Kim Ruehl: So you've been coming here [to IBMA] for a while?
Claire Lynch: From its inception, yeah. I'm trying to think of the very first on. If it wasn't the first one, it may have been the second or third. I've been sort of involved with the organization for a long time, and watched it grow. We always admired their goals and the integrity with which they try to meet those goals. There have been other bluegrass organizations on a more local level. Then there's one other national one, but [that one is] run more like a personal business, like a sole proprietorship. But, [IBMA] is a service organization to service the industry, so it's been grand, you know. It's the CMA of bluegrass.
It's a wonderful event. How has it changed over the years, that you've seen?
I think the attendees are getting used to the whole thing. It's not novel anymore. Instead of a novelty and "Hey, who's there?" You know, a show place, which it still is, but people are here [now] for tools, for education. A lot more people are taking advantage of the workshops and the health fair and all those things that are here for our benefit. So that's kind of cool
Have you seen ... I was talking with Steep Canyon Rangers the other day about how bluegrass is drawing a younger crowd and ... somebody said at the business summit the other day that bluegrass is the new punk rock.
Oh, Lester Flatt would turn over in his grave [laughs] Bill Monroe would for sure. I don't know about that. I think that when I was their age ... I got into bluegrass at the tail end of the big folk movement and bluegrass gained new popularity on college campuses. It was all about the ecology movement, they called it back then, nothing was green or anything like that, but there was alarm about the environment. We were idealistic about it, now it's so much reality.
But, the fact that the music was all acoustic, you didn't need an amplifier to plug in. you could go out in the woods and have a whole band sound you could party, it's party music. Everybody would be involved. The guys really like the mechanics of being in there and picking and staying with it and getting good at it in their little focused left-brain thing. It's just a wonderful way to meet with friends and party and have fun. Of course the musical people were the ones that were attracted to it.
What I'm saying is that ... Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe and those guys were headlining the festivals. But we were the ... rebellious young ones that were the punk of bluegrass for that generation. To me, it's happening over again but the music has evolved a little differently. I think that Steep Canyon Rangers have kept a wonderful respect for the tradition in their music. I don't think they've gone too far off the page. There are some bands that have, but you probably won't see them here, necessarily. The [Infamous] Stringdusters are another example of a band that was raised in it. They know what it is and how it is to be done. Of course they put their own twist on it. But, you can feel the respect from them, and I'm one of those that ... [has] also been labeled as a person who is too edgy in bluegrass. I probably had a harder fight than they ever will.
So if someone asks you what you play, do you generally say you're a bluegrass musician?
Yes, I identify myself with the genre, because of the instrument set up and because of the partial content of my music.
What other kinds of influences do you bring?
Swing, folk, country. Not very much klezmer. [laughs] Not that I don't love it, or that there's anything wrong with that. I love all that ... I like any kind of a strong acoustic music. I like all music, but I wrote on music row for seven years, I've been in the country [music] machine. I went through the songwriting school there. So I've been indoctrinated into country and I've had my educationi n that respect. It's where I found a place to land musically, although I'm not a true southerner.
Where are you from?
I was born in upstate New York, and moved to Alabama when I was 12. My dad was with the space program. It was Saturn rocket days. So it was sort of an upheaval culturally. And I got into the bluegrass after high school, college age. Interestingly enough.
Let's talk about your new record Crowd Favorites ... How did you choose these songs? Did people vote?
Yeah, I have a fairly extensive mailing list, a little fan base and email newsletter and all that. Those are the people who are really interested in my career. So I just polled them, told them I was thinking about doing a compilation and asked what their vote would be ... I actually chose some of their choices over what I would've chosen, because it's about the crowd and what they like.
There are four new cuts on there, but they're actually old songs, so all of it's old music. I'm looking forward to looking forward, actually. I've done a lot of retrospect and I'm kind of over it. [laughs] Before I was Claire Lynch, I was in the Front Porch String Band. [Those were] sort of my formative years. So there are some songs that the fans won't let me quit playing from those old days.
Three of them are on there: "Kennesaw Line," which is a Civil War song, "Wabash Cannonball," which is our arrangement thereof, and "Hills of Alabam," which is a song I wrote very early in my career and Kathy Mattea recorded.
