SERVING THE MASTER

anish kapoor

It seems like every day I see an ad someplace on facebook appealing to the white-headed to live longer, somebody has a secret to tell about living a long time. I've seen inside enough nursing homes to get the understanding long life is not necessarily desirable. I've seen enough that if Social Services commits me to one, I'll quit taking medications and/or starve myself to death. They let you do that. I call a nursing home a lumberyard, the place they stack inert boards. In the past I swore I could never live in a trailer. By this time in the life, I could live happily in one. Simple maintenance. Everything I'd need in a pod. Only problem, they're tornado targets. It was arrogance that said I couldn't live in one. Low status. Not that my status is above a trailer. It never has been. There was a time I didn't want it to show so much. Had to come down from city mind. It took a long time. I sound like Jr in his decline saying, "I aint goin to no nursin home. I'll kill myself first." I said, "No you won't. They'll drive up in an ambulance, take you out of bed, strap you down and drive you to the nursing home. You won't have a chance to kill yourself." I'm the same. If SS set out to put me in one, I couldn't stop them. Let me have my laptop and wifi. I could write a nursing home chronicle and call it Grumpy Old Bastard. Of course, it's probably not allowed. Television only. I could have friends bring me books. No, I'd be too far gone for books. Maybe the Carl children's books, pictures without words, Carl the black and tan rottweiler baby-sits baby while mama goes out shopping. Dog and baby have adventures. Baby rides Carl's back to the park. They go through the refrigerator and have snacks. Mama comes home, Carl and baby are back in place, Carl had cleaned up their mess, baby and Carl are happy to see her. She thanks good-dog Carl for keeping her baby safe. No words. You make up your own words. I could enjoy that kind of nursing home reading. In art class where we would cut out flowers from construction paper, I'd be unable to cut the paper. I'd have a sheet of orange paper and think it's beautiful as it is. I can't cut it and can't improve it. My contribution on the walls would be a sheet of orange paper, or turquoise, or yellow, whichever was put before me. I'm afraid the activities director would lose patience. 

anish kapoor

The time Jr was elder-napped and put in the nursing home for physical therapy, I went to see him every day to keep him aware he was not abandoned. His mind was feeble. I didn't want him to worry that he'd been sent off to die. During his first week, activities director, Ms New Age feel-good all the time, so happy she's dancing on air, came to the room wanting him to go to art class where they cut out flowers with construction paper. She said he'll love it. I told her he won't love it. She knew he would. I told her I know the man. He will not love it. He will not do it. He has not lost his wits and his wits have no place for cutting flowers out of construction paper. This is a mountain man. Give him a gun and a target and watch him go. You can talk to him all you want, but he won't do it. One day Wayne Henderson played in the entertainment room. I told him about it, suggested I wheel him there to see Wayne. He and Wayne made music together years before. No. "I'm not like them people." He meant he did not want Wayne to see him in a wheelchair among a bunch of old people bent over in wheelchairs. It shamed him. He wasn't that bad off and he knew it. I knew it. I did not push him beyond his decision. I understood by knowing him. He lost so much mind over the two months he was incarcerated, entering the doorway at home, he said, "Is this where I live?" He stood leaning on the walker, looked around and said, "This ain't bad. I like it." He wanted to die at home and I wanted it for him. In my way of seeing, he was too honorable a man to cast into the human landfill. In my mind's eye, it was the same as piles of dead Jews from concentration camp photographs. The old people in the place didn't make me feel as bad as the people working there did. Deceptive and indifferent on all levels from room service to management. They was just doin their jobs. My sense of it was, not hardly. They counted the minutes from the time they went on shift to the time they left. I could not let Jr lie in the bed looking at the ceiling any longer than the first minute I could get him out. 

