PICTURES OF MY WORLD

vada, 2

Day 7 of the blogathon asks for pictures of one's creative space. My creative space is my head and heart. I'll start with the heart. Above is baby Vada, the child I fell in love with the day she was born. Her mother painted a wall flat black and Vada practices her art there.

vada art, age 2yr 2wk

 





Vada drew this image sitting on the kitchen floor. Her mother asked her to draw a picture of TJ and this is what she did. She concentrated such that she never lifted her mind from the image until it was done. She was drawing from her mind. It makes a perfect mask. I could cut out eye holes and wear it for a mask if it were on thicker paper. But I wouldn't cut holes in it. You can see the eyes, nose, mouth and an ear. She filled in the whole face. It is framed now and hanging on my wall. Willard Gayheart framed it. I was tickled out of my mind to get something by her before she evolved into stick figures.

 

 

found art

 

found art

 

found art

 



Found art is a regular feature of my blog. At top is what was left after a bank changed locations and took down the old sign. They left the fluorescent bulbs turned on at night, making this fabulous piece of Dan Flavin art in Sparta. Sparta doesn't have much public art. So I appreciate it where I find it. In the middle is a huge pile of silage (ground corn stalks) for dairy cows. The mound of silage is covered with white tarp held in place by black circles. I see this once a week and love it every time I see it. At bottom is something found in the basement at Crystal and Justin's. Crystal had been spray painting something. While I was getting some pictures of it, she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Found art." She said, "Oh my God!" (She said God a few notes higher than Oh my, Southern style.) These are examples of art I see everywhere.

 



steve lewis and josh scott

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

scott freeman

edwin lacy and willard gayheart

 

bobby patterson

the crooked road ramblers at the Jubilee in Sparta

 

Above are my artist friends. These are the artists I spend time with and call my friends. At top is Steve Lewis, Master bluegrass banjo and guitar picker, good story teller, and his step-son Josh Scott, who Steve raised as his own, who became his best friend and his bass player. The painting on the wall behind Steve is my portrait of Willard Gayheart, the guitar player with Skeeter and the Skidmarks. Willard is 81 and has been picking all his life. This means he's good. He plays rhythm so well the musicians of the region love to make music with Willard for his near-perfect rhythm. Willard doesn't strum. He hits an upper string and a lower string, individually, each lick. When he has Orange Blossom Special going on, it works him. The pencil drawings on the walls are his. The venue is his frame shop/gallery. Willard has been singing with a Galax bluegrass band, the Highlanders, over forty years. The ones living are all old guys now. Their fiddler, Buddy Pendleton, is one of the great ones. He's near gone now, I hear. Skeeter and the Skidmarks made two cds on Hay Holler label in the early 90s. Then Edwin Lacy, banjo, had to leave the area for several years, so Scott and Willard started a new band, Alternate Roots, an amazing bluegrass band. Steve Lewis played banjo in the band. They made 4 albums and the bass player had to leave the band. Alternate Roots disbanded, Edwin returned and Skeeter started back up. You can hear them on YouTube. I've made hundreds of music videos that are on YouTube. My name there is hobblealong1. The fiddle is Scott Freeman, who also plays mandolin. He is married to Willard's daughter, Jill, a good bluegrass singer who doesn't like the stage. That's Sandy Mason's head sticking up from behind Willard. She plays bass. Oh they have a good sound. Scott and Edwin composed several of the songs they recorded. The song they open shows with is one of Scott's compositions, Groundhog Shuffle. It is mandolin and banjo mayhem. They're putting together a new "project" now.           I put Bobby Patterson's picture in there because Bobby is important in my life. He has a music store in Woodawn, Virginia, and a recording studio in the basement. Old-Time Herald magazine was begun in his basement in the 1970s. Over the last 40 or more years he has recorded old-time bands of Southwestern Virginia, Heritage Records, and has a catalog that is out of this world for music of the region. He played guitar on the finest old-time album my ears have ever beheld, JUNE APPLE, with Tommy Jarrell on fiddle, Kyle Creed on banjo and Audine Lineberry on bass. Jarrell and Creed have been dead at least thirty years. Both are legends and were legends while they were living. Bobby is one of the Highlanders and also sings with gospel groups. First time I met Bobby, we'd known OF each other for years, I said, "In my way of seeing, you're the most important man in Southwest Virginia." He said, "Thank you." He knew what I was saying. Thanks to Bobby we have a great collection of old-time music of this region on record and he puts together recordings of the Galax fiddlers convention every year. Plus, he's a terrific musician. His dad was a legend fiddler of his generation. Our bond is our dedication to the music.          At bottom is Kilby Spencer on fiddle with his band the Crooked Road Ramblers. Great fiddler, son of a great fiddler, Thornton Spencer, who is in his later years the great old fiddler of his generation. Thornton's wife Emily plays banjo and sings with their band, Whitetop Mountain Band. In my own personal estimation, WMB is the hottest old-time band in the region right now, and has been for years. They are most characterized by their drive and their musicianship. Kilby knows so many songs he's become a living encyclopedia of the music of the Central Blue Ridge. Kilby's aim in life is to be a great fiddler. He is well on his way and has a momentum going that will take him there. His band has good drive too.   

