If you didn’t catch them 10 minutes before they took the stage Sunday night, you might think Slim Pickins was actually a troupe of would-be comedians, not one of the city’s most-celebrated bluegrass acts.
Randy Steele (banjo/vocals), Deron Stevens (mandolin), John Boulware (fiddle), Brad Clark (guitar/vocals) and Justin Hupp (bass) certainly enjoy handing out good-natured ribbings. From mocking someone’s clothing to sly comments about so and so’s playing, no band member’s ego is safe from a gentle communal slap from time to time.
Honestly, after spending the day following them around before their show, I’m amazed Stevens doesn’t have a psychiatrist on speed dial to help him cope with all the ribbing.
I hooked up with the band just after it finished a lengthy sound check for its first Riverbend performance. Even when band members traded their T-shirts and shorts for dapper slacks, dress shirts and ties, they were still yucking it up like they weren’t about to take the stage in front of the packed amphitheater fronting the Tennessee Valley Credit Union Stage.
Instead of the nervous twitching and hand-wringing I expected, they were surprisingly confident, without seeming flippant.
About 10 minutes to show time, however, there was a dramatic change in their behavior. It was as if a cosmic switch was flipped. Suddenly, the jokes stopped, the game faces came on and the foam fingers came off.
“Play like you’re dressed well,” Boulware said, everyone nodding, valiantly resisting the urge to crack another joke at Stevens’ expense. “Every mistake is going to be amplified on equipment this good.
“Make sure you know the next song we’re playing, even if we’re taking a five-minute break.”
Suddenly, this wasn’t a group of grinning buddies anymore. This was the band that swept the FYI Awards last year, taking home trophies as Chattanooga’s Best Live Band, Best Bluegrass Band and Best New Band. This was who everyone was here to see.
“We’re all about business now, baby,” Clark told me, smiling at my bemused expression.
Five minutes later, of course, they’d gotten the seriousness out of their system and the ribbing recommenced in earnest.
Moving out to face the stage, it was obvious the word was out, and droves of people had arrived and filled the amphitheater to near capacity. As Gordon Lightfoot sound-a-like John Lathim and Company packed up their gear to vacate the stage, however, I couldn’t help but wonder which Slim Pickins we’d see, the comedy troupe or the award-winning bluegrass band.
As it turns out, the answer was somewhere in between.
Band members normally plug their instruments in, but for their Riverbend debut, they would be sharing a single mike, Bill Monroe style. Boulware told me earlier in the day that he was concerned about choreographing people moving in and out to take instrumental breaks.
He needn’t have worried. After a couple of songs, they’d clearly found their rhythm with the new setup, and you’d never know they didn’t play that way all the time.
To kick things off, they launched into Bela Fleck’s “Whitewater,” grabbing the audience’s attention and locking it in a veritable bearhug. That was the first in a set of about 16 songs they’d planned to play, about 20 percent of which was new material they’d been working up in the months leading up to the show.
I had to leave at this point, but judging by the rapt attention of the audience, they had the situation well in hand.
It might be tempting to write off a band simply because it’s local, but Slim Pickins reminded everyone under the Walnut Street Bridge why it won that trio of accolades last November. Yes, band members like to have fun with each other, but the reason they deserve the award is that, when they take the stage, the audience does, too.