Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 21: ETSU’s Bluegrass Legacy: An Interview with Dan Boner
What makes Dan Boner with The ETSU Bluegrass, Old-Time & Roots Music Program a good neighbor?
Ever wondered how a humble program can shape the future of bluegrass music education globally? Join us on the Good Neighbor Podcast as we sit down with Dan Boner, the dynamic program director of the ETSU Bluegrass, Old Time, and Roots Music Program. From its modest beginnings in 1982, thanks to the vision of Jack Tottle, to becoming a thriving hub for talented musicians, you'll hear stories of notable alumni like Tim Stafford and Amethyst Kia, along with the influential faculty members Trey Hensley and Wyatt Rice. Dan also shares his unique journey from South Jersey, where varied musical influences shaped his path to ETSU, making him a central figure in this influential program.
In this episode, you'll be inspired by Dan's personal commitment to inclusive music education and his passionate efforts to support first-generation college students. Growing up with financial limitations, Dan emphasizes the importance of community support and how it fuels his dedication to providing scholarships at ETSU. Discover how the program honors diverse cultural backgrounds and teaches traditional American art forms authentically, attracting students worldwide. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone passionate about music education, cultural heritage, and the vibrant world of bluegrass music.
To learn more about The ETSU Bluegrass, Old-Time & Roots Music Program go to:
https://www.etsu.edu/cas/das/bluegrass/
The ETSU Bluegrass, Old-Time & Roots Music Program
(423) 439-1000
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:All right, Hello everybody and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Do you love country music, bluegrass, country, old time, roots, mountain music? If so, you're in for a real treat today, as I have the pleasure of introducing your neighbor, Mr Dan Boner, who is the program director of the ETSU Bluegrass, Old Time and Roots Music Program. Welcome to the show, Dan.
Speaker 3:Hey, skip, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Well, we are absolutely thrilled to have you here, and I know I am and I'm sure our listeners are really excited to learn all about you and the program at ETSU. Would you mind telling us a little bit about it?
Speaker 3:Well, sure Gosh, our program started back in 1982 when Jack Tottle moved to the Tri-Cities area. He had been a professional bluegrass performer and recording artist living around Boston and he had been working with Bela Fleck and Pat Enright and Mark Schatz and decided he wanted to kind of leave the touring life and he moved back to the southwest Virginia area, came over to ETSU and asked the music department chair at the time if there might be some interest in offering some guitar lessons, mandolin lessons, maybe a history of bluegrass and country music course and a bluegrass band. And they were very receptive and that's when the program started. And in that first semester the bluegrass band, the first ever Bluegrass Band, included Tim Stafford who would go on to work with Alison Krauss and found the magnificent Bluegrass Band Blue Highway, and he's currently our artist in residence right now at ETSU.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and then since that time there's been a lot of people who've come through our program back in those early days and then, you know, even recently, with people like Amethyst Kia. Becky Buller, who I used to work with and tour with, is one of our star alums. Jacob Metz, who recently graduated, who tours with Rhonda Vincent now. So the faculty there, like Trey Hensley, wyatt Rice, we got Kalia Yagle. They're just. It's a big community of professionals and learning young minds.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds incredible, toured with Bela Fleck. Huh, yeah, that's amazing. Did he play?
Speaker 3:he didn't play banjo, I guess, no well, jack had his own band on Rounder Records and they were called the Tasty Licks and that band included Bela Fleck, who was really young at the time, wow yeah. So if you want to hear some good early Bela playing really traditional-sounding bluegrass, look up the Tasty Licks. Anchored to the Shore is one of their really good albums. They did, I think, two records around her, but that Anchored to the Shore is a great record.
Speaker 2:I will check that out for sure. Yeah, that's a first for me. I've not heard that, and I'm a big Bela Fleck fan. So, Dan, how exactly did you get into the business?