 



medea by tj worthington

on the side of the house approaching from parking space

donkey jack

 

Closer to home now. The painting above, Medea, I did something like 15-20 years ago. It doesn't leave the house. It is on my wall all the time. I don't put it up for sale because I don't want to lose it. Plus, I'm the one it's important to. I see it a stage with Medea in foreground planning what she has to do, pacing, the rock behind her a Greek rock mountain and the Greek archipelago, the night sky howling its horror seeing what Medea has in her mind. Below Medea is the a little sign I put on the house soon after I moved in. The first one rotted away with time. This is the second one. And here comes Donkey Jack. This is one of the first pictures I got of him. That's my friend Jack the saxophone player. I put hee-haw and braying out of my mind and I hear a saxophone. It is the same sound, low range tenor, a note John Coltrane might have found. The donkeys have been a great source of creative inspiration since they've arrived in my life. I thank God every day in my heart I've lived long enough to know donkeys.

 

 

 

found art

 

 

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THE GRASSY HOLLOW BOYS LIGHT UP THE FRONT PORCH

scott freeman, willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

Another night of good music from home, acoustic mountain music by Willard Gayheart, guitar, and Scott Freeman, mandolin and fiddle, with Mike Gayheart playing bass. They are calling themselves the Grassy Hollow Boys, Scott and Willard with whoever they can find available for banjo and bass for a given show. They said Jimmy Zeh plays banjo with them, but couldn't make it for this show. They found a banjo player who might make it, but didn't. No problem. Scott and Willard together make the most satisfying shows I've seen and heard there at the Fiddle and Plow Show at Woodlawn, Virginia, in Willard's frame shop and gallery for his extensive collection of pencil drawings of regional people and musicians of the past and present. A second book of Willard's drawings has recently been published. It's his pictures hanging on the walls. Willard and Scott play together at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway once a week, I think Thursdays, during the summer months. Scott is married to Willard's daughter, Jill. He and Willard have made music together at least twenty-five years. They have had bands together, Alternate Roots, a stellar, first-rate bluegrass band of Scott and Willard's own style of bluegrass. And Skeeter and the Skidmarks, disbanded for several years because the banjo player had to leave the area, and when he returned years later, the band is back together. They have been called a "progressive old-time band," and I can't improve that. It's what they do.

 

willard gayheart

 

 

Willard and Scott have been giving concerts at the frame shop, The Front Porch, where they bring out about forty folding chairs for the show. Excellent sound system Scott keeps at a level where it sounds like there is no sound system, but it's easy to hear everything clearly. Tonight's sound was about the best ever. I think Scott has been working with the sound system, fine tuning it. The audience is often less than twenty, and often full. Last time Skeeter played, they had to bring up chairs from downstairs and still there were people standing against the back wall. Wayne Henderson fills the place up too. Full is about fifty. Everybody is comfortable. The people who go every week to almost every week, of which I'm one, all know each other after something like four years of hearing some of the finest music from the Central Blue Ridge every week. We're spoiled. There is no place any of us want to go to hear better music. There isn't any better music. Some more popular, some more dynamic, some more showy, but to my ear, even Willie Nelson's band doesn't compare to Scott and Willard's bands. Back in May I saw Willie Nelson and was struck by what a good band he had, and struck even more that the band was no better than what we hear at Woodlawn on Friday nights. Not less, but not better either. My respect for Scott's and Willard's music is the fullest of any music I have ever loved. They bring in different musicians of the Central Blue Ridge who play for $5 a seat.

 

scott freeman

 

Jeanette Williams has played there I think three times. She won bluegrass music award for best traditional vocalist twice. Her band, Jeanette Williams band, has made about ten albums. She's Nashville bluegrass and says every time she's plays at the Front Porch with maybe fifteen people in the audience that it's her favorite place to play. She gets no more than gas money when she plays there. Her husband, Johnny, is with her and he's fine bluegrass musician and singer on his own. He's recently played with Big Country Bluegrass, one of many he's made music with. It's some high-powered straight-ahead bluegrass when they play. The VW Boys, from Bristol, have played three times, as well. Another auditorium bluegrass band that likes to play at Willard's place for gas money because everyone in the audience listens. No coughing, no getting up and going to the bathroom. It happens, but rarely. Everyone is there for the music, because they love the music, go when they don't know who is playing. We all know that whoever is playing is music we want to hear. This Fiddle and Plow Show can come under the heading, Best Kept Secrets. They don't advertise. People hear about it in their own ways. Scott and Willard open every show with two songs. Going by my own musical taste, I'd rather hear Scott and Willard than any of the people who play there. It wouldn't do to have Scott and Willard every week. But it's great to have them give a show after ten or so by other musicians. It's always refreshing for me when they give a show. Neither Scott nor Willard take any money from it. All the money goes to the guest musicians. Scott and Willard won't have it. It's not what they're about.

 

willard's henderson guitar

 

I've not been able to go for several weeks due to one circumstance and another, and lately because city night driving through Galax blinds me with the bright car lights. This is a new condition of my eyes. Night driving with other cars on the highway gives me a fit anymore visually. It makes me uneasy and I do it less and less. I missed some really good music. And I was glad the show was Willard and Scott. Scott's mandolin is out of this world. The sound system carried Willard's guitar the best I've heard it. Willard sang the songs he loves that I have learned to love hearing him sing them. When It's Nighttime in Nevada, one of my favorites, the Bob Wills Texas Swing song, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon. This show was the best Willard has done that song, one of his I love the most. A lot of the people take it for a children's song, but it's not. It's a beautiful love song. They had a good rhythm going, a kind of Forties big band rhythm Bill Monroe used in his bluegrass that has gone out of bluegrass over the years. Willard and Mike kept the rhythm going at a pace that makes you tap your foot double-time. They played another of my Willard favorites, I Get The Blues When It Rains. It rained when I found you. It rained when I lost you. That's why I get the blues when it rains. Beautiful song, a pop song from the 1920s. He sang several songs of his own composition, Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog, one we love every time we hear it. He sang Hank Williams' song, Mama Tried. To my ear, Willard has made that song his own.  And one of his more recent songs, My Henderson Guitar.

