Big Smith
The Ben Miller Band
Folk
Missouri folk
artists take
old sounds to
new heights
By Tina Casagrand
The Ben Miller Band’s ozark stomp
The Ben Miller Band’s rise has advanced almost as quickly as their tempo. They converged at Joplin open mic nights in 2004, and have recorded dozens of original songs since then, including an upcoming benefit
album for Joplin tornado victims. In 2011, they took their self-described
“Ozark stomp” to two shows at the South by Southwest music festival
in Austin, Texas. Although record labels have courted the band, for now
they’re sticking with Nashville’s Blackbird Studio. The independent track
suits their style.
“From my little world in southeast Kansas, the music world was driven by the record companies and the bands on the radio,” Scott says. He
snorts and recalls his first epiphanic encounter with Delta Blues in his
thirties. At age 52, he’s about a generation older than his two band mates,
and began playing before the widespread music distribution that came
with new technology. “Nowadays, the more individual you are, the more
attention you get.” The music The Ben Miller Band plays is all over the
board: Americana, folk, honky-tonk, blues, jazz, Cajun, African, reggae,
and Indian. It’s music that makes purists balk.
Ben dismisses genres as marketing strategies. He sees his band as a
link in the chain of an ever-evolving art form.
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courtesy of the ben miller band
in a
Columbia bar, Ben Miller howls into
a telephone strapped to his mic stand.
Below the phone, a lightbulb casts sharp
shadows on his expressive face and flaming
red hair. To his left, Scott Leeper plays washtub bass, and to his right, Doug Dicharry scrapes
thimble gloves against a metal washboard. The washboard sounds otherworldly, stuck somewhere between percussion and cicada, and the
bass works deep into your core. Doug’s tank top reads, “The Guy Your
Mother Warned You About,” and he verifies that by taking off said shirt
and announcing, “This next song’s about drugs.” The college kids cheer.
He furrows his brow and says, “Yeah, but it’s about meth.” Welcome to
Missouri folk music, full of old-time instruments and honest stories.
In another era, these were the the innovators that pushed American
folk music toward modern blues and bluegrass. In Missouri, these were
The Dillards and Ozark Mountain Daredevils, who rejected conservative
styles to blend country and rock. Today, we have new faces of folk, and
while the look and sound has changed, the ethos stays the same: work
hard and innovate. That’s how music stays alive.
courtesy of big smith
n a short stage
Indeed, when bluegrass began in the late 19th century, it was a time
when sheet music cost a bundle and the poor folks’ instruments couldn’t
stay in tune anyway. Hillbillies, both black and white, taught each other
to pluck and fiddle everywhere from front porches to dance halls. This
was their entertainment and expression. It wasn’t church music. It was
the music of rural people who struggled. They sang about pretty women,
hard work, and the places they were from.
Over time, other genres broke off: blues, modern country, folk, rock,
and gospel. Missouri saw its share of stars with Springfield’s Ozark Jubilee, the first network show to feature country music. It premiered in the
1950s and featured guests such as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Gene Autry, and Patsy Cline. Then in the ’60s, some of Missouri’s biggest bands,
the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and The Dillards, caused a stir by rejecting conservative styles, adopting electric instruments, and blending
country and rock.
goodbye to big smith
Today, the state’s most popular contemporary folk band is Big Smith, who
will finish their farewell tour this month. Many mistake Big Smith for
bluegrass because of their instrumentation. But we’re not in Appalachia.
The Ozarks are a whole different set of mountains. “As an anthropologist would put it, our music is polluted,” says Jody Bilyeu, the band’s
doctorate-holding mandolin player. “We’ve been corrupted by gospel,
blues, and jazz. It’s American roots music in our own idiom, in the protocountry vein.”
Jody’s band member Rik Thomas defines it more simply. It’s “hippity
hoppity hillbilly music,” and it comes direct from the hills.
