Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 200770

Robert Bowlin: Six String SoliloquyNew Release Highlight

by Dan Miller

When we featured Robert Bowlin on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine’s September/October 2000 issue, Joe Carr’s article about Robert was titled “Making music that makes other people sound good.” Tastefully fitting into a band situation and providing exactly what is needed to make the whole band sound better is what Robert Bowlin does best. He has done it out on the road with such distinguished names as Maura O’Connell, Tom T. Hall, Faron Young, Kathy Mattea, Bill Monroe, Richard Greene, and the Osborne Brothers. Robert’s guitar playing is more about taste—playing the right thing at the right time—than it is about being “hot” and flashy. He doesn’t draw attention to himself; he simply makes the band sound better as a whole. As Joe Carr said in his article six years ago, “Robert is best known for his tasty musical approach—that ‘just right’ phrase that makes a song click.” Robert has never really received the amount of attention that someone of his incredible skill and abilities deserves. Not only that, he seemed to have totally dropped out of the music scene after leaving the Osborne Brothers in 2003. Robert has always been one of my favorite flatpickers and many times since we published the cover story about Robert I’ve thought to myself, “I wonder what Robert Bowlin is up to these days?” Several months ago Brad Davis sent me an email with a link to a myspace page that he said I should check out. I went to the link and saw the page listed “Wil Maring/Shady Mix with Robert Bowlin.” I had never heard of Wil Maring before and I was interested in knowing why Robert, after performing with some of the most famous people in the country music world, was playing with this person. I clicked on the first song, “The Turning of A Century” and began to listen. After hearing a verse and chorus, it became very obvious to me why Robert was playing with Wil Maring. The music was absolutely incredible! It was on par with some of the best female singer/songwriter music that I have ever heard. Wil’s music has a Nanci Griffith kind of vibe, which I love, but has an even more mid-western rootsy and

down-home feel to it. It is unique and very pleasing to the ear. The more I listened, the more I liked the music, the singing, and the songwriting (which you can check out for yourself at http://www.myspace.com/wilmaring). Now I needed to find out more about Wil Maring and try to discover why I had not heard about her before. As I started to read her bio on myspace it said that she had won the prestigious Chris Austin songwriting contest and had appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, so I’m still wondering why I hadn’t heard of her. The bio then said that she had “honed her skills playing music professionally in Europe with her group Shady Mix.” OK, there was a clue. Perhaps she had spent most of her career in Europe. Further investigation, on her band’s website revealed that Wil had indeed spent more than ten years in Germany. She had returned to the United States in the fall of 2001 and since then had mostly been performing in her “ten-county comfort-zone” around her home in southern Illinois. The site also stated that she was “gathering the gumption” to step out beyond that region. My reaction was “it is about time…people need to hear this woman sing!” In addition to learning a little bit about Wil’s background and that she had two CDs available that featured Robert Bowlin on guitar, I also discovered that Robert had put out a solo guitar CD, Six String Soliloquy. I then recalled hearing something about a Robert Bowlin CD on the flatpick-L internet group some time last year. I immediately

