Few musicians have touched as many genres and made as many creative contributions to their art as Vassar Clements. Raised in the flats of South Carolina and residing in his long-time home of Hermitage, Tennessee, right outside of Nashville, Clements embodies the spirit of a pioneer and leader. Even through his seemingly never-ending tour of duty as bluegrass and folk fiddle ambassador, Vassar retains an air of humility and unspoken grace in everything he does. From fiddle seminars for aspiring players at regional music festivals to benefit concerts for special causes, he seems to create an excitement and love for roots music wherever he goes. He has combined the influence of swing music from his youth with the bluegrass standards he helped create with Bill Monroe and in turn inspired countless hundreds of musicians in the last 30+ years.

His career can be traced back to his school days playing with Monroe, but he quickly rose to national prominence in the early 1970's playing fiddle for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" album. From there his success and demand as a fiddle player rose exponentially. As many music fans are aware, Vassar was a key ingredient of the Old and in the Way lineup that included Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, John Kahn, and Peter Rowan. Their 1973 self-titled release still stands as the highest selling bluegrass album of all time. A four-time Grammy nominee, Clements' versatility playing everything from basic folk and bluegrass to swing and "Hillbilly Jazz," as his own unique style is named, made him a must-have for recording artists of every genre. His credits on studio and live projects of other musicians are far too numerous to list here.

After tapering off a little beginning in the late 80's, the 72 year-old Clements was once again going strong in the late 1990's and yes, even the year 2000. He continues to write the pages of live music history, jamming with everyone from Stir Fried, featuring his old pal Buddy Cage on pedal steel, to Jazz Is Dead, reliving some of his old licks on the Dead album "Wake of the Flood." His tour schedule for the upcoming spring is chock full of gigs, ranging from a benefit show in Nashville for an amputee, to a very special engagement at Center Stage in Atlanta, being backed by , as well as sitting in with Blueground Undergrass, led by the Rev. Jeff Mosier. Mosier's original bluegrass ensemble, Good Medicine is also scheduled to perform, and Clements will most likely have amble opportunity to contribute. This special show will take place on Friday, April 7.

There is certainly much that could be said about Vassar Clements' immense talents and contributions. Even so, you most likely won't hear it directly from him. He is without a doubt the most down to earth, humble guy around. He marvels at the progress of technology in the music industry and is equally impressed with the resurgence of bluegrass in younger players today. He is certainly an important catalyst of the latter, although he wouldn't be one to boast about it. His website can be found at http://www.vassarclements.com. You can send him e-mail, and his daughter, Midge, reads it to him on a regular basis. The site also includes a touching section on the influence and love shared for his late wife, Millie. Check out the website and catch Vassar playing this Spring in a town near you.

I had the opportunity to chat briefly with Vassar about some of his experiences, past and present.

C: I was taking a look at your tour schedule the other day. You seem to be continuing your tradition of playing with as many different musicians in as many different places as possible. Has your inspiration changed much over the years or has your basic motivation remained about the same?

V: I don't know. I guess everything changes a little bit. I guess it changes some when you play with different people because you're playing their music and trying to fit in with what they're doing. So that might make it sound a little bit different. If I was playing with T Lavitz and playing with Jazz is Dead it would be different than if I was playing with a bluegrass group. I have to blend in with what they're playing.

C: That's what has always struck me about you. You like to play a little bit of everything as far as your musical influences go. I guess that's why you get along with everybody.

V: That's true. It's more of a challenge to me than anything else, so not being a [music] reader really helps me do that.

C: Do you like taking to the road and traveling a lot?

V: I don't care a thing about traveling. I had much rather play to people than have four walls and a studio. I don't mind studio when you have time to do things and get things worked out a little bit before you go in there. You get in one like you feel at home instead of a rush job. I like studio sometime, but I'd rather play for people. I like to look on their faces, and see if they are enjoying it - meeting them and everything.

C: I know you play a lot of music festivals every year, do you enjoy the county fair atmosphere more than being enclosed in a concert hall?

V: I like both. I like the performing arts centers and concerts at colleges, or just about anywhere. At lot of the festivals are really good. You don't get as much rest at a festival as you do at a concert. You are going a lot and the time you're not going, you're talking to somebody. I enjoy that but you know, I spend the time I have - maybe 3 hours before I'm supposed to go on and I would never sit down. I would never sit down, probably for hours. I don't know, I just go around and stand up and talk to people. I'd meet one and then run into somebody else, and then it's time to go onstage. It's a little more tiresome at festivals then it is at concerts.

C: I know you give a lot of special fiddle clinics at festivals, and you're even playing some benefit concerts coming up. How important do you think it is to give back to the music community and encourage younger players?

V: I think it is VERY important. That's part of the reason that I love to play, to give it to somebody else.

C: There does seem to be a revival in bluegrass and folk music right now.....

V: It's doing good right now and there's a lot of talk about it right now. A lot more than when I was growing up - NO, no, not when I was growing up. Bluegrass was going good, especially Monroe. I don't know much about anybody else, but I know he was doing good back when I was growing up. Then there was that lull in there when he almost had to pay to play. Then he came back to festivals when he was doing real good. Since that time, a lot of the young ones got into bluegrass and played it all kinds of different ways. It's being talked about a lot more now and people seem to respect it more. They always liked it you know, but I don't know why, if it wasn't a festival, you could hardly get any support for it. Nowadays, I think it's doing real good.

