If you ever meet Pam Gadd or heard her perform live, you'll not forget her. Not only is she a fine banjo and guitar player with a distinctive, lonesome-edged soulful voice, the woman has simply never met a stranger. She seems to say whatever pops into her head onstage—which, when combined with her disarming honesty, creative mind, off-the-wall sense of humor and pure charm—can be pretty entertaining.
You may have heard Pam singing lead and playing banjo with Capital recording artists, Wild Rose on country radio in the late '80s/early '90s, on hits like “Breaking New Ground” and “Go Down Swinging.” In the bluegrass world she has performed with The New Coon Creek Girls and also fronted her own band, Pam Gadd & the Long Road, with recordings on the Vanguard and OMS labels.
Look for Pam onstage with Porter Wagoner this month—still playing banjo and guitar, and featured as his duet partner---in celebration of his 50th year as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. “I'm so very proud to be with him and be a part of that,” Gadd says. “I used to watch his show in the '60s when I was a little girl, so you can just imagine how amazing it is for me to grow up and become a Wagonmaster...uh, Wagonmistress…uh, no, not mistress. Well, a Wagonwoman,” she laughs. “There!”
The job with Porter came out of the blue, Pam says. “Glenda Faye, who was once in his band and had grown up with Wanda Vick, my former group leader with Wild Rose, was managing Porter and he was getting ready to go into the studio to do a duet CD with a lot of his favorite country singers. They needed someone to come in a sing all the female parts in the recording session, so that Porter could put his parts down first. Glenda was real sweet; she said, 'Would you be willing to sing the ghost (scratch) vocals for the rhythm tracks? I mean, would that be insulting?' I said, 'Heck, no. I'd be honored,' and I meant it. So, that's how I met him. I went over to his house three days later, and I sat on the couch and sang all these classic country songs with him that I'd hustled up and learned (10 songs in two and a half days!) so he could set keys for the women's parts and so he could determine (he's a great producer) how they would modulate back and forth between the male and female parts. We totally hit it off,” Pam continues. “We laughed and sang, and he's really a great singer in an acoustic setting like that. As he's gotten older, the loud speakers and amps on stage don't always allow him to hear the house sound…. I was so happy to hear our voiced blend so well together. It was really a joy. I told him that day about having this memory of driving along with my dad and my sister in Daddy's truck—me straddling the gear shift and Daddy clutching and letting me shift the gears, and listening to Porter and Dolly on an eight-track tape. I told him that it was really an honor to sing with him. He seemed to be tickled with the story. Well, anyway, that day we were breaking to have lunch, and he just out and asked me if I'd like to be in his band. I was so pleased and thought about it for one second, and it felt like the peaceful, right thing to do. I just knew I'd love it, and told him that I didn't want to step on anybody's toes or anything. He told me that he was making some changes after the new year, and that he'd love to have me, and we agreed right then and there that I'd start after the new year. I started in February '04. So, my gosh, it's been three years already! So anyway we went into the studio, and I sang the very best I could for the 'scratch vocal' in hopes that maybe he might ask me to do one of the songs on the CD as a keeper. And you know what? He decided he really liked the way we sounded together on the project, so he just scrapped the idea of inviting other female vocalists to be on it and decided to make it a duet album with me! I was thrilled! I just wish my dad could have been around to see me sing at the Grand Ole Opry with him. I know he'd be so proud. My mom sure is.”
What's it like to sing on the stage of the Opry with Porter Wagoner? “We have a lot of interaction, and we're sincerely friends,” Pam reports. “He has been so supportive. He absolutely will step aside and let me shine if he wants me to do an original song. I've been amazed at how he's so unselfish in that way. It was my first time to ever sing on the Opry by myself. I'd sung there once with the New Coon Creek Girls and with Patty Loveless, Johnny Russell and with a theatre group for Cotton Patch Gospel, but I never had been featured as a solo artist, and he let me do that. I about cried, it made me feel so happy. I love his classic records, and truly, besides the Osborne Brothers, Porter and Dolly are my favorites. I love Conway and Loretta, too, but yes I was a fan, and I still am. He's not recognized for his records like I think he deserves on radio,” Pam adds. “He's got a new box set available on the Bear Family label. You get those, and you've got a real treasure there. They're unbelievable.”
