Keith Little’s first instrument was the ukulele. But he was born to play guitar, almost literally. “My mother bought a 00-18 Martin as a gift for my father, shortly before I was born,” says the veteran bluegrass and country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. “I wasn’t allowed to play it until I could hold it in my lap and reach the nut, but my father would often play the guitar with me in his lap and the guitar in front of me. I remember placing my ear on the upper shoulder of the guitar and playing open strings with my right hand. It sounded so good—hearing the initial tone of the open strings, and listening to the harmonic overtones ring out. I was hooked, and couldn’t wait to play the thing by myself.”

Not only did Keith learn to play guitar, but also he picked up 5-string banjo, and later added mandolin and fiddle to his musical arsenal. By the time he was 13 years old, in the fall of 1969, he landed his first professional gig, playing banjo with local musicians around a campfire for a post-trail-ride party in the Sierra foothills of Northern California. “I earned $25, a mountain of cash to me at the time,” he recalls. Ten years later, in 1979, after a decade of developing his skills on acoustic guitar and banjo, and as a harmony singer, Little committed to becoming a professional musician. “I built a very humble studio business,” he says, “while working in country dance bands in the Central Valley and taking every gig I could manage.”

Now, with 40 years in the rear-view mirror, Little’s career resume is nothing less than brilliant. He has recorded as a side musician on nearly 100 albums—with Frank Wakefield, Claire Lynch, Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, Nell Robinson, and others—and was featured on the Chieftains Grammy-winning Another Country (RCA, 1992) and Dolly Parton’s Grammy- and IBMA-winning The Grass Is Blue (Sugar Hill, 1999). He has performed and/or toured with the Vern Williams Band, Grant Street String Band, High Country, Rose Maddox, the Country Gentlemen, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Lonesome Standard Time, the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, and a duo with Jim Nunally. In 2000, he recorded his first solo album, Distant Land to Roam (Copper Creek Records), and he leads his own group, the LittleBand. His compositions have been recorded by Claire Lynch, Tim O’Brien, the Country Gentlemen, Longview, Crystal Gayle, Vern Williams, the Whites, and others.

Today, Keith and his wife, Phyllis, live near Garden Valley, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, a few hours north of the Gold Country town of Sonora, where his musical journey began in the Little family household. “Living where we did isolated us from popular culture to a large degree,” Keith recalls, “so my early music education came strictly from recordings, the radio, and church music.” And from his father and mother. “Both of my parents were second-generation Californians (at the very least), and as such knew a wide variety of ‘folk’ songs introduced in the public school system,” Keith explains. “My father was a fine amateur home musician, playing guitar, banjo, harmonica, Autoharp, and mountain dulcimer, and he loved to sing and play old-time country music. He taught me how to hear chord changes and sing harmony before I actually started playing the ukulele.

“My mother was also a wonderful musician, and lover of the arts,” Keith adds. “She taught piano out of the house after she retired as a kindergarten teacher, and was beloved by her students. She showed me the chords and melody to the first song I learned on the ukulele, and was always supportive of our musical interests.”

Keith’s father fell under the spell of bluegrass after seeing the 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde. He fixed up an old banjo and taught himself to play. Following the listening recommendations in a Pete Seeger instruction book, he bought the family’s first stereo record player and ordered three albums from a music store in Auburn: Foggy Mountain Banjo by Flatt & Scruggs, Mountain Song Favorites by the Stanley Brothers, and Bluegrass Ramble by Bill Monroe. “I remember what I was wearing, and what the room looked like when the needle went down on ‘Ground Speed,’ the first song on the A side of Foggy Mountain Banjo,” Keith says. “It was a life changing moment for sure. I began buying records with money I earned from odd jobs, adding to the collection, and eventually took my turn at the banjo.”

It was only two years after that $25 campfire job that Keith landed his first official bluegrass band gig—at the Sierra Nevada House in Coloma—with bassist Steve Townsend, and Del Williams and Larry Park, the sons of Vern Williams and Ray Park, aka Vern and Ray. After attending junior college in Sacramento in the early 1970s, and answering calls for recording session work, Keith moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1978 and “began playing with everyone I could” while attending the University of California, Berkeley. When he decided to play music for living, Keith dove into learning fiddle and mandolin. “Being a singer/multi-instrumentalist, with a demo tape of my material, eventually led to my first full-time salaried gig with the Country Gentlemen in 1986.”

Reflecting back on some of the lasting influences on his approach to music and performing, Keith points first to the way his father was able to “effectively communicate the ‘fun factor’ in playing music.” And he singles out a “life-changing experience” working with Rose Maddox in a country band at Sharkey’s Casino in Gardnerville, Nevada, in 1982. “I’d been working on improving my less-than-mediocre stagecraft skills, and was in total awe of her performing ability,” he explains. “She was keenly sensitive to the energy coming back from the audience, which was a totally new concept for me. I was absolutely amazed at her ability to captivate the crowd each time the curtain went up, take them on a 35-minute ride, and leave them on their feet when the curtain went down. She could sense when they were bored, as well as when they were tired, and set the tempos and songs accordingly. Rose worked without a set list and didn’t play an instrument onstage, yet she never took her eyes off the crowd. This was critical. It was the first time I remember actually gathering the courage to look out into the audience in the same manner. ‘There’s no secret to being an entertainer,’ she told me, ‘you simply have to be yourself, and don’t be afraid to let it show.’ OK then, I thought, perhaps I can do it too.”

Now a music industry veteran of more than four decades—a dedicated instructor at many of the top national and international acoustic music workshops and camps, a professional member of the IBMA, and an honorary lifetime member of the California Bluegrass Association—Keith takes special pleasure in leading his own group, the LittleBand, with Michael Witcher (dobro and vocals), Josh Tharp (banjo and vocals), Sharon Gilchrist (mandolin and vocals), Blaine Sprouse (fiddle), and Rick Dugan (string bass). “I’d have to say that ‘setting the tone of a performance’ is a favorite part of leading the band,” he says, “not musical tone necessarily, but rather tone as it relates to the flavor of the time we spend together. Even if it’s only a 50-minute set, I like for the weight and relative intelligence of each song to come through like a good story. The end result should be entertaining, uplifting, challenging, and honest. This most easily happens by mixing the special talents of each player, providing a platform for them to flavor the dish, and then encouraging the audience to join with us. It’s more on the model of a chef (or a designated driver), and can’t be fully explained, I believe.”

And if he ever feels like he needs to stoke his own fires of inspiration? “It’s easy: I listen to the 1950 Flatt & Scruggs Mercury recording of “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” Once through normally does the trick, but I can seldom stop there. It’s the recorded antidote for creative musical stagnation, in my opinion, especially when you realize that the band cut four other classics that same day, all once through, no overdubs, Usually just thinking about that record sends me happily back to the woodshed.”

—Derk Richardson, Oakland, California-based music journalist and radio programmer, KPFA 94.1 FM