 

mike and willard reflected in the window and mirror

 

Scott played several songs of his composition and sang a Bob Wills song, Roly Poly, a good Western Swing song that Scott performs so well he has made it his own. By made it his own, I mean the way Jimi Hendrix made Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower his own. He played an instrumental on the mandolin of Sweet Georgia Brown that was killer. I don't usually use that word, like awesome, but it fits here. It's the only word. My old banjo pickin friend, Junior Maxwell, would say of Scott that he has found every note there is in a mandolin. He has only said that of Earl Scruggs where the banjo is concerned. I believe if he'd heard Scott picking on every song he played he would have come away from it saying Scott has found them all. Scott would not say that. And maybe Junior would not say it. But I do. I've heard Scott smoke his mandolin such that the others in the band looked at him in awe like, What got into you? That was in an Alternate Roots show at the Blue Ridge Music Center scheduled right after Scott won the mandolin competition at the Wayne Henderson Festival. He was playing the new mandolin he'd won made by Wayne Henderson. He tore it up. Steve Lewis standing beside him playing banjo looked at him like he'd found a hole in the stratosphere and went through it. In the mountain tradition, Scott is not a show-off musician. He just plays music so beautifully he doesn't need to pretty it up with flourishes to draw attention to himself. His musicianship is about addressing the song itself as beautifully as he can make it. Scott and Willard satisfy my ear to the same degree Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys give me musical satisfaction. I feel privileged in a very real way to be one of the people who knows the Fiddle and Plow Show is happening. They are my primary source of music in this time of the life. I feel like I have grown into them over years of listening to every kind of music, educating my ear to the place I can appreciate the music Willard and Scott make.

 

 

willard

 

 

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SKEETER & THE SKIDMARKS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT SKY

skeeter and the skidmarks

scott freeman, edwin lacy, sandy mason, willard gayheart

 

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

Friday night, Skeeter & the Skidmarks lit up the sky over Woodlawn VA with traditional music Skeeterized. Their music holds the audience's attention and doesn't let go. Sometimes I closed my eyes to hear better and the difference was radical. It's the best example I know for how sight limits hearing. I watch these four people whose music I've listened to long enough that I know all the words, hearing them make music, watching them pick and sing, wowed by every moment, happy to be in the presence of this music as good for the soul as laughing. I close my eyes and the quality of the sound I'm hearing increases what seems like immeasurably. I understand why Doc Watson had such a good ear for playing his guitar and banjo, why blind musicians seem to hear the music they are making more clearly than ones distracted by sight. I get into a grove with my eyes closed, sit flowing with the music, open my eyes and the music changes. Eyes closed, it is more like listening to a cd at home, relaxed, grooving to the sound. Eyes open, it's a bunch of people picking their instruments, it's even social in that I see I am among about forty people and know a lot of them. I might be looking at what Willard is doing with his guitar strings while Scott is tearing up his mandolin. I'll miss much of what Scott is doing because my focus is on Willard's strings. I pay attention to what Scott is doing and I lose what Edwin is doing. Sometimes I focus my attention on Sandy, because that's when I best hear what she's doing with the bass. Eyes closed, everybody's individual sound flows with the other sounds as a unit. I like the concert experience of eyes open awhile, closed awhile. To my ear, it is two different musical experiences in one. A quarter century ago at a Frank Sinatra concert, I was so drunk that I saw two of him through the entire show. I think of it as seeing Frank Sinatra twice.

 

scott and edwin

 

scott freeman

 

I think of Skeeter as the house band at the Fiddle and Plow series. This may be their seventh show there. Not complaining. For my satisfaction, they don't play enough. Several weeks ago, I had to miss a show that was Scott and Willard. Those are the best ones for my ear. I love to hear Scott and Willard pick and sing together. They've made music together for so many years, they move together as one. If I had a big wad of money, I'd want to produce a project by Scott and Willard, Live At The Front Porch, because it needs doing and nobody has done it yet. Like Skeeter, Scott and Willard's sound is their own. To them, it's like nothing because they're so used to it. To my listening ear it is dynamite. Soft dynamite. The kind that blows your mind and makes you happy. Skeeter started the show Friday night with Willard singing Silver Dew On The Bluegrass. It's a beautiful song and Willard brings it to life. Willard likes to take old songs from the 1920s and before, and make them his own. Drifting And Dreaming, I Love You Nelly, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, a Bob Wills song. Unfortunately, the audience takes Little Red Wagon for a children's song and discourage Willard from singing it. They laugh at me when I request it, and I think in turn the unspeakable. Scott sings some good Bob Wills songs too. Another of Willard's old songs I like to hear him sing is Nighttime In Nevada. Then there is The Yellow Rose of Texas, a song Skeeter and the Skidmarks made their own, Willard singing it.  