C: I think so too. Bands like Leftover Salmon out of Colorado and Blueground Undergrass..

V: I know [Jeff] Sipe real good. I don't know if I know any of the others or not. He's one of the nicest people I've ever met, and one heck of a drummer.

C: How did you meet Rev. Jeff Mosier?

V: I don't know how long ago that was. I can't remember if it was in Athens, Georgia, or not.

C: I know you have a mutual friend in Col. Bruce Hampton.

V: Yeah and I had been knowing him for years, but I really hadn't seen him. You know, I had been off of the circuit, really for a long time. I was going really strong in the 70's and 80's, then I started slowing down. My wife wanted to get rid of the bus and slow down. I didn't do anything much for along time. Then of course, she passed away. This July will be 2 years ago. Now it seems like I've been going as much as I had back in the 70's. I can see it seems like the places I play (pauses) it seems like the circle has made a circle. I see the same faces and the same types of people. They act the same way. It's like I'm looking back at the 70's, but now it's 2000, you know. It's like I'm seeing the same acceptance of what's happening.

Years ago, I knew Col. Bruce and I hadn't seen him in so many years, until I played Atlanta with Stir Fried. He remembered and I remembered him just as soon as I saw him. We talked and he brought back old memories and all that. Since then we've been in fairly close touch. I helped Phish, especially Michael [Gordon] do that soundtrack for him for that movie. That's gonna be the funniest thing you've ever seen. My daughter was talking to Michael the other day. He's gonna let me know when it's going to be shown here. It's a funny thing. If you get a chance to see it, I want you to see it. It's funny, believe me.

C: Thinking a little about how some aspects of music have changed over time while others have stayed the same, I know Folkways Records over at the Smithsonian and David Grisman's Acoustic Disc label have both done a great job of preserving and exposing different kinds of traditional music. Can you foresee record labels doing more for those kinds of music than they have in the past?

V: Yeah, if there's record labels, per se, and I'm sure there will be in some description. There's a whole lot going to this Internet thing. I don't know how they're gonna get it worked out. A lot of it is already worked out to a certain extent. I'll be real glad to find out how it works anyway. They're going to be selling them off of that, by the millions. They're going to burn their own CDs. What I don't understand yet is the way they are going to pay for each one. I don't understand how they're going to work that out. It's supposed to be as clear when they burn it [MP3s and such] as it is right now. A few people have it worked out where they can do a whole album with a MIDI and a computer setup.

C: My father actually has a program on his computer called Cakewalk where he can score the entire soundtrack to the high school plays in my hometown using a just a MIDI connection and a Roland keyboard.

V: I've been behind there [in a studio] and I've seen them do it. It's amazing to me how they do it. I want to try and get it worked out so I can do that. I don't know if things like that would work on a fiddle or not, but I guess it would. I'd love to find out.

C: When you're playing live, I've seen that you'll get in the middle of a passage and you're deep in the jam and your eyes are closed. You tilt your head back and it looks almost like you're dreaming. Do you have anything running through your mind in those moments?

V: Yeah, I'm always having to think because I can't remember how to play it the same way. I can remember how to start off and the ending and maybe the little riffs or stops we have in-between part of the tune. When you're out there on your own you really don't know where it's going. There's a lot of things that run through your mind, but, which one will work the best? It's so fast sometimes that you pick the one that doesn't work right and you try to cover that up real quick. What I'm doing is just really thinking. I guess that's why I have my eyes closed. I really am in another world, I guess.

C: You play some other stringed instruments as well don't you?

V: Yeah, I'm trying to get back into it. I cut my finger off with the lawn mower a few years back. You know when you bend your little finger? I cut it off just before the bend. Fretted instruments cause too much little hurt and feeling just below the bump where it was cut. I'm getting back to where I can play a fretted instrument. I can't play it too long.

C: What about composing. Do you like to write music as well.

V: I can write.. I can write the music part, but I can't write words. I have to get someone else to do that. I can't condense a whole story down into a few verses.

C: You still play with Buddy Cage a good bit in Stir Fried. His pedal steel seems to compliment your fiddle very well.

V: Oh yeah. I've been knowing Buddy since the Riders [New Riders of the Purple Sage.] Then we lost track. I lost track of where he was. When he met Stir Fried, I saw him again when he started playing with them. We were playing a place in New Jersey or New York and I was playing with a group called Ripple. I was just sitting in, playing with them, you know. Stir Fried opened up and they asked me to come out and play with them, so I did.

C: You also went out of Colorado and played with Jazz is Dead. You did some of the same material you recorded with the Grateful Dead on the Wake of the Flood album, right?

V: Yeah, but you couldn't tell it (laughs). You couldn't tell it by the jazz versions of it. You just go all over the place with jazz, you don't stick with the melody too much. Now we just got through doing a Deadgrass album that a guy out in California did. We did all Grateful Dead tunes. It turned out really good. We used all bluegrass instrumentation except for the steel. Hunter and somebody wrote most of them.

C: Do you have any fond memories of playing with Jerry Garcia from years past?