anish kapoor

His roommate was a sad old thing nobody came to visit, incapable of taking care of himself, but had his wits about him. He hated it in there. He occupied the tv with round the clock auction channels. Jr was not interested in anything on the television. It was merely a flickering light and noise to him. I took a xerox of a Flatt & Scruggs photograph with Art Wooten, Jr's fiddler friend, and taped it to the bathroom door opposite his pillow. The bathroom door was his view. I thought the picture might be a catalyst for memories of the music, playing Foggy Mountain Breakdown on bluegrass banjo, and making music with Art Wooten playing fiddle in his band, The Green Mountain Boys. Art was Jr's favorite fiddler to pick banjo with. They were in the same league, their music flowed, they played mountain bluegrass at weekend dances. They liked playing for dancers. The dancers became part of the music. It beat the hell out of looking at a dreary old bathroom door all day. This morning on NPR I heard somebody talking about geriatrics. He said only seventeen percent of Americans die in their own beds. I was surprised at the small number. The nursing home was, indeed, Jr's destiny had I not stepped in. I moved in to take care of him because he wanted to die in his home, and I could not watch the only wise man I've ever known waste away in the lumberyard waiting to die. I wanted him to have a life, encouraged his friends to drop in and visit. I'm happy to say he left this world from his own bed asleep. A little after seven in the morning I heard from the next room his death rattle. It sounded like a straw pulling on the last of milk shake. I recognized it, though it was the only one I'd heard. I wanted him to go in peace. I wanted to keep my energy quiet and let him proceed. I wanted to get a Tibetan shaman to come in and do prayer over him for a few days. This isn't Tibet. We do things the American way. I went back to sleep to get out of his way and not distract his spirit. I woke after a couple hours. I wanted to give the spirit plenty of time to leave the body. I went into the room and sat in his wheelchair beside the bed and prayed while he was exiting the body. I said, Go, don't look back. There's nothing back here for you, your body's give out, it can't go no more. Go forward. 

anish kapoor

I dreaded making the phone call to hospice. I wanted to sit with him all day, but knew it was a dramatic fantasy. I sat with him for an hour or so, him still and permanently asleep. I wanted him to have some time. I supposed three hours was plenty. Called the hospice number. The Sunday nurse on duty, one I didn't know, came right away. I thought about staying with her and watching the procedure, but a moment came right away I realized  did not want to see it. I left the room and just a few feet into the next room I turned around for a last look. She had just picked him up from the bed in the diaper he was sleeping in, his head hanging back. I saw the Pieta. I looked away moved to the core and never looked again until the rescue squad or whatever it was backed the big truck up to the door. Three of them got out with a gurney that goes up and down, this way and that. They picked him up and strapped him onto it like lumber. I thought, Oh Lord, where is the respect? We think we're so much better than the old way, but in the old way they knew about respect. I was idealizing, not allowing that these are people at work doing what they do. They were good at it. They left, the nurse left, and there I stood on the floor gaping about in an empty house. That's it, cat shit. I was convinced God sent me to Jr for a teacher, I served him the same as serving the Master. I received him as such and he turned out to be a great teacher. He didn't know it. I learned by paying attention to him, listening to memories from his life over five years. I suspected a possibility of wisdom in him for some time and then saw it. It wasn't wisdom like he had the answers to cosmic questions. It was in his humility, his patience, his attention in the present moment, his peace with his neighbors and everyone around him. I asked him one day who he looked up to. He said, "I look up to everybody." At first I took it for a figure of speech. Knowing him for several years I saw he meant it as he said it. He did look up to everybody. It doesn't mean he looked up from a pit. He looked up to everyone with respect, basic human respect, received them for who they were devoid of judgment.  

anish kapoor himself

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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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DORI FREEMAN @ WAYNE HENDERSON FEST 2012

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

         dori freeman

          audience


Up early this morning and on the road to Mt Rogers, the Grayson Highlands State Park where the Wayne Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition happened all day long. I went as a volunteer in the tshirt selling tent 12:30 to 3:30. I wanted to be there to see Dori Freeman's performance by special invitation from Wayne himself, who has known her all her life. I was able to get my lunch first thing, a good chunk of chicken and get situated by the time Dori would be on. She had an orchestra with her. Scott Freeman, her dad, played mandolin, fiddle and guitar. Edwin Lacy played old-time banjo. Mike Gayheart, Dori's mother's brother, played bass. Steve Lewis played guitar. Dori played her Henderson guitar and sang several songs of her own composition, and several others from people like Peggy Lee and Gordon Lightfoot, and several others. Dori's singing brings Sade to my mind. She doesn't sing like Sade, but has a hauntingly experienced winsome quality that makes the association in my mind. I loved her singing the Peggy Lee song with banjo, guitars and mandolin. The audience was attentive to every moment of her performance. She had them with her from the first note. It was like she was the star of the day. Several people walked from back in the crowd to the front in a cluster under the speakers to have a closer look and listen to what was happening on the stage.


