Longview article

BLUEGRASS
Music Profiles

LONGVIEW

By Bill Conger

When all-star bluegrass band Longview formed on a whim 14 years ago, there was a short view of their future. But when fans heard the high lonesome singers’ classic harmonies they demanded more. The band continues to deliver studio recordings with Deep in the Mountains, Longview’s first CD in six years, but with a slightly different make-up this time around. Founding member Don Rigsby talked to BMP about remaining true to its traditional roots, juggling a multiplicity of performers’ schedules, and the shake-up within the band.

BMP: How did Longview begin?
DON RIGSBY: The band started in 1994. Myself and Dudley Connell and James King sang together at Denton, North Carolina Bluegrass Festival in celebration of Rounder Records’ 25th anniversary. The harmony that we had was just uncanny, especially on the old Stanley Brothers’ classic high trio numbers. I began to have conversations from that point with Ken Irwin about how that just really needed to be recorded. We went into the studio the next year. Ken called it a 25th anniversary present for himself. We had James, Dudley and myself and I kind of hand picked the rest of the people. I called Joe Mullins to play the banjo. We had Glen Duncan on fiddle, and Marshall Wilborn on bass, and we made three recordings with that aggregation. Times, people’s schedules and lives just changed and we went through some upheaval in the band. All of us still get along. We all still like each other. We just had to make some personnel changes because people’s schedules and lives dictated it was necessary. We got who we felt like at the time were the best people to replace those people - you couldn’t really replace them but you just made the changes necessary to keep going. We got Lou Reid, Ron Stewart, and J.D. Crowe to be in the band. The band kind of started as a studio band with no real intentions of doing shows, but nobody was really doing that kind of music at the time. Now even, there’s nobody really playing this kind of music [full time].

BMP: How would you characterize what your sound is?
DON: It’s really hardcore 1950s-style bluegrass music - comes right out of the deepest, firmest traditions of bluegrass music. This is one man’s opinion. Most traditional bands out there today - there are probably some that play pretty traditional music - have forays into other things, but Longview, by and large, sticks to traditional old-time bluegrass music. We just take old songs and make them new again. What we’re trying to do is pick songs from regional acts that weren’t all that well known, but were really worth their salt as writers and influential on us, and we’re going to turn those into good performances for people to hear today that they can’t possibly find or would be extremely difficult for them to find. Plus, we’ll take a few chestnuts from folks like Jim and Jesse and Bill Harrell and stuff like that and turn that into a fresh arrangement for today, too.

BMP: With all the personnel changes, is it challenging to click together and keep the similar sound you had in the beginning or has it evolved?
DON: It has evolved to some degree. It evolved while the other guys were in the band, too. The sound evolved from the first record to the third record, but it was much the same on this last record as it was on that third one. I think we kind of got ourselves to a point that it was all kind of a Longview sound. It’s kind of hard to put my finger on exactly what I mean by that, but it’s kind of defined by those raw sounding high trio harmonies, which we still have, and hard driving accompaniment with good hard rhythm guitar. Lou Reid can provide that, and of course, J.D. Crowe’s banjo playing, that goes without saying what that’s going to be. There’s not a better fiddle player in the business than Ron Stewart. We had Glen Duncan in the band. He was a walking encyclopedia of bluegrass fiddle playing. If you wanted something to sound like Kenny Baker, well there it was, or Benny Simms or Benny Martin, just whatever you want. Curly Ray Cline - Glen could do it verbatim. Well, guess what? So, can Ron Stewart. Then, at the same time he’s going to give you a big ol’ dose of Ron Stewart in the midst of it, too, and that’s what Glen Duncan would do. I think we’ve got those same elements with all these people. They’ve taken the tradition that we kind of had established for ourselves and put their own little signature with it, kind of maintained what we were going for and then just giving it a little something extra.

Longview's four page interview is in the current issue of BMP.
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Additional interview questions included in the Longview article:

-Talk about this latest album, Deep In The Mountains. Since all of you are already committed with your primary bands, was it hard to schedule time in the studio to record?
-So each person has a voice.
-People change and grow and want to try other things, I guess.
-There's such a vast background of that kind of music to choose from so how did you decide what to put on the record?
-This must be a special treat for you guys to play these songs that you have kind of rediscovered again.
-Do you want to on tour in support of the CD?