Bluegrass is about pace.
Mandolin, banjo, bass, in a harmonious flurry – mischief in the eye of the guitarist. He leans in, hair draping – and unleashes a quick, impossible rush of notes, blending with the general roar.
The song never ends; it frays, deconstructs. They shift tunings on the fly, each moving up and down the neck of their instrument with one hand, turning the pegs with the other – another look, another impossible riff, and they bring it back together, from one tapestry to the next.
There's joy and sadness in it, pining. Like all music that comes from hard-worn people, upbeat with raw, sorrowful language. He drawls:
Sometimes I sit and wonder where my little life went wrong
These old jailhouse blues have got me singing this old song
My life is a disaster, Lord and I feel so ashamed
In here where they call by a number, not a name
Bluegrass is about being exactly, precisely human, a pining from monotony – the countryside, prison – toward divine speed and harmony. Striving to live multiple lifetimes in a single riff, to transcend “this life of sin.”
At that moment in the amphitheater, looking at those ragged long-haired men, I settled into the pace of things – I felt all at once the fast days and the slow days, the bad date, the leaky ceiling; I saw the chair in the sunlight in the office, felt the fog on Tank Hill, heard the laughing in the living room and the sound of wind through my car through the mountains.
And it was good, to the last damn millisecond.
This makes me think of the few times that a single piece of music made me feel all at once the litany of highlights and lowlights in my life. I used to feel this when my children would perform in a recital. I would watch their hands go up and down the neck of the cello or violin or piano. As I’m writing this, it’s transporting me back to that time.