sent an email to Wil asking if I could get copies of the CDs for review and if she could send me Robert’s current contact information. She sent me an email back that included Robert’s current phone number. She also told me that Robert was teaching for a semester in the bluegrass program at East Tennessee State University and said that she would be happy to send the CDs. About a week later all of the CDs arrived (Wil has recorded a total of seven CDs; she sent me four of hers, plus Roberts’ solo CD). Those CDs did not leave my CD player for weeks, and they are still in very heavy rotation! Robert Bowlin’s solo CD is truly a soliloquy, a musical monologue. It’s not the type of solo CD where his is the only name on the cover but a lot of other musicians help him out. This one is just Robert and his guitar. It is all flatpicked, but it is not like many other flatpicking CDs that you may have heard. There are not any blistering fast solos and there are only two standard flatpicking fiddle tunes (“East Tennessee Blues” and “Whiskey Before Breakfast”). All of the tunes are played at a slow-to-moderate tempo. The most unique aspect of this recording (which I discovered after talking with Robert about the project) is that the entire recording was improvised while he was laying it down. While it is not hard to imagine a player of Robert’s skill sitting in front of a microphone and improvising on standard tunes and composed original numbers, the amazing thing about this recording is that Robert wrote six or seven of the fifteen cuts spontaneously in real time! “Sometimes I’m in the mood to just sit down in front of the mic and start playing,” he said. “When I do that, sometimes a song will come out better than if I was to try to compose it.” To understand the series of events that led up to Robert recording this solo CD, I caught up with him starting back in late 2000 after we had published the cover story. When Flatpicking Guitar Magazine had last talked with Robert he was playing with Richard Greene’s band The Grass is Greener. After leaving that band Robert then joined the Osborne Brothers from 2001 through

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 2007 71

2003. Although the Osborne Brothers had never featured lead guitar in their music, they allowed Robert the opportunity to step out and take a few guitar solos during their show. Robert stayed with them until they began to move towards retirement. In 2004 he became a member of Wil Maring’s band Shady Mix. After hearing the story of how Wil and Robert met, it sounded like one of those things that was just meant to be. Wil Maring explained that she had been a fan of Robert’s guitar work since she had seen him perform with Kathy Mattea in Prague back in 1988. “I remember standing in front of the stage at that show,” Wil recalled, “and being very impressed with the guitar player. His style of playing fit the way I hear music. I wanted to talk with him after the show, but I couldn’t find the band’s dressing room.” Years later, after Wil and her German-born husband Mark Stoffel had moved back to the United States from Germany, Wil’s friend Gary Gordon came to visit her just after he had returned from a studio session in Nashville. Wil remembers, “Gary was going on and on about this guitar player who was going to play on his CD. He brought over a copy of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine that had Robert on the cover and left it with us. I think that magazine stayed in the magazine pile in our bathroom for about two years.” At the time Wil did not make the connection between the guitar player who was on the cover of the magazine and the guy she had seen play with Kathy Mattea in Prague. Wil and Mark had moved back to the United States from Germany in the fall of 2001. By the spring of 2002 Mark had set up a recording studio in their home in Illinois. A band from Missouri, Frank Ray & Cedar

Hill, had come to the studio to record that spring and Robert Bowlin had been hired to play guitar and fiddle for the session. Wil said, “I wasn’t really involved with the session. I was at the house, but I was busy with other things and never got the chance to talk with Robert. A year later that same band came back in the studio to record a second CD. Robert was there again and I got to visit with him. I still didn’t make the connection with who he was. I didn’t realize that he was the guy from Kathy Mattea’s band and I didn’t even recognize him as the guy from the magazine cover. I didn’t start to put those things together until after he left. We just talked about music. When he was leaving my husband handed him one of my CDs. Until that moment I don’t think that Robert even realized that we had a band.” Robert listened to Wil’s CD The Turning of A Century while he was driving home. “I started playing the CD when I left the session,” he said, “and I just kept on playing it. What struck me about this CD was Wil’s voice and the overall feel of the recording. It had a uniqueness to it…it cut through the preconceived notion of singers that you have in your head. When I heard her interpretation of ‘Sunny Side of the Mountain’ I realized that although I’d heard that song all my life I had never really listened to the words until I heard her sing it. I must have listened to that song 200 times. I also liked the title song ‘The Turning of a Century’ and her phrasing in a song like ‘One in the Great White Yonder’ was very unique. It is hard to describe what it is. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it spoke out from the way a lot of singers interpret a song or sing a phrase. To me it was a very fresh sound.”

