Author: Max Brzezinski
Alice Gerrard is this week’s featured artist on SHAPED BY SOUND (Thursday, 3/13). She made four records with Hazel Dickens in 1960s and ‘70s, the first two for Folkways and the second for Rounder. Now considered landmarks of old-time and bluegrass, these LPs have had the natural but distorting effect of downplaying Gerrard’s life and career post Hazel & Alice.
And this is a shame, because Gerrard has made a number of fine old-time records (solo and in new partnerships: listen to our playlist), and played a vital role as a journalist/archivist of her community. She founded and edited The Old Time Herald from 1987 to 2000, and served as a vernacular archivist of countless impromptu musical happenings. Now in her nineties, Gerrard has taken on the role as unofficial mentor and guide to younger generations of old-time musicians in North Carolina. A down-to-earth legend who has lived multiple extraordinary personal and musical lives, Gerrard has low-key functioned as a connector, catalyst, and advisor to the flourishing networks of emerging old-time musicians in North Carolina.
But Gerrard’s populist politics, lived not simply professed, keep her grounded in situations that might go to others’ heads. Though young folks now treat her as a guide, legend, even idol, her response has been markedly relaxed. As she says on the SHAPED BY SOUND podcast, “it’s surprising, isn’t it?” when asked about what she thinks about musicians looking up to her. So open and egalitarian in her approach to life, she seems to avoid instinctively elevation to legend or cult status. Rather, she earthily laughs and says she’s “learning to deal with it.” Of course, this ease ironically has the effect of making her all the more appealing to her youthful acolytes.
Considering she started as the almost ten-years younger member in Hazel & Alice, Gerrard’s new role as an old-time music elder represents something of a full circle moment for her. It’s a testament to the quality of Gerrard’s at times difficult, but always intensely lived life that she’s been able to complete this decades long journey from student to teacher, from participant in a culture to one of its key standard-bearers. This makes every one of Gerrard’s performances a work of living history, with an emphasis on living.