Bluegrass Journey (review)

Bluegrass Journey explores both the music and culture of contemporary bluegrass with its crosscurrents of traditionalism and innovation, while also capturing the enthusiastic participation of its fans. In an effort to define contemporary bluegrass through documentary film, producers/directors Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer present onstage, offstage, backstage, and audience perspectives of bluegrass music and culture. Oxenberg is a former ABC News producer, who in 1996 had produced a feature story on bluegrass for ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings. Schumer, Oxenberg's husband, is an eye surgeon and research scientist who comes to this project with no prior film production experience. Nancy Kennedy edited and co-directed the film.

This eighty-six minute documentary focuses (perhaps excessively) on the music performances and audience members at the 2000 Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival on the Rothvoss Farm in Ancramdale, New York. Indeed, eleven of the fifteen scenes include footage from this festival. Additional segments covering the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) convention in Louisville, Kentucky, "the big daddy of bluegrass festivals," and two songs performed by Tim O'Brien and the Crossing at Blue Cats (Knoxville, TN), provide both continuity and diversity to this project. O'Brien is the primary voiceover, and other talking heads include Ronnie McCoury, Peter Rowan, and Pete Wernick. With the exception of brief archival footage of an eight-year-old Chris Thile and some photographs of Bill Monroe, most of the footage was filmed in 2000.

Bluegrass fans will like the long list of performers and ensembles more often than not shown in complete performances, including Tim O'Brien, Jerry Douglas, the Del McCoury Band, Chris Thile, Bob Paisley and the Southern Grass, the Peter Rowan Texas Trio, Tony Rice, Pete Wernick, and numerous amateurs performing informally on the festival grounds and in the lobby and hotel rooms of the IBMA convention.

Emphasizing bluegrass culture today, the filmmakers present only a brief history of the genre. Indeed, there is little film coverage or discussion of the early years of bluegrass, and the liner notes, which could have fleshed out this history, are limited to two lists of featured music and performers. (Unfortunately, there are several errors in the order, which are duplicated in the closing credits of the film.) While the talking heads and voiceovers mention repeatedly the significance of Bill Monroe in the history of bluegrass, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs are also part of that history but are not mentioned. Arguably due to its emphasis on contemporary bluegrass music as well as such a heavy focus on a single music festival, several key players in the bluegrass story are left out. For example, not covered are Alison Krause, Ricky Skaggs, and Ralph Stanley, to name only a few.

Bluegrass experts will arguably find fault with these limitations; nevertheless, viewers with less experience of the genre will likely be inspired by both the quality and diversity of contemporary bluegrass music as well as the infectious enthusiasm of the fans, both successfully captured in this documentary.