On the eve of their extensive Irish and UK tour in Jan/Feb 2023, including a Celtic Connection date, Greg Cahill, anchor man and founder of the long running, multi award winning, bluegrass ensemble, Special Consensus, sat down with us for a wide ranging interview. Past illustrious members of the band include Robbie Fulks, Chris Jones, Josh Williams, Rick Farris and Dallas Wayne. Bucking the trend by always touring here in the post-Christmas winter season, Greg gives us some insight into what makes him tick, and the secret of maintaining a successful band over such a long period. Long may they run.
What is the current Special Consensus line-up?
The current band comprises Dan Eubanks on bass, Greg Blake on guitar and Michael Prewitt on mandolin. I am very happy to have each of them in the band - they are all superb players and singers and wonderful human beings. I thoroughly enjoy making music with them and can't wait for the recording we just finished in the Compass Records studio (with Alison Brown producing, as usual/thank goodness) - should be released in the spring of this year.
Being an Irish publication, I have to enquire about your Irish heritage?
My mother had a bit of Irish but more German in her family tree. But my father's dad was born in Chicago in 1898, soon after his mother arrived from Ireland. The Cahill and O'Cahill clans we apparently have in our lineage were primarily from the Tipperary, Kerry and Clare regions.
What are your earliest musical memories and influences growing up? Where did the swing influence originate?
My grandad was a great harmonica player and he began teaching me how to play when I was around 5-6 years old. My grandmother would often give him a new harmonica for Christmas and he would give me one of his used ones. When I stayed with them, he would show me a tune in the evening and then I would sit and try to learn it the next day while he was at work. I often could not get it exactly as he played it but later learned the hand-me-down harmonicas often had a blown reed or two. My mother was a great piano player who learned from her mother, who played for the silent movie houses. My grandad (mother's father, whom I never met) worked for the railroad and was killed in a railroad accident when my mother was quite young and her mother gave piano lessons in their apartment to support them. We always circled around the piano at family gatherings - mom played the old standards and everybody sang songs like Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue, All of Me, Baby Face, etc. I wanted to learn an instrument so I began taking accordion lessons when I was about 8 and did so for maybe 6 years. I learned how to read music and play some of those old standards, which is where my penchant for swing music began. My accordion teacher also began introducing me to some of the jazz standards as well. My folks listened to Dixieland music recordings when I was in bed falling asleep so I heard lots of tenor banjo music (like Eddie Peabody) and I'm certain that definitely enhanced my liking of swing music and the sound of the banjo. My father sang in the church choir and one of my younger sisters took accordion lessons and the youngest took piano lessons so we had plenty of music around the house.
How did an Irish-American from Chicago become interested in bluegrass music, and end up playing the banjo, in particular?
A friend brought his 5-string banjo to our high school graduation picnic and I thought that was the coolest sound. He was playing Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary folks songs and I just really loved the sound of that banjo so I bought an inexpensive long-neck banjo and carried it with me to college in Minnesota. I eventually co-founded a folk trio with friends and found my way from the "new" folk music scene to Pete Seeger and ended up buying a Sears, Roebuck and Co. 5-string banjo, a red "How To Play The 5-String Banjo" book by Pete, a 6-string and a 12-string guitar to play Pete Seeger and Weavers folk songs as well as the more "current" folk songs like If I Had A Hammer, Charlie and the MTA, etc. I soon traded in that banjo and bought a Vega long neck 5-string banjo to play in a folk trio through my last two years of college in Minnesota. Then I heard the 5-string banjo on The Beverly Hillbillies and I was hooked. I met a banjo player in the Chicago area who showed me some licks and tunes and the journey began. I went into the Army after graduating college in 1968 and came back to Chicago area in 1970, where I worked for the Cook County Dept of Public Aid and then went to graduate school (on the GI Bill) to get my Master's in Social Work degree. I had a day job and a wife and son but I was playing the banjo as much as possible and I sold the Vega and the 12-string guitar and bought a Gibson Mastertone 5-string. Richard Hood played banjo in the Greater Chicago Bluegrass Band and he brought me to bluegrass festivals and concerts and I was now very deep into the music.
You formed ‘Special C’ an unbelievable forty seven years ago. Does this mean you hold the record for the longest running bluegrass band ever? And who among the band’s alumni holds the record for putting up with you the longest?
We actually formed The Special Consensus around 1973 - just friends trying to learn more about bluegrass music and eaten up with playing. We played just for fun, then at parties and eventually started to play in Chicago clubs. But by 1975, the bass player Marc Edelstein and I decided we wanted to try to play professionally as a touring bluegrass band. The other members were finishing degrees or working day jobs they did not want to leave so we basically reformed with guys who were of the same mind and that is why we call 1975 the beginning of The Special Consensus as a touring and recording full-time bluegrass band. The name began as The Special Consensus Bluegrass Band, then we dropped "Band" from the name, then "Bluegrass" and finally "The" because everyone called us "Special Consensus" or "Special C."
I believe Rick Faris gets the prize for staying with the band the longest, which is 11 years.
’No bus wreck, bounced check, or personnel change can shake this band’s determination and joy in making great bluegrass’ (Tim O’Brien 2005). My overriding feeling that remains after seeing you play over the past twenty years (only!) is of that of the sheer enjoyment of the band members, which is contagious for the audience. What is your secret?
