Larry Groce is the founder, former host, and artistic director of “Mountain Stage”, heard Saturdays at 6pm on KRWG Public Media. He recently spoke with KRWG’s Scott Brocato about the show’s upcoming compilation album, “Live On Mountain Stage: Outlaws and Outliers”, which will be released on April 19th.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Let's talk about the new compilation, “Live on Mountain Stage: Outlaws and Outliers”. Now this is a collection of performances from Mountain Stage. Is this spanning the entire 40 years?
LARRY GROCE:
Almost. Not quite, but almost. The earliest song on this record, I believe, is 1991; and the most recent is from last year, 2023, in January.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Talk about the process of choosing which artists (to include). I can imagine that it was pretty daunting.
LARRY GROCE:
It was daunting and it was time consuming. But it was fun, because we got approached by Oh Boy! Records, John Prine's label, about doing something...kind of I guess, kind of in celebration of the fact we were celebrating our 40th year. I said “Great”, ‘cause I like the idea of doing compilations. We have so many good tracks that are in our vault. So I just immediately started pulling out things I thought would be interesting, but I didn't know what their focus would be--whether they wanted a wide variety of styles or whether they wanted something more, you know, contained.
We started out with 250 different artists, but then I realized that, you know, we had to bring this in a little bit. We had a team going from Oh Boy! Records, from Kathy Mattea's management. And we looked at it, and I took it from 250 down to less than 100, because we wanted to make it things that were more rootsy, country, alt-country, Americana. We wanted to keep it in that kind of bag. And then I brought in the other people and said, “Let's start listening to these people,” and we went through the artists and what might be more interesting. We wanted to have some certain diversity to it. And I just want to hear the songs. So I pulled out the songs that I thought would represent--sometimes more than one song--because I want to get their opinion. I said, “Here's what I think's best. But here's two or three to choose from.”
It took a while because people had to listen to a lot of things. And we got it narrowed down to about 40. Then we said, well, it's going to be a double album, so we're going to need at least somewhere between 20 and 23 or 24 songs, whatever. And so we aimed at having around 30 or a little less than that, so that we knew obviously some people wouldn't give us permission. Actually, we only had one person turn us down. But sometimes people act like they're going to give you permission, but then they keep dragging their feet and the deadline’s coming. So that eliminates them because we got to have somebody who signs on the dotted line before we put out the record. So it finally got down to 21, which is what we have now.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, let's highlight a couple of them, and let's start with the band that's been on there several times: the Indigo Girls. Six times, or more?
LARRY GROCE:
No, they've been on eight times. Eight times, and then between the two of them, they've both been on over 10 times, because Amy's been on with her band three or four times and Emily's been on by herself, too.
Well, the good thing about this cut—well, two good things. One is, I wasn't sure they were going to let us use this cut. This is their most famous song, you know? “Closer to Fine”. And it was just included in the Barbie movie. And I thought, well, my goodness, now it's gonna be hot as fire. And they may say, well, we don't want you to put it, out because we're going to do something with it, because it just got introduced to millions of people who didn't know who the Indigo Girls were. Which is wonderful! When I heard that in the movie I thought, Oh my goodness, this is so great because they're so good and their music is so good. And the way they did it in the movie was really great.
But in any case, they came on, they've done it two or three times on the show, maybe more. In 2002, they've been on the road with this band called K’s Choice. The lead singer for that band had stuck around with the Indigo Girls and was touring, and that person sang with Emily and Amy. So it's really a trio, which is kind of an unusual thing we have: a version of "Closer to Fine” with three voices!
The energy in it was super. And the audience’s, of course, reaction is always great. But everybody was right there in the palm of their hand. And I love that song. And so I was really, really grateful that they let us put that out.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Another cut that we're going to highlight is Wilco’s cover of David Bowie's “Space Oddity”. What can you tell us about that, and your memory of Wilco and their performance of that song?
LARRY GROCE:
Well, you know, Wilco has a long history with Mountain Stage. Uncle Tupelo was on the show before Wilco even started. And then Wilco was on the very early days, and they've been on several times. And in 2016, by that time they were big stars, and they did a show in Charleston. And they started that song, which is the David Bowie song, as you say. You know, “Ground control to Major Tom”. Everybody's heard that song, and you hear that from Wilco. And you think, how are they going to do this song acoustically? You know, this is a big rock'n'roll big production thing, but they did it great. It was so good. And then people told me, oh, they've been doing it in concert for awhile, but they never released it on one of their records. So we thought, well, we'll never get ability to (get) their permission, but they gave it to us. They were so nice. And so we released that as the first single off this record in January, on David Bowie’s birthday.
But most people are familiar with this song. And when you hear this version of it, you can't help yourself. You're going to love it because it's just a triumph, I think, of somebody who understands the whole thing and translates it into the way that they do it. Which is really wonderful.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Were there any performances that were particularly painful to leave off the album?
LARRY GROCE:
Yeah, yeah there were. There were several. We had a cut from Townes Van Zandt, we had cut from Odetta and wanted to put it on there. Chris Stapleton. And I think everybody was saying yes, we'll do it. But then we never could get it finalized by the time the record came. But that was OK, because we had what you would call the fill-ins were not fill-ins. Everybody's an A. It's not like we put any B material here. They're all A's. We just had a lot more A's. And so we went along with some others, and then some got in at the end. I was glad, because I really wanted them in, but we didn't have a place for it. So I'm happy with this lineup, 100% happy.
SCOTT BROCATO:
Well, final question: you've recently been named as a 2024 inductee into the International Folk Radio Hall of Fame as well as an inductee into the 2020 class of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. What do those honors mean to you?
LARRY GROCE:
Well, they mean different things, both of them. With the folk alliance, I was really surprised and totally delighted to be a part of their world. And I guess they just started that a few years ago. And I looked at who else was in it, and it's all people who I admire, and many of whom I worked with interviewed me when I was a singer in the folk music, going around the stations and so forth. So that was just an honor, a huge honor to be thought of. I was totally taken by surprise and delighted by that.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame was also a surprise. I was more familiar with it, but I've been in West Virginia now for 52 years, and anything anytime I get honored by this state, it means a lot to me because I'm not a native West Virginian, but it makes me feel like I'm being accepted for what I've contributed. So both those things, that kind of stuff is just kind of overwhelming to me. I don't know how to react to it, and I really appreciate it.
SCOTT BROCATO:
The compilation is “Live on Mountain Stage: Outlaws and Outliers”, to be released on April 19, Larry Groce, thanks for joining us today on KRWG Public Media.
LARRY GROCE:
It's my pleasure. And I hope people can listen to this one way or the other. It's on LP and it's on CD and it's everywhere else on the Internet. So check it out. I think you'll like what you hear!