Speaker 3:Well, I grew up in South Jersey. We were talking. You were born in Jersey as a Navy kid and I grew up the son of, on my mom's side, italian and Welsh immigrants and then on my dad's side they were all from West Virginia and they moved north out of the mountains to get work and my grandfather Pawpaw. He stayed in West Virginia his whole life but my dad and his uncles and one aunt and a couple of brothers. They moved to Jersey and my dad met my mom and I grew up playing Southern style country and bluegrass music in a small Free Will Baptist church. There were four Free Will Baptist churches within 10 minutes of each other and it was a really interesting cultural experience because you had all these Southern people going to these churches and playing bluegrass and having jam sessions and then you also had all sorts of other communities of people. There was a Jewish community and Japanese community. The Black community is strong there and around where I grew up. So we were just one kind of microcosm of I don't know one little subgroup of the melting pot, I guess. And I grew up playing in church. I played in a gospel group when I was about seven years old when I started called the Shining Lights, and then a few years later I worked with the Strings of Gospel who actually toured and traveled around kind of the tri-state region and that included at the beginning David Reed, who is Ola Belle Reed's son. The great songwriter Ola Belle Reed and David was on some of those Smithsonian Folkways recordings with her back in the 70s and so I got to stand next to him while he played the banjo, I played the fiddle and did that.
Speaker 3:And then when it came time to go to college I had heard about ETSU. It's the only school I applied for. I got my degree in music education from ETSU while I was working a lot in the bluegrass program. When I graduated I was hired as an adjunct for the first year and then I applied for the assistant director position under Raymond McLean and worked with him for a couple of years and then when he left I assumed the directorship and now we have an academic director, my colleague Nate Olson.
Speaker 3:Roy Andrade, who coordinates and directs the old-time part of our program. Lee Bidgood, a great colleague who does a lot of ethnomusicology work. Jane McMorrin, who runs our Scottish and Irish traditional music. Ben Bateson, who does audio production. Morin, who runs our Scottish and Irish traditional music, ben Bateson who does audio production We've got over 25. We might even have I got to count up we might even have as many as 30 faculty and staff right now over there at ETSU and we serve about 60 majors and minors and then in addition to that lots of students who are non-majors and minors who just want to take lessons, or they take our American Roots Music, gen Ed course. So yeah, that's kind of my summary in a nutshell of how I got to ETSU and how that's worked out.
Speaker 2:Wow, and it sounds like there's a lot going on in the music program there. Just an enormous amount 60 majors and minors. That's amazing. So excuse me, Dan, so you played in bands growing up bluegrass and gospel groups. What was your acts of choice?
Speaker 3:Oh well, I started on guitar. My Uncle Larry taught me to play guitar and I would kind of play rhythm guitar but also electric guitar, but not chicken picking or anything like that. I was learning chord melodies from Cecil West who was a West Virginia guitar player and fiddler who moved north. He kind of married into our family indirectly, kind of married into our family indirectly, and so real melodic type of guitar playing in the background while people are singing in church. And then I learned the bass, and then I learned banjo and fiddle and mandolin and a little percussion and I tried learning piano, but I wasn't very good at that, so I haven't played piano in a long time. So when I was touring with Becky Bowler she first hired me on mandolin. I didn't even own one, I had to buy one.
Speaker 3:I played mandolin with her for about a year and then moved over to guitar and I played guitar for another four years with her. Then fiddle I like fiddle as well. I would carry the fiddle on the road with Becky. So through the years, either fiddle, guitar. Probably fiddle and guitar are the two I play the most. Some mandolin, sometimes bass. Upright bass is fun. I've always enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like you're kind of a utility guy. You can play just about anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I haven't perfected any of them, but I kind of migrate from one to the next, one to the next and get marginally decent at some of them.
Speaker 2:That's similar to my story. I'm a guitar player since I was about six years old but as I grew older, played in church, you know praise bands. I was the guitar player unless the drummer didn't show up or unless the bass player didn't show up. And I happen to have a bass. And it's really funny when I talk about me. But growing up I would have people bring me instruments and say, because I've got a fiddle and a banjo and a dobro, which I bought, but I've had neighbors wherever I've lived in North Carolina, tennessee, bring me an instrument and say, hey, learn how to play this and then come back and teach me. And it never happens and I end up with a fiddle. So anyway, enough about me Outside of work. I have a feeling I know. But what do you? What do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Gosh, you know through the years I like hunting, my dad and I. He'll come down to Tennessee and we'll deer hunt and I'll go to New Jersey and we'll turkey hunt, because the turkey hunting is really good up there. I also like designing audio equipment and your listeners won't hear this but I'm going to hold up on the screen here you can see a PCB board of a microphone preamp and equalizer that I've designed. I like designing that stuff, I love good sound, I like recording, I like production and I also was a little bit cheap. I wanted to learn how to build my own stuff to save money but then also to have even better quality equipment. So I've learned through the last 10 or 12 years how to build and design vacuum tube audio equipment. I also like repairing guitar amps. I've got about six or seven Fender amps out in the garage right now that I'm working on for clients and I like getting in there and troubleshooting and fixing and making those old amps come back to life and make them sound as good as they can.
