Jordan Logue

Bluegrass in Downtown Jacksonville

In Music on June 24, 2018 at 12:47 pm

Bluegrass Music Downtown!

Can you believe it? A Bluegrass music festival right here in downtown Jacksonville. In Hemming Plaza. I am going to ignore the obvious cheap shots about the heat, the humidity and the homeless and focus on what I love – Bluegrass Music.

Bluegrass Music. Pure. Clean. No electric instruments. No drums. One of the things I love most about Bluegrass is truly a mystery. It is a percussive music – but has no percussion instruments. The effect is created by skillful interplay between an acoustic upright bass fiddle giving a heavy down beat, and the mandolin (or whatever other instrument is not involved in a melody, harmony, solo, or any other maneuver that prohibits it from answering the bass) on the off-beat. The result is a sound very like a snare drum. This bass line and percussive timing lays the foundation to begin building the rhythms and melodies that are Bluegrass music.

Right on top of this bass-percussive effect comes the big, rumbly, rhythm sound of the dreadnaught guitar. This does two things. It reinforces the bass/percussion effect, by playing the alternating bass notes of the chord, while the strum of the chord provides the rhythm. Lester Flatt and a few other greats managed to do this flawlessly with a thumb pick and finger pick. The rest of us rely on a heavy flat pick. No matter the method, all of bluegrass music has come to rely on what is known today as the “Lester Flatt G-run.” There are also other runs, or transitions, that the guitar player uses to get from one chord to another. These will often suggest or echo the melody and reinforce the tempo. They will lead, or sometimes push, and are not superfluous decorations, but rather are the very nature of bluegrass guitar.

Bill Monroe, the undisputed founder of the genre, played the mandolin. He wove the tapestry of bluegrass music around his style of mandolin playing. The punch and the drive from his mandolin pushed all the other instruments to be what they are today in a typical bluegrass ensemble. That strong punch comes on the offbeat, creating the aforementioned percussive effect. Then out of the blue (grass) comes the tremolo driven melody that Monroe used to create his solos (we call them breaks in Bluegrass music.) But just as the great one developed his style, other artists picked up and started their own styles.

Then we have the heart of bluegrass music, the five-string banjo. In a 1960 interview with NBC News, Lester Flatt said, “If it don’t have a five-string banjo in it, it ain’t bluegrass.” What Bluegrass music did was take the banjo out of its role as a rhythm instrument and make it a lead instrument. Earl Scruggs did this by developing a system of three finger rolls that when executed upon the chord patterns of a song result in a barrage of notes from which the listener’s ear forms a melody. Using thumb and finger picks, Earl managed to get volume and brightness out of the banjo that had never before been anticipated. The Scruggs influence and innovation on the banjo cannot be overstated. But it was only the beginning. Not too long after Earl, other artists of the five-string banjo came along and the chains were off and the banjo would never be the same.

The fiddle, or fiddles if you are lucky, is another traditional instrument that figures big in bluegrass. Like the guitar, the fiddle is ubiquitous in the music world. How it is played in the bluegrass style is what matters. The average bluegrass fiddler draws influences from old-time music with the shuffles and bowing patterns. But also from classical structure in terms of stating a melody and answering it with a variation. And also from jazz when it states the melody, then a variation, then an improvisational rendition. And it draws from traditional country with long bow, whole-note melody lines. Listen to Paul Warren’s fiddle break on “Shucking the Corn.” It is certainly not the melody that Earl plays on the banjo. But it is so perfect, it could not be anything else. Words cannot help us here. Go listen to it. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and get a band with twin fiddles playing harmony. The only rule is that they can never be playing the same note at the same time!

The resonator guitar, which is often called a Dobro, (which leads to lawyers fidgeting because the D-word is a trade name, like Frigidaire or Kleenex,) is the latecomer to the genre. You find it in a lot of Bluegrass bands, and indeed when Flatt and Scruggs broke away from Monroe to form the Foggy Mountain Boys, they used the Resonator Guitar to distinguish their sound. And Josh Graves created the form of bluegrass dobro that we know today. The resonator guitar, like its kin the banjo, continues to plow virgin ground.

