THE ROOTS CELLAR

By Barry Gilbert

Michael “Supe” Granda, St. Louis native and bassist for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, has added a new series of gigs to his parallel solo career: “Supe’s On: An Evening of Songs, Stories & Serious Silliness.” The show, which debuts this weekend in St. Louis, features Supe singing songs from his Daredevils and solo catalogues, and telling stories drawn from his book on the band.

We had a very enjoyable chat last week, and my story from that interview appears in this week’s Go! magazine in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Also, here are some links to some earlier Supe/Daredevils stories

–A review of Supe Granda’s bandography, “It Shined: The Saga of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils”

– A review of the Daredevils’ CD “Rhythm and Joy: The 1980 Reunion Concert”

– A story from 2004, “Old stunts are new again”

– A story from 2009, “Band keeps on strummin’ ”

For fans of the Daredevils, Supe and the Sandwiches, Supe de Jour and the Garbonzos, here’s the interview Q&A, edited a bit for length and clarity.

————————

BG: I see by your area code that you’re still down in Nashville.

Supe: I’ve been in Nashville 19 years. Almost as long as I lived in Springfield. I love it down here. I got access to the greatest musicians in the world. For a musician and writer, it’s like being a kid in a candy store.

(more…)

See photos from the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Marty Stuart’s “Sparkle & Twang: An American Musical Odyssey”
By Barry Gilbert

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Sept. 1, 2007) – “May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”And welcome to the Grand Ole Opry, theme-park version. Little Jimmy Dickens was the host for the first segment of Saturday’s late show at Opryland USA, and his crossover novelty hit from 1966 set the tone for the night.

What was the tone? Kind of laid-back. Folks laughed politely at the moldy, cornpone jokes, and Dickens seemed to get a bigger hand for being 86 years old than for anything else.

Loudest cheers of the night went to the exciting gospel quartet Legacy 5 — No. 5 plays the piano — but they cheated, bringing in a busload of fans.

Perhaps I’m feeling ambivalent about this experience because it came only a few hours after I toured the “church of country music” and the Opry’s original home, the Ryman Auditorium. And perhaps no first-time trip to the Opry can meet expectations fueled by years of reading stories and books about it, seeing it on TV and hearing it, ableit rarely, on the radio. Because it is a radio show, broadcast still over WSM in Nashville, complete with live scripted ads for Martha White Flour.

Then there’s this whole Opryland USA thing, this monster created in the middle of nowhere 20 minutes out of downtown Nashville by Gaylord Entertainment, which saved the Ryman from the wrecking ball 20 years ago and rehabbed the old church, but not before moving the show out of downtown.

(more…)