The
Mountain Music Machine featuring Glenn Lawson presents:
THE HUMAN CONDITION
New Songs and Sounds from the Blue Ridge Mountains
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Producers Note:
Thirty years ago I canvassed a sizeable number of radio program directors
in an effort to ascertain the reasons for the total segregation of
Bluegrass Music from regular programming on their stations. The sum
of their answer was Radio Play is determined by an Absence of Negatives
and Bluegrass contained too many negatives to be considered for
Normal Air Play. The big three were,
1) The singers sound like they buy their underwear three sizes too
tight!
2) An acute shortage of well crafted new songs!
3) Lack of separation and balance in the instrumentation.
It's all about Banjo!
 
Their opinion was, the small number of people that liked these esoteric
forms of music could tune into the genre specific segments that were
broadcast on, for the most part, NPR. Tom T. Hall loves Bluegrass
but almost all of his great songs were recorded as Country Productions.
Chet Atkins told me about working with one of North Carolinas most prolific
writers, Don Gibson. "Don loved to play and sing Blue Grass and
when he would bring his new songs to the studio the battle would begin.
We had to drop three keys and cut the tempo in half." If you are
in this business to be commercially successful you must keep one eye
on the bar of public acceptance. Chet worked the same magic for another
singer named Elvis Presley and history indicates that his ability to
make these assessments was unsurpassed. The resulting recording project
from this study was the New South's "Old Home Place." (Rounder
044) The radio stations that played any Blue Grass spun it a bunch
however the magazine reviews were luke warm at best. It wasn't the
sound they expected from J.D.Crowe. Eight years later, 1983, a live
Old Home Place recorded concert won a Grammy for "Fireball".
My current interest, The Mountain Music Machine, is a very different
landscape. It features writers, singers and musicians that choose to
pursue music as an avocation, not the gypsy life of a full time touring
performer. They are mature world class talents that perform passionately
from the heart. Glenn Lawson has a marvelous ability to capture a lifetime
of experience and observation in lyrics that can take you to another
place. The vocalists are, with out question, the very finest I have
ever had the opportunity to work with. Eleven of the fourteen cuts
on this project were arranged in our studio while we were tracking.
Glenn had never worked with or knew any of the participating performers
but one hour into our first session the mutual respect and shared musical
taste was truly synergistic. We did very few second takes in the layering
process and postproduction was a snap. No pitch correction and very
small EQ adjustments were all that was necessary when mixing down to
two tracks. This was the easiest and most rewarding project I have
worked on over these last thirty years. We are baby boomers addressing
the interests of our peers that Country and Rock have long since
abandoned. Let me know what you think about "The Human Condition"
Hugh Sturgill
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