Few things in life are more fun than a pickin’ circle – a group of musicians sitting around a campfire or on a porch somewhere with guitars, banjos, fiddles. It’s always an informal affair, this practice of getting together in an open jam. Not being a musician myself, I can only imagine that actually playing is more fun than sitting on the outside listening, but the listening part suits me just fine.

One of those few things in life more fun than a pickin’ circle is an old-fashioned camp-out bluegrass festival like the Cherokee Farms Fiddler’s Convention that was held in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains near Lafayette, GA July 10^th -11^th of this summer. And this makes perfect sense as an old-fashioned bluegrass festival is essentially the mother of all pickin’ circles. The lineup featured no small amount of serious bluegrass and roots-Americana talent. Friday night Columbus’ own Bibb City Ramblers played the big stage followed by The Virginia Dare Devils from Asheville, NC. Those acts were followed up by festie veterans and national touring act, The Snake Oil Medicine Show.

Saturday afternoon started off with an open jam session at the smaller stage hosted by Bibb City Ramblers (amazingly fresh considering the marathon pickin’ session the night before) followed by several groups that were new to me such as Pea Ridge Ramblers and Smokey’s Farmland Band with special guest Joe McGuinness. After dinnertime the main action shifted back to the big stage where audience members were treated to more big names in the bluegrass community like Larry Keel and Chojo Jaques.

While the weekend was in no way lacking in professional-caliber talent performing all formal-like up on the big stage, the real focus was fiddlers (and banjo pickers, guitar strummers, bass thumpers, and the occasional bongo drummer, washboard player, and spoon clicker) informally convening. From the time I arrived and pitched my tent to the time I packed up the tent and headed out someone, somewhere was playing music. Friday night, long after the festivities on the main stage ended, I was lulled to sleep by the distant sounds of a pickin’ circle around the campfire across the meadow. Waking up Saturday morning, my pancake-making was serenaded by songsters playing in groups scattered all over the festival grounds. On my way to the port-a-potties I passed no less than four gatherings of musicians at various campsites.

After breakfast I wandered around the festival grounds, watching little girls hula hooping, little boys playing on the floating dock in the pond, and old hippies dancing. I wound my way in and out of vendor tents selling stickers and tie-dyed t-shirts and hand made crafts of all sorts, soaking in all the sights and sounds and smells that comprise a music festival. Finally I parked my behind on a grassy hillside to sit and listen to the music. I’ve heard many of these bands before playing in more traditional venues – bars and the like – playing the same music and often with many of these same folks in the audience. However, the feeling of being there in that space in that moment felt so inexplicably different from the experience of seeing music on an indoor stage.

After much thought (and a few beers) I think I finally put my finger on the difference. When a band plays in a bar, while no doubt some of the audience have that date marked on their calendars as a must-not-miss, many others are folks who have wandered in off the street either in search of a drink or having heard the music from the sidewalk. At Cherokee Farms, as with any camping festival, the vast majority of the attendees traveled quite a distance to be there and they cleared out an entire weekend of their lives in order to attend. All my fellow festival-goers were there quite deliberately, and went through quite a bit of effort to be there. Audience members, camp-mates, fellow travelers – not only do we all make the pilgrimage for the music, we gather to enjoy each other’s company. The feeling is much like a family reunion (though lacking in the drama and dysfunction so common to reunions of biological families.)

This summer’s convention was the first year of what is to become an annual event. No doubt next year will be bigger, better. My family and I are already making plans to be there, to hook up with old friends, to make new friends, to dance, to sing, to be with our musical family.

Like just about every other citizen of our fine nation, I’ve been paying attention to the health care reform debate and hearing arguments from both sides. Most recently, my mother has been sending me emails forwarded from Newt Gingrich and Chuck Norris. For some of us on the Left end of the political spectrum, merely the sources of these missives are enough to discount the contents. However for others, like my mother, a point-by-point refuting is more necessary. So for those individuals like my mother, I will deal bit by bit with some of the ‘facts’ at hand.

In one email, noted spin-master Newt Gingrich said that this government is completely incompetent when it comes to handling money using Cash for Clunkers as an example. I will give Newt this — it is documented fact that Cash for Clunkers was far more popular than anyone thought it would be and it ran out of money months ahead of schedule. You could take this to mean, as he asserts, that the CARS program was thus a colossal failure but before you do consider that all of the clunkers traded in equated to new vehicles bought and new car lots sitting empty of inventory creating a need to make more cars thus a call-back of THOUSANDS of previously laid-off auto workers. Tragic failure? I think not.

