Two Aussies and a Brit walk into a baseball stadium and start playing bluegrass. It’s no joke. Willie and Bob took the trio seriously enough to carry them around the country opening for them on their small (baseball) stadium tour a couple of summers ago. But The Greencards, Brit fiddler Eamon McLoughlin, and down under natives Kym Warner (mandolin) and bassist Carol Young had been stirring things up for a couple of years in their adopted home town of Austin before they were discovered by the big boys. Their first release, 2004’s Movin’ On, showed them to be outsiders with an insider’s knowledge of bluegrass.
Americans tend to think of bluegrass as our music, but of course it isn’t. The influences and ingredients come from all over the world: the banjo from Africa, and the fiddle and many of the melodies are of European origin. But Britain has never been on the list as a hotbed for the genre. McLouglin came to it in a roundabout way. “I was brought up by Irish parents, and the Irish love the country music — the classic Buck Owens George Jones, Charlie Pride kind of stuff. In our house there was always country music being played,” says McLoughlin in his broad English accent, calling in from his Nashville home. “And up until the time I was 11 or 12, I thought that was normal. Then you get to high school, and you realize nobody knows who Charley Pride is.”
They didn’t know who Charley Pride was at London’s Royal School of Music where McLoughlin was classically trained in violin either. So he moved to Austin to continue his education by hanging out in Texas songwriting circles collaborating, touring and recording with Kelly Willis, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Alejandro Escovedo and the Austin Lounge Lizards. The Greencards came together in 2003.
Their tour with Nelson and Dylan gave them a brand new audience for their old-time music, and their latest release, Viridian, hit number one on Billboard’s bluegrass charts. But slapping that label on The Greencards is a bit limiting. “We don’t know how to label our music because it seems to fall under so many umbrellas,” McLoughlin says. He admits to a strong bluegrass influence but says if you compare their music to traditional artists like J.D. Crowe or Blue Highway, it sounds a lot less bluegrass. McLoughin says the band is just as likely to get turned on by classic Newgrass Revival material as classic Bill Monroe. “In fact, we did a show with Sam Bush just the other night, standing there agog at the way he plays and his rhythm.
He believes Veridian has what he calls a “strong American influence” from listening to Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Buck Jones and Richard Thompson, which he says have played as big a part in the band’s music as bluegrass. “So yes, we’re very thankful that the bluegrass charts will take us, but we also felt as valid on any other chart of label.”
Dylan gave the band up close and personal validation towards the end of the tour. The band was apprehensive about approaching the star, who had been uncommunicative in the beginning. “It was very tempting to find his bus and knock on his door and just be like, ‘Oh my God, this is Bob Dylan!'” McLoughlin says. “But that wouldn’t have been the cleverest thing, so we just played it cool for a while.” His manager finally told the group Bob would like to meet them. “He came over to us at the end of the night and chatted with us, made jokes, was very charming and just very real,” he says. “The incredible thing was, this is Bob Dylan. This is an icon to many people. But when you’re standing there and you’re shaking his hand, he’s just a dude — he’s just a guy like any of us.”
But the dude passed on some words of wisdom that the ordinary mortals in the band are still processing. “We said, ‘Thanks for the opportunity.’ And he looked at us and he nodded his head and said ‘Yeah, OK, you guys are gonna be all right from now on,'” McLoughlin chuckles. “And we said, ‘Hopefully, he’s right.’ We won’t go argue with him.”
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2007.