Five of the band members—all the men are cousins—had a grandfather named Hosea Bilyeu, whose fiddling was in high demand for Saturday night dances in the Ozarks hills. “Those were pretty rowdy scenes,”
says his grandson and Big Smith founder Mark Bilyeu. “Grandma influenced him to start playing gospel instead.”
Hosea’s children started a popular Branson gospel group called the
Wayfarers. At family events, “invariably several guitars would come out,”
says Rik, and when the band began, they would pay tribute to the gospel.
“If there was any musical tradition that would be the base of our music, it would be our family’s, with a lot of singing, a lot of gospel, a lot of
three-part harmonies sung by ear,” Mark says.
Gospel was pushed to the wayside as the band became more popular and wrote more music with Americana and southern rock. They’ve
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Mercer and Johnson
The Mississippi Sawyers
Adam Lee &
the Dead Horse
Sound Company
Mercer and Johnson take a different approach to drawing in crowds, with
a more cohesive sound and edgier image. Their look defies logic: it’s “hipster Amish,” according to a college student overheard at a show. Brock
Johnson’s suspenders, black dress pants, and blue dress shirt contrast
with full-arm tattoos and dreadlocks. During musical interludes, Shannon Mercer faces Brock and trills out a tune on his mandolin. It’s hard to
dance to the tinny high strings, so Brock just stomps on stage like a mule.
“I joke that he’s the second-best mountain dancer in the nation,” Shannon says, “and people started thinking it’s true.”
Their sound is hard to pin, at once familiar and very new. Brock hails
from Lake of the Ozarks, Shannon comes from northwest Missouri, and
they converged in Columbia. “We want to take the ingrained music of
this area and evolve some of these sounds, if it’s possible without ruining
things,” Shannon says.
They write all original songs. Subjects cover women, home, and travel,
and the broad appeal has taken them all over the country, playing out
of state for more than three weeks at a time. Despite national exposure,
they’re still happy to play events such as the Lebanon Combat Veterans
Motorcycle Club and the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture’s Harvest Hootenannies. “We’ll play in your living room if you give us money,”
Shannon says, and he’s completely serious.
More often, though, they sound best paired with other bands of the
same Americana ilk, opening for bigger acts such as The Ben Miller Band
and Adam Lee & the Dead Horse Sound Company.
The latter, a Kansas City band, plays honky-tonk that’s reminiscent of
greats such as Elvis and Johnny Cash. At a show with Mercer and Johnson, Adam Lee offered little in stage banter, simply prefacing songs with
deep-voiced introductions: “This song is about getting in trouble with
the police.”
The young audience relived old country bar scenes just like their
grandparents used to enjoy, complete with an upright bass, tilted cowboy
hats, and lyrics like “Gonna build a bar in the back of my car and grab
myself a drink.” Classic country.
Like Ben Miller, Adam doesn’t want to get pigeonholed into a single
genre. “A good song is a good song is a good song is a good song,” Adam
says. “So if you’ve got a good song, it doesn’t matter what you want to call
it.” He can’t say it enough. “More than anything now with country, you
need to write good songs.”
Like any music genre, country has gone through cycles of authenticity
and money-making pop hits. Adam cites Merle Haggard, George Jones,
and Johnny Cash as influences, and appreciates Randy Travis and Dwight
Yoakum for fighting against the grain of pop country in their day. He also
draws inspiration from contemporary bands such as Wayne Hancock
and Junior Brown. “Seeing new music on the shelves is reassurance, I
suppose,” Adam says. “It’s nice to not have to go digging in the thrift store
bins to find new country music.”
Although their sound is a little more electric, they fit with their fellow
Missouri brethren by merit of a hard-working ethos and original song
writing. They began in 2008 as a duo playing Americana-type music.
“Right around the genesis of the band, I’d been writing more and more,
moving in the classic country direction,” Adam says. “And so [Johnny
Kay, the guitarist] and I talked about, what if we put on a real, full-on
country band?” The result has been thrilling: a swingin’, hollerin’, good
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time where young and old can dance and feel nostalgic.