Speaker 3:So if folks want to have an old amplifier restored, they can call me up, they can go on my website, professordansmusiccom, and you can find out anything about me there. But really that's all kind of just background stuff to help my mental health and just background stuff to help my mental health. Really, my main focus is on ETSU and the students and the program and what we do there. We do a lot of traveling, we do a lot of outreach. We're always playing in the community. I was telling you before we started that the ETSU Bluegrass Pride Band it's a brand new group this semester. It's one of about 25 or 30 bands that we have in the program and they're going to be playing Rhythm and Roots here in a few weeks. But the first show we have is in South Jersey at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, a festival that has, you know, between 6,000 or 7,000 people that attend it right outside of the Philadelphia area.
Speaker 3:And our first show with a brand new band is this weekend. We started rehearsing last week. We have four sets, two on Friday, two on Saturday and we are working really, really hard. We're kind of front-loading, having to learn about 45 songs in a week. So I like for that pressure to be on. It puts the students on the spot. It's like we got to do this. We're standing alongside Del McCurry there and the Poe Ramblin' Boys. We've got to sound as good as them if we can. So let's buckle down and let's work real hard and hopefully it'll pay off.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it'll definitely pay off. Well, speaking of, I'll have to look up your website on your amp repair. I'm sitting next to like a 1972 Fender. Champ, literally, is sitting next to me but it works great. It works great. You just crank it all the way up and it warms up. Man Sounds great. Let's change gears. Can you describe, dan, one instance or hardship or life challenge that you rose above and can now say, because of it you're better off and stronger? Does anything come to mind?
Speaker 3:Oh man, I have had times where things didn't go the way I had hoped them to be. I mean, growing up in South Jersey my folks didn't have a lot of money. My dad worked really hard. He had a job, full-time job, a safety net. You don't have grandparents or some rich uncle who can bail you out when your cars break down or something Kind of growing up that way of meager means was a challenge, but it meant relying on, but it meant relying on people or community.
Speaker 3:People helped each other. Where I grew up, the church community we had if people needed things you'd just show were sometimes a little bit hard. But other people had it way harder and we didn't feel the need to feel ungrateful. But it did mean that. You know, going to college, my brother and sister and I, we've all gone to college and we've all gotten our degrees and I know my parents are proud of that and I'm proud of that, as you should be. And I kind of feel that way when I'm working with students, that some of them they're first generation college goers and I want to help give them as many opportunities as possible as possible. That's why one of my goals at ETSU has been to raise scholarship funds and have more funding available for people who can't afford to go to college. And we've been pretty successful at that and that's one thing that has kind of driven me to do that, just knowing how it feels to be a little bit broke, a little hungry, a little just not able to do things that you want to do.
Speaker 3:One story you know we had gone to West Virginia. I mean our vacation. We didn't go to Disney World, we didn't go places that cost money. Mom and dad would take us to a historical site that was free or something. That was how we spent our time together. But we went to West Virginia one year and on the way back we swung through Gettysburg overnight and Bill Monroe happened to be at the Bluegrass Festival there in Gettysburg that year and we just heard about it. We just happened to be in the town at the same time and it was going to be $45 if my dad and I were going to go there and my mom and dad didn't have $45. They didn't have $45. And I didn't get to see Bill Monroe. And that was something you don't forget. You don't forget how that feels and fortunately I've played the Gettysburg Festival a few times myself now, and so things are different, and that feels good.
Speaker 2:Well, it's very, very inspiring. Sounds very familiar too, actually. Well, please tell our listeners one thing that they should remember about the Bluegrass, old Time and Roots music program at ETSU.
