Rarely, if ever, will you find two more differing musical personalities than Ted Nugent - the raffish, rough-and-tumble, 53-year-old rock-guitar showman who has sold 30 million albums worldwide - and Alison Krauss, the 31-year-old dulcet songstress whose award-winning vocals and fiddling, some say, have brought American bluegrass to mainstream audiences as effectively as Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs or Ricky Skaggs ever did. Yet their surprising similarities mirror the ever-growing diversity of Harley-Davidson lovers - a diversity that Harley fans say reflects the growth and history of America itself.
That diversity might be the theme of the historic motorcycle company's "100th Anniversary Open Road Tour" - a series of extravaganzas that marks Harley's first century of existence - and which makes its second of 10 U.S. stops this weekend, starting tomorrow afternoon at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course.
If it's like the first, held last month in Atlanta, the festival will be three days of education, entertainment and outreach. Harley-Davidson, according to event producer Robert Butters, chose Baltimore as a venue not just for its proximity to other Eastern cities, but also because 25-acre venues like Pimlico are hard to come by, and it'll need every square inch. Harley exhibits will pack the track - tents showcasing vintage cycles, historical presentations, riding venues for bikers and newcomers alike - but Butters, a Londoner and onetime theatrical producer for Andrew Lloyd Webber, is just as proud of the musical slate he has assembled. "Nowhere else in the world will there be such an assortment of acts in one place," he says.
The card includes 13 performers, starting tomorrow at 2:15 p.m. with Southside Johnny, the Neville Bros. and the Marshall Tucker Band. On Saturday, reggae kings the Wailers; up-and-comers Default; Krauss and her band, Union Station, and Hootie and the Blowfish will star. Sunday's roster includes Billy Idol, Bob Dylan and, last but not least, the high-powered Nugent. (For complete coverage, see Page 3 of LIVE.)
"We've been setting attendance records at state fairs everywhere," Nugent says. "This is the peak of my career. Every night is dreamland, my musical jihad.
"When I choose to be progressive, jump back, Jack, or get singed."
Nugent, a conversational stick of dynamite, is hardly the model of the dissolute, left-wing rock star. Known for his support of gun ownership and bowhunting; his seat on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association; his authorship of best-selling books like God, Guns & Rock 'n' Roll and the Kill It & Grill It cookbook, and his lifelong opposition to drug and alcohol use, he is seen by many in rock as a right-wing crank - a fact that amuses him.
How to explain Ted Nugent's Spirit of the Wild, the video series he created that has netted more than $3 million for PBS affiliates? Or his recent win of the James Fenimore Cooper award for writing, his induction into the Native American Strongheart Society, and his founding of the Ted Nugent Kamp for Kids?
"In a world of sheep," he says, "I love being the grizzly bear."
All his works incorporate a belief in the American dream that, to him, calls for individual freedom, resistance to evil, community involvement ("we-the-people stuff") and respect for the mystical forces of nature. "I love to tell the truth," he says. "It's fun. I have supreme confidence. Part of it comes from never having taken a drug or drink, never eating an unhealthy piece of food. I have a discipline that guides me at being a positive force - as a parent, a husband, a voter, a community member, a participant in self-government."
He deeply respects "the continuing rush hour for excellence [in the United States]," he says, "and I salute it and celebrate it. But I see the decay of society in AIDS, obesity, welfare whore-ism. The fact that Clinton was president was a nauseating barometer. The lunatic fringe is expanding."
That fringe excludes the musicians who jazzed him as a boy in Detroit. "I have no white influences," he says. "Bo [Diddley], Chuck [Berry], the black artists of that era, were it. Both the musical blackness and the hunting blackness - it comes from black aboriginal peoples as hunters. I tread the primordial goop."
The Harley gig should please Nugent.
"I love all forms of music," he says. "I should clarify that rap and hip-hop are not music. I represent the R&B; factor. I also happen to be a fan of Britney Spears and the boy bands. They deliver the goods."
He spurns country and bluegrass, whose rhythms he finds simplistic even when he respects the musicianship. Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited was a masterpiece, he says, "though Bob did his species a disservice by celebrating chemical abuse. ... The notion that drugs inform consciousness is ridiculous. Drooling does not enhance one's creative possibilities. Just try to get Jerry Garcia on the phone."
Krauss, on the other hand, is such a Nugent admirer she's convinced the right bluegrass CD would change his mind - and might take one to the show for him.
"I'm a big '70s and '80s rock fan," she says. "Journey, Foreigner, AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd - I love them. I just bought the Chicago greatest hits collection. I got a George Benson CD from Walgreens."
But bluegrass, she says, is far more complex rhythmically than many realize. "Ted probably just isn't educated to it. A lot of progressives use 7/8 -time signatures just for the sake of doing it. It should just feel good. If it feels good, I love finding out later that it's in some crazy signature."
Krauss, a child-prodigy fiddler in Kentucky at age 5, discovered her genre three years later and began entering - and winning - fiddle contests. She later became famous for the potent yet angelic voice that still stuns colleagues and fans. Her first Grammy nomination came at 18; she has won, individually and collectively, 13 in the time since, and her three songs on the soundtrack of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? helped advanced the cause of bluegrass still more.
"That record affects people the way Flatt and Scruggs did on The Beverly Hillbillies," she says. "I'm happy just to be a part of work like that."
Krauss' longtime band, Union Station, features some of the top instrumentalists in bluegrass, including guitarist Dan Tyminski, who provided George Clooney's voice in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Ron Block, a banjo player known to incorporate rock rhythms into bluegrass. "I'm lucky to make a living at my hobby," she says, "let alone play with people like these."
Krauss admits, if shyly, a less than fanatical interest in Harleys, but "when I heard who-all was playing, I got real excited," she says. She played the Atlanta show - Nugent was on the opposite stage as her band played - and she has met and played with Dylan.
"We got to open for him for six dates," she says, "and I played fiddle for him on [the song] 'One More Night.'" He was "real quiet" when she met him, and "his daughter was there, deservedly getting his attention. I didn't want to horn in on that."
Recent motherhood has changed Krauss' life. "It's unbelievable how differently you see the world," she says. "Life sounds good. It improves everything in your singing. And the older you get, the better you sing."
She might be speaking for Nugent, whose four kids - ranging in age from 12 to 32 - he calls "the Nugent tribe." He loves nothing more than to shoot hoops with his sons and won't let his youngest, Rocco, play Nintendo till he's done with his chores.
Nugent, sounding very little like Krauss, says he has "no peer," including Dylan - who erred, says Nugent, when he went acoustic. But he supports the Harley fest, Dylan and all, for what it represents.
"This is an inclusive attitude," he says, "and I applaud that. It's the way to go for Harley-Davidson. Their success pivots on appealing to a mass demographic.
"They're doing it right."
That demographic has changed, of course, over the past century, to the point where the average Harley rider is 45. The fest, adds producer Butters, will also reach out to kids under 14, all of whom gain admission for free.
Krauss might be speaking for all of them, though, when explaining why she came on board for the Pimlico gig. Like Nugent would tell you, it's very American. "Gosh, it's pretty simple, I guess," she says. "I just love good-time music."
The facts
What: The Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour
When: 1 p.m.-11 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday, 1 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday
Where: Pimlico Race Course, 5201 Park Heights Ave.
Admission: $55 per day; kids 13 and under free when accompanied by an adult.
Call: 410-481-SEAT
Web site: www.harley davidson.com