 

sandy and willard

 

dori freeman

  

Dori Freeman and David Long opened the show with some of the songs she is singing now. David played mandolin accompaniment to her singing that flowed well with her sound. I was struck again by Dori's new degree of control with her voice. Her singing has become more conscious after some years now of performance and practice. I've seen Dori's singing grow and it brings to mind watching my baby friend, Vada, grow. Both are doing something new each time I see them. This time, Dori's singing was on a whole new level. It is still her, still her voice. She's fine tuning it. She's paying very close attention to it the way a musician pays close attention to an instrument, finding the subtle nuances, listening. I was thinking of Carter Stanley, not that she sings like him; his voice played with its own sound like Dori is doing. This is the first time I've heard her sing since she has become a mother. Her music has improved immeasurably since she has been with David. She was good before, and gets better. By now, her singing commands the hearing of the audience. It always has, but now it's in awe. David playing a mandolin is in the zone we think of as "professional," meaning extra good, and Dori's singing has entered that zone. Together, they are working very well musically. It feels like their life together is making music. Dori has a baby, she has the man of her life. She is in double love now and soaring with her music. It is a good time in Dori's life. I'm happy for her. I was hoping she would bring the baby, but it's not a good idea to be hauling so new a baby around in the cold night air. Mothers know it better than I do.

 

david long and dori freeman

 

edwin lacy

 

Edwin Lacy, the banjo in Skeeter, has begun a new phase of his life, recently married to a woman named Roye. Edwin's demeanor has brightened up considerably. I don't mean he was hang-dog before, but I see in him a new light that tells me he is doing all right. I'm happy for Edwin, too. Edwin has a good woman and Roye has a good man. He was wearing a ball cap with a logo that said Wild Goose. It's the name of a new church idea he has arrived at on Tuesday evenings, rocking chairs instead of pews. People bring instruments and they make music. It's the other side of Hillsville, an hour and a half from home. I want to make the trip every week, but every Tuesday I don't want to drive for three hours at the end of the day. I'm even a little shy of driving two hours on a Friday night. This Friday night was one of those black nights that was opaque but for where headlights fell. I was not comfortable driving either way, going or coming home. Plus, I'm so paranoid about highway patrol now, I drive 45 in a 55 and use a turn signal even if there's not a car in sight. I don't like to drive anymore because of the paranoid feeling, esp in opaque darkness. This is new and I don't like it, but there it is. I had not seen Edwin in several months. I was glad to have a few minutes to talk with him before the show. Sandy too. Had a good visit with her before the show. Dori and David were asked to join the band opening the second half. Driving home, I did not play any music in the car, let my mind flow with a mix in my head of Lucinda Williams singing Ventura, and Dori singing Prairie Song. They flowed in and out of each other all the way home.  

 

dori freeman

 

dori and david with skeeter and the skidmarks

 

 

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SKEETER & THE SKIDMARKS AND THE WOLFE BROTHERS

skeeter and the skidmarks

Saturday night Skeeter & the Skidmarks played on the indoor stage at the Blue Ridge Music Center nearby on the Parkway. Expecting it to be an outdoor event, I took folding chair and a bottle of gatorade. At the door I had to turn around and carry folding chair back to the car. I kept the bottle of gatorade in the lower right pocket of cargo pants. Inside, it's announced no food or drinks. I thought: shit. I wasn't going to carry the bottle back to the car, so I didn't drink from it. Didn't see any police, so it felt like I might not spend the night in the Galax jail for disobedience. Outlaw on Government property! And, of course, I'm sitting there thinking the republicans will shut the place down first chance they get, and they're working toward it, same as they're working toward shutting down the post office and Social Security, a step at a time. Since our government has turned against we-the-99-percent, it felt like I was behind enemy lines on federal government property. I told myself to stop that kind of thinking and enjoy the music. It was easy once the music started. Republicans will shut the place down soon enough; enjoy it while we have it, I told myself.

skeeter and the skidmarks with dancers

The place was packed, full to capacity. I questioned the thinking of whoever put Skeeter to open for the Wolfe Brothers. Even the Wolfe Brothers questioned it. Skeeter gave them a booger of a musical act to follow. When the Wolfe Brothers came onto the stage, they looked a little bit in shock, like how do we follow that? Casey Hash, guitar, said right off he doesn't know why his band was scheduled to play after Skeeter. I'd say it was rough for the Wolfe Brothers, an old-time band, to step onto the stage after the audience had just been Skeeterized. By the time I walked in the door, not many seats were left. I found a seat that was good for getting pictures, but less than ideal for sound. The sound in the place was good for the audience as a whole and I was in lower right corner, kind of under one of the speakers. The only difference between where I sat and the ideal was volume. Of course, I wanted it rock concert volume stereo. I wanted Scott's mandolin and Edwin's banjo to rock my world. I'm not complaining about the sound system. Considering I had less than the best seat in the place for sound, it was still good, very clear sound. I chose the spot for pictures over sound. I'm well acquainted with Skeeter's sound. I like to hear the next new way they'll play their songbook. If I were riding in a pickup with a friend and a Skeeter cd was playing, the volume was such that I'd ask, "Could we have just a little more volume?" But it was an auditorium full to the last seat of white middle class grownups making it obvious, even to a child, I was not the only one there. At home I can hear it any way I like it, don't even need headphones.

