Travis in fact came into Nashville as a much different kind of more progressive singer, but was produced to sound more in the vein of George Jones etc. Reba was produced to do more contemporary material than she ever wanted as a new artist. I think it is the recording making first, and that dictates what happens live and in the cover bands. When I made it as the top session musician for those years, there was speculation that thousands of fiddlers all over the world were being hired for the first time into country bands to cover the fiddle parts in all of the new songs.
DeleteHow many of these new young artists are coming to Nashville with a preformed sound? A sound that has been cut and shaped in live venues, without a full compliment of musicians, fiddle and steel alike? Zac Brown for instance didn't come to the scene in the normal manner (He has an awesome fiddle player by the way). There must be others that made the powers that be lean towards working with the talent as it came to them rather than shaping a future star from scratch. It would definitely be more cost effective to do so.
DeletePS, I for one am indeed thankful to you for opening the door for fiddle players during your reign. I have been a fan of yours for as long as I can remember. I recall Charlie Daniels saying that he was a guitar player...if you want to learn how to be a fiddle player, look at Mark O'Connor.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it! I am not sure about show how many young artists, coming to Nashville being "preformed" as you say. I don't know. But I do know that producers still have a role to play. Many producers are the "stars" until of course their artists become more important stars than them. Usually producers push their weight around in the beginning with new singers.
DeleteRemember, record producers are not pushovers. They are artists as well. They have musical ideas and they are looking to achieve them. What better scenario for them - a new artist to shape and mold a new sound that the producer helped to achieve. For better or for worse, it was usually how it happened. I remember playing on new artists albums all the time. Many times, the producer is trying to create a sound that they are imagining, and look for singers who can be molded to fit that picture. Yes, a few times, producers will go with a particular singer's "preformed" sound and already written songs. Although that was rare.
Here is an example of a record label wielding power. My show The American Music Shop had a bluegrass act on called The Dixie Chicks, we gave them their national t.v. debut. Their goal was to follow in the footsteps of their contemporary Alison Kruass - female bluegrass. Sony signed them, but made them fire their original lead singer and matched the sisters with Natalie Maines, changed their sound and the rest is history. By the way, the lead singer who was fired in order for the band to get a record deal, was a friend. I actually knew her sister really well. So this kind of thing happened all the time. But it could be changing now, I don't know. If it is changing, then it would be the first time in many eras of recording I think! Great producers are great producers and they want to inject themselves into their projects artistically. George Martin and the Beatles is a perfect example of course. The producers usually are not wallpaper.
Mark, I don't mean to drag this on and on, but you did spark a very interesting scenario that I have noticed over the years myself. As a cover band learning popular songs, I have noticed fewer and fewer songs that require fiddle. I have even been putting fiddle leads in songs that originally didn't have any just to play it more often.
DeleteI guess to summarize it all, doesn't it seem that a larger portion of keeping fiddle in modern country music is more the producers responsibility rather than a fiddle player with some new and exciting chops coming along. Obviously the latter would help and bring the art into a new chapter. But you have pointed out an industry truth that I have known to be fact all along. What we hear on the radio is more production and arrangement than merely the performance of a fantastic artist. That sounds cynical as I type it, but seems to be the reality of the situation.
Anyway, I thank you for your opinions and insight. It both reaffirms and puts to rest the opinions that I have garnered over my career.
I will play my fiddle till I can no longer lift it. Damn the establishments products...I can throw some fiddle turnarounds in here and there.
Thanks you again.
On this one, I can point you back to what I originally said in my blog, as it addresses exactly the answer to your question:
Delete"I know some of those producers who are still there in Nashville as well as new producers who used to be my session musician cohorts. They want to see something new that will knock them over the head regarding the fiddle or other instruments that could now be considered novelty again. If they are not knocked out with something new that they consider great, a new style, new sound, new approach, a huge talent, it will be rock and pop formulas ongoing for country music."
Hi Mark
ReplyDeleteI agree that the blending of genres is "destroying" what Country music used to be. I play fiddle in several country bands in Texas and have noticed the music on the jukebox always ends up with a healthy does of rap and hip hop. I'm always surprised to hear this in a country dancehall.
There are a few of us still out there that are holding on and pushing through the fiddle sound!
I am not so sure though that it is the blending of genres which leaves out the fiddle. I think it is more about leaving the fiddle out of any of our music. I think if it was a true "blending," there would be more fiddling in country music than there is now, and more fiddling in rock music as well. I still think it is about artistry and players. Most producers can write songs and sing. So they know what they are looking for when they sign an artist. But the producers can't play the violin. That means that a violinist/fiddler has to come along and rock their socks off with it. I was able to do that in 1984 and convinced dozens of decision makers in the country music industry that the fiddle was the coolest thing they could hear. Unfortunately, I think that's what it's going to take, now 30 years later. Johnny Gimble came in with his Texas Swing sound right smack in the middle of the "Nashville Sound" with Elvis and Patsy Cline. He did it too. It can be done as we did it. But I think it will have to take something like that again.
DeleteHi Mark,
ReplyDeleteThere is someone you have completely forgot about. It is very noticeable that the fiddle has been disappearing out of country music. But you missed one of the influential artists there is. You missed the King of Country music with 59 number one hits. George Strait has used a fiddle in every single one of his latest singles. In his last number one hit "Love's Gonna Make it Alright" the fiddle is a prominent element of the song. In fact, its one of the instruments you mainly hear in most of his songs. The King might be the only one left in today's Country music.