Wagoner is a big bluegrass fan, Pam says. “He loves Ralph Stanley, and I've never met a bigger Bill Monroe fan. He loved Reno and Smiley. He tells me the greatest stories. It's just a treat to get him going about being a young teenager going to see Monroe—standing under a tent watching him anytime Bill made it to Missouri. Later, when Porter got his record deal on RCA, he said he and Monroe became friends, and that Bill told him that he remembered him from coming to those tent shows. He didn't know if Bill was just being kind or really meant it, but I tend to believe you'd remember meeting, tall lanky Porter Wagoner, even if he didn't have his shiny wagon wheel suits on,” Pam smiles.
In addition to his talents as a singer, songwriter and producer, Pam admires Wagoner for being “a great entertainer. Johnny Russell was one of the best I've ever worked with as far as being at ease with the audience and really making them laugh,” she notes. “Porter is great at that. He's very warm and engaging. I really wish he'd tour more, but he loves going to work practically out his back door over at the Opry. At 79, I don't blame him a bit.”
Porter had an aneurysm last year, which was caught before it ruptured, thankfully. “They did an emergency three-hour surgery and were able to repair it,” Pam says. “He's recovering now and plans to resume at the Opry in 2007, hopefully after the New Year.
Pam made the decision to take a part-time position at a Nashville community college as a testing technician five years ago so she could still have time for music, but also have a monthly income with full benefits. “I've noticed the women in bluegrass I've admired have had a spouse or partner to help them with the journey,” Pam notes. “Trying to manage it alone brought me a tremendous amount of stress, which made me unproductive. I stayed in a state of worry all the time, which furthered the unproductivity. Geez, it was a vicious cycle. My father had just died, as well, and that sort of pulled the rug out from under my feet and woke me up to the reality that as a freelance musician, I had never really prepared for my later years like we all should. So I decided to try to do both. Starting in 2007, I've been working in the campus library helping students and helping with the research databases. I love it.”
Pam also took the opportunity to go back to school herself, working toward finishing her degree. She says “the mental stimulation, the growing, the productivity of continuing to learn” is what drew her back to an academic journey. “It's so disciplined, and in general the music world does not offer this type of structure—which I thrive in. I love learning,” she says. “I'm like a little sponge, and it helps me to re-define life and to have a broader sense of understanding the world as a whole. I'm studying music, history, and philosophies of religion and mythology. I may want to teach one day. I seem to have a knack for communicating with others, and I get a real joy out of it.”
Known as much for her songwriting as for her chops as a musician/vocalist, Pam says she's been writing a lot lately. “My mind is very stimulated from writing essays and research papers and listening to a lot of different styles of music,” she explains. “I find this intensity carries over into a desire to write. I don't write prolifically, but then suddenly I say something or hear someone say something which instantly wants to be a song. That's how I've written most every song I've ever written,” she confides. “It's hard for me to just sit and decide to say something out of nothing. I'm not very productive in that way. It's spontaneous.”
Pam's fans will be glad to hear she does plan to go back to the recording studio soon. “I want to record a duet CD with many of my favorite singers, both male and female,” she announces. “I've got a lot of the songs picked out…. I would very much like to do a traditional bluegrass album, as well. I've got a lot of material I've written that does not exactly fit the traditional bluegrass format; it lends itself to a blend of country-folk, bluegrass, and some day I'd like to put that out, as well. I blend into different categories musically, and trying to figure out how to produce CDs which will fit a radio station format is very difficult because it means giving something up and squeezing myself into a certain category.” Wild Rose was like that, she adds—10 years too early for the commercial success the Dixie Chicks had.
Wild Rose got together for a reunion once at Renfro Valley, Ky., sadly, as a benefit concert after mandolinist/vocalist Pam Perry's daughter was killed in an auto accident. “The reuniting of such great friends and creative music was so heartwarming,” Pam says. “It made me want to do it all over again. I really miss the band setting, and most probably will create a band again one day. I thrive on the interaction of ideas and camaraderie. We were always good friends in every band setting I've ever been in—Muddy River, The New Coon Creek Girls and Wild Rose. It's just amazing how (that kind of) support gives you confidence and balance.”
