Cosgrove brings good medicine to local bluegrass club

Mark Cosgrove and Good Medicine will perform on April 27. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Mike Burns is the co-founder of  the Westchester Bluegrass Club in Purdys. JAMES F. KAPLAN PHOTO

Greg Cahill and Special Consensus performing at the club earlier this month. JAMES F. KAPLAN PHOTO

By BRIAN KLUEPFEL

The story begins in a darkened workshop in New Jersey. The apprentice, Mark Cosgrove, sanding and scraping musical instruments for an aging, Geppetto-like mentor, Augustino LoPrinzi.

Emerging from the whorls of wood-dust comes a particular instrument — a Brazilian rosewood, six-string dreadnought — which nobody but the apprentice wants. He offers to buy it at a discount price. Grudgingly, the mentor accepts.

The apprentice readies for battle, and enters in one of the nation’s prestige competitions, the National Flat-Picking Guitar Championships in Winfield, Kan. He does not place; realizing he is not ready, he woodsheds for seven long years before working up the gumption to enter the 1994 Doc & Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest competition in North Carolina. He wins.

“It was a complete surprise,” he admits. 

The next year, eight years after his first trip to Winfield, he returns to the plains of Kansas and wins that competition. Cosgrove is on his way, and since that 1995 trophy has gone on to play with folk legend David Bromberg and a host of other music legends and semi-legends. Inspired by flatpickers like Doc Watson (of the aforementioned competition) and Clarence White, he also draws on electrical influences, borrowing licks from Lowell George and Telecaster master Albert Lee. 

Cosgrove brings that heady mixture with his band, Good Medicine, to the Westchester Bluegrass Club in Purdys on Sunday, April 27. Included in his posse are other alumni of the Bromberg band, like fiddler Nate Grower, as well as guest player and Baltimore-based legend Mike Munford, known colloquially as “Mr. Banjo.”

Cosgrove’s recorded eight albums under his own name and his latest, “Unencumbered,” features tasteful instrumentals like “Ricketts hornpipe,” “Clinch Mountain backstep” and “Remington ride,” indicative of the quick-pickin’ that might be expected in Purdys on April 27. 

The wood-paneled clubhouse on the lake shares its origins, nearly, with the birth of bluegrass music in America — both got their start in the 1940s. Much like the music, there’s little pretension here, just a tray of cookies and cupcakes, and an old bottle of Seagram’s whiskey behind the bar, framed by black and white photos of days gone by, opposite two dartboards. The clientele favor plaid and baseball or knit caps, and many of the heads are white with age. 

Yet the tradition remains young at heart, and often, onstage. A recent Sunday featured Nate Sabat and Mike Daves, 20-somethings who are already veterans of the bluegrass circuit. Their sets included classics from the Stanley Brothers, Norman Blake, Hazel Dickens and Dolly Parton as well as originals. They spoke of the WBC as a community force.

“People come to play and for the camaraderie and inspiration,” said Sabat. Since many of the audience bring their own axes for the preshow jam and open mic, “it’s an educated audience.” 

Daves said, “This is a go-to gig for me and my band. It’s all about community and people of all (playing) levels and backgrounds getting together.”  

The musicians appreciate the building, Bose sound system, and the warm, woody vibrations. Overheard near the coffee pot at a recent gig, a guitarist whispered, “I love the way this room sounds.”

The bluegrass club’s association with Lake Purdys goes back 17 years, when club founder, Mike Burns, a lakeside resident, decided to promote shows, rather than play them. He and WBC co-founder Ben Freed began the tradition at St. Luke’s Church in Somers but soon relocated to Purdys, where the center has held for nearly two decades. 

No longer a traveling musician, Burns still opens the preshow open mic with a song or two: at Westchester Bluegrass Club, the circle remains unbroken. 

The April 27 program begins with an open jam at 3 p.m., followed by open mic at 3:30 p.m., followed by Mark Cosgrove and Special Medicine at 4 p.m. 

For more information, visit westchesterbluegrassclub.com.

The Westchester Bluegrass Club is located at 33 Lake Way, Purdys.