liked Heavy Metal but was afraid it would lead to a hernia. He tried Disco but discovered he had allergic reaction polyester. Free Jazz made him feel trapped. Drum circles left him feeling beat. Grunge Rock was an insult to Picker Dan’ s sense of hygiene.
It was a time when Picker Dan became just Dan. He gave up on music— or the music gave up on him. Either way, Dan tried his hand, or rather his voice, at a job in a tech support boiler-room. Hour after hour Dan would answer the phone and put people on Hold. He never got back to the people on Hold and they fired him. But it wasn’ t Dan’ s fault, not really, because Dan’ s talent was music and did not extend to computers.
Dan, still feeling like there was no place for him in the world of music, did not know what to do next. He didn’ t want to get another job. He found out the hard way that jobs are like Kryptonite to musicians. So he began to jog.
The Boxcar Annies at the Pine Room Gabrielle, Heather Dawn, Picker Dan, and Barry.
He jogged down one block and then another. He picked up speed. He was running. He didn’ t know where he was running to or what he was running from. He ran in fair weather and foul, in daylight and dark. Across the landscape of America he ran. Rumors began spreading about him. Some folks said he was running from the Law. Some folks said he was running from a tragic love affair. No matter, Dan kept running. He had been back and forth and up and down the length and breadth of this great land when there just south of the cross roads of America, Dan stopped running.
Dan saw what was to become his destiny in the form of the words on a green sign“ Bill Monroe Memorial Highway.” He picked up his pace again and in short order he saw another sign that said“ Bean
Picker Dan with Otis Todd.
Blossom,” and a third that read“ Bill Monroe’ s Memorial Music Park,” where Dan directed his feet. When he heard the ringing of a banjo, the trill of the mandolin, a guitar bein’ flat picked, a fiddle singin’ out a melody, and all of it anchored by a solid thumpin’ dog house bass, Dan knew he had found what he had been looking for all his life— Bluegrass.
Very soon after finding the Mecca of Bluegrass music, Dan enrolled in the Otis Todd Institute of Advanced Country and Bluegrass Musicology. It was there that Dan met a few other fellers, not unlike himself, and they put a band together called The White Lightning Boys. No matter how often they gigged, Picker Dan still had talent left over.
When he wasn’ t playing, he was thinking. When Picker Dan was thinking his thoughts were not always pure. They strayed towards the unnatural, like“ Why does a man have to choose between his guitar and his mandolin? Why can’ t he have both … and play them at the same time?”
Luckily, Picker Dan did find more outlets for his obsessive need to make music. He was an integral part of the Keenan Rainwater band and the Indiana Boys. He plays with another picker prodigy and fellow White Lightning Boy, Barry Elkins, in a duo called Lucky and the Kid and with the Boxcar Annies, a band with Barry’ s daughter, Heather Dawn Elkins, and Gabrielle Steenberger.
So that’ s some of the story of Picker Dan the guitar man, the mandolin man, and all-round good guy. You can usually find him playin’ in one of the local venues, in one band or the other. If you’ re you are listening to a smokin’ Bluegrass band, the feller on the guitar will likely be Picker Dan Bilger. •
Nov./ Dec. 2015 • Our Brown County 31