The Bluegrass Bypass entertained at a recent Stafford Historical Society meeting at the Courthouse. hugh muir/the free lance-star Visit the Photo Place

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Heartfelt history played by group

Heartfelt history played by the Bluegrass Bypass

by Hugh Muir

Date published: 10/21/2008

by Hugh Muir

Former Stafford County Sheriff Ralph Williams' Bluegrass Bypass Band gave a program for two dozen members of the Stafford County Historical Society last week, entertaining the monthly gathering with swiftly strummed themes ranging from the hills of West Virginia to a famous train wreck in the 1800s.

Bluegrass Bypass?

When Williams, sheriff from 1988 to 2000, formed the band in 2003, the five members were at a loss for a name. But then, in measured succession, harmonica-playing Williams; his five-string-banjo player, Mike Wilson; bass-thumping Pete Harding; and mandolin player Jerry Thompson all underwent open-heart surgery.

They are fine now, as their vigorous bluegrass-style of strumming and twanging and plinking and plunking proved last Thursday evening. But the bypass experience gave them a common moniker--and so it was adopted.

The fifth player in the band is guitarist Mickey Coffey. All the members are native Staffordians, with the exception of Coffey. "I was brought to the county when I was 2 years old," said the now-retired Coffey, "so I'm still an 'outsider.'"

The band's singer is Dina Shiflett, who does close harmony alternately with Coffey or Thompson (the only, as yet, un-retired member of the group).

Hosts for the meeting were society president Richard Chichester and former president Al Conner, who gave a PowerPoint sketch of American war-time music from the Civil War through World War II.

"All of these songs," Conner said, "from both North and South, have become part of our nation's tradition." He cited, among others, "Dixie," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "Tenting Tonight," "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight," "Marching Through Georgia," "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag."

Conner said 1,000 men from Stafford served with the Confederate Army during the war. He pointed out that the war began to shift when 150,000 Union troops arrived in Stafford early in 1862 to begin the series of campaigns that would climax at Gettysburg 18 months later.

He also recalled the little-known historical fact that Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who led the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, formally received his colonelcy and command of the famed black unit at a ceremony in Stafford in April 1863. He was killed three months later in the attack on Fort Wagner in Charleston, S.C.

The program ended with the guests joining Williams' band in singing a 19th-century funeral hymn: "Will the circle be unbroken by and by, Lord, by and by / there's a better home a-waiting in the sky, Lord, in the sky."

Hugh Muir: 540/735-1975
Email: hmuir@freelancestar.com

Bluegrass is usually defined as a form of American roots music, born in the late 1930s, influenced by jazz and blues and characterized by a skillful mix of banjos and guitars and high-pitched, close-harmony vocals.

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Date published: 10/21/2008