It was an all-star band of her dad's and grandpa's musician accomplices. All of them have known Dori all her life or close to it. They are the musicians who recognize in her a peer. They love making music with Dori. Like my way of supporting her was to go hear her perform, the musicians in the band were supporting her musically. She ordered a guitar from Wayne Henderson last year and was playing it in two weeks. Unprecedented to the max. He always takes ten years, thereabouts, to get to your place on the list. The guitar and the invitation to perform at this year's festival were Wayne's support. She was buoyed up all day. It was a performance worth getting up and driving an hour for. I was happy for Dori all the time she was on the stage, happy to see she had found her voice, happy to hear the music the whole bunch of them made, all of them my favorite musicians I've listened to almost every week for the last two years. These are musicians I respect to the sky, for their musicianship and for their integrity as human beings. Best for me was seeing that Dori gave a stunning performance, and next best was seeing the audience paying such close attention to her. For one thing, we were hearing music, the real deal. Dori's singing seemed to surprise the audience at first, it not being bluegrass or old-time, and they seemed to me to be right there with her, took to her refreshing new sound.


Dori introduced several new songs she'd written. I've heard everything Dori sings, I think, or almost. Consistently I feel like her own songs are better worded songs than the ones she covers. Dori not only writes a good song, she writes a good story too. I've seen three of her short stories, and I'm here to tell it that Dori Freeman is a gifted story teller. Her writing is that of somebody who has spent years honing a style, this when she was 19. The last time we talked, she said she wanted to be a writer first. Singer she likes, but writer first. It's looking like her music, her singing, is taking hold with quite a lot of gigs going, good ones. She can make music on weekends and write during the week if things balance for her that way. It's silly to project somebody else's way, especially Dori's, someone whose intelligence I admire, someone who can make her own decisions. It's looking like that balance may work out for her. Her stories that I've seen impressed me by the maturity of the writing, the skill, the insights, her sophistication with language. This is a young woman who thinks about things. She thinks deeply. She has intelligent and experienced counsel in her dad, Scott Freeman and her grandpa, Willard Gayheart, two of southwest Virginia's finest musicians and songwriters. She is buoyed up by support all around her, especially in her family. I get the impression the music community of southwest Virginia is delighted to have Dori's refreshing new voice in their midst.


They said the attendance broke a record this year. It was a happy crowd in perfect weather. No winds, no rain, no cold. A clear, comfortable day. I worked the tshirt tent for three hours after Dori's performance, and then I came home. Missed the Gibson Brothers and the Kruger Brothers, the big lights of the show. Gibson Brothers are awfully good. Kruger Brothers too. But I didn't want to stick around any longer. It was only Dori I wanted to hear. I'm also partial to music of this region of the mountains, the central Blue Ridge. Big name chart bluegrass bands I can take or leave. I like the bluegrass of this region. Kruger Brothers live in Wilkes County now, but they're stars in their own firmaments. There was an hour that fiddler Rita Scott was in the tshirt tent, Rita of Appalachian Mountain Girls. I'd rather listen to Rita on a fiddle than the Kruger Brothers. That's only about me, not about them. They are excellent musicians. Also in the tshirt tent I met another volunteer named Layla. First Layla I've met. Great name. One of the great rock anthems. Even beyond Angie. I had a good time talking with the people that came by. Layla had a fresh spirit and a silver ring in her right nostril.


The most interesting inter-personal moment was a time talking with a woman here from Washington DC and Oregon. We talked at length and she started looking familiar to me. I asked her if she went by Wayne Henderson's shop one day about 2 years ago. She indeed had. I said, "You had a camera and took pictures." "Yes." I told her why I was there, delivering Jr's cd to Wayne, and we had a good laugh over meeting again when we didn't even meet then. I probably recognized her because I liked her. She had a charming energy about her. I've no idea why that moment of her walking in the door at Wayne's shop stuck with me so I'd recognize her a couple years later. While we talked, I could see that image in my mind's eye like it was the present moment. I was glad to find myself grown up enough to allow myself to leave before the big expensive acts, the stars. I just wanted to go home. Had a good time the whole time there. 8 hours since leaving home, I was ready to make the hour drive home. I didn't need to go to the party at Wayne's house afterward. I needed to be on the road.