skeeter & the skidmarks

light from somebody else's flash

I've heard Skeeter play as Skeeter more than half a dozen times. Every time I've heard them, they play in a new way they've not played before. Once, they came on strong, blew the roof off the place. Another time they sat down and made the music leaning toward folk style. At one they were playing loose and free, at another paying close articulate attention to the notes. No matter how they approach their music, it has music for its foundation and purpose. Everybody in the band is a musician who plays music first. Their approach to the music this time was very clear, very articulate, no bombast, just masterful picking and good understand-the-words kind of singing. They had on their good-behavior minds. They didn't cut up between songs like at Fiddle & Plow shows where they're at home. They played Skeeter's greatest hits. I don't know that I'd ever head Skeeter with a big audience of people from everywhere. In a way, they were giving people from Away a sampling of what is going on in mountain music of this region. Edwin's banjo wowed the audience. He didn't overdo it with a loud country banjo gettin er done. He played quietly sometimes, esp opening his Theme from Dr Zhivago and Gentle On My Mind, both of which he plays clawhammer banjo, Edwin style. At the beginning, when they played Groundhog Shuffle, most often at the Front Porch they use that tune to open with a bang. This time they slowly crept into it, Scott doing some almighty picking, others joined in and off they went.

sandy mason

willard gayheart

edwin lacy

scott freeman

Introducing a song he'd written, Willard told of the time in the mountains of East Kentucky where he grew up, the women would go out on a certain day in springtime looking for greens to make salad, then called salet. In such moments, I attempted to pretend I was passing through the mountains, staying in a motel nearby, this my first mountain music experience. I'd never be the same after hearing this and being unable to hear it again. I'd be compelled to buy a cd. When I'd get home, I'd start looking for websites to find cds of more of their music and devour YouTube for it. I felt the audience connect with every individual in the band, with their personalities, with their musicianship, their singing, their songwriting, and the whole band. Sandy sang her wonderful Carter Family song, When The Roses Bloom In Dixie. To say I'd never heard Skeeter play like they played last night, is like saying one winter is different from the others. Every winter is unique unto itself. Same with the other seasons, every year unique. I was most interested hearing the band's manner of playing, like usual. Every time I've heard them play, the way they present the songs is unique, more in feeling or attitude. I've told them they are my new Rolling Stones, meaning they satisfy my ear as totally in this time of my life as the Rolling Stones did in another time. I can still listen to the Stones in full appreciation, but I'd rather listen to Skeeter & the Skidmarks. Both bands are loaded with stellar musicianship and music. Every tune Skeeter played had a polished, professional edge to it that was neither too much nor too little. It was just right. Their sound was clean and clear, relaxed at home, masterful picking that served the music without drawing attention to the musician. They made no more of themselves than would musicians in a classical quartet. 

 

casey hash and donna correll

jerry correll and dale morris

I was feeling a little bit sheepish for the Wolfe Brothers when they came on, but they did it. They busted loose and I didn't feel a bit of a let down. They jumped in and did it their way. Old-time is a square dance music, after all. These musicians have played many a square dance. They know how to make dancers kick their feet. I believe it was in 2008 I saw a show at Glendale Springs of four bluegrass bands, one of them the Wildwood Valley Boys with Michael Cleveland playing fiddle, totally awesome, and Whitetop Mountain was the last band to play. I felt sorry for Whitetop. What a thing to drop in their lap, to follow four driving bluegrass bands. When Whitetop Mountain Band hit their first notes, all that went before vanished like a mist at sunrise. It was on. Wolfe Brothers did not fade behind Skeeter, either. They hit the ground running and kept it up. It has been a few years since I had heard them make music. I missed them when they played at Fiddle & Plow, for what reason I don't remember. Dale Morris said they'd be playing at the Fiddle & Plow in the next few weeks. I will not miss this one, unless it's the night I go to Roanoke for a Willie Nelson concert. Dale's banjo is awfully sound. By sound, I mean he's right there with the rhythm, keeping it steady and clear with dancing melody. He plays a very respectable banjo. For many years Dale played bass in Whit Sizemore's band with Tom Norman playing banjo.

the wolfe brothers

Casey Hash has written another Caty Sage song besides the one Eddie Bond sang. It's a good song. I have an issue of my own that has nothing to do with anybody else, that I don't believe it was a tragic story for Caty Sage. By way of an Indian trail, she was taken to Ohio to be adopted the daughter of a chief of the Wyandotte tribe in Ohio. I expect she was handled very carefully and nicely by her captor all the way. Maybe. Maybe not. Evidently, this chief had word out he was looking for a princess. At age 6, first grade, Caty became the daughter of a chief, privileged, blond hair, the coolest kid in the tribe all of a sudden. The warrior she married became the next chief when the old man died. When the second husband died, her next husband became chief. Why would she leave that world where she had a good life with people that cared about her? She wasn't anything at all like a slave. She went native. What kind of tragedy is that? The tragedy came later when the white tsunami destroyed the tribe's way of life and forced the surviving Wyandottes to the northeastern corner of Kansas in a township of Kansas City, Kansas, called Turner, where Caty spent her old age. She's buried in a cemetery beside the Kaw River, the section that was then the Indian cemetery, unmarked. An interstate runs between the cemetery and the river. Caty's brother found her while their mother was in her later years, but Caty refused to return. It was a tragedy for the folks back in Elk Creek. She had a life. She undoubtedly had her own kids and their families, her grandkids. I just have an automatic reaction when I hear about poor Caty Sage, lost her mama and her daddy, oh poor baby. She undoubtedly was scared for an unknown, though short term, period of time. When she found out she was the chief's princess daughter at age 6, I doubt she entertained many thoughts of going back. Caty's is a Cinderella story.

