Gretchen Bowder and friends planted their Americana flag at the Medford Brewing Company on Wednesday, 20 September 2023.

Mustang Lager back on tap. Let’s ride.

The Gee Bees. Why not?

After a musician has notched enough shows in their belt, and practiced 10,000 hours or more, the entire enterprise of naming the band, or album, or song, or genre must start to feel a little like a superficial procedure.

Sure, you want people to be able to identify you on the marquee or sandwich board out in front of the venue. But the journey of the musician is an itinerant one, whether you’re on the road or just filling in guitar for a friend’s band across town. Getting precious about labeling the stops along the way must lose its luster.

Catch a veteran musician in the right or wrong mood could produce the following interview.

Journalist: “Hey, what’s the new album called?”

“Rotating Disc With A Bunch Of Songs On It”.

J: “What’s your favorite track?”

“The long one.”

J: “Cool. Where’d your band name come from?”

“I thought it up and no one else was there to say no.”

J: “What kind of music can we expect to hear?”

“Some loud stuff, quiet stuff. Notes all the way through and a little drumming. Every song that starts has an ending too.”

J: “Looking forward to it!”

Is that type of exchange (which sounds a little like athlete interviews too) a product of boring questions or boring answers? A bit of both.

The substantive point underlying the blasé response, though, is that whatever is worth knowing about the music is learned through listening to the music. If naming ceremonies were the most important thing, most musicians would have been writers of words not sounds.

You can bank the above claims double for the traditional music Gretchen Bowder and Friends were crafting at the brewery. Big picture, the tradition is bigger than all the musicians who contribute to it. And yet without the yeoman work of groups like those that Bowder’s been part of – the Mudsills, Local Freight, the Hazel Project, and the Bagboys – there’d be no tradition to speak of.

It’s a paradox worth mulling over a lager or two.

The Gee Bees

The Americana four-piece for the night Gee Bees assembled in the side room of the brewery. Banjo, acoustic guitar, fiddle, standup bass.

The set started in daylight, and finished at night. A big bay door was open, allowing the first cool breeze of autumn to wend its way between the legs of the tables and chairs.

The order of the night was bluegrass, western swing, and anything that falls under the general heading of Americana with a capital ‘A’. Including “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow,” the bluegrass banger popularized by George Clooney from that Coen Brothers film.

“You know, the one from that…”

“We know, we know…”

It’s the entry level country folk request par excellence. The Gee Bees received it with good humor, picking out the tune from memory.

Not that they learned the song. They heard it in that vague half-heard way we all did when the movie came out. Except with their musician’s memory, what’s vague found focus and came to life as a full-fledged number.

Better put a tip in the bowl for that one.

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