Oh there's someone in the kitchen with Dinah
There’s someone in the kitchen, I knowowow
There’s someone in the kitchen, I knowowow
Oh there’s someone in the kitchen with Dinah
Strummin' on the old banjo.
FeFi Fiddly Ay Oh,
Fefi Fiddly Ay oh oh ohoh!
Fefi fiddly ay oh
Strummin’ on the old banjo.How well I remember that song from my childhood, as if I heard it just yesterday; my mother animatedly singing it to me when I was 5 years old, her voice lilting at the end of each clearly rung verse, and I happily singing along.
Seeing Bo Brown at Harlow’s in January brought back those kinds of memories in a humorous but comfortable reminiscent way, when the Hamburger Cows played a rousing round of homegrown folk songs filled with lightly lewd and comical lyrics as well as lively melodies. Very catchy, very easy listening, very engaging, very folksy, and very Ozarkian. Pickin’ on the mandolin or fingering the electric, he proved to be quite the talented fellow. Looking like a sociable older gentleman of an easy going nature, his silver white hair proclaiming his maturity, I could immediately see that he must be a veteran of the music industry and someone with a lot of knowledge and experience. I found myself eager to talk with him.
Upon doing so I found out that he also plays for the group Lowdown Fancy, a funk folk favorite of the Ozarks with other talented members like Steve Ames (who also plays lead singer and acoustic for Hamburger Cows), Aaron Holmes, and Mike Henderson. Having heard that group name before and finding him to be friendly and easy to talk to, I arranged for a Babydoll Interview.
Not sure of the ideal place to conduct recorded interviews, we met at the Mudlounge on Walnut street downtown. We realized immediately that wasn’t going to work due to the bustle and noise, so we walked to Flame down the street. It felt somewhat like a bizarre adventure trying to discover the perfect environment. Downstairs in the bar, we sat on the couches at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do for the time being.
Settling down on awkward stiff couches, placing the recorder on the glowing boxy table provided, we ordered our drinks and started talking. With preamble about the weather, the restaurant, the weirdness of the sofas, both of us laughing and enjoying the camaraderie of our appointment, we soon started talking music.
BD: How long have you been in the music industry and when did you know you were going to be a musician?
BB: “I started at twelve years old when I got a guitar for Christmas and picked around on it. My sister was a folk singer; she taught me and more or less got me started. Then, at age 14, a buddy at school introduced me to rock and roll, <chuckles>, (BD: Oh no!), and the electric guitar. I was off and running, playing in a series of garage bands up until 1972-73, when I started with a band called Spillwater, with Ruell Chappell and his brother Alan. Carl Garner was on bass, an awesome player even back then when he was 15, he’s a Branson guy now. But, Spillwater was the first band I was in that was actually any good <laughs>… they originally had horns doing a mix of funk and rock and roll. A year earlier, I did play a short time with an eight-piece funk horn band, <laughs>, it was really cool. I wasn’t that much into it then as I was years later.”
BD: Nice. It’s like “Wow, I did that!”
BB: Exactly. After playing in rock bands up until 1974, a buddy asked if I wanted to go to the Walnut valley Bluegrass Festival at Winfield KS. I was a hippie rock and rollin’ guitar player and didn’t really want to have anything to do with that stuff, (bluegrass) but he said there would be lots of scantily clad dancing women there. So, I was like, “oh ok, I’ll go! <Laughs>.”
BD: I bet!
BB: “So I went, and absolutely fell in love with acoustic music, and learned about this whole thing called ‘flat-picking’ where they pick old-style fiddle tunes on the guitar. They were doing these amazing arrangements with extreme virtuosity, very creative stuff, and that was my introduction to bluegrass. The first acoustic band I played in was “Arkamo Rangers”, a trio with Grady Wilson and Chip Ballard, our first gig was a season at Silver Dollar City in Branson Missouri in 1975. Just a few years ago, another group of young kids using the same name appeared on the scene, with a guy I knew - Dave Harp, and I thought, “you bastard, you stole my band name”. I told him about it, he said, “no, no, I didn’t get that from you, my dad was in a band by that name.” I said, “No, that’s just ridiculous”. When Chip Ballard came back through town later and I told him the story, he said, “You know, before you got into the band, we did have a banjo player named Ron Harp (Dave’s dad) in the band, but he had a nice job and couldn’t play the gig at SDC, so we brought you in.”
BD: How many bands have you been in all together?
BB: “Hundreds! Hundreds! <laughs> One of the more recent bands I started and played with from 2000 till a couple of years ago was Hogmolly. You know what a Hogmolly is?”
BD: “Uhh, no can’t say that I really do “
BB: “It’s a Hillbilly thing, a local name for a type of fish…The actual name is Northern Hog Sucker, but the locals always called it a Hogmolly. They are just ugly-looking box-headed things with a big sucker-mouth, but they live in the most clear gravel-bottomed Ozark Mountain Streams. It’s kind of applicable. If you’ve been to the Suckerfest in Nixa, you’ve eaten Hogmolly. That band was an outgrowth of another group called Them Dang Peckerwoods, a very funny bunch of great bluegrass pickers.
Around the late 70’s, I was playing a lot with Dale Hopkins, a well-known fiddle player around here. He had a buddy named John Kendrick that we jammed with, John and I started a progressive bluegrass band called The Undergrass Boys around 1979. We toured regionally, played at Silver Dollar City, and did lots of festivals and opening for the likes of Emmylou Harris and others, probably the closest I ever got to the big time. We were right on the verge of a big label when our lead singer/song writer, fiddle/mandolin guy wanted to get off the road to stay home and raise his kids, so he bailed. The band went on another year or so but never really recovered and we let it go around the end of 1983.