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 200772

The quality and uniqueness of Wil’s music prompted Robert to give Wil a call about a month after he had been given the CD. “I didn’t really call to inquire about a job. I was just calling to say ‘hello’ and say how much I liked the CD. I had continued to play the CD and I carried that music with me. It made me curious about where they were playing and what they were doing. In the back of my mind I was thinking that maybe I could play with them.” Wil remembers, “At some point we had to go to Nashville to get work done on a fiddle. We took it to Robert’s shop and then sat around and jammed. There was a musical connection. During the visit we had mentioned to Robert that we had been trying to get a gig at the Station Inn. He knew the owner, JT Gray, and contacted him about booking us. JT told Robert that he would hire us, but as a stipulation Robert had to join us as a special guest so that there would be some name recognition.” After that show Robert started to join the band onstage on other gigs. By 2004 he was playing all of the band’s shows. About this time Mark began to take on more full-time work within the digital media field, while Wil decided to take a leap of faith and extend her recording artist career opportunities. This, together with the eventual culmination of some personal relationship challenges which became apparent during their successful run in Germany, was the deciding factor in

the end of their marriage. However, their musical collaboration continued to produce two more projects, a live performance CD, Shady Mix Live, and then in 2006, Wil’s third solo CD, The Calling, on which Robert played an important role in arranging and performing. Today Wil Maring and Robert Bowlin are primarily performing as a duo or in a trio with a bass player, and sometimes still as a quartet with local musicians in Southern Illinois. When they perform as a duo Wil will sometimes play bass and Robert guitar, but more often than not they both play guitar. Robert said, “When we both play the guitar we try to voice them differently. For instance when we play a tune like ‘Arkansas Traveler’ I will use a C tuning and Wil will use an open G tuning and capo up on the 5th fret.” Wil said, “Our strategy when we are both playing the guitar is for me to capo up high and for Robert to tune down low. He likes to use drop D tuning. That way we have a broad range and can stack the notes and get a big sound.” Although Robert had been planning a solo CD for years, it was Wil’s urging that finally motivated him to sit down and get it finished. Wil remembers, “I’d been bugging him to record a solo CD for about a year and a half. We were playing a lot of shows and he had nothing of his own to sell. He was missing out on a lot of income because people were asking for it at our shows. There is a gig that we play near

Springfield, Illinois, where we usually sell a lot of product. About five days before that show I said to Robert, ‘It is too bad that you don’t have anything to sell.’ He surprised me and said, ‘Let’s make something real quick.’ I took a picture for the front cover, started on the graphics, and he got to work on the recording.” At that time Robert had a few songs already on his hard drive but was a long way from a complete CD. He sat down and finished the rest of the CD on Monday and Tuesday of that week. By Wednesday he had the master at a short-run quick-turnaround duplication facility in Nashville. Wil said, “He was standing at the counter in the duplication place talking with me on the phone and we were trying to come up with titles for the songs he had improvised so that they could print the song list on the disc. He still hadn’t even come up with a name for the CD, so I suggested Six String Soliloquy.” Since the CD first came out, Robert has been only printing short runs in order to sell it at shows. He is now in the process of fixing a few little glitches and re-mastering it to get the recording ready for a more substantial duplication run. In fact, the version of “East Tennessee Blues” that we have included on this issue’s audio CD companion is different that the one on the original disc as it was one of the songs he decided to re-record, using additional variations to the melody. Although Robert can play just about any stringed instrument (as well as piano and trumpet and who knows what else), he said that he feels like the guitar is his creative voice, perhaps because he has spent many more hours on the guitar. Regarding his new recording of solo improvisations, Robert said that the challenge was to maintain the rhythmic harmonic content and play the lead at the same time. He does a phenomenal job with that, utilizing chordal strums, crosspicking, and arpeggiated rolls. Although Robert was the National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion in 1979, he said that he prefers to play with a flatpick. He said, “I like to think of playing the guitar like piano playing. I played the piano from grade school up through college. I think of the guitar like it is an open keyboard. In order to put the sound down the way I hear it, and to make the tone even, I need to use a flatpick. I like to strike each note solidly, as I would press a piano key all the way down to the bottom, with varied dynamics. I can’t do that with my fingers.” In his improvisations Robert also draws

