Eastern Kentucky University Bluegrass Ensemble

Students attending Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in Richmond, Kentucky can consider themselves extremely fortunate if they have any interest in learning to play bluegrass music.  Although the university does not have a bluegrass music degree program, they do offer a Bluegrass Ensemble course and the person who teaches that course is multi-instrumentalist and singer Pam Perry—which is the extremely fortunate part for these students.

If you were a fan of bluegrass and country music back in the 1980s and ’90s, you may remember Pam as a member of Helen Carter’s band in the early ’80s, as a New Coon Creek Girl in the mid-to-late ’80s and a member of the all-female country band Wild Rose in the early 1990s.  After leaving Wild Rose, she spent nearly twenty years playing in the house band at the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center.

     For the past nine years, Pam has been the Artist in Residence directing the Bluegrass Ensemble program at EKU.  She also performs in a number of local bands.   Pam stated that in her early musical life she never thought of herself as a teacher, however, over the last decade she has become very committed to teaching students in the EKU program and thoroughly enjoys the work.

Pam Perry Background

A native of northwestern Ohio, Pam Perry started playing the guitar when she was eleven and the other bluegrass instruments followed soon after.  She said, “I learned pretty much all of the instruments as I was growing up.  My grandfather died when I was five and his instruments were still at Granny’s house.  I would grab those instruments and find melodies.  The guitar only had four strings on it, but I would tune it up to where I could find melodies.”  Pam’s mother, seeing her determination to learn how to play on a guitar that was missing strings, bought her a guitar.

Although Pam learned mostly on her own, she said that she did have a lot of mentors and mentions Jimmy Thompson, of Toledo, Ohio, as being someone who was particularly influential when she was young.  By the time she was fourteen, Pam was playing in local bands and continued to do that through her high school years, mostly playing the mandolin.  She points to players like Jesse McReynolds and Buck White as having encouraged her when she was in high school after she met them at various festivals and shows.

Shortly after Pam finished high school, she was performing with a band at a festival in Michigan and heard that Helen Carter (daughter of Maybelle Carter and sister to Anita and June) was putting together a band with her kids called Helen Carter and Breaking Tradition.  She auditioned for that band and was hired to play mandolin, guitar and autoharp.  What she discovered after getting that job was that one of the main gigs that the band had was playing as part of the Johnny Cash show!  When Cash became ill and had to have surgery, the shows came to a halt for a while and Pam moved on.  Helen was older and not wanting to travel or perform often.

The next big job that came Pam’s way was an offer to be a member of the New Coon Creek Girls with Pam Gadd, Wanda Barnett and Vicki Simmons.  She joined that band in January of 1985 and left in May of 1988 to help her former New Coon Creek Girls bandmate Pam Gadd (who had left the band in January of 1987) form the female country band Wild Rose with Kathy Mac (bass), Nancy Given (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Wanda Vick.

Between 1988 and 1991, Wild Rose recorded three studio albums and charted three singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.  In 1990 the band was nominated for the Academy of Country Music’s “Top New Vocal Group” award and in 1991 was nominated for a Grammy award for “Best Country Instrumental Performance.”

Pam enjoyed her time with Wild Rose, saying “I’m thankful for that experience because it took me all over the world.” However, the 280 dates a year on the band’s touring schedule took its toll.  Pam was the only member of the band who had children and she was interested in spending more time at home with her family.  After leaving Wild Rose, she was offered a solo deal, but she decided to turn that down, once again choosing her family over a hectic touring schedule.  She said, “My children are the biggest and best thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

In order to be able to stay at home more and still play music, Pam next joined the house band at the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center.  Although the schedule was busy at Renfro Valley—13 shows a week, Wednesday to Sunday—she didn’t have to be on the road.  One of those 13 shows was the legendary Renfro Valley Barn Dance.  She ended up staying at Renfro Valley for 19 years.  For the last nine years of that job she also served as Renfro Valley’s director of entertainment.

