Oklahoma John

John Pollard started learning the guitar when he was 12 years old. It really was like Larry Cordle’s song “Black Diamond Strings,” his daddy showed him G, C, and D and told him to go away and not come back until he’d learned them. Ole L.D. was pretty surprised. John devoured everything his daddy could teach him, and to shorten the story up some, discovered bluegrass when they went to an Oklahoma Bluegrass Club show. Mike Clark wow’ed him with “Black Mountain Rag” and John says to himself, “I can do that.” And he did.

Shortly thereafter he helped form the Bluegrass Revue. They played all the regional festivals and local Pizza Parlors (anyone remember Shotgun Sam’s?) since they weren’t old enough to play in bars yet. Then he joined a hairy, eclectic group called “The Upper Middle Grass” and tried real hard to fill Adam Granger’s place. “UMG” had the pleasure of picking fun places like Spring Lake, Frontier City, The National Flatpicking Contest in Winfield, Kansas (Yes, John has entered that contest 3 times, and no, he didn’t win) Alan Munde has sat in with them and they were the warm up band for Willie Nelson.

John enlisted in the Marines, was sent to California, and wandered around the funny-smoke smelling festival scene out west for about 10 years. He did a stint in Nashville then came back home and started looking for someone to pick with. He finally met a girl at a Bluegrass Festival that could not only sing, but she played the guitar too. She had a little group called Country Grass and she needed a guitar picker, so the next year, at the same festival, on stage, she married him. Roy Barnes came to pick banjo with them and they changed their name to Route 66. That was a good gig, singing with Ella and Gloriea is like singing with angels. They really made him sound good.

The rest is recent history...

Email John @ flatopicker@mylaststand.com