By virtue of being a band for 37 years, Special Consensus has outlasted its detractors, Kentucky boys and purists who said if it’s from Chicago it can’t be real bluegrass. This weekend, the group will celebrate the release of “Scratch Gravel Road,” its 18th album, having long cemented a place in contemporary bluegrass. The group has certainly come a long way.
As bandleader Greg Cahill sees it, Special Consensus and bluegrass fit perfectly in the continuum of Chicago roots music, so it “makes sense” that they formed here. “Blues is more identifiable as part of Chicago, but bluegrass is to country like jazz is to blues, it really is.” As a teenager, Cahill used to hang around outside clubs and blues bars, listening to the players he was too young to get in to see. “There is a lot of blues in bluegrass.”
Some of Cahill’s first exposure to bluegrass came by virtue of location — growing up in Evanston, he was neighbors with early country star Kenneth “Jethro” Burns of Homer and Jethro, who appeared regularly on “National Barn Dance” (country radio show, broadcast by WLS-AM). “There were a lot of people who had moved up from the South, to Chicago, and I remember seeing people lined up for blocks for the Barn Dance.”
Cahill finally got his own band together in 1975 and plugged along for years despite many in the bluegrass world raising an eyebrow at them being city boys. “We were fighting that for a long time. Promoters and people — they wouldn’t even listen to our music and give us a chance, on principle,” laughs Cahill.
He says he owes the band’s multi-decade run to simply being stubborn, as well as a loyal fan base that has made it possible to earn a living. “Bluegrass is real communal, it’s one big, extended family.” While that’s the byproduct of it being niche music, that’s something that the community is trying to change — in order to make the family bigger.
“Bluegrass — it got to a point where it was mostly old timers and we had to work to pass it on and bring in young people and young players,” says Cahill. “As a result, bluegrass is no longer remote. People find it on satellite radio or through the Internet. That’s why you will see, at any festival or gathering, there are workshops for young people, so they can learn to play.” Cahill laughs, remembering a time long before instructional DVDs, back when he learned to play by slowing down bluegrass records on his turntable to decipher them picking along, note by note.
Cahill and Special Consensus have been instrumental in passing on the tradition to another generation, by tapping young talents for the band, as well as his own teaching efforts. “By virtue of being a band as long as we have, you go through a lot of members,” laughs Cahill. How does he know if someone is right for the Special C ranks? “It’s feeling. It’s not all about musicianship. I do look for younger folks — all they just need is the chance.”
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When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave.
Tickets: $18-$22; 773-728-6000 or
oldtownschool.org