casey hash and donna correll

 

That was my own personal aside, a play within a play, my Shakespearean device to keep the drama moving. LOL. Believe it if you want to. It's more correctly called a rambling mind that's in the delta of this lifetime that forgets from one moment to the next. I like the delta. The water flows smoothly in the delta, shorebirds, fish, gators, skeeters. Yep, lots and lotsa skeeters. Virtual skeeters of the mind. They leave skidmarks when they come in for a landing on the runway in our minds. In stage humor, Skeeter as well as in Alternate Roots, Willard happened to be the one the jokes were pointed at. Scott made some remarks about Willard's old age and the audience didn't take to it. Most often it cracks an audience up. Willard bends over laughing. This audience felt to me like it got its back up in defense of Willard. They liked Willard. And a lot of them were old, too. Things like that work with some audiences and not with others. The only way you find out is do it and see. It was no more than a joke that didn't work. Kinda like if I'd told a joke. Plop, face down on the floor, dead joke. That didn't hurt anything. Willard had already proven himself singing a couple songs, picking his strong rhythm guitar with his new Henderson guitar. The director of the show's series, fiddler Erynn Marshall, pointed out that the walls displayed large reproductions of some of Willard's drawings, like in a gallery. The Blue Ridge Music Center is a spot that can be held up as a place and time our government did something right. 

sandy mason and willard gayheart

 

 

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EDWIN LACY AND JIMMY ZEH BANJO RAMA

scott freeman, edwin lacy, jimmy zeh, willard gayheart

 

 

Last Friday night at Willard Gayheart's Front Porch Gallery, the Fiddle and Plow Show featured the banjos of Jimmy Zeh (bluegrass with resonator) and Edwin Lacy (open-back) with Scott Freeman's mandolin and Willard's guitar. Everybody did vocals. Jimmy Zeh plays with the Highlanders with Willard and Bobby Patterson, a Galax bluegrass band of 40 years. Jimmy is an easy-going kind of guy it takes a good bit to incite a problem with. I've an idea if Jimmy were threatened he'd come out of his corner doing some serious damage. Give him a banjo and Jimmy Zeh is about making music. Both he and Edwin were asked to tell how they started playing banjo. Jimmy told a story similar to mine, in that he had been listening to rock and other music when one day he went to the Galax fiddler's convention without much anticipation. When he heard the music it was a question for him similar to mine: where have I been? This music has been in the world all my life and I'm just now hearing it! I heard my first mountain music at the Independence fiddler's convention. I remember hearing Kyle Creed, Albert Hash, Ernest East, The New River Ramblers (James Burris fiddle) and a fun old character from Zephyr NC, Melvin Slaydon. He danced while he played the fiddle. Sent the crowd into a roar. Slaydon later became mentor to Jacob Bowen of Zephyr Lightning Bolts, who grew up next door to Melvin. Jimmy's response was to start learning how to play a banjo. Mine was to put my mountain music interest on hold because punk had just started in rock and I was following its progression.

 

 

edwin lacy of skeeter & the skidmarks

 

 

I knew if I started paying too much attention to mountain music it would swallow me whole. So I stayed focused on rock for the music I listened to. The late 1970s. Patti Smith was happening, Nina Hagen, The Clash, Siouxsie & the Banshees for the start of a very long list. What I heard first time I listened to mountain music (old-time) was acoustic punk. No kidding. In punk there is no lead guitar. No long solos. Punk is everybody in the band playing all out. Few of the old-time tunes were familiar to me, so they were as fresh to my ears as a new punk album by the Ramones. In every band I heard at the fiddler's convention, acoustic, everybody in the band played all out. It was hard driving mountain music. Punk is hard driving. The only difference I was hearing was acoustic and electric. Also, in punk, the bands write their own songs, whereas in old-time they play traditional songs, each band in their own way. I was seeing pop music coming full circle, starting with old-time, then country, then bluegrass, then rock, then punk, then old-time. I can go to a Papa Roach concert or a Thrice concert with the same enjoyment I get at a Crooked Road Ramblers show or Skeeter & the Skidmarks. To my ear, it's all the same. In late Seventies I mentioned to a few people in conversation that I saw a link between punk and old-time. No Way Ho Zay! A quarter century later punk rockers around the country were discovering old-time, acoustic punk, and put away the electric guitars, took up acoustic instruments and became very respectable old-time bands. It's been something of a trend ever since, electric rockers taking up acoustic traditional music, even jazzing it like the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show.

 

 

willard and his new henderson guitar

 

 

Anyway, that's why it took me awhile to come to mountain music after first discovering it. Later, when punk became mainstream and was no longer interesting, I started listening to mountain music and, like I knew it would, it reeled me in like something I had no control over, like destiny. For the first time in my life I found music that made me weep for the beauty of it. The Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers consistently tear me up. I have wept through an entire Ralph Stanley concert for the beauty of it. On my radio show I wept every time I played Carter Family. I could never say anything. I'd mention Sara's name and would choke up, silence, push the button to play the next song. On Carter Family days I played music without talking except weather at the half hour. Couldn't say anything. Didn't need to say anything. All my listeners loved the Carter Family. At the time I started the music store I became acquainted with Scott Freeman who needed a place to teach in Sparta. He'd been at one place that didn't work out. He offered to pay me for the time spent there, but he wasn't making any money. He made a little bit, but it went to gas. I couldn't take what little pocket change he had left. I wasn't about money anyway at the store. I wanted it to be a place where mountain music could be available. I wanted to give people who love the music a chance to have some for their home sound systems. As it is, to find a cd by the Slate Mountain Ramblers, you have to go to one of their shows. That's not a problem, but they don't play all the time. For my part with Scott, I was honored to have him using my store's space. I felt like we were both doing the same thing.