When someone leaves the band, I don't try to replace that person with someone who plays and/or sings just like the departing member - I look for someone who will bring his/her special talent to the band. I of course want people who at least know of us and some of our music but who are also on the same page, so to speak, with the kind of music we play and our sheer love of bluegrass music. We love the traditional bluegrass and consider ourselves to be pretty traditional sounding but with some material that is newer and perhaps not exactly what might be called bluegrass but we then make it our own and love to play songs from different genres that we "grassify.". And personality has everything to do with joining the band - we want people who love making the music as we do and who are willing to work at it and grow with us. Sometimes even the greatest player or singer may not be the right fit with our "band personality" so we don't ask them to join.
Some readers will not be aware that Robbie Fulks (guitar ’87- ‘89) and Dallas Wayne (bass ‘88 - ‘92) are two artists who graduated from ‘Special C’ in the early days, and have gone on to make names for themselves in the country/Americana sphere. Can you tell us a bit more about their days with the band? (We love a bit of gossip, so don’t hold back)
We had the best times together! Robbie and Dallas are superb musicians, songwriters, wonderful human beings and true music scholars. They have studied and lived music most of their lives - both are voracious readers and both know so much about music history, especially country music. There are too many stories to tell - I truly would not know where to begin but will say we have the utmost respect and love for each other to this day - friends forever. One brief story about the silliness and fun we had is that we often had lodging provided for the band but not always the most comfortable sleeping situations for all. If there were different degrees of comfort, we had the "system" of flipping coins in various combinations until a winner was declared. The winner could choose whatever bed/room he desired. We would continue the process until we all knew where each of us would sleep. One morning, after a night of not very comfortable beds/quarters for any of us, Dallas and Robbie came skipping out of the building singing "Rollaway, rollaway, rollaway bed..." They made up an entire hilarious song about the situation right on the spot, singing as we laughed hysterically. Talk about making a difficult situation into a fun experience... great guys!
Apart from songs penned by yourself and other band members, you always include several covers on your albums. What are the considerations when deciding on other writers’ songs to include - are you driven by the lyrics, or the instrumental potential for live performance, perhaps?
We are always on the lookout for a good song. We are always making lists that we all contribute to and when we are preparing to record, which now is usually bi-annually for the Compass Records release schedule, we let our professional songwriter friends (especially those whose songs we have recorded on previous albums) know that we are on the search for new songs. We do receive many unsolicited songs from people we do not know and we try to listen to all of them as well. We primarily focus on our original material and that of the songwriters we have worked with. Sometimes a theme begins to appear as we listen to so many songs but sometimes there is no obvious theme and we look at songs from other genres that we feel would be fun to record. We have often included old country songs, swing songs and tunes, classic rock and roll songs and gospel songs. I must say that we work hard at our music - we are always listening, always trying to perfect our stage performance and always trying to learn and to raise the bar. It becomes a "leave egos at the door" and work together mission to make the best band song selections and performances. We are so very fortunate to have Alison Brown as our producer, who is just brilliant at hearing songs that fit our band sound, at arranging any type of material with us and at pushing each of us to raise our personal bars as well as the band bar.
Tell us a little about the TAM (Traditional American Music) programme which you instigated in the 80s. Were you the first band to do this outreach into schools and institutions, something that has now become very common practice?
Other bands brought bluegrass music into schools before Special C - the McClain Family, the Goins Brothers, to name only a couple - but we were at least one of the first to provide written materials for teachers to use in the classroom before and/or after we came to make our presentation. In the early 1980s, a teacher friend of mine in the Chicago area asked me to bring my banjo into her classroom to play for the students, most of whom had never seen a banjo in person. I did this and then other teachers asked me to do it for them and I eventually asked our guitar player at the time (Chris Jones) to come with me. Soon the band would come in and there was clearly interest in having us introduce primary and even high school students to bluegrass music. I went to the library to do some research (there of course was no internet, no cell phones) and I wrote our description of our TAM Program that included pictures of the instruments and the basic history of bluegrass music. We eventually brought the program into schools around the country and even to schools in Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and South America. This written TAM Program material became the model for the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) "Implementation Manual" to help bands create their own school programs and that led to the IBMA video production that Nancy Cardwell and I produced to encourage bands to go into schools and also to hopefully inspire students to learn more about bluegrass music.
Generally, you don’t have a fiddle player in the band. Is this a conscious decision?
We all love playing with a fiddle in the band! We always have a guest fiddle player of two on our recordings (and usually a dobro player) for that "full" bluegrass sound. The reason we don't have a fiddle player in the band can be summarized in one word: economics. We already split the band income six ways (after paying our booking person commission). We each get one share and the band gets two for operating expenses that include having a band vehicle (Sprinter) and paying for all travel and some lodging expenses. Hence, there are four seats in the van and we have four rooms in our booking contract - the fifth person would increase our expenses and make the split reduce our individual income, which is the primary job income for all of us.
You travel extensively across the US and further afield, playing at festivals etc. Which up-and-coming artists and/or bands have impressed you recently, that you think we should keep an eye on as the future of the music?
I see so many great young bands - I can hardly remember names but I am very impressed with so many of them. The obvious are Molly Tuttle (who sang and played clawhammer banjo on one of our recordings) and Billy Strings. There are many others like Kody Norris, East Nash Grass, Po Ramblin' Boys, Laura Orshaw, Henhouse Prowlers, former Special C members Rick Faris and Nick Dumas (who left with blessings to begin their solo careers) and a band you may know (said tongue-in-cheek) named We Banjo Three.
Interview by Eilís Boland