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GUITAR PICKERS

willard gayheart

audience




These were the people sitting in front of me at the Amantha Mill show Friday night. They enjoyed the music, no two ways about it. It was a happy audience. The audience at the Front Porch is always a happy audience, especially among the people who go every week or almost. We (I'm one of them) know that whoever it is playing, it's going to be good music. We walk in the door, one at a time, ready to hear some more good mountain music every week. I have to say some of the shows are less good than others. However, the standard there is so high that not quite as good as the best is still pretty dern good.



A few years ago a somewhat pompous man I know announced to me in the clear-the-throat English way that precedes the voice of authority William Buckley did so well, "Wayne Henderson is the best." I've come into a place within where best is meaningless. My first thought was Scott Fore from West Virginia wins Galax every other year, and Wayne wins it every other year, as a rule that sometimes gets broken. In that competition way of pickin, it looks like they're equal. Both are the best. Then pickers like James Allen Shelton, who plays guitar with Ralph Stanley. And Ricky Lee, who played guitar with Ralph in the mid 70s. Snake Smith of the Fishers Peak Timber Rattlers can pick around just about anybody. Steve Lewis can give Wayne a run for it on the guitar too. Dave Vaught of the VW Boys is also an amazing picker. Willard Gayheart, who plays only rhythm guitar, is an awfully good picker, one that the musicians all around him love to pick with for his extra good pickin and his solid rhythm. Johnny Gentry of the Mountain Park Old Time Band, and before that he picked with the Whitetop Mountain band for several years, can pick a guitar like nobody's business.

Among these people I've mentioned, I'd hate to be put in a position to proclaim one of them The BEST. I can say each of them is among the best. One thing I can say definitively is, Eric Clapton is not the best. I bought the Clapton acoustic MTV Unplugged dvd because someone had said he played his Henderson guitar on it. I wanted to know for certain, because I didn't quite believe it, thought I'd have heard it before now it it were so. I was disappointed by Clapton's acoustic picking. Yes, what he does takes the g on the end. I wish I'd never heard him play Layla acoustic. It was one of those great anthemic songs in rock, like Angie, Jane Says, Money. It its time, I loved it even better than Whiter Shade of Pale. Clapton's acoustic was such a major let-down I've not listened to it again. I may want to with a new mind. Before, all I could hear was all the guitar pickers I've heard who are indeed better, and this is what's called the best?

Clapton, himself, would say with certainty that he is not the best, that is in private, where he's comfortable he won't be quoted in the rock press. In like manner, Wayne Henderson knows he is not the best. I believe he could say with some satisfaction after all the years and unthinkable number of hours and attention he's given to practicing, that it's good for his self-esteem to be called the best, but it is devoid of meaning. Even if you really are the fastest gun in the west, somebody can shoot you in the back. I don't mean to take anything away from Wayne Henderson, because his stature as a guitar picker speaks for itself. My favorite way to hear Wayne play is after he has done the round of contest favorites the audiences expect of him and settles into making music with Carter Family songs and other traditional mountain music, as well as bluegrass. That's when I hear the pickin that satisfies my own ear. Even if someone can dance his fingers all up and down the frets at the speed of light, if there's no music in it, in the old way of putting it, it aint nothin. Wayne knows that. Whatever he plays has music in it. In the picture of Willard above, that's Wayne with the guitar in the picture on the wall, a drawing made by Willard. All the pencil drawings in the gallery are Willard's.

WAYNE HENDERSON AT FRONT PORCH

helen white and wayne henderson

Tonight was Wayne Henderson night at the Front Porch Gallery in Woodlawn, Virginia. About double the usual number of people there. It was comfortable for everyone. I found a place to get pictures from that was out of everyone's way and in the back. Wayne and Helen wowed the audience with good picking, good fiddling, good singing, good music. From the back I can see the entire audience all the time, and they were feeling good. It was a similar good feeling as the night before in the Sparta library with Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson. It felt good to relax in there with good music in the air, everyone there to hear it. Wayne started with Down Yonder, did his virtuoso fiddler's convention kind of picking, because that's what everyone there wants to hear. From there, he engaged the audience to sing along Take Me Out To The Ballgame. They played and Helen sang some Carter Family songs, Sweet Fern one of them. Helen played her fiddle. She can play a fiddle too. Helen is one of the respected fiddlers of the region. I saw her play Pullin The Wagon at Galax a few years ago and was knocked over by how good she was. I knew she played a fiddle, but didn't know she played like that.