Pam is also very interested in introducing the banjo to new students, and she's happy to brag on her star pupil, Luke Munday, “the most remarkable student I've ever had the privilege of knowing,” she says. “He caught on so quickly and heard every nuance that I did. He mimicked me and has taken that and built his own feeling and style into it. It's a joy to have a student who truly listens and cares, plus he has a good sense about him. I started with him when he was nine and only knew some rolls. He has great right and left hands, and a great personality to boot,” Pam adds. “I only have a few students with the (college class) load I'm carrying now; however, I'm buying some banjos here and there to have for new students who will be joining me.”
Pam has also developed a “History of the Banjo” presentation, something that grew out of being invited on a regular basis to present banjo demonstrations at the Country Music Hall of Fame, she says. “It grew into a study of the instrument and its rich history, and I've slowly added visual aides and demonstrations of different songs and styles from the great pioneers of the banjo. It's a lot of fun,” she says. “I get the audience to sing along, and I try to teach them—during an hour performance—the language of the banjo. As far as schools go, I'm open to taking it on the road and to festivals, but I've mostly presented it at museums in and out of town.”
Pam became affiliated with Deering Banjos after Janet Deering saw her do a banjo history presentation out in California. “They make great quality instruments,” Pam says. “The Calico I'm now playing is the most beautiful banjo I've ever seen. The wood grain is amazing. It plays really well and mic's great, too. Deerings have very nice necks, and I love their starter banjos for new students. You won't meet nicer folks, and I'm real proud to share the roster with Jens Krueger and Mark Johnson, two of the most inspirational, soulful players in the world, in my opinion.”
Pam's friends and fans will remember the little Boston Terrier “Gracie,” who appeared with her in promo photos and videos, who died a couple of years ago after an apartment fire. “Thank you for remembering my sweet little best friend,” Pam says. “She was exceptional, and I will always miss her. I am living in a log cabin with three cats. I have become a cat woman,” she laughs. “I don't know how that quite happened! I found a litter of five and couldn't find a home for the last two. Thank God,” she adds, “because they are just the cutest little kittens I've ever had. I have a picture of them on my website: Forrest and Ginny. They lick each other's heads and love each other so good. I just couldn't separate them or toss them off into a shelter. My big girl is Madeline. She's a calico and a total, dear sweetheart. No dog for now—lest it eat my landlord's antique furniture. Can't have that! Someday I would love to have a couple Boston Terriers running around. Their snoring will probably keep the neighbors up at night, but I've grown used to it.”
Sometimes we don't realize the support of friends and family out there until something devastating hits our lives. After the fire Pam says “some very thoughtful bluegrass friends sent contributions to help pay for the vet bills which mounted up tremendously. I will always be grateful for that. I was especially touched by a contribution from Lynn Morris. She was already one of my vocal heroines, but she will forever be special for caring so much at a time of true sadness.
“I would like for people in the bluegrass world to know that I love and teach bluegrass and have and will always include it in who I am,” Pam continues. “You can not un-become who you are, and I was immersed in it from the Country Gentlemen in the '60s to Eddie and Martha in the '70s, the Osborne Brothers as far back as I can remember, and Keith Whitley with Ralph in the '80s, and then Crowe and Skaggs and the Seldom Scene. I loved it and wanted to make it a part of country music. I got a chance to do that (with Wild Rose), but they kept turning my banjo down for fear of scaring the record off of country radio—believe it or not,” she says incredulously. “I want to think that I've offered something to the listener with my songs and my CDs of music. I'm loving the traditional country and gospel and bluegrass I'm recording with Porter Wagoner, and I have a lot left to give. I love that the fans listen and seem to appreciate me. I love that bluegrass is so well-respected now. I'm sad that it took this long, and that Wild Rose had to disband (after seven years) before that happened, but you can't go back. I wish everyone out there trying to be creative and make a living with this music all the best. It's a great journey, every step.”
Stay tuned for the next leg of Pam Gadd's most excellent musical journey at www.pamgadd.com. Her latest album, a duet project called Porter and Pam, is on the King Records label.