In another email Chuck Norris exposes one of the ‘Dirty Little Secrets of the Obamacare’. He expresses concern that language in the bill would allow ‘government agents’ to come into your house, (will they be wearing black suits and dark glasses?) usurp your parental authority, indoctrinate your children, and perhaps even encourage pregnant women to have abortions! He is right that there is a provision in one version of the bill to expand funding to existing programs that provide low-income families with in-home prenatal and parenting support. However, if you look up the provision in the bill to which Walker Texas Ranger is referring there is absolutely no language – not one teensy hint – that anyone will urge anyone else have an abortion as he suggests. In fact, any government employee or contractor is expressly forbidden even to mention such a thing under the Hyde Ammendment of 1977.

I knew a woman once who thought it was just fine to put Mountain Dew in her baby’s bottle when the child was four months old. Is it a bad idea for someone to step in and tell her otherwise? These agencies come in at the parents’ request (or sometimes on the recommendation of teachers or doctors if a problem is noticed) and make sure at-risk children are hitting their developmental milestones. You think the Mountain Dew Mom would know if her child weren’t developmentally on par with other children his age? If he has developmental issues do you think she should be encouraged to accept the support services offered or that the government should just stay out of her life while she continues to neglect her child?

Norris is correct that this portion of the bill is targeted at low-income families. You could accept, as does Mr. Kung-fu-fighting, that this is deliberate profiling and unfair stereotyping. But before you do consider that many low-income parents are also poorly educated. A lack of education could lead to the kind of parents who might not know the full spectrum of consequences drinking or smoking during pregnancy may cause or the importance of proper prenatal care. Should they not be offered the opportunity to work with a health care professional to help them out on the finer points of fetal health?

In a different email from Mr. Gingrich, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel’s name came up as being a ‘Dr. Death’ type who advocates the rationing of services to people near the end of life. The fact of the matter is quite contrary to this charge. Dr. Emmanuel is a well respected professional who has been working for years on improving quality of life for patients near the end of life and has long been an opponent of euthanasia and assisted suicide. What he said that has been taken out of context could be simplified as meaning that sometimes the best course of action is not the most aggressive, regardless of expense. This is a quality of life issue – not an espousing of care-rationing. Imagine you’ve got an 80 year old patient with cancer. Do you think that aggressive radiation and chemotherapy is going to do a whole lot to improve the quality of life for this already frail individual – months of nausea and weakness and other painful side effects in order to prolong existence for a matter of months – or do you think that maybe pain management might be the most humane course of treatment?

The quotes and statistical facts that Gingrich uses do indeed appear to be legitimate and well documented, but just because something ‘looks’ well documented doesn’t mean that it is factually correct. Many of the things claimed and quoted in those emails were things that I didn’t know much about so I went and looked up the quotes and read them in context. I support health care reform because I’ve read into the various versions of the bill – in context – and asked questions of actual experts like doctors who deal with these issues daily. I’ve also researched the information supporting the need for health care reform.

In my research I immediately discount any partisan information source from either side. I’ve been looking up statistics from neutral sources such as the UN, World Health Organization, CDC, National Census, etc. Here are a few facts I gleaned from these impartial sources: We pay twice the amount per capita on health care than the next country in line which is Switzerland. (About $8000 per head v. about $4000 per head.) At the same time we rank 29th in the world for infant mortality and 41st for total life expectancy. The cost of health care is rising at a rate roughly commensurate with that of insurance company profits. Not only is the actual cost of health care going up – as in what the doctor’s bill actually costs – premiums and deductibles are going up. Debt from health care is the number one reason cited for bankruptcy. And most of those going bankrupt are insured. The number of uninsured is also rising – something like 12 million over the past ten years. And while it is true that an ER cannot deny treatment to someone in crisis but that doesn’t include routine care or follow up. People are denied that daily – which often causes the crisis situations that spark the ER visits that don’t get paid for and end up being passed on to the actual paying consumers.