Helen accompanied Wayne mostly with guitar, keeping rhythm for him. They were relaxed and played in a relaxed manner, though without diminishing the drive. It was another night of the audience, myself among them, satisfied we were hearing some good music played by real musicians. Every instrument in the place tonight, including Scott's and Willard's were Henderson made. Mike Gayheart, son of Willard, showed up with a bass for the 2nd half of the show. Scott told me Mike bought the bass from Audine Linebury, the bass played on the Tommy Jarrell / Kyle Creed / Bobby Patterson / Audine Linebury album, June Apple. It is the old-time album of old-time albums. Linebury also played with Whit Sizemore's band, the Shady Mountain Ramblers. I believe she's won Galax multiple times. It was a powerhouse of music tonight with roots running all through SW Virginia and NW North Carolina traditional music.

Scott and Willard opened the show with 2 songs, beautifully done, as always, I'm Going Back To The Blue Ridge Mountains. They have played that song so many times together they have a flow between them now that gets a little more practiced every week. They play it during the week at the Blue Ridge Music Center too. It's a major enjoyment for me to be witnessing these performances week after week. The music is consistently so good it makes the hour drive there and the hour back as nothing. I go there in anticipation and return in satisfaction. I feel privileged and honored to be one of the dozen or so people who go regularly, just to know it's happening and to be there. It's like there is this little spot with the best music in the central Blue Ridge playing there week after week, and I happen to be one of a few who goes to hear it. Music like this is all over the mountains. There are jams during the week in various counties. Every county has at least one place where you can hear bluegrass and / or old-time on weekends. The music is so good, it's ever an amazement for me that so few people go to hear mountain music. It doesn't get played much on tv except in b&w Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Dori Freeman came to the stage area after intermission with her brand new Henderson guitar to

sing 2 songs. After the second one, the whole audience stood up for her, clapping and asking for more. She went back and sang a third. Scott accompanied her with the mandolin, and her uncle Mike Gayheart played the bass. Dori is a beautiful singer. She has a good voice and she plays with sounds when she sings so it's not mono singing; it has dimension. If she gets out singing in different places, she'll get her stage confidence going and she'll grow as a singer by leaps and bounds. The stage experience, the guitar playing, the singing will help her writing too. I look forward to seeing Dori grow into who she's becoming. Right now she's busting open with creativity like a flower bud about to pop.

Wayne and Helen returned to the stage, Scott, Willard and Mike with them. They played and Willard sang My Henderson Guitar. They made a good band. Willard sang it with special feeling, Wayne beside him pickin and the house was full of Henderson instruments. Their playing of the song was something of a celebration of Wayne as guitar maker, guitar picker and friend. The good feeling among the musicians flowed into the audience. By the time the music was over, it seemed like the whole place was satisfied. The musicians were and everyone in the audience was. It was a happy occasion for all concerned.

JR MAXWELL & FRIENDS CD

crack



I've decided to play music while writing you tonight. Needed to hear the cd of Jr with Cleve Andrews and Art Wooten. Don't know how long this will last. Art Wooten is playing the fire out of his fiddle. Jr's banjo is keeping a roll going. Wayne Henderson's rhythm guitar picking runs up and down the strings. I find myself going off into listening to the 3 of them together, hearing them individually, together, hearing the music that is seemingly independent of them, though entirely dependent. This music is getting at my heart. I'm going over with myself again my eternal joy that mountain music is all around where I live, that I've found it. It's such an intensely personal music. Listening to Art Wooten's fiddle is a beautiful moment to behold.



