John Hartford – Aereo-Plain

In 1971, at the same festival where Bill Monroe ended his long feud with Lester Flatt and again shared a stage with his old partner, John Hartford made his first bluegrass festival appearance. He brought with him a mangy band of veteran roister doisters: Norman Blake flatpicked, Vassar Clements sawed, and Tut Taylor dobro-ed.

In those days, Hartford (already notorious for penning “Gentle On My Mind” and appearing with banjo on the Smothers Brothers’ and Glen Campbell’s TV shows) was a lanky Chewbacca, a tuned-in and dropped-out picker-songwriter who loved down home lyrics and near-surreal images. Hartford would still be important if all he had done was bring the counterculture to bluegrass, but he also gave the genre some challenging, deep material. For Sam Bush, the band’s Bean Blossom music was a “mind-blowing experience.”

What makes Hartford’s 1971 Aereo-Plain so bracing today is the loose spaciousness of the sound, the impromptu genius of the collaboration, and Hartford’s vocal and lyrical charm, somewhere between philosopher clown and vaudevillian trickster. Here’s how Hartford describes the recording session: “I had laid down certain rules — anyone could play anything or any lick at any time irregardless [sic] of whether they knew it or not — or they could lay out…we did not ever discuss arrangements.” Yet that disregard for perfectionism’s minutiae never becomes clumsy or indulgent. (Well, almost never: The grunting “Boogie” might have been hysterical in the stoned ’70s, but today it just makes one thankful for programmable CD decks.)

The songs are playful and political. “Back In The Goodle Days” is both hippie bluegrass and front-porch country: nostalgic and progressive at once. “Steamboat Whistle Blues” eschews both work and modernity (“The grass is all synthetic and we’re not too sure about the food”).

Hartford’s picking is as striking on guitar as banjo. The instrumental “Presbyterian Guitar” has an understated radiance all the technical wizardry in Nashville can’t buy. Sometimes it sounds like he’s not quite singing or playing right; still his style imparts an intangible, humanly hewn immediacy. And his work shows what’s missing from many bluegrass and old-time recordings: songwriting that exceeds mere conventional excellence, the unsatisfying smack of even the smartest formula. Aereo-Plain had no certain recipe; 25 years later, its inspiration remains fresh and delightful.