Speaker 3:There's a lot that is on the surface that people recognize, such as the students who come through who are so incredible, the faculty who are so incredible, the performances that people get to do. We've got students always playing on the Grand Ole Opry faculty playing some of the biggest venues in the world, and so those are the things that people might see. But I think it's important for people to understand beneath the surface. What's really happening is a movement in music education, Music education at the academic level. They've been struggling for a long time, but particularly in the last 20 or so years 15 to 20 years, and mostly in the last 10 years, I think or so years 15 to 20 years, and mostly in the last 10 years, I think to figure out why is it that we teach only European classical music, why is that the music we teach? When I went back to my high school a couple years ago to receive an award, it was really nice. My brother and sister and I got this award. But I looked around and I thought you know, here is a high school program in a rural town and they have show tunes and there's a marching band and a concert band and kind of the typical things that you might expect, but there was a Black community. Where was the Black music in our curriculum? Where was the Japanese music in our curriculum? There was a lot of Latinx people who moved in. You know families working the fields and doing business in our town. Where was the music from Mexico and Central America represented? Is it any wonder why people get discouraged when they go to school and they don't see their history, their culture, reflected in curriculum? And so I don't think it was intentional what Jack Tottle did, but kind of.
Speaker 3:The result of his work and his vision is that we have an academic program where the focus is on passing on a traditional American art form or art forms in the way that it is traditionally done knee to knee by ear, not with sheet music, and a really in-depth, serious study of Appalachian balladry, of bluegrass music, the roots of this music and how it made its way into this country and the people in this country who shaped it. And academics from other disciplines are looking at that and going, oh my gosh, here's an institution that has figured out how to do this. It's very hard for somebody let's just say if they studied clarinet and went through the, the typical system of concert band and then they get their music education degree and now they're in an inner city school where kids don't care about the clarinet. They want to, they like hip-hop, they like um, pop music, they like all these other things and and that has not that education system has not trained them to be effective in that classroom. And they're trying to figure it out and I don't have the answers for them.
Speaker 3:I know what works at ETSU, in our location, with our population, and the result is that we have students from all over the world. We've got two students from England this semester, students from Canada, We've had two graduates from Iran. They come to Johnson City, Tennessee, to study this music in this place in Appalachia, and it's so important that we're located in the Department of Appalachian Studies at ETSU because it enriches the music education that we offer.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, it sounds to me like it is a movement and that you guys, etsu and with your leadership, have figured this thing out, maybe sort of a model for other colleges.
Speaker 3:I think people are looking my colleague, nate Olson. He presents at a lot of academic conferences on these topics and people are always interested. They want to know how do we do this. I presented this summer at the National Association of Teachers of Singing to know how do we do this. I presented this summer at the National Association of Teachers of Singing. It was the first time they'd had a bluegrass group at all, or anybody talking about bluegrass from a platform Did a plenary session for 90 minutes and at the end people were coming up and asking questions. People were crying like you're doing what needs to happen in music education. And I don't want to diss classical music. I mean, my degree is in classical. I love. I've sang at the Thomas Kirscher and, you know, at Box Grave. I don't discredit that we love all kinds of music and there's room for much more music to be part of music education.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely Well, dan, I know your time is precious and school just started, so I know you're crazy. But before we go, let me ask you one thing that our listeners can. How can our listeners learn more about our listeners? Learn more about the Bluegrass, old Time and Roots Music Program at ETSU?
Speaker 3:They can go to wwwetsuedu slash bluegrass and when you go there you'll find all about our four concentrations that we have in bluegrass profession audio production, old time music and Scottish and Irish traditional music. You'll learn about our graduate programs and Appalachian studies. You'll see where we're going to be performing and where you can see one of our bands. You can book a band if you want to. If you've got a corporate event or something coming up that you'd like to have some entertainment we have great entertainers. And if you've got a recording session and you, or if you'd like to record something, you can come to the ETSU recording lab and rent that space and get a professional quality recording done. There's a lot of stuff you can find on that website.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, dan, I can't tell you how much I really, really appreciate you being on the show. It's truly been an honor for me as a musician, and I've been in East Tennessee for about five years now and I've heard so much about you. So thank you so much. We wish you and your program and ETSU only the best moving forward, and hope we can get you back on the show again.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Skip. Thank you so much for inviting me. I like meeting our good neighbors here in the Tri-Cities.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right, all right. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3:Take care.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPtry-Citiescom. That's GNPtry-Citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.