If I had never come to the mountains, I'd never have known this music. That I have what it takes to appreciate Art Wooten's fiddle, that I had a brief acquaintance with him and his wife Minnie, that I have painted his image 3 times, is better to me than knowing Elvis. Jr's banjo in there with the fiddle, not taking over, supporting him like a wave the man on the surfboard can hang 5 on all the way to the end of the song. I honestly mean it when I say that until I heard mountain music I had never heard music. Seeing the video of Eric Clapton MTV unplugged playing acoustic, I sat in awe that he was no better than he was. I thought, I know I can name half a dozen guitar pickers inside a 40 mile radius of my house who could pick circles around Clapton. The number is probably more like at least 20. And that's just right here. All up and down the mountains there must be a thousand who can pick better than what Clapton did on the unplugged show. Only listened to it once. Can't do it again. Somebody told me he played a Henderson guitar on it, but he didn't.



I'm happy I've been able to see into the world of mountain music and listen to Jr for 7 years talk of his musician friends, music experiences at fiddlers conventions, at square dances. And Jr was the real deal. The point is not that he was the best there ever was. He'd be the first to make certain you understood he was not to be mistaken for that. He just liked to pick and done the best he could. Now Jr is cutting loose on Home Sweet Home, Wayne Henderson playing rhythm with him. Had to pause with head down and listen. Now he's cutting loose with John Hardy, Wayne's guitar going right along with him. It turns out I know a lot of people who play Henderson guitars. A picker in these mountains, especially a stage picker, one who self-assesses himself good enough to play out in public without embarrassing himself and his family name has to have a Henderson, is willing to wait 10 years for it. I don't know if resonance is the musical term for it, but it's what it seems to me a Henderson has over a Martin. A Henderson puts the sound out there. The sound is exactly right. I don't know the terminology for guitar sounds, but a Henderson sounds to my ear like the texture of honey is in the sound.



Listening to Jr I have been able to see from the inside the world of mountain music. Not as I would as a musician, but that's ok. When anyone asks me if I pick, I say I'm the audience. I do the appreciating. I'm hearing the sample copy Bobby Patterson made to make the other copies from. It is clear. Very clear. Same sound level all the way through. Originally they were 3 different sound levels. The sound is so good I can hear it that he put a lot of time and attention into it. He did with the cd "label" managing to list every song, name every musician and a picture of Jr and Cleve Andrews. Bobby did a beautiful job with it. I'm a hundred percent happy that the quality of reproduction is what I went to Bobby Patterson for. The music is over now, finishing with Jr picking Billy In The Lowground, the radio show's theme song. It's just right. Bluegrass banjo noting the song in an ongoing roll. Plain, meaning clear. I feel happy honoring Jr in this way. There's not a whole lot I can do, but this project feels right. It cost a little bit, but so does everything else. It is my gift to Jr's relatives and friends who are now my friends. It's a little bit of a way to keep memory of him alive and appreciated. And to be sure he is archived in Chapel Hill and probably Boone, Johnson City, TN, other places I can find to send them to. It's music way too good not to be heard.



I don't want Jr forgotten right away. I'll go on keeping his name alive and Art Wooten's name alive, Fred Roupe's name alive. This is one of the ways the radio show is so satisfying for me. I'm keeping a lot of names alive, Sara Carter, Carter Stanley, GB Grayson. I love about playing music of the region that the musicians are of the community I've lived in the latter half of my life. The mountain people have been gracious enough to allow me to live among them for which I'm every day grateful. The music I play on Saturday mornings is my gift to the people of the county I love way down deep in my heart. This is why it is such an emotional experience every week. I close myself up in the studio, turn the sound up loud so all my attention is on the music. I feel the emotions of the songs. I do that to guide my choice for what to play next after each song, keeping a flowing harmony going from song to song through the hour.



Last week in the gospel hour I played 5 songs by Hazel Varner, a petite woman from Wilkesboro, writes her songs and sings them. Her husband plays the church piano. David Johnson, who recorded them at his studio played steel guitar. She has a high childlike hillbilly voice, "When Jesus comes again he won't have to be born in a barn." And it's a soulful voice. "There'll be no wheelchairs in Heaven." Yes, there is soul in white music. Hazel Varner has it. Ralph Stanley has it. Doc Watson has it. Hazel Dickens has it. So do an awful lot of others in these mountains. It's a Suthun thang. I could not have lived my life happily outside the South. The Southern Mountains, the Central Blue Ridge, Alleghany County, Bullhead Mountain, Whitehead, Air Bellows, home sweet home. I like living someplace I love. It feels good all the time. A place with no written history.