Bluegrass Growing in Marin
Sweetwater series plays up variety
By George Martin
Special to The Chronicle
Friday, December 2, 2005
The grass is bluer in Marin County in recent years, thanks to Larry Carlin, a singer and bass player with a talent for promotion and a love of bluegrass and traditional acoustic "roots" country music.
Once a month, and often more frequently, Carlin promotes the Bluegrass Gold music series at Mill Valley's venerable Sweetwater tavern, and he runs a twice-monthly jam session at an area church for people who would rather play than listen. To tie the whole thing together, Carlin puts out an e-mail newsletter to nearly 900 people that lists all the North Bay acoustic-music offerings he can find, and also reports on the doings of well-known musicians around the country: new albums, TV appearances, movies and deaths in the traditional music community.
Carlin was raised in Pennsylvania and discovered bluegrass at Penn State University, where he switched from being a rock 'n' roll bass player to playing acoustic bass for a local bluegrass band. He moved to California in 1979 and quickly got into the local bluegrass scene, where he met Elmo "Dr. Elmo" Shropshire, who is famous for having recorded "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," which is heard somewhere at least once, every December.
Says Carlin, "What most people don't know about Elmo is when it's not Christmastime, he's a banjo player -- he plays traditional bluegrass."
Carlin began playing bass for Elmo & Patsy, Shropshire's band at the time, and has continued with him in various groups (currently Wild Blue) for 24 years.
He also plays country duets with his singing partner, Claudia Hampe. The two met at a Peter Rowan bluegrass concert in 1995 and discovered they both were raised in the same Pennsylvania suburb, about a mile from each other, and they both liked to sing traditional country music. They have a duo act called Keystone Crossing, and they augment their small group with two or three other musicians to become the bluegrass band Keystone Station.
Carlin started the Bluegrass Gold series in 1999.
"For years," he said, "people would complain to me that there was no place to go to hear bluegrass in Marin County. I heard that so often, so I thought, I guess there's one way to get it started: I'll have to do it."
Carlin approached the owners of the Sweetwater and proposed that he would book bands one night each month. The club gets 20 percent of the admission charge, with the rest going to the musicians. Carlin contributes his work "just for the fun of it and to have some place to go."
For Sweetwater owner Becky Steere, Carlin's series has been a welcome addition to her entertainment offerings.
"What's nice is the crowd varies, because he tends to like strictly traditional bluegrass, but he also does a lot of, I wouldn't say newgrass, but younger bands, as well as the traditional ones,'' she said. "And he has really great variety. He has a good panache for finding bands that are up-and-coming as well as those that are already established."
Musicians also appreciate Carlin's efforts. Peter Rowan, who lives in Marin when he isn't touring or in Nashville, said: "He's done a lot to increase the awareness of people that there is local music around the Bay Area. And his bringing in of touring bands has helped local musicians, too."
"He's beginning to have a reputation nationally so that when touring bands are coming to the Bay Area, they know they can probably get something going at the Sweetwater, to fill in on a tour," said Kathy Kallick, Oakland bluegrass singer-songwriter who tours nationally with her Kathy Kallick Band. "It's not a big venue, but it's a worthy venue with a long and illustrious history. And it'll have a good listening audience that we didn't really know was there."
Kallick's band played the very first Bluegrass Gold show in April 1999. In the spring, the series marked its 100th show, and Carlin, who has kept careful records of each event, says the 10,000th listener should come through the door this month, probably Wednesday, when Kallick and a group of her friends will appear, with Keystone Crossing as the opening act.
"Larry has done such good work promoting bluegrass in Marin County, that it is now on our radar when we are booking a block of gigs," said Kallick. "Especially me -- I have a fiddle player from Minnesota in the band, so it's nice to be able to get a little block of bookings, and he, aside from promoting music at the Sweetwater, has sort of collected all of the venue possibilities in the North Bay, and has contact information for all of that."
A high proportion of bluegrass music fans are also amateur musicians, and for them Carlin offers a twice-monthly jam session, on the first and third Thursdays, at Marin Lutheran Church in Corte Madera.
"It was the same thing with the jam session," Carlin said. "People were constantly telling me that there's nowhere to jam in Marin County. So eventually I went and got this venue. I set it up, take responsibility for it. I don't always go to it, but I always make sure there is someone in charge, calling the shots. And I always try to make sure there is a bass there, because I am the main bass player. When I can't go, I have three or four people I can call on. If you have a jam without a bass, it doesn't sound like a band anymore."
