Post-Boomers Part 3: Josh Levine
For years, it seemed that traditional bluegrass in the Northwest was becoming exclusively a Baby Boomer thing. But more recently, tons of post-boomer folks have picked up bluegrass instruments, joined jams, come to festivals and formed traditional-style bands. Portland venues are filled with people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, both on stage and in the audience.
One of these musicians has been performing in a band for about 10 years and is in some way a mentor to others just starting to play out. He’s Josh Levine, mandolin player and co-founder of the band The Filthy Skillets, which won the OBA band competition in Shaniko last May.
Meet Josh, who agreed to help me with my “Beyond Boomers in Bluegrass” series.
Does it always start with The Dead? Some of Josh’s earliest musical influences were The Grateful Dead and Phish – music he heard from his father’s friends and Josh’s older brother. In a way, the Dead and subsequent jam bands have often been the gateway drug to bluegrass.
In the spirit of rock and roll, Josh was given an electric bass as a gift -- which he never really took to. So, years later, Josh traded it for a mandolin.
And he soon realized that this instrument could open up a whole new set of skills and interests that offered a reprieve from his intense graduate school studies. And he plunged in.
The road to bluegrass love. Like many people who pick up the mandolin, Josh wanted to play bluegrass – but he didn’t really know what that was. His principal exposure had been to String Summit-style jamgrass.
So, when he started taking lessons, teachers would say, “Oh, you want to play bluegrass? Well, you need to listen to a lot of Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers and Flatt and Scruggs.”
And by the time he got to the Bluegrass Album Band and other Tony Rice projects with higher quality production and more sophisticated instrument techniques Josh knew what he liked and what he wanted to achieve.
He has immersed himself in Monroe-style technique with teachers like David McLaughlin, Caleb Klauder and Mike Compton. And he continues to learn, improve and experiment.
Bitten by the jam bug. “Soon,” Josh said, “I worked up the nerve to jam.”
It seemed to Josh that he was alone in beginning his music journey at the age of 27. “A lot of the people I meet have been playing their whole life.” But it was different for Josh, who was starting out both in music and his professional career. He felt that not many people his age were learning about bluegrass, but “I was just in the mode of ‘I’m going to do this. I’m going to play music. This is my hobby now.’”
“I think the first jam I went to was the slow jam at Biddy McGraw's, which was called something like the Off Key Bluegrass Jam.
“There I met a lot of the folks I’m still hanging out with at festivals today.”
At Biddy’s, “Everyone was really nice, and I wasn’t very good. I didn’t know what to do. A couple times I left with my tail between my legs, and then I would come back every few months,” he said. But after a while, the time between visits got shorter.
“Eventually, it kind of clicked, where I could say ‘OK, I kind of know what to do. I can hang in there. I can take chances. It’s going to be OK.’”
And then, he said, “It got to the point where I just wanted to go to every jam I could.”
And a band was in his future. He started going to festivals like the Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival and Wintergrass. There he met many experienced pickers like Brett and Rollie Champ and Matt Ruhland and Genevie Thomas who influenced his music choices.
“One of my favorite things has been finding myself in a jam with Rollie and Brett and Matt and Chuck Holloway, jams that would go until the sun comes up. It’s like one Stanley Brothers tune after the next – and it’s all so good. And I came to realize how deep that well is. And when I get to play with people in a late-night festival jam I realize how exciting and fun that music is.”
Then he went to a jam at the White Eagle run by Rich Landar, where he met his first bandmate, bassist Kit Ballantyne, who since has moved back to the U.K. They exchanged contact information and decided to start a band. Then they recruited fiddler Brendan Haggerty, banjo player Steve Hathaway. After a few turnovers in the guitar position they were able to recruit powerhouse singer and guitar player, John Montgomery, who played with the group for eight years.
And not long after getting together, they started gigging. Their first show was at The Ranger Station on Hawthorne in 2017.
Evolution. With careers and kids and family obligations, the band played intermittently, often with other musicians filling in because the core members had conflicts.
But, Josh said, recently they have gotten more serious about playing. “We have started to find our own sound and our own direction.”
When John stepped away, Joel Correia joined on guitar, and today they are a cohesive unit. Joel joined just before the band came in #1 out of 10 in the OBA band contest.
Still drawn to the old stuff. Josh has eclectic taste in music. “I still listen to the Grateful Dead, and I like honky tonk music. I like jazz. But I don’t gravitate toward super modern bluegrass or mashgrass.”
He loves Billy Strings, “But it’s like there are two musical minds. There’s the jam band and then the traditional. And I want to hear him play Doc Watson and Larry Sparks songs more than I care to hear a 20-minute jam.
“I think it’s okay to have a broad palette. I think it’s okay to define things and describe certain things as being bluegrass or not. But at the end of the day, it comes down to ‘is it good music? Do you like it?’”
Again with the community! Josh said, “Bluegrass is really accepting.”
Taborgrass, which he went to occasionally, was “an accessible community,” that launched many pickers. Then they would find themselves in the jam world and starting bands. “And now there’s this huge group of people that are all learning or in bands or just jamming. It’s bloomed into this big thing.”
Josh referred to the block of pickers who gather around the camp of Hannah Dondy-Kaplan and Melissa Tanguay at festivals as “Hannahstan,” It’s a reflection of the connections created by sharing music.
And pickers beget pickers. Josh said it’s common for someone to say, “Oh, I want to go to that festival, too. I want to see these people and be part of this.” And then they get more courage and say, “I want to play with Rollie!”
(Rollie Champ was a long-time member of Oregon’s iconic traditional band, The Sawtooth Mountain Boys, and is a pillar, both musically and socially, of the bluegrass community as a singer, bass player, guitarist and mandolinist.)
With respect to getting into bluegrass, “A lot of people have had a similar trajectory to me. You get into your instrument, you start playing it, you become obsessed, you start going to jams, and then next thing you know, you're like 15 years in, and it's become your community and your social circle, and what you want to spend your time doing during evenings and on the weekend.”
A full life, with bluegrass as the icing on the cake. Josh has been married to Sarah Horn for 11 years. They have two boys: Samson, seven, and Artie, four, who already are happily fiddling under the tutelage of Celeste Johnson.
After many years teaching and providing vocational guidance with special education students in the Portland Public School system, Josh started his own business. He helps people with disabilities find, obtain and keep their jobs. Josh has met many talented, eager people who are strong performers in their work, but need guidance on issues like interviews, workplace etiquette and other behaviors that, with some professional advice, can smooth entry into the workforce.
So, he has a very busy, meaningful life. And he weaves his music into that whenever he can. Josh and The Filthy Skillets are continuing to make their mark in Oregon bluegrass.
Follow Josh and his band here.
