Fred Pike

Many listeners associate bluegrass using the Appalachians, to the stage where one college of criticism insists that this weirdos away in California couldn’t possibly play it correct. That hill range does ultimately wind its method up into New Britain, so it is probably no real surprise to discover pickers of the grade of this double danger bluegrass designer in New Britain. Guitarist and five-string banjoist Fred Pike was created in Rhode Isle but his people soon were going North, about as much North as you can proceed without leaving america for good. Among biggest wheels around the Maine bluegrass picture, Pike was subjected to music at an extremely early age group. He was following towards the youngest in a family group of twelve kids, each egg in the carton musically willing. He was just five when he started picking out music around the piano, and four years later on he had been playing stage displays and dances. Obviously there were users of his family members at his aspect in the bandstand which fact was held no top secret. Their first music group was known as the Pike Brothers as well as the Pine Hill Ranchers, a name that if announced to a maitre’d would definitely lead to the biggest desk in the cafe being established. Playing electric guitar, Pike and his sibling Earl produced this group in 1947 and it lasted ten years. The break up of the group was something of the turning stage in Pike’s musical profession. It resulted in him teaming up with Randy Hawkins to create a music group called the united states Nite Hawkes. Moreover, this new music group supplied an inspiration for Pike to extend his musical wings and consider in the five-string banjo. After launching some well-known 45 rpm recordings, Pike started concentrating his interest on another group, the Kennebec Valley Guys. He began the initial bluegrass celebration in Maine with this brand-new music group in 1976 and in addition gained that state’s prize to discover the best bluegrass music group of the entire year. It had been Pike’s almost continuous touring with this group that basically helped this genre gain a foothold in Maine, as soon as a local curiosity was set up for bluegrass, it hardly ever died out. Nonetheless it wasn’t often the situation when Pike began his activities. Inside a 1980 interview using the Maine Weekend Telegram, Pike described the early times of his music in this manner: “WHILE I began playing bluegrass in Maine, it had been so new that folks thought it had been something you smoked.” In 1977, Pike arranged Back again Porch Bluegrass, which continued to earn that year’s Maine Nation Music Association prize for bluegrass music group. Pike in addition has performed using the scorching banjo participant Don Reno, sterling vocalist Macintosh Wiseman, bluegrass mandolinist and bandleader Costs Monroe, and nation artists such as for example Dick Curless, Gene Hooper, and Jud Strunk. Although essentially known as a normal bluegrass participant, he has were able to match the intensifying mob on tasks like the acclaimed Jimmy Gaudreau Mandolin Recording. The lion’s talk about of his documented output is within the original vein, and followers seem to enjoy his guitar recording, Fred Pike and His Flat-top Acoustic guitar, released from the Revonah label in 1978. Until his loss of life in the middle-’90s, Pike kept the Salty Puppy Event on his plantation each year to celebrate the music he adored and had carried out so much to determine a pursuing for up North.