 

 

scott and willard of skeeter & the skidmarks

 

 

Scott's band at the time was Alternate Roots, to this day my favorite band. He gave me a pass to get in at Alternate Roots shows. I saw them fourteen times, and drove to Hiltons, Virginia, to the Carter Fold to see Alternate Roots' last show. I found a Carter Family tshirt that night, my anti-cool tshirt. Willard played with Alternate Roots. I think of Alternate Roots an art band, like in rock I think of Garbage as an art band or Patti Smith Group or Mazzy Star. By art band, I mean full of truly excellent musicians making original superb music; in Alternate Roots' case, some traditional, some their own compositions. I later came to think of the Alternate Roots sound as another form of "bluegrass," or jazzed old-time. Bluegrass is Bill Monroe's jazzing of old-time, and Alternate Roots was Scott and Willard's particular jazzing of old-time, which doesn't have a name yet. Unless it might be Skeeter. Their band before Alternate Roots was Skeeter & the Skidmarks, a band that was called "progressive old-time." That's another way of saying they were jazzing old-time like Bill Monroe jazzed it, but their own way, which is not bluegrass. The band has a sound of its own that is the composite of each individual in the band. When they take on a new song, they "Skeeterize" it. Skeeter is a high-spirited rhythm and an acoustic sound assault by musicians that blow the mind with their musicianship and the music itself. When the Skeeter sound is happening, it is fully alive. That might be what characterizes Skeeter, makes their sound their own. Their music is the equivalent of a Merriam-Webster audio to define the word music.

 

 

edwin and jimmy

 

 

Edwin Lacy picked banjo with Skeeter & the Skidmarks, an early l990s band. Anyway, that's when their two cds were released. They'd been playing together quite awhile before recording. By the time they recorded they were solidly a band used to playing together. Edwin was called to a Presbyterian seminary because the Presbyterian church needed soul. Edwin is soulful in the pulpit as he is singing and picking his banjer. He's a soulful man. He has a great deal of silence within. Skeeter without Edwin was not Skeeter. No other banjo could be the Skeeter sound. Scott and Willard put together Alternate Roots and took a leap into a new sound that also was their own. They made four great albums and then the band went *poof* and was no more. Soon after, Edwin got himself stationed in Bristol TN/VA. There wasn't much traditional music in the Indiana sea of corn. Edwin ached to be making music with Scott and Willard again, and to make music with other musicians in the mountains where they play the music he loved. Skeeter & the Skidmarks got back together. They've played several shows since Edwin's return. They've played I think seven times at the Fiddle and Plow Show. When it's Skeeter night, the audience is ready. We all love the Skeeter sound. We feel blessed that it's twenty or so of us given the privilege to hear this band we all love as much as we love music itself. It is indeed a privilege to have this music happening an hour's driving distance from home. Scott and Willard's music resonates with my soul in whatever band they're playing in as well as together.

 







 

raymond oakes

 

 

The bell on the door rang not long into the music. In the corner of my eye I saw a man sit in the empty seat with cushions the cat used to nap on. Later, at intermission time I saw it was Raymond Oakes. I'd met him twice at Bobby Patterson's music store in the building almost connected to Willard's shop. I remember my first impression in conversation with him that he talked freely for a man of his generation from the mountains. That was the musician in him. Jr Maxwell, the banjo player could talk freely with people he didn't know. I suppose it comes from stage experience, people you don't know coming to you after the show, having to talk with all kinds of people in the music business, people in bands, a wide range of people. Bobby told me Raymond had played guitar with the Lilly Brothers at the Hillbilly Ranch in Boston for a year, and played on a country music show on tv in Richmond, Virginia, for several years. Raymond told me Everett Lilly asked him to stay with them, but Raymond had to get back to Virginia. That yankee world didn't suit him. Virginia is home and he loved his family, wanted to be close to them. This was what it took to provide for them, and he did. It just meant he had to be away a lot. That's a musician's life. I sat and spoke with him during intermission. He accompanies himself and sings country songs. The Blue Ridge Parkway produced a cd of Raymond Oakes singing some classic old country songs. I hear of him playing every once in awhile someplace in SW Virginia, close to home, like the Floyd Country Store and at Flat Ridge Community Center. I felt like he was the show's special guest. Not because he's a star, because he's not. He's an interesting man of these mountains to talk with who has a lifetime of experiences.

 

 

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FREEMAN & GAYHEART @ THE FIDDLE & PLOW

scott freeman, mike gayheart, willard gayheart

Last Friday night Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart played again at the Fiddle and Plow Show with Mike Gayheart playing bass. Scott and Willard open every week's show with two songs, then turn it over to the guest musicians. This night it was Scott and Willard the whole show with Mike playing bass. I had a kinda feeling the show might be Scott and Willard. They play a whole show every few months. For my listening pleasure, the best shows are when it is Scott and Willard. They have made so much music together, they play as one. Willard likes old songs from the 1920s, 1930s and older. One of my very favorite songs he sings is Coney Island Washboard, which he says came from around the turn of the 19th to 20th century. He sings a pop song from the 20s, Drifting and Dreaming, which he makes into a beautiful folk song. He started the show with Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, the Bob Wills Texas swing song that Willard turned into another beautiful folk song. Scott sings a Bob Wills and Hank Williams song, Roly Poly, which he makes his own, like he does every song he arranges to his own style. Scott played his instrumental, Dori's Waltz, on the mandolin exquisitely like every time he plays it.


