What: Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder
When: Tonight, 8 p.m.
Where: Butchart Gardens, 800 Benvenuto Ave., Brentwood Bay
Tickets: $32.60 (adult), $16.30 (youth 13-17) or $3 (child 5-12)
Note: Includes admission to the Gardens
MIKE DEVLIN
Times Colonist
Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs sees himself as a conduit who carries tradition forward. “I’m a carrier of the old tradition of Bill Monroe, Flat & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers, and yet at 63 I’m still young enough to have another 20 years of impartation to young musicians,” Skaggs said this week from Seattle, where he was booked to perform two shows. “That excites me, but it’s also a challenge.”
Skaggs, who grew up in the mountains of Cordell, Kentucky, is one of bluegrass’s most decorated practitioners, with 15 Grammy Awards. He has been performing professionally for 50 years, in groups with Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Bruce Hornsby, Jerry Douglas and Ry Cooder, putting into practice skills he learned first-hand from several bluegrass titans.
His first break came when he performed on mandolin — at the age of six — with Bill Monroe, widely acknowledged as the father of bluegrass.
It was during a concert at a high school in remote Martha, Kentucky, that “Little Ricky Skaggs” was handed Monroe’s Gibson F-5 mandolin and played Ruby (Are You Mad at Your Man) by the Osborne Brothers.
“He let me get up on stage and play what we could call Excalibur, the sword of bluegrass,” Skaggs said, with a laugh.
“He put that thing on my shoulder and I played it. That night changed my life forever.” Skaggs followed that with a performance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and TV appearances alongside Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who would eventually become his employers.
By the time he was 16, Skaggs was a full-blown professional, and at 17 was invited to join Ralph Stanley’s band, the Clinch Mountain Boys.
Monroe and Skaggs remained especially close, touring and recording together when the opportunity arose. When the man he still calls “Mr. Monroe” was alive, Skaggs made a promise to his mentor that he would dedicate his career to bluegrass music. In the years since Monroe’s death, in 1996, Skaggs has kept his promise — and then some.
It would be hard to imagine the 2001 roots revival O Brother, Where Art Thou? — which features a version of Keep On the Sunny Side performed in part by Skaggs’s wife, Sharon White — taking place without his years of service. In fact, it was Skaggs who legendary guitarist Chet Atkins credited with “single-handedly” saving country and bluegrass during the bleak years of the 1980s.
“I think we’ve helped to bring bluegrass, the wonderful music that it is, to a lot of people that never would have really given it a listen,” Skaggs said.
He will step away from bluegrass for a brief moment on Sept. 2 to revisit his country material for the first time in 20 years. Country music fans, who sent 13 of Skaggs’s hits to the top of the charts, were overjoyed at the news that he would revisit his 1980s output for an electric performance at the Nashville Palace nightclub. The tight-knit bluegrass community, however, was put off by the idea.
“They had a conniption,” Skaggs said. “We announced one show, but you would think the end of the world had come.”
Skaggs feels he has earned the right to play his old country hits — Crying My Heart Out Over You, Highway 40 Blues, Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown, Honey (Open That Door) and Country Boy — for his old audience, which has enabled him to have such a fruitful career.
“Had I not had the recognition from the country music community, I would have not been afforded the luxury of coming back to [bluegrass] and taking it the places I’ve taken it. I’ve been able to do that, and I’m grateful for it. But when folks gets fussy about me playing music the way they want me to play it, they need to sit back and look and listen.”
Skaggs will play in Victoria for the first time tonight at the Butchart Gardens. He will perform a bluegrass set with his seven-piece band, Kentucky Thunder, which features four pickers in their 20s. Fast mandolin runs are more difficult to play the older he gets, Skaggs said with a laugh, so it’s nice to have some fleet-fingered young guns along to do some heavily lifting.
“I love having young musicians with me because they challenge me. But these guys want to learn the old stuff and that’s why they’re here.”