You said the "King of Country Music" and of course he was actually a fiddler - Roy Acuff! But you mean the modern version of the King... ha! Yes, George Strait is a classic as well and an amazing hit maker through so many years, helped to bring in the new traditionalists when I started sessions. He was not on the CMAs though which prompted me to write the article about current trends. The fiddler has to adapt to these new sounds, new productions, tastes/trends or what they develop there in Nashville. The fiddlers can't rely on the icons who got their start in the early 80s and still love the fiddle obviously.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, it is a sad time. I keep coming across the word "Rock" in today's country songs, shouldn't that be in its own Genre? I fear that country is straying too far from its roots ultimately retiring the fiddle, steel guitar, and acoustic guitar. Do you think the fiddle will survive 10 years from now?
DeleteHello Mark,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear your observations of the missing fiddle in Country Music. I posted a similar post on FB, and it seems a lot of people (not only musicians) have noticed it also. I just arrived on the Nashville scene about a year and a half ago and wondered what was going on with this absence of fiddle on the sessions. I think you are right, we just need for some of these producers to open their ears and minds to some FRESH fiddles on the sessions.
Hyram Posey, Nashville, Tn
This couldn't have been stated any clearer. As far as I'm concerned, the fiddle & steel-guitar are what make a great country band. I'm a rock/jazz fusion guitarist myself, but I grew up on country music and have done several shows with Willie Nelson's guitarist & mandolin great Kelly Wayne Lancaster. We have listened to your library of fiddle recordings (as well as guitar recordings) over the years and feel that you've contributed to the richness country music has offered in times past. Thank you, Mark, for being a great teacher. Ricardo Sweatt Rodriguez
ReplyDeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteFollowing up on your comments earlier about bluegrass vs. country, have you ever talked to Stuart Duncan about the diminished role of the fiddle in country music? He seems to be the one that took your place when you moved on from session work, and it is very interesting that he followed in your footsteps with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer with the Goat Rodeo Sessions. Also would be curious what you thought of that recording, since it clearly seems to build on the Appalachian Waltz and Appalachian Journey CDs.
No, I haven't talked to any of them about this. But since Stuart Duncan had been in Nashville since 1985 playing professionally (about the year that I really got going in Nashville), it will probably take someone who is new to come in and shake things up I imagine.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible that Stuart put so much emphasis on the bluegrass style regarding his session work, that with the addition of the huge success of the soundtrack "Oh Brother Where Art Thou," with Stuart playing fiddle on that, along with him maintaining his full time bluegrass band, the "Nashville Bluegrass Band," may have pushed the fiddle in Nashville into more of a mountain bluegrass sound, pigeonholing it again as an instrument requiring banjo, mandolin etc, for it to work as well.
My bluegrass playing was pretty newgrass to start with, and the main instrument I was associated with from that acoustic world was Jerry Douglas' Dobro, which gave us a lot of flexibility in how we contributed to various productions. Sound associations play a big part in how producers think about certain instruments and players to use in their productions. For instance when I played mandolin on many sessions, say Waylon Jennings, they didn't associate my F-5 mandolin any more to bluegrass as they did Rod Stewart's Maggie May. I think it was that flexibility that I represented and shown day in and day out in the sessions that kept on reminding producers that the fiddle or the mandolin was something they could always use and feature. My biggest role was to remove fiddle from the niche sound that it already had when I showed up in Nashville in 1983 as a Honky Tonk instrument. Mainly because Honky Tonk was out. I worked it back to becoming the sound that everyone wanted - no matter if it was Country Rock like Travis Tritt or Contemporary Christian music like Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith.
Remember, the Nashville music industry has always been shy of bluegrass. It is why the greatest bluegrass fiddlers in history could not break into country session work (Kenny Baker, Vassar Clements, Bobby Hicks, Scotty Stoneman...) Where different fiddle styles like Johnny Gimble, Tommy Jackson, Buddy Spicher and myself, did make it to the top of the scene as a number one musician in Nashville with CMA wins etc. Certainly Alison did as much for bluegrass in Nashville than anyone ever did before.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn the '80s, I had worked hard to prove that the fiddle in Nashville had a solid, legitimate place alongside rock guitars and electric keyboards in the context of modern productions. Just like the fiddle had the legitimate place alongside of acoustic bluegrass instruments. I was able to do both, but never took my eye off of making sure that mainstream producers quit believing that what I was doing on the fiddle, was a mainstream sound, as opposed to a niche sound. I was able to achieve both of those aesthetics and maintained that confidence from producers and labels. So when my more bluegrass type sound on The Trio's "Those Memories of You" came out on radio, it was just as good a fit as the role I played on a Ray Price, George Jones, Kenny Rogers or Eddie Rabbit album to those producers.
ReplyDeleteI think it also helped me that my own solo albums during that time I was in Nashville on Warner Bros Records like "On the Mark" and "Stone From Which the Arch Was Made" etc, featured Nashville's top session players playing electric music. It gave the musicians who were central to that scene, the confidence that their sound was also central to my own music as well. A perfect case was my "New Nashville Cats" album. What session player or what producer in Nashville would not absolutely believe that my own music and projects would not be central to the players and sounds in their studio scene? My best friends in music became the drummers, piano players and bass players of Nashville sessions for instance, not just mandolin and banjo players in the Nashville bluegrass scene.
Unfortunately, the same thing is happening to country what happened to blues, jazz and rock. It has been homogenized, commercialized, sanitized, predictable, and over-produced. The producers are more interested in how it will look on the video than the music itself (they've forgotten that fiddle looks good as well as sounding good). They don't take the music and push the envelope anymore, they play it safe.
ReplyDeleteWhen the recording industry was in its beginning, the technology tried to keep up with the talent. Now, the technology has taken over. This is true in the live performances as well as the studio work. Years ago, you could go see the same group on two different nights and get two different performances. Now, a band can play in New York one night and L.A. the next night and it will be exactly the same.