The plot has echoes of a folk tale, if not a myth or bible story. It’s not that kind of music - it just keeps you in the moment, delights you and let’s you move on. The songs, and there are many, are lovely and evocative and enhance the story, although I’ll be darned if I could have whistled two bars of any one of them while I walked up to aisle to my car after opening night. (She’s married to Paul Simon, himself an advocate for world musicology.) Together, they have recorded two heritage-music album, one of which formed the seed for Bright Star, a musical now at the Winspear, chocked with bluegrass as well as some Texas swing and foot-stomping hoedown music. Brickell, one of the forerunners of the incipient alt-rock scene of the late ’80s/early ’90s, knows root-based music well herself. Martin, if you’re old enough to recall, has long been a fan of the banjo, even playing it in his comedy act - a more upbeat sound than the bluegrass I’m talking about, but part-and-parcel with its heritage. There’s a story behind the strains of a hillbilly melody, even if we don’t know what it is.Įdie Brickell and Steve Martin know that feeling too well.
It could be the folksy, homespun voices that resonate in our heads when someone sings along. (It’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle.) Maybe we project the sound wafting over fog-choked mountains that hold many secrets, or project a plain, rural lifestyle touched by sadness and hard-won humanity. Maybe it’s the plaintive wail of a single string instrument, held rapturously before an abrupt change of tone. Let’s face it: There’s something oddly mystical about slow-playing bluegrass.
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