Bluegrass Underground: Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Brothers Osborne (Todd2 Productions, PBS, 2020-2021)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After Austin City Limits KPBS showed another country-themed music show, Bluegrass Underground, in one of the most fascinating (and preposterous) musical venues ever: an underground cavern through which both musical and TV equipment have to be pulled in on narrow-gauge railroad cars and the audience has to enter similarly. I’ve only seen a few previous Bluegrass Undergrounds and my recollection was that in those programs they mostly presented genuine bluegrass acts and avoided bands that needed electric amplification, taking advantage of the stunning acoustics of that underground space to create a live sound without electronics. This time, in a show celebrating the tenth season of this series, they went in the opposite direction and threw up three major stars of mainstream country: Vince Gill, Marty Stuart and the Brothers Osborne, who were only allotted one song on the show but did a nice job on a song called “Stay a Little Longer” (a good song, though not on the level of the old zydeco song “Dance All Night [Stay a Little Longer]” Willie Nelson covered on that first Austin City Limits) episode.

Then Marty Stuart came on for two songs backed by a band he called the Fabulous Superlatives – I loved that name! – in a fast song called “Let ’Em Make a Fool Out of Me” and a beautiful slow ballad called “Old Mexico” which describes the land south of the border as a refuge for an outlaw who’s made the U.S. (or at least the southwestern part of it) too hot for him to handle. Then they brought on Vince Gill, who looks more like a banker than a music star and who did three songs of widely varying quality. He started with a breakup song called “Take Your Memory With You When You Go” and then did a ballad about his long-term relationship called “Look At Us.” I’m glad Vince Gill has been able to keep his marriage going long-term (there was a woman sitting on a stool front and center doing nothing but singing backup, and I assume that’s Mrs. Gill, especially since she looks as old as he does), but this song tapped into so many of the tired old country-music clichés (lyrically and musically, including the nice little pedal-steel guitar breaks just when you expect them) I found myself thinking, “This is the sort of song people who say, ‘I don’t like country music,’ don’t like.”

Fortunately he redeemed himself through his last song, “One More Last Chance,” about someone (I’m presuming it is a relationship partner, though it might be a kid who’s turned to alcohol, drugs and/or crime) who’s shown up at the singer’s door and is pleading for a “last chance,” and the singer is pointing out how many “last chances” he or she has already had and why should the singer think this one will turn out any better than all the earlier ones. Though it was a pretty ordinary country-music TV program distinguished only by that visually (and no doubt acoustically as well, though I suppose you’d really have to be there to experience it fairly) spectacular location, nonetheless I liked this Bluegrass Underground even though I’d have liked it better if the music had been real bluegrass.