As for the ‘lack of efficiency and total failure of government health care programs’ that Gingrich asserts, consumer satisfaction surveys show that recipients of government health care programs like Medicare and Tricare are far happier than those covered under private insurance. The military medical system is one of the most efficient and best in the world because they don’t adhere to any artificial construct of cost-per-service. The army owns the x-ray machine and the facility. The army pays the x-ray tech a flat salary. The overhead for maintenance of the radiology department is the same whether they see 5 patients in one day or 50. They pay their doctors a flat salary whether they are active-duty soldiers or civilians employed by the Department of Defense. There is no calculated cost-per-visit to see patients – they work X hours a day X days a year regardless of how many patients they see or how many tests they order. The military buys such a massive quantity of drugs that they are able to negotiate costs down with the drug companies for common and generic drugs. (Walmart is able to do the same thing which is why they are able to offer something like 500 prescriptions for $4 each.)

This system is very similar to some of the much-feared socialized medical systems of Europe and in my opinion the best option for our country. There is a minority of far-left liberals in the House and Senate that share this point of view. However, this is seen as far too radical and expensive for just about everyone else so they’ve introduced this idea of a ‘public option’ which basically works like expanded Medicare. People who do not have insurance or who do not like the insurance they have would be able to buy in to a not-for-profit government-run insurance program. Mind you BUY INTO – not get for free. (Though there is a provision to allow low income citizens a graduated pay scale – up to people making four times the poverty level which is about $12,000/person/year, but they’d still be required to pay deductibles and co-pays like any other insurance.) If people do like their insurance, they are welcome to – encouraged to – keep it. Insurance companies might lose some business. Watch me not cry for them when they’re already making record profits and their CEO’s are making salaries in the BILLIONS. Maybe if they’d treated their customers right in the first place they wouldn’t be losing them. Hopefully, the fear of losing customers to this public option will prompt them to start. One of the goals of a public option is to provide competition so that the private companies start providing adequate services.

This isn’t a hostile government takeover of health care. This isn’t a plot to kill grandma or mandate abortion or provide coverage for illegal aliens or force the entire population to get microchipped as a precursor of the mark of the beast. Any argument to that end is nothing more than an insurance industry lead campaign of deliberate lying and scare tactics in order to cause mass hysteria and thus opposition to a bill that stands to reduce the profits of those same companies to levels that are only moderately obscene. However I have heard very few arguments that are NOT based on lies and fear-mongering. You’d think that if this bill was so bad someone, somewhere would be able to come up with a legitimate, logical, and reasonable argument against. Perhaps it is because there are no such arguments strong enough to garner enough public outrage to defeat a bill that would so obviously be in their best interests.

Both sides are behaving badly at these town hall meetings. It started out with the opposition and their hysterical screaming and continued with the proponents organizing to scream back and scream louder. That isn’t the way to have a national conversation and the whole thing makes me very mad, especially since all the screaming results in a complete and total lack of actual discussion on what are very serious issues that are in desperate need of being handled. Perhaps I too am hostile. I admit that I am angry. I will gladly live with that charge. I do not like it when people in power use lies and fear to manipulate the people that they have power over in order to continue to take advantage of them.

Atlanta-based Ben Deignan has been playing regular dates here in Columbus over the past year. His self-titled debut cd was released in January of this year. He will be bringing his funky, poppy party vibe back to The Loft on Saturday, September 5^th. I got the chance to spend about an hour talking to him recently.

Q: What initially brought you to Columbus and The Loft?

A: We’ve played the Loft several times. I really like Columbus. I love downtown. Actually, I adore it, really dig it. And I love the Loft. It always sounds great in there.

Q: What do you remember most about that first show?

A: It was at the Loft and it was nuts! We always do this two-set thing in Columbus. That night, by the first set we were doing our thing and the attention was great but by the second set everybody in the audience had drank a little bit more and we’d drank a little bit more and it turned into a celebration. There was a wedding party there or something and it just got nuts. We will always remember that. It was great!

Q: What did you want to be when you grew up when you were little?

A: A firefighter when I was real little. My dad was a firefighter before I was born so it was kinda my thing. I decided I wanted to be a musician instead when I was 15 but still, my favorite show now is “Rescue Me” on FX so it’s still a part of me.

Q: What was the first album you bought with your own money?

A: R&B tapes with my change. I don’t remember exactly what the first was but it had to be some cheesy early-90s R&B. I would scrounge change and do chores and pop a big thing of coins up on the counter of the record store – this is back when they still had record stores that people actually went to to buy their music – and me and the cashier would have to stand there counting it all out while the line of people behind me got longer. I had a Walkman cassette player with headphones. Do they still make those? I don’t think they do.

Q: What other music influenced you growing up?