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Pacific Sun
By Mike Thomas
January 29, 2003
Butane James Brown may still be the hardest workin’ man in show business, but Marin bluegrass dude and folkster Larry Carlin ain’t laggin’ far behind. For openers, the ubiquitous player, singer, songsmith, producer and overall roots music man-about-town performs with four different bands, among them Keystone Station and Wild Blue. He has also hosted and masterminded the monthly Bluegrass Gold series at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater for the past four years, and logged nine years as MC of the club's periodic Northern California Songwriters Association open mics. Factor in a day job, showers and meals and it’s a wonder the guy finds time to get any quality shuteye.
Tuesday, February 18, birthday boy Carlin takes a rare solo step into the spotlight when the Sweetwater continues its Sweetsongs Singer/Songwriter Showcase series (cohosted by, you guessed it, Carlin) with a double bill that also features Asheville, North Carolina-based road hog Chuck Brodsky. A popular fixture on the national folkie circuit, Brodsky is a highly engaging live performer who can moisten your eyes and bust your gut in the span of one artfully spun song. Like Carlin and yours truly, Brodsky hails from Philadelphia. And, I should add, with spring training under way, the guy’s priorities are impeccably aligned. When I interviewed him a few years back for a Sun article, we spent half the time swapping childhood tales of following the Phillies. Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Richie Allen, Tony Taylor, Von Hayes, Johnny Callison, Bob Boone, Greg Luzinski, Harry Kalas, Rich Ashburn, Clay Dalrymple, Garry Maddox...well, I guess you had to be there. Anyway, as they say back in Philly, “Yo!”
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San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival
Returns to the Bay Area
MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL
FEBRUARY 2, 2001
By Paul Liberatore
Larry Carlin is sometimes known as the "Bill Graham of bluegrass" in Marin.
"I've been called that, but I don't put it on my business card," he says. "But as far as trying to spread the word about bluegrass in the North Bay, I'm it. I'm trying to make a bluegrass scene in Marin County."
Thanks to Carlin and other local aficionados of this traditional American music, there is a growing bluegrass subculture out here, but it exists below the mainstream music market.
"You have to be plugged in to know about it," he says. "You have to know how and where to find it."
For the next 11 days, though, bluegrass will be hard to miss.
Carlin is one of the organizers of the second annual San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival, an ambitious event with live shows, workshops and films in San Francisco, Berkeley and Mill Valley.
The festival opens at 7:30 tonight with a concert at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco headlined by Marin's Peter Rowan, one of the most prominent figures of progressive bluegrass since the 1960s.
It closes Feb. 12 at Sweetwater in Mill Valley, with a sold-out show by the Laurel Canyon Ramblers and special guest David Grisman. That show was added after a Feb. 11 concert at Sweetwater with Grisman and the Ramblers sold out quickly. Some standing-room tickets may be available the night of the performances.
Also sold out are concerts next Thursday and Friday at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley with bluegrass original Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys.
But there are still tickets left for concerts showcasing many of the top bluegrass and old-time-music groups in the Bay Area, including the Kathy Kallick Band, the Crooked Jades and Marin’s David Thom Band, which plays next Friday at the Plough & Stars in San Francisco.
Last year’s debut festival went so well that Carlin and the other festival founders expanded the number of days from eight to 11 and added films, workshops and more live shows.
About the enduring appeal of bluegrass, Carlin says, “To me, it’s real American music, played on acoustic instruments. It has a lot of soul and feeling. I just fell into it in my college days, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.”
A singer and guitarist, Carlin plays with partner Claudia Hampe in a duo called Keystone Crossing. They will be opening for Ralph Stanley next Friday at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley with bluegrass original Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys.
A longtime resident of Sausalito, he also performs with the Marin bluegrass band Wild Blue.
For the past two years, he has produced a monthly Bluegrass Gold show at Sweetwater. He also hosts a twice-monthly bluegrass jam at the Ross Valley Brewing Company in Fairfax.
When he isn’t playing or producing, he writes a monthly column for Bluegrass By the Bay, a publication of the Northern California Bluegrass Society, and churns out reviews of bluegrass CDs for Bluegrass Breakdown, the California Bluegrass Association newsletter.
In January, he began a monthly e-mail newsletter, Carltone’s Corner, which lists shows in Marin that feature bluegrass, folk, country and Americana music. To subscribe, contact larryc@carltone.com. Listings are also available on his Web site at www.carltone.com.
In Marin, clubs like Sweetwater, Rancho Nicasio, Cafe Amsterdam and 19 Broadway in Fairfax have presented bluegrass shows. And Carlin is encouraged by the burgeoning bluegrass scene at places like the Atlas Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District, where a young crowd is being introduced to his old music.
