Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Growing+bluegrass+Montreal/3350130/story.html#ixzz0vY0kaHnE
Bluegrass may seem like the kind of down-home music that couldn't possibly thrive in a metropolitan city, but Notre Dame de Grass is proof that urban and country can go hand-in-hand.
The Gazette got in touch with a very busy Matt Large - the group's lead singer, songwriter and the force behind Hello Darlin' Productions - to talk music, hippies and La Grand Rencontre folk festival, where the band will be performing this weekend.
I've heard you're a bit of a bluegrass purist. What makes a song or a band bluegrass as opposed to just a string-music band?
I am a purist in terms of what the instrumentation should be and the way that you approach the music. But I think it's very important that bluegrass music grows and isn't a museum piece. For me, in terms of the purity of the music and the instrumentation that I alluded to, I want to see five or six particular instruments. That means an acoustic guitar, a stand-up bass -not an electric bass -a mandolin, a banjo, a fiddle and a resophonic guitar, which is commonly known by its trade name, a Dobro. Those are really the only instruments you should see in a bluegrass band. And the way that the vocals are stacked in terms of the harmonies and trios and high-lead baritone trios. ... So that's really where my puritanism ends. Besides that I think that content and singing style and all that is fair game.
Is that how you move the genre forward?
Precisely. I mean, I'm certainly not going to write or sing a song about "my little Carolina home" because I don't live in Carolina, so those reference points don't resonate with me. But I would just as easily be able to write about the Canadian landscape or someplace in Canada that resonates with me in terms of geography. So I think you can carry on that tradition -one of the traditions of bluegrass music in terms of song content is longing for the old home. ... And I think that can still be translated in a modern sense.
Have you seen your fan base grow with the locavore, back to the land, urban farming movement?
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Growing+bluegrass+Montreal/3350130/story.html#ixzz0vY0GH0YP/