While we were playing at SDC, I met and started hanging out with this old Indian named Jim Fire Eagle that was at the craft fair making arrowheads. Turned out he was a medicine man, teacher, and seemed to know every single plant and what it’s used for. Since I had collected arrowheads as a kid, I was totally fascinated because I didn’t know people still knew how to make them, and got very immersed in learning flintknapping, plants and other native skills. After the Undergrass Boys broke up, I wasn’t in the mood to go back into music after the 8 hour day/ 5 day a week gig at SDC, so for most of 1984, all I did was hang out the woods learning wilderness survival. A friend of mine was working on her Ornithology PHd. in Arkansas, and was part of a big bird study down there. She called me because I knew students from MSU that might want the work, and asked me to contact them. I said “I would love to do that!” She told me to put a resume together, but other than being a recreational birder, I had little experience. I kind of fibbed about doing bird tours in SDC, but put all the survival stuff in it, and that got me the job because it meant I was willing and happy to camp out the whole summer in Arkansas.”
BD: How did that help you with music and when did you come back into the music field?
BB: “One of the skills needed is to ID birds by their songs and calls, and I learned bird songs the same way I learned music, by memorizing phrases and tone. It’s a marketable skill; you can make good money identifying birds by their songs. Learning bird songs also helped me learn to listen better in music”
BD: Wow. I did not know that until now, where do I sign up? <laughs>
BB: The woman that got me the first bird research job also launched a 10 year-long bird monitoring study in Branson that year, so it got me work in the area again. Around that time, I ran into Mark (Howie) Denny, who headed a trio playing at Cartoons called Howie and the Hillcats, he invited me to play with them. They were the first band I played with in Springfield after I came back.
BD: So what bands are you currently in?
BB: “Howie and the Hillcats, the Lowdown Fancy, Hamburger Cows, Da Mullets, and The Undergrass Boys. The last two bands only do a few shows a year. I also recently played for the soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated movie Winter’s Bone. The group that was assembled for it (Blackberry Winter) was just booked on a big coast-to-coast US tour starting May 20th to promote the soundtrack CD, and we’re scheduled to start recording a new project in April.”
BD: How many instruments do you play?
BB: “Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Bass, Mandolin, Dobro.
BD: What’s the reunion band you are in?
BB: “The Undergrass Boys do reunion shows every few years, the last one we did was recently at Juanita K Hammons Hall. Our first and only record came out 1981 on vinyl; someone located the original 2” tapes it was recorded on and had it re-mastered to CD. We released it at a sold-out concert at the Landers Theater in 1999; we’re also in the process of recording a new CD of old and current material.
BD: So it’s been over 40 years of playing music. Wow! What do you like most about dealing with the music industry besides playing the music?
BB: “Well, the business and the industry itself is the worst part about it. The real magic is when you are onstage with musicians who you totally respect for their musical ability and what they do. There’s nothing like it, such a raw communication. The Undergrass Boys was the first band I had that with; we split up in 1983 and didn’t have a reunion till 1993. But then and even now, every single time we get together on stage, we still have these moments of communication that make me well up a bit. It’s an amazing thing, and almost every band I’ve played with has those moments, some more than others.”
BD: That’s awesome! What about Hamburger Cows?
BB: “It’s an offshoot of Lowdown Fancy, with me, Steve Ames and whoever shows up to jam. We had our first gig at Tipsy Turtle and didn’t have a name at the time. On the way there, Steve needed a shirt, so goes to Wal-Mart and buys a $3 special with the letter “I”, a picture of a hamburger, then “Cows” spelled out below that. It looked like some guy in China wanted to capitalize on the “I (picture of a heart) my dog” craze and tried to apply it to hamburgers, but got lost in the translation.
Steve shows up in the shirt and said “This is gonna be our name! Hamburger Cows! I’ll go buy a bunch of them to give away and it’ll be crazy! I argued a bit that I thought it was stupid, but finally agreed. During the next gig at the Turtle, we gave most of them away, throwing them at the winners of stupid trivia questions, it was great fun. The next day, I got a bunch of emails and FB inquires, asking “what the hell is this Hamburger Cows?” It was one of those things where the silly name probably got us more notoriety then if we’d gone with some standard name.
BD: Oh yes, I was out with my friend and he said lets go see this band called “Hamburger Cows” I was like, are you serious? Lol”
BB: “It’s mostly material we wouldn’t want to do with Lowdown Fancy. Steve is a classically trained, magnificent singer and I usually don’t want to sing that much while playing with him in Lowdown, as my rough voice kind of leans toward country and bluegrass. With Hamburger Cows, I can drag out a bunch of my original songs written over the years, Steve has a lot of other originals as well, and we do a lot of covers we both picked up that are applicable. We can also play the naughty songs.”
BD: I know! Those are my favorite ones” <winks> So what advice would you give to a newbie, just starting out in the music field, any parting words of wisdom?
BB: “Practice as much as you can, hone your craft, and don’t play out till you don’t suck so bad.”
If you would like a taste of the vast array of Bo Brown’s music, go to Blackberry Winter (Winter’s Bone) www.blackberrywinterband.com . The Lowdown Fancy – www.reverbnation.com/thelowdownfancy . You can also check out Bo’s survival school’s site: www.firstearth.org .