A: That R&B was a gateway drug into soul like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. I also remember when I first heard Matchbox 20. I bought that on cassette. And then there’s U2 and The Police. They’re kind of generic musical vitamins. If you’re gonna do music you’re gonna have to spend some time with them.

Q: Who have you been listening to recently?

A: I’ve just gotten into Kings of Leon. I’ve been hearing about them for a long time but I’ve just now given them a chance. I bought their latest album and it rocks my face off. They are a mix between new age southern rock and arena rock I guess. Their lead singer’s voice is just the truth. There’s also Amos Lee. I liked him before he was popular in the South. And a guy from here in Atlanta named Anthony David. He’s a singer/song writer with a down-home, bluesy, front-porch sound. I like his song “Cold Turkey” – it has all of those elements – and “Georgia Peach” which any real Georgia girl is bound to like.

Q: How did you first get interested in playing?

A: It just kinda happened. My parents took me to Nashville when I was a kid and I thought the guitars were the coolest thing ever. I watched the guys on stage and it just looked like bliss to be up there – a way to be a kid forever. So when I was 15 I picked up a guitar and got into a phase that I’m still in at 23.

Q: How did you break into music?

A: I’m not sure that I have yet. It’s been a climb so far. I’ve been playing professionally for 3, going on 4 years and in the grind touring for about a year and a half. I’ve been plugging away and playing and doing what I do and if it happens it happens.

Q: How did the band come together?

A: I was playing around Atlanta meeting these guys all the time playing the same circuit. We’ve gone through a couple of drummers and a couple of bass players but the group I have now seems to have a brotherhood. We keep getting tighter and tighter. These guys seem to be the ones that want to follow me into the fire.

Q: What inspires you to write?

A: Just life. Reading. Living. Movies. Drinking. Touring. Romance, relationships, and the lack thereof. If my life isn’t worth writing about I’ve got interesting characters around me and I get to dig into their lives.

Q: Tell me a story about one of your songs.

A: Well, “Fault Line”, off the album. I wrote it right after high school and it’s got high school references in it. It talks about the homecoming queen and the cheer-leading team. It was fine then but it feels weird to sing it now at 23. It reminds me that I’m getting older. Has it been five years since then already?

Q: If you pop “Ben Deignan” into the search on youtube you get a ton of hits of you doing the solo-acoustic thing with a webcam. What gave you the idea to put your stuff up there?

A: At the time I started it was my only outlet. Other people were doing it and I figured I could do it as well or better. I’ve gotten some good exposure that way. I’ve also learned a lot from the feedback from other people and from viewing it myself. If you go back and look at the early videos until now and look at the evolution you can see that I’ve grown a lot.

Q: What goes through your head when you step on stage and there’s a huge crowd of people?

A: Thank God! It means I’ve booked a good gig. And the energy is real high so I don’t have to try too hard to get into people’s heads like I do sometimes when there’s only like ten people. When there’s a big crowd I’m most comfortable. Lots of people is a good thing!

Q: Thus far, what was the one moment when you most felt like a true Rock Star?

A: When we opened for Collective Soul at The Tabernacle in Atlanta. There was a huge crowd, a great green room, and everything just ran smooth like it would if you’re on top. And then there was the after party and we got to hang with the band. And we were well fed and we drank well. Plus this was in my hometown. Also, the night we sold out the Hard Rock for our CD release. We owned the city that night!

Q: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned so far?

A: I’m still learning. I’ve grown over the past year. I used to be so neurotic and I’ve learned to take things with more ease, you know, roll with the punches. This can be a cut-throat business and there’s ups and downs and you just don’t sweat the small stuff. I think I’ve learned not to get in my own way. And all of that applies to life in general as well as music.

Q: You’ve had the chance to play with many big names. Who’s been your favorite and why?

A: Well, there haven’t been that many. Collective Soul, Huey Lewis…all of them I guess. Especially the ones I get to hang out with. And the ones who bring lots of people that I then get to play in front of.

Q: If you could play with anyone living or dead, who would it be and why?

A: Stevie Wonder would be awesome but I’m not ready for that…but I guess if we are just daydreaming here, yeah, Stevie. And Micheal Jackson for someone who’s dead. Man, it’s still just so soon to think about that one.

Q: What big things are planned in the near future for Ben Deignan and Suburban Soul?

A: Get out west, up north. We are talking about doing Europe and spending more time in the studio. We have a lot of big plans but we are still taking things one day at a time right now.

