Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 5, 1991 TAG: 9103050260
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In other words, a self-made sensation.
The concept is simple, Robins says. You record an album of bluegrass standards, you produce a cheap television commercial catering to music's lowest common denominator - casual listeners - and then you sit back and watch the money pour in.
Slim Whitman and others have been doing this for years in country music circles, but in the world of bluegrass, nobody has lifted a banjo.
Until now.
Robins, a Radford banjo picker and past member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, is working to fill that void. You may have seen him lately on Country Music Television.
Together with his bluegrass business partner, Kerry Hay of Blacksburg, Robins last October assembled a group of musicians, mostly Virginians, and recorded 39 of the best-known traditional bluegrass songs they could think of.
"Orange Blossom Special," "Cripple Creek," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Rocky Top" and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" are just a few of the selections.
They named the group The Bluegrass Band, packaged the album, titled "Once Again, From The Top," and started peddling the mail-order collection on television in December.
The price tag: $19.95.
"These songs have been recorded to death, but never in one package," Robins said. "The trick to what we're doing isn't to create some new musical challenge. We're aiming only to entertain our audience."
So far, they have sold only about 4,000 copies of the three-record set - not exactly a Whitman-bashing pace - but Robins and Hay are confident sales will pick up.
A new commercial will help, they believe.
Their first television spot featured a soundtrack comically out of sync with what was appearing on screen. It has been running on Country Music Television since December.
Despite the sound problems, at least one bluegrass enthusiast is happy to see somebody pushing the old music.
"Of course, the commercial didn't do them justice, but at least it got the point across. And bluegrass needs to be there. It needs to be accessible," said Sherry Boyd, a disc jockey at WPAQ-AM, an all-bluegrass radio station in Mt. Airy, N.C.
"There's every other kind of music being promoted on TV now, so why not bluegrass? It's about time," Boyd said.
She said her station has been playing at least one song off the collection every day.
A second commercial, with the sound matching this time around, was recently filmed at Blacksburg Middle School and should begin airing within a few weeks.
Robins and Hay also plan to begin advertising in bluegrass magazines, on radio, and eventually on The Nashville Network and other networks.
By then, they hope to be sitting pretty.
But the project means more to both Robins and Hay than money. They share the belief that pure bluegrass, performed with the traditional arrangements, is being lost as contemporary trends continue to take over.
"It's all changing," Robins said. "There's something completely different out there now. Part of our intention with this is to prolong that traditional bluegrass."
Ironically, Robins was in a number of bluegrass bands, including New Grass Revival, that helped to popularize the contemporary sound and further erode pure bluegrass.
That was back before he joined Bill Monroe in 1978 and became a hard-core disciple of the old-time arrangements.
Robins toured with Monroe until 1982, when he packed away his banjo and vowed to quit the music business for good. After 12 years on the road, he had decided enough was enough.
"If I had a car that got me up and down the road and a banjo, I was happy. But it got to the point where I wanted new clothes and they cost money," he said.
He also wanted to broaden his horizons.
"For all that time, I was interested in being the best banjo player I could be. There was nothing else," he said. "I lived a black and white existence and I needed some gray."
He returned to school at New River Community College, tried several different business ventures, and now owns Environmental Concerns Inc., an asbestos abatement firm based in Dublin.
"I just wanted to get involved in business," he explained. "It's fun for me to organize things, get them up and running and then go on to something else."
Thus, "Once Again, From The Top."
The Bluegrass Band project remains just that, a project. There are no plans to tour or even play the occasional bluegrass festival.
Robins and his band mates - Rickie and Ronnie Simpkins, Larry Stephenson, Wyatt Rice, Wayne Henderson and Arnie Solomon - all have other interests.
In fact, Robins didn't open his banjo case for nearly five years after leaving Monroe and at first he had no intention of playing on the record. He only wanted to produce.
But his original banjo player dropped out and Robins found himself in front of the microphones by default. Robins previously had released three solo albums, "Forty Years Late," "The Fifth Child," and "Fragments Of My Imagination."
Recorded at Bias Recording Studio in Springfield, most of the tracks for "Once Again, From The Top" were finished in just four days. The band never rehearsed, nor had they all played together before.
Essentially, they just rolled the tape and jammed.
"I thought the bluegrass world would murder us for this," Robins said, "but all things considered, I'm really pleased."
Boyd went one further.
"For me and my listeners, it ranks right up there," she said. "I applaud the efforts of these fellas to give some of the old tunes a shot in the arm."
Others in bluegrass agreed.
"It's just about like a carbon copy of the young days of Bill Monroe," said Billy "Bluegrass" Lineberry, a disc jockey at WFNR-AM (710) and FM (100.7) in Christiansburg. His station has been playing about six cuts off the record daily.
"I think 20 years from now people are going to put on these old CDs and say those were the good old days. They'll be just like Flatt & Scruggs," Lineberry said.
But Robins didn't record the album for the bluegrass world. "I really don't care what they think," he said.
He hopes to target instead the casual listeners, those who might attend a bluegrass festival somewhere and like what they hear, but beyond that, show no interest.
"The person I care about is the person who listens to music just for the joy they get out of it," he said.
Like Hay, for example.
Hay and Robins met 12 years ago through Robins' father, Calvin, and because of their common love of bluegrass became friends.
But Hay is not a musician.
He's a fan, and brings to the partnership an ear for what's been popular over the past 50 years and his skills as the former head of marketing at Electro-Tec Corp. in Blacksburg.
"The music aside, what this project all boils down to is marketing," Hay said. "And that's where I come in."
He knows what the average person is going to like and he knows how to pitch it to them, while his wife, Sue, takes care of shipping and handling.
Meanwhile, they are plotting a sequel.
If this project goes as well as they are expecting, then Hay and Robins said they plan to reunite The Bluegrass Band to record the definitive set of gospel bluegrass music.
And from there, who knows?
Maybe The Bluegrass Band does the best of Slim Whitman . . .
by CNB