* Basically Bluegrass/ Bluegrass goes slightly out of bounds with
Northern Lights
Tanya Bell * 02/19/99
The Gazette
(Copyright 1999)
* Many bluegrass bands are happy to stick to the
traditional style started by Bill Monroe and the Blue
Grass Boys in the 1940s. But Northern Lights wants
to give the sound its own twist.
"A lot of bands want to preserve that exact sound,
but that's not what I want to do," says Lights mandolinist
and vocalist Taylor Armerding. The band will perform
tonight at the Black Rose Acoustic Society.
"The core philosophy of the band has been to try
not to be totally bound to what would be the traditional
* boundaries of bluegrass, but not out of the genre,"
he says. The band blends jazz, rock 'n' roll and classical
influences into their original music, but they also
* stick to the three-part harmonies that bluegrass is known for.
* Conventional bluegrass is a style of American country
* music that combines elements of dance and religious
* folk music. The vocal range is usually higher than
* most country music, and bands usually consist of guitars,
banjo, bass, fiddle and mandolin.
Northern Lights doesn't stray far, because that
would take away from what they originally fell in
* love with: the honest, earthy quality of bluegrass.
"The speed element is very hypnotic to me. It's
very homespun and not processed in any way. It's very
real. You have a sense of what it's about," says Armerding.
"It's very happy-sounding music."
Formed in 1975 in New England, Northern Lights
has had quite a bit of turnover. Since their first
album release in 1976, the band has taken on many
forms. For a while it seemed as though they broke
up and reformed about every two to four years. Some
members would leave to take on "real jobs," while
others simply moved away. Armerding is the only original
member.
Now the group is made up of Bill Henry on guitar
and vocals, Chris Miles on bass and vocals, Mike Kropp
on banjo, and Armerding. Occasionally Armerding's
son, Jake, joins the group on fiddle when he's not
tackling college courses. Miles joined in 1996 and
the rest of the bunch has been playing together since 1991.
And for a traveling band, these guys maintain some
pretty demanding "real jobs." Armerding is a newspaper
editor in Andover, Mass.; Henry does engineering and
draft work for nuclear submarines; Kropp sells music
equipment and Miles does music session work and teaches bass.
But with all of the changes in band lineup plus
the members' demanding work schedules, they still
have managed to maintain their own sound.
"Every person has taken (the music) to a place
it would have gone," Armerding says.
The band is putting the finishing touches on an
album to be released this spring. It's the eighth
Northern Lights album, the second recorded by the
current lineup. The lyrical themes are heavily steeped
in relationships and life in general.
"We just write from our own experience or the human
* experience. We sing about classic bluegrass themes,
* like life on the road - if you're singing bluegrass,
you're not flying in jets." They spend about 60 days
on the road each year.
The band also is choosing cover songs not from
the traditional repertoire, including the Beatles'
"If I Needed Someone."
Despite the new types of music being thrust into
* the limelight these days, Armerding says, bluegrass
has maintained a stable place in the music world.
* "(Bluegrass) has a very intense and loyal following.
You find thousands of people at festivals, but it's
never going to be an arena type of music. It's not
growing with great rapidity, but it has a good, solid niche."