I like it that Scott and Willard are not known outside their region, the Central Blue Ridge, and they're not big stars. They're known among musicians of the Central Blue Ridge as very respectable musicians, but they've never sought fame and fortune. They like living at home. They don't like to play anyplace so far from home they can't be back to sleep in their own beds. It's on the borderline of unbelievable to me that in someplace like the coffee shop I can mention Scott or Willard's name and I get, "Who?" Then I explain. Response: "Oh." Though if I were to say "Wayne Henderson," it's suddenly animated, "Yeah, I've heard of Wayne Henderson. He's the BEST!" He is awfully good and he does tend to win Galax almost every other year, telling me he has a few unknown equals lurking about, Scott Fore one of them. Leaving off such exaggerations as best and worst, Scott and Willard are in Wayne's league when it comes to making music, and I'd put Wayne next to Doc Watson as a picker. Wayne has played at the Fiddle and Plow Show three or four times. A few weeks ago he was in the audience when Dori Freeman was the guest performer, accompanied by Scott and Willard. Willard invited him to pick a couple tunes with them. Scott, Willard and Dori were all playing Henderson instruments. Musicians love to play his guitars; owning one is more important to a picker than a Martin.

helen white & wayne henderson at fiddle and plow

 

 

Scott has been recording a new project that should be available on cd in a month or so. Its title will be BLUE RIDGE FAR AWAY. It will have some of his musical allies with him, like Willard on guitar, Edwin Lacy old-time banjo, Steve Lewis bluegrass banjo and guitar forward motion, and I think he said Scott Manring will pick some guitar, and Dori will sing one. Scott always puts together a fine album, cd, project.  Very fine. He's a master on a mandolin and close to the same degree on the fiddle. He picks a guitar too. Then there's the part I tend to overlook, Scott's vocals. Scott is a good singer. No two ways about it. He doesn't sing with flash or bellering; he tells the words to the song as articulately as he picks his mandolin. In line with mountain tradition, Scott's voice and singing style do not call attention to himself. They call attention to the meaning in the song, only. Scott's performance style is something of an anti-performance style. He goes on stage, wherever he is playing, in the clothes he has worn all day, talks to the audience in a friendly, intimate way as one person to another, and never points a finger at himself. Willard praises him from time to time, and rightly so. Willard points out Scott's abilities as a songwriter, composer, singer, musician with several instruments, knows an unknown number of songs. Five or more years ago I made a cd of all Scott's compositions that he has recorded. I think there were 16. I played from it on one of the Saturday morning radio shows. It made an hour of some good music.

 

I feel like Scott is in a highly creative time of his life. I suspect Dori now singing, writing songs and putting on stage performances has inspired the artist in Scott, a new burst of creative energy. He plays on her projects and she plays on his. A few people doubt her for having it made, her daddy and grandpa with their places in the regions music world, knowing everybody. Scott's musician friends watched Dori grow up from a baby. They love her. They love that she turned out to be a good singer, an equally good song writer and can join them making music. They love supporting her musically. They love to see her successes. They're her friends she's known all her life. Sure, that is a little bit of privilege, but the issue is whether she is up to their support. The musicians around her know she is up to their level of musicianship. If she were not, they would be encouraging her to practice, not playing gigs with her. I'd be more inclined to call Dori's situation karma, not privilege. Her soul is obviously connected intimately with Scott and Willard. The three of them are about the same as soul mates. Sure, they have their differences, they're different people, but what I see is three people very much in tune with each other, from knowing each one of them individually. They're souls who found each other and love to make music together. It tickles the fire out of Willard to accompany his grand-baby on her albums and to sing with her on stage. It lights Willard up that Dori has become such a good singer and musician. Dori is invited to play for gigs because she is an excellent musician in her own self.

 

   

 

 dori freeman at the wayne henderson festival 2012

           with edwin lacy, mike gayheart, scott freeman, steve lewis

 

 

 

I arrived at the show Friday night a little sooner than anticipated. There were no cars ahead of me all the way. I made good time without going fast; just nobody to follow for ten miles who speeds up in passing zones and goes 35 to 40 in between. Scott and Willard were practicing when I walked in the door. They were working on songs I'd not heard them do before. My feeling by the end of the show when they had not played any of those songs I heard them practicing is that these are songs Scott has on his new project and they are learning their parts to play them together the night of the show after the cd's release. They sounded good. I liked what I heard. Scott is making some powerful music. His musical partnership with Willard over the last quarter century has created several cds together, Skeeter and the Skidmarks in the early 90s, then Alternate Roots in the 00s, two bands of what I can only call art. Skeeter and the Skidmarks are back together as a band and Alternate Roots in the past, alas. These are art bands. They are about musicianship and their own interpretations of the songs they play. It appears to me that Scott and Willard's bands are the projects of artists. Audiences appreciate their art, but as artists, Scott and Willard don't play down to the audience or get the audience charged up and hollering. They're like the Carter Family in that they present the songs beautifully, make no production of themselves, just play some really good music.

 

 

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