Q: And when you’re not busy with BDSS what do you do with your free time?

A: I wouldn’t say technically that I actually have free time. I’m always doing something relating to music, either practicing or performing or doing something to stay in shape because this business can be hard on your body. I read a lot. I was never much of a reader – always too ADHD for that – so I’m glad that I’m doing that now. And movies. I like to watch movies. That’s about all I do that doesn’t relate to music but it does because I get inspired by that.

Q: The last question is kind of random and silly. When you get really uber famous (because we all know you will) what is the first totally diva thing you want to do?

A: I’ve never really thought about that. There’ve been times I’ve had assholes giving me a hard time and really piss me off and I’ve thought, “If I get famous I want to come back and tell this guy to go to hell!” I’ve wanted to do that but I don’t think I ever will. The biggest people I’ve known in this business have always been really humble and I hope that I’m that kind of guy if I ever get up there. But who knows. I may be totally obnoxious if that ever happens.

Andrew McMahon, front man of Jack’s Mannequin, knows what a pop song ought to be. Perhaps the use of orchestration, synthesizers, and the occasional glockenspiel mixed into one nearly homogeneous wall of sound might be a turn off for some but in this writer’s opinion, rather than sounding over produced, the effect comes off as being lush. Radio-friendly anthems like the opening track ‘Crashin’ and the last track ‘Miss California’ feature jangly guitars and bright snare-driven rhythms reminiscent of the beginnings of the Indypop movement in the early-mid 90’s. McMahon’s earnest and angst-ridden vocals on slower tracks like ‘Swim’ and ‘Annie Use Your Telescope’ bring a heartfelt warmth layered over these instrumentals that creates a sound so rich you can nearly dive into it. (Particularly appropriate for a song entitled ‘Swim’, yes?)

I feel much more hip and with-it just for having listened to ‘The Glass Passenger.’ (Do we still say ‘hip’ and ‘with-it’?) ‘Passenger’ would serve well as the soundtrack to some neon-soaked Indy flick following the escapades of trendy yet quirky, unrealistically intelligent yet gorgeous young adults surviving in the Big City. The general feel of this collection of songs makes me a bit nostalgic for the inherent drama of that just-post-adolescent age. (Not that I’d realistically ever want to revisit being 19 again, seriously.) Fortunately, giving this record a checking-out won’t actually cause you to travel back in time.

Stephanie Morgan of Asheville-based Stephanie’s Id stands on stage at the Loft, the teeny-weeny package that is her body dressed in a wife beater, a tutu, and plaid Chuck Taylors. Dark brown curls cascade over her face yet are not able to hide her zillion-kilowatt smile. How can I be expected to take someone this impossibly cute seriously as an artist? Turns out, the task becomes far less daunting the moment the band strikes up and she opens her mouth to sing.

Stephanie’s Id is not your average girly-band. Actually, Stephanie’s Id is not your average anything. Stephanie has a baby doll voice that sounds like something between Macy Gray and Bjork with a bit of the edge and quirky unexpectedness of Ani DiFranco. Tracks on the 2007 album, ‘Grus Americanus’ layer these delightful vocal tones over a stylistic versatility that keeps the listener engaged while at the same time maintaining a consistent groove that eases the transition from song to song. The sound is by turns subtly sultry with ambient synth-sounds that create a trance-like feel on tracks like ‘Cold Cold’. At other times the vibe is overtly soulful and funky with smooth gospel-inspired harmonies like those used in the song ‘Hey Hey Hey (It’s Gonna Be Okay)’. In the middle, tracks like the Go-Gos-esque ‘Unmistakably Love’ present a gleeful celebration of cheesy 80’s pop vibe.

Stephanie’s Id is getting attention from the (almost) main-stream press. In a review of ‘Grus Americanus’, the NPR show ‘Second Stage’ described the band’s style as “a beguiling mix of sounds with unexpected sonic turns as hushed, serene songs erupt suddenly into dark, explosive jams.” And they played right here in Columbus! How cool is that? I remain consistently impressed, if not even amazed, by the amount of talent offered to Columbus residents on stages like those at The Loft and Soho’s. If we want to insure that performers of this caliber keep returning to our local venues we need make sure they consistently have a lively audience when they step on stage. In the meantime, I recommend checking out the MySpace page for Stephanie’s Id and giving ‘Grus Americanus’ a listen.

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