“A third generation is coming out to see bluegrass and old-time music,” Carlin says. “It’s been growing enormously in the last couple of years.”
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KEYSTONE CROSSING COMES HOME
Former Pennsylvanians perform in King of Prussia
by Gary Puleo of The Times Herald
July 14, 2000
If one of the Everly Brothers had been a female, the famous duo probably would have sounded a lot like Keystone Crossing.
That may seem like a curious and ultimately useless piece of conjecture, but the comparisons won't surprise anyone familiar with the music of Larry Carlin and Claudia Hampe.
As Keystone Crossing the couple--opening for the Nields at Concerts Under the Stars, King of Prussia, Sunday--play guitars and sing songs from the days of classic brother acts.
And we're not talking Hanson, for those with short-fused memories.
Carlin and Hampe have been flipping through the Everly Brothers songbook for inspiration since hooking up five years ago, also dipping into forgotten tunes by other brotherly partnerships like the Delmore and Louvin Brothers.
And no, the irony of a male and female who aren't even siblings nailing the familial persuasion of a brother duo so effectively isn't lost on Carlin.
"Well, none of my brothers can sing, so I was never going to be a part of a real brother duo," he says, laughing, from his San Francisco home.
"There's something unexplainable about brother duos when they get this harmony thing going. There's something magical about it, I'm not sure what it is, but I do think we've captured that sound that real brothers do. When people ask us what we do all we have to do is mention the Everly Brothers and they get an idea of what we sound like. There's not too many people doing this kind of thing, and the female harmony adds a real sweetness--we've created a real niche for ourselves. "
It's those niche songs that make up Keystone Crossing's first CD, "Crossing Paths" (available at Sunday's performance and from the duo's Web site, www.carltone.com), which includes the Everly chestnut "Devoted to You" and the more obscure "So Sad To Watch Good Love Go Bad." It's plainsong country with a rockabilly-bluegrass pedigree, a song cycle built on pure back-porch guilelessness that never seems so simple as to dull its message or emotional impact.
Carlin graduated from Upper Merion High School in 1972, left the area a year later, and eventually moved out west in 1979 to pursue his musical ambitions. He met Hampe at a San Francisco-area coffeehouse in 1995.
"We were both there to see Peter Rowan play, so we obviously had something in common," he says. "It turned out we loved all of the same music, including Emmylou Harris. When I was a kid I discovered Gram Parsons, and I was always looking for my own Emmylou Harris--who was his singing partner. I just loved the sound of the male-female harmonies. As a matter of fact, Harris and Parsons did a lot of the brother-duo material and actually revived the Louvin brothers career by doing a bunch of their songs."
Musical tastes weren't the only common ground the couple shared. Not only were they both transplants from Pennsylvania, they had gone to the same grade school in 1959.
When Keystone Crossing performed at Concerts Under The Stars two years ago it had been the first time Carlin played in the area in 25 years.
"I get back there once a year and it's usually in July because most of my family still lives around the area. I don't really pursue getting other gigs in the east because of my job--I can't get off three weeks to do a tour."
His job as a full-time chauffeur for an executive honcho at an investment firm allows him freedom that another day job might not, he allows.
"It's great job for me because I'm only beholden to one guy, so I drive him to work and I have the whole day to myself to work on the music career thing or whatever."
Though the homecoming will be all too short-lived, Carlin admits he's looking forward to playing in his hometown again for family and friends.
"King of Prussia has changed so much since I hung out at the mall in the '60s and early '70s," he says. "But it's always great to come back.”
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Marin Independent Journal
Paul Liberatore, Music Editor
September 4, 1998
The Marin bluegrass duo of Larry Carlin and Claudia Hampe bill themselves as Keystone Crossing and call their debut CD Crossing Paths. For good reason. Larry and Claudia met for the first time that they know of at a Peter Rowan show in 1995 at Sweetwater in Mill Valley. When they got to talking, they were amazed to discover that their paths had crossed before. They both came from Pennsylvania (the Keystone State) and actually attended the same elementary school in 1959. They also followed the same path in music. Both play guitar and sing and are big bluegrass fans. Soon after they finally met they were performing as a duo in Marin clubs and harmonizing in an off-stage relationship as well. They even look alike. On Crossing Paths, they cover songs by the great brother duos of the past, the Louvin, Delmore and Everly Brothers, and the contemporary duos of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum. Appropriately enough the final cut on Crossing Paths is a song they learned from Emmylou Harris. It's called "We Believe In Happy Endings."