Robert Bowlin and Wil Maring performing on the Grand Ole Opry

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 2007 73

from his violin background. He said, “I like the song ‘Butterflies’ the most. There is a lot of floating around in there that was probably inspired by violin solo pieces and concertos. When asked about the slower tempo of the two fiddle tunes, Robert said, “I lived in Texas for a while and listened to fiddlers like Benny Thomason who played slowly. I like to try to get lyricism and nice phrasing out of these tunes. I like to tell a story.” Robert’s rich tone combined with lyrical phrasing and a wide range of dynamics does indeed make his sound like his guitar is telling a story. The guitar that Robert used on this recording was a 1930 Larson Brothers guitar stamped “Robert Stahl,” that was intended for sale in his store. Robert explains, “The Larson Brothers made guitars under different names depending on who was selling it. It is similar to a Martin OM, but shaped a little differently. The back and top are a little arched and the bracing is different.” When asked what he liked about the guitar, Robert said, “The Larson is voiced to sound sweet in the midrange. It has good sustain and the upper range is focused. The Larson guitars don’t usually have much on the bottom end, but if you get the right one the bottom end will be good. It is super-balanced and loud.” The music on Robert’s new CD includes two fiddle tunes, a couple of bluesy numbers, many beautifully lyrical pieces, and some old Stephen Foster standards (“I Dream of Jeannie/Old Kentucky Home”). Overall, it is the kind of music that you want to listen to when you need to sit back and relax…something to put on while having the morning coffee, taking a long relaxing drive, reading a good book, or just settling in for a quiet evening. It’s music that is soothing, relaxing, and very enjoyable. When Robert’s recording was first released last summer there was some buzz on the internet listserv group flatpick-L. Here is what list member Dan Mozell had to say: “There are lots of guitarists these days who have great technique and can generate excitement with hot picking. Robert can certainly do the same. But there are few who work with the full range of emotion that is possible in music. These are medium and slow paced solos intended to move the listener. Though they’ll appeal to any guitar playing person with an ear, they’ll also appeal to others who don’t care what kind of guitar he

plays or whether or not he uses a custom-made beveled pick. Do you have a spouse who’s tired of hearing your flatpicking CDs? Get this one and you’ll both enjoy it! This is really one of the finest guitar recordings I’ve heard in years. It’s only fault is that it’s too short. I could listen to Roberts picking all day.” Many other list members chimed in to concur. I’ll have to agree with his assessment as well. This is a recording that all guitar players need to own. On this issue’s audio CD we have included Robert’s arrangement of “East Tennessee Blues” and we have transcribed the first section of his solo on the pages that follow. At the end of the audio companion we have also included two songs from Wil Maring. The first is the old flatpicking standard “St. Anne’s Reel”. The unique thing about this recording is that Wil wrote some incredible lyrics to the tune and sings them on this cut. Any flatpicker who likes to sing, or performs with a singer, needs to learn these lyrics and bring them out at the next jam session or show. Since Robert Bowlin was not yet with the band when they recorded “St. Anne’s Reel,” I wanted to included another cut on our audio CD so that subscribers could hear the way Robert accompanies a song. I asked Wil if I could included something from her newest CD The Calling. She told me that she and Robert had just been in Gary Gordon’s studio recording a demo to a brand-new song that she had written called “Flapping My Wings.” Since the only lead instrument on the demo is Robert’s guitar, Wil thought that would be a better selection. On the cut Wil plays the guitar intro and rhythm guitar while Robert plays all of the guitar fills and guitar solos. If you like what you hear on this CD, go to www.wilmaring.com and order a couple of Wil’s CDs. You will be happy that you did.

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Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 200774

East Tennesse BluesAudio CDTrack 43

Arranged by Robert BowlinTranscribed by Alois Kleewein

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Flatpicking Guitar Magazine May/June 2007 75

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