For Adam, the draw of the music is also about its authenticity. “I listened to country when I was younger, and when I came back to it, the
simplicity and the honesty of it really grabbed me,” he says. “Lots of songs
about carousing around and drinking too much. That’s super relatable.”
No matter the venue or the audience, Adam Lee & the Dead Horse
Sound Company hope to strike that chord with people.
The Mississippi Sawyers remember
courtesy of the mississippi sawyers
Mercer and Johnson: Hipster Amish
Adam Lee’s honky-tonk
courtesy of Lacey Schuetz and adam lee & the dead horse sound company
since played countless shows, including halftime at a big Arkansas game,
a rickety dance floor at the Hartsburg Elderberry Festival in a summer
storm, in the state of California’s Great American Music Hall, and at an
Americana festival in France.
As night falls over the Arcadia Valley Bluegrass Jamboree, a disembodied
voice announces The Mississippi Sawyers from St. Louis. A black curtain
splits and slides open. The reveal: a four-part bluegrass band dressed in
striped, throwback vests. Stage lights gleam off instruments.
After the first song, the guitarist, Jeff Griffy, asks how many people
had heard the band before. Cheers follow. “What took the rest of you
so long?” he teases, laughing. Then they launch into “Lonesome Road
Blues,” a lightning-fast song with soaring vocals and plunky strings that
sound as if they are careening through Ozark hills. They also play a kazoo-laden cover of “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and a classic Texas Swing tune,
“Dixie Cannonball,” which alternates from singer to singer like popcorn.
They pay tribute to and remember The Dillards, whose sound captures
the Sawyers’ spirit. In a powerful cover of “Whole World Round,” Dave
Meuller’s mandolin trembles like autumn leaves and Nate Free’s banjo
rattles like bones. The song is about choosing to settle down in the woods
and leave behind the city life. Perfect topic for a band from the Ozarks,
and like most Missourians, the musicians also had distinct styles. “I love
Doug Dillard’s banjo playing,” Nate says. “It’s quirky, on a higher capo.”
The Dillards, a Salem-based band, have a distinctive sound and more
than a dozen albums, but perhaps their most notable attribute was a regular guest appearance on The Andy Griffith Show as a fictional band, The
Darlins. Historians also credit them with ushering a country rock movement into the state of California. The Sawyers likewise strive for a unique
sound, which sometimes runs them into trouble on the bluegrass scene.
“Almost everybody has at least one song that they like,” Jeff says.
“Yeah, out of twelve, they’ll have one,” the bass player, Candice Hale
Griffy, says, laughing. At a wedding reception a few years ago, the band
got an icy welcome as they toted in their instruments. “A guy looked
over, rolled his eyes, and mocked us to his wife,” Candice says. “Twenty
minutes later, that same guy had his foot tappin’ and boppin’ his head,
and we were like, ‘Aha! We got you!’” she says, pointing her finger.
“I like getting people away from the stereotypes of what they think
bluegrass is,” Jeff says. That’s why they shoot for playing to crowds who
have never heard folk and bluegrass, rather than playing at festivals
where most of the audience already knows the classics.
“That’s why we try to write as much stuff as we do,” Dave says. “It
makes it ours.”
Like Big Smith, they’re calling off the band after this year. Dave is leaving for North Carolina so he can learn from mandolin players there. Jeff
and Candice are hoping to start a family. They might reunite later, but in
the meantime they’ve planted the seeds for future folk fans by bridging
gaps between old-time and modern music.
Missouri’s folk music today balances the grand tradition of homage
and inventive styles. New acts such as The Ben Miller Band and Mercer
and Johnson stand ready fill the shoes of the legendary bands bowing
out. At the end of a show in St. Louis, Big Smith finished with a gospel
song, proving at the end of the night, you have to acknowledge your
roots. And that’s just what these Missouri folk bands intend to do.
For more Missouri folk bands, a full list of blues and folk festival dates,
and to listen to music from The Ben Miller Band, Big Smith, and The
Mississippi Sawyers, visit www.MissouriLife.com.
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