But my favorite thing about Bluegrass Music? The singing. The harmonies. The most important instrument in a Bluegrass Band? The voice-box. Duet harmonies, like Jim and Jesse. Three-part arrangements like the old Carter Family. Not Bluegrass, but certainly a part of the DNA. Quartets like the old gospel harmonies of Flatt and Scruggs. Or find the Country Gentlemen singing East Virginia Blues. Look at your arms. Those are goose-bumps. Don’t be embarrassed.

These are the reasons that I love bluegrass music. I would put your average Bluegrass Band on the same level as any chamber orchestra group in terms of musical skill. Maybe they can’t read the standard notation, but they know what each instrument does, and how the music should sound, and they deliver it. And to think all this will be right downtown in Hemming Plaza. I will dearly miss the campground jam sessions that usually go along with bluegrass festivals. But I will be proud to see and hear Bluegrass music right in downtown Jacksonville. Saturday, July 21st. I’ll be there listening to Bluegrass music!

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What is Van Poole up to?

In Van Poole's Corner on February 15, 2015 at 1:53 pm

A lot of people are asking when the third Lambert Van Poole adventure will come out. It won’t be long. I have a little tidying up to do, then it goes into the editing process, in which I voluntarily ask people to demonstrate how they are so much smarter than I. It’s a little like volunteering for the dunking booth when there is no charitable beneficiary. People just really want to see you land in a tank of cold water.

But, enough of that; people want to know about Lambert, not me. Well, sometime between the second and third book, Lambert and Lily get married. I wanted it to happen between books so that I would not have to deal with it. And, Jacksonville gets a new police chief. Let’s face it, Chief Cooper was old, and even with some literary license, was not going to make it much longer. The new guy, a college educated military man, is somewhat gullible and a little out of his element. I don’t want to give away too much.

So for the third novel, we take a leap forward in time. (You see? Cooper would never have made it.) It is May, 1914, and the United Confederate Veterans are having their annual reunion in Jacksonville. This really happened, and you see a video highlights reel of it. Really. I don’t know how to do links and all that complicated stuff, but if you search for 1914 Confederate Veteran’s Reunion, you will find a video. It’s about 12 to 15 minutes long. I think you can find on the Jacksonville Historic Society website also. So Van Poole and the new chief are involved solving a murder, busting up a moonshine ring, and keeping conmen from relieving visitors to Jacksonville of all their earthly possessions. There is also a brothel, a pesky little juvenile delinquent and some civil war church looting thrown in as well.

It is hard to predict a time frame, but I would hope to have this out in the next four months or so. The working title is A Deadly Reunion. Don’t forget about One Fiddle Too Many and Swindler’s Paradise. Both books are still available at Amazon.com and probably at Chamblin’s Bookmine. If I were smart I would be able to put links right here so that you could buy them right from me. But, I’m not. If anybody wants to train me in how to do that, there is always the hope that I can still learn something new.

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Swindler’s Paradise: What the critics are saying

In Van Poole's Corner on November 4, 2014 at 3:38 pm

My second novel, Swindler’s Paradise has met with critical acclaim from several corners, primarily the corner of my dining room where several boxes of the book are stacked. One particular critic has chosen to go beyond the standard book review and has entered a critique of my entire volume of work. Arnaud du Potash who writes in the Footlick Literary Monitor in Snakeblood, South Missouri, has given me permission to use parts of his essay here and to respond as I deem necessary. (There is not really a state of South Missouri, but I chose not to point that out to him. For obvious reasons.)

Mr. du Potash posits: “Both of Mr. Logue’s stunning novels start out with a man on a train. This man will soon be pummeled to death by a blunt object to the head. I do hope that future books will find some combination other than a train ride and a bludgeon to introduce the heinous event. It almost appears that Mr. Logue is in league with the NRA to downplay the incidence of gun violence in this country by shifting the blame to more benign objects as weapons.”

