The Grascals to bring bluegrass to Perrysburg
Written by Vicki L. Kroll | | news@toledofreepress.comPickin’, pluckin’, three-part harmonizin’ and lovin’ – that’s The Grascals.
“The main thing I think and feel is that there’s six people that’s playing together that love each other and love the music that we create,” singer and guitarist Terry Eldredge said. “And we don’t forget our roots; we remember where we came from. We’re just trying to carry that on and do it in our own way.”
Whether the bluegrass band is covering a country classic, playing a gospel song, or scorching a barn with an original instrumental, The Grascals have fun.
That’s a lesson the Grammy-nominated group learned from a legend. After forming in Nashville in 2004, The Grascals toured one year with Dolly Parton.
“Dolly always said before we’d go onstage, she’d say, ‘Have fun with it because if not, it’s work and that’s a four-letter word,’ ” Eldredge said during a phone call from Nashville.
The Grascals – Eldredge, singer and guitarist Jamie Johnson, singer and upright bass player Terry Smith, banjoist Kristin Scott Benson, mandolin player Danny Roberts and fiddler Jeremy Abshire- will bring that good-time attitude to the Center for Fine and Performing Arts at Owens Community College in Perrysburg for an 8 p.m. show March 19. Tickets are $26 and $22.
They’ll be excited, too, as their fourth disc, “The Famous Lefty Flynn’s,” will be released March 30.
“[Lefty Flynn's] a fictional character that Jamie Johnson came up with … and [Flynn's] an outlaw. He robbed all the banks out West and hid a bunch of money all different places,” Eldredge said. “And then, of course, well, me because I’m the one singing it, me and Lefty end up breaking out of jail and go and get the money and build this bar called the Famous Lefty Flynn’s. I ain’t going to tell you the sad part of it, though, but you can probably figure that out.”
The new CD will feature a cover of The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville.”
“Anything that will fit our music we’ll do. Like we’ve cut ‘Viva Las Vegas.’ And who would have thought that of a bluegrass band, but it just fit our music,” Eldredge said. “One of the good things ['Last Train to Clarksville'] fit our harmonies, because one of the main things we’re known for is harmony singing. We’re huge fans of the Osborne brothers, Bobby and Sonny, and we try to kind of make our music off of that.”
Hank Williams Jr. is a guest vocalist on the new disc; he sings “I’m Blue, I’m Lonesome.”
“It’s a song that his daddy, Hank Sr., and Bill Monroe wrote backstage at the Ryman Auditorium at the Grand Ole Opry,” Eldredge said. “We combined Hank Sr.’s sound and Bill Monroe’s sound together because we’ve got twin fiddles and, of course, the mandolin and guitar and banjo, and then we also put steel on it like Don Helms would have played on Hank Sr.’s albums, and it turned out really, really cool. And Hank just absolutely sang the flip out of it.”
Eldredge was matter-of-fact when asked about his reverence and passion for bluegrass.
“It’s a real, rural, American music, and it talks about home, growing up and living and dying and dreaming, you know, it’s just a real true music that anybody can relate to,” he said.
“Bill Monroe said it best. One time when we asked him about what [makes bluegrass special], he said, ‘It’s my heart talking to your heart.’ ”
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