Work at East Kentucky University

After leaving Renfro Valley, Pam took a couple of years off before accepting a job at EKU.  Her first job at the university was working in administration in the music department.  She said, “The chair of the department was a fan of Wild Rose back in the day and, in addition to my administrative duties, he had me lecture to the music business classes about my experiences as a road musician.”

After working in administration for about four years, Pam was asked to put together a Bluegrass Ensemble class as part of an exchange program with a university in Columbia, in South America.  She explained, “We did an exchange program with the University of America in Columbia, South America.  They had a jazz group at their university who came to EKU and we had a jazz group that we took there.  They loved that, but they wanted something that was real roots music from the state of Kentucky and that is how the EKU Bluegrass Ensemble got started.  They asked me if I would take that on.”

During the trip to Columbia, the band performed at seven different universities in that country and also performed at the Festival of Flowers in Medellin.  Pam said, “It was an incredible experience for the students and they did fantastic.  I was so proud of them.”  Of the original group of students from the music department, only one of them had ever played bluegrass (some mandolin and banjo).  The other members of the band included a classical violinist, a rock and roll bass player, and a jazz guitar player.

Originally, the job was to prepare a group of students in the music department at EKU to play some bluegrass shows in Columbia.  Pam said, “It was such a huge success and we have continued the class now for nine years.” Although the original group was composed of students from the music department, the class was later opened up to students from any major who want to take it as an elective.  Pam said, “We now have students who are here to study construction management, nursing, physics, agriculture, and accounting.  After the second semester of teaching this course, they started allowing me to take students who were not music majors.”  Some students take the class for one semester while others continue to take the class every semester throughout their stay at EKU, even up through completion of a master’s program.

In order to be accepted into the class, all of the students have to audition for Pam.  Although the audition is not rigorous, Pam does want to see that the student has some potential with their voice and an instrument.  She said most of them have never had experience playing bluegrass or singing harmony, but by the end of the semester they are able to do it all.  The class meets for three hours each week, with an additional three-hour session during one of the weeks out of the month.  The majority of the time in class is spent working together as an ensemble with homework assignments relating to working on their particular instrument.

To help the students work on their instrument, Pam sets the students up with online mentoring sessions with some of her friends, like fiddle player Wanda Barnett and banjo player Danny Barnes.  Deanie Richardson has also come in to help coach the whole band.  Additionally, Pam helps each of the students work on their instrument.  She said, “I will play their part for them in class and allow them to film me playing it.”  Then they work on that as part of their homework.  Pam added, “Most of these students have never played bluegrass before, but they love the organic feel of it.”

Although Pam teaches bluegrass history as part of the course and gives the students assignments, such as writing reports on specific famous bluegrass artists, she also encourages the students to “push the envelope.”  She said, “I have always pushed the envelope myself, with my own music, so I encourage them to write songs and I encourage them to bring songs from other genres.  I teach them that you can play those bluegrass instruments on almost any kind of music.  I feel that if they learn the traditional, but also learn to push the envelope a little bit, it might be more appealing to kids their age.”

As part of her job in the music department, Pam says that over the years she has had to attend a lot of student music recitals and, for the most part, the audience is made of fellow students in the music program and parents.  But, when her bluegrass band performs their recital, much of the local community and “tons” of students from all programs in the school show up to hear the bluegrass ensemble.  Pam said, “We even have other ensembles from other colleges come to see us play.”  In addition to performing for their recital, the band also performs in and around town and has even performed at the IBMA’s annual event.

Each semester Pam typically has enough students enroll in the class to fill out a full bluegrass band and she has had up to nine students in the class at one time.  In that class she had three fiddle players, so she worked with them to develop triple fiddle parts for some of the tunes.  Pam said, “One year we even had a cellist as part of the group.”

After speaking with Pam about her class at EKU, I will reiterate that I think the students at that university are extremely fortunate not only to have such a class offering, but to have someone with Pam’s background, talent and passion for a teacher.  She absolutely loves working with the students and said that she always looks forward to each new semester.  

No matter what a student may choose to study in school, having a gifted teacher who is passionate about the subject is extremely valuable and the students at EKU definitely have that in Pam Perry.