Well, not to reveal too much or to disappoint Mr. du Potash, (I understand that the original spelling of his name was du Poutache, but he he chose to Americanize when an immigration official at the Canadian border called him Mr. Pow-take) but I must admit that the third book, which should be ready soon, also involves train travel. And yes, the unlucky commuter is then struck down by the ubiquitous blunt object. But it is not the opening of the story. I have moved it a few chapters in so that I could more skilfully develop several plot mechanisms.

Why trains and bludgeons? I try to write in historical context. In the early twentieth century train travel was quite popular and blunt instruments were commonly found laying about everywhere. Mr. du Potash would have no frame of reference to this historical feature of our society, as being an immigrant, he would not have the same appreciation for our history as do we. His family came to this country in a round about way from a long forgotten region of France called Woollen Knees, which until they were completely forgotten about were under the impression that King John still controlled their feudal estate. (They were sending men to fight the French right up until 1957.) When the east fork of the Iano tributary dried up completely, both of the permanent residents migrated to Canada where they could continue to live in the Franco-Anglo confusion to which they had become accustomed. When they lost their life savings buying ice futures and found themselves penniless, they moved to Snakeblood, South Missouri and applied for Social Security. This is when Mr. du Potash began his career as a literary critic to augment his earnings as a split-cane weaver. For whatever he reason he chose to weave cuspidors almost exclusively, and sales have not been as brisk as he had hoped.

So part of my response to Mr. du Potash is that in One Fiddle Too Many, there is a second murder which is committed by means of a gun. A small derringer concealed in a garter belt. In Swindler’s Paradise, a second murder is committed by jabbing an ice-pick into the eye. Admittedly, the ice-pick murder is part of the denouement (which he pronounced de-now-ment in his telephone interview with me) but nevertheless was a bludgeon-less murder. And, need I remind Mr. du Potash that the victim in Swindler’s Paradise had been poisoned prior to the head pummeling. I hope I’m not giving too much away if one of the very few who has not read it.

In spite of his obsession with the mode of travel and choice of weapon, Mu. du Potash gives both books very favorable reviews. Both earned four and a half pea-pods on a five pea-pod scale. When he mentioned the pea-pod scale, I understood why I could not find his podcasts anywhere on line. Apparently he is under the impression that seeding freshly tilled soil is called podcasting in this country.

At another point in his critique, he lamented the omission of a map. I have to agree that when I am reading a novel, I find a map to be an elucidating addition. Especially when the action unfolds in a specific and limited geographic space with which one may be unfamiliar. On the other hand, I have read novels without benefit of a map and have enjoyed them no less. Including a map is a challenge. First one must determine how and to whom tribute is given. I would need maps that are historically accurate, and most of those are in private collections. And people who have private collections of historical maps are usually, in my experience, shall we say, an eccentric bunch. Secondly, it creates technical issues with the actual process of printing, such as font recognition. The print process is challenging enough without this. All that being said, my third novel will most likely have a map, because it really needs one. It is tentatively titled A Deadly Reunion, and when it comes out, you will see that a map of the area is critical.

So, what do the Van Poolians of the world think? Is the train/bludgeon combo wearing thin? Is it done? Have I pummeled that head once too many times? Frankly, I think that a good bludgeoning about the head and shoulders, while no doubt an inelegant way to die, makes for a dandy murder investigation. I am an enthusiastic gun owner and gun lover. But what I don’t want the Van Poole novels to become is a bunch of technical analysis of calibers, grains of powder, and all the stuff you can find on television at any hour of the day. I want my murders to be about people. Motive. Love. Hate. Anger.

I always welcome constructive criticism from my readers, and from such high-born personages as Arnaud du Potash. It keeps me focused on my work, and that keeps me looking for new ways to entertain and inform. I will have much more from Mr. du Potash in my next posting.

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