PICTURES FROM THE HILLBILLY SHOW

     sheets family and bill joines

     david joines

     joe wyatt, tim lewis, gracen lucas

     kermit pruitt, joe irwin

     bill dancy, wade petty, charlie edwards

    

     the rise and shine band

    

    eddie bakeberg, dr jack cahn, lynn worth, dr keith oliver  --  the drones

    red hat dancers

The Hillbilly Show Saturday night was nearly all music this year. A variety of music was played by different string bands and singers. I got a couple pictures of Dorothy Morris singing, but microphone stand was in front of her face, the only way I could get it from where I was standing. I was trying to get a picture of the band with a good face of Dorothy in it, and while trying to take the picture, standing at the edge of the open curtain out of sight of the audience. I was told to open the curtain more. When I did, I could only get one view of the band and it was with the mic rod in her face. Pulling the rope that opened and closed the curtain was my role. I got all the pictures from my station at the edge of the curtain out of sight of the audience. Used the zoom to get the close-ups.



The musicians in the pictures are some of the musicians of our county, Alleghany. The Rise & Shine Band plays at the Jubilee, the square dance place in downtown Sparta. A few years ago a bunch of white middle class women moved in here from the suburbs of Charlotte, Raleigh, W-S, Florida, and join groups to get to know people. They thought the Jubilee too corny to have on Main St. It didn't fit their image of Sparta a suburb of Blowing Rock. They wanted to tear the building down and make a walkway to the vacant lot behind the Main St businesses where the Teapot Museum was once projected to save us. Agnes, through connections in Raleigh, had the building declared an historical site, the Trojan movie theater, and defeated them. At the time, it was alarming, because it was being run through the process so fast that if something weren't done right away, it would be bulldozed down, Agnes and Ernest put out of their livelihood. That's of no concern when it comes to beautification, putting big plastic flower pots on the sidewalks people have to walk around that have dead flowers in them 2/3 of the year. Somebody plants them, nobody maintains them.



The audience tonight was no more than we've had the last several years. Quite a lot of advertising done this year didn't seem to make any difference, unless a whole lot less would have come otherwise. I'm thinking it might have to do with the people what would go to the Hillbilly Show are already going. It's mountain people specific, by mountain people, for mountain people. The people who think it's too ridiculous to think about, let along go to, aren't going to go, and advertising won't persuade them. It's old-fashioned and, besides, there was a football game tonight. Whatever the case, I'd guess somewhere between 700 and 800. That's a good sized crowd. The Hillbilly Show is the only show of local talent we have besides the fiddlers convention. The Jubilee on Main St has cars parked all up and down the street on the nights it's open. The other nights of the week, you don't see cars parked on Main St.



The audience enjoyed the show. The people putting it on enjoyed their parts. It was good old-time, bluegrass, country music and folk. I don't recall the Hillbilly Show having this much music in it and this many musicians. Dr Cahn played fiddle with the band The Drones. It was Cahn, Dr Oliver, the optometrist, Eddie Bakeberg and Lynn Worth. She played banjo and played twin fiddle with Jack Cahn and it sounded good. Initially, I think they meant drones like the drone string on a banjo, the same note every time it's struck. Now with the Afghanistan war we have flying drones that assassinate from the sky. A whole new meaning for the Drones. I'd like to see them embrace the meaning, use a picture of one for the band's logo. But that's one of those things fun to think about, but boring when it's done. Gracen Lucas, Tim Lewis and Joe Wyatt made some very respectable music. Wade Petty's fiddle made some beautiful music. Charlie Edwards, good singer, good guitar player. Mason Wagoner, a boy of early teens played a couple of old-time tunes very well on his banjo. I had to watch every performance closely to know when to pull the curtains. I liked watching it closely. I got a photograph of what I saw, the stage on the left, the curtain down the middle, backstage on the right.

          frontstage/backstage

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HILLBILLY SHOW PRACTICE

          the possum creek boys

     helen and dottie (backstage managers)

     gracen lucas and joe wyatt

     hillbilly wes

     the red hat dancers

     mason wagoner

Friday night is practice night for the Hillbilly Show that plays on Saturday night. It ought to be a pretty good show, though you couldn't tell it by what we saw tonight. About half the people showed up. Several of the ones that did show up weren't ready with their performance. But we've learned by now, year after year, that Friday night is a disaster and Saturday night a success. Most often Agnes Joines, the director, goes home in tears after Friday night and is inconsolable until Saurday night when the Hillbilly Show is happening and it's working out. Everybody did their part really well, no dead time between acts, the audience didn't clear out during intermission, and Agnes heard nothing but wonderful things about the show on the telephone after she got home. I actually expect the show to sell out and people be turned away. She's never advertised much before and the auditorium was almost filled. This time it's big advertising and lots of it. 

I find myself telling people I know from Away the Hillbilly Show is not for them. It's mountain people entertaining mountain people with mountain humor. It's not like the humor of the suburban middle class that holds Jay Leno and and a few others suitable humor. Hillbilly Show humor is, like I said, specific to the mountain people. In the first year of my store, I recommended it to visitors as something going on that is Sparta specific. They left in the exodus of people from Away at intermission, walking at a measured pace, containing their desire to run to the car and lay rubber all the way to the highway. Now when somebody from Away talks about going, I encourage them to stay away. It's slap-stick corn-pone and old-time fiddle and banjo music. People from Away, in my experience, always come away disappointed and laughing at it. I say it's not for them. It's for mountain people, by mountain people. However, if one can let go of expectations and receive it as it is, it's a wonderful show full of good times. 

This year things ran so smoothly backstage that I was lonesome much of the time standing at the ropes for pulling the curtain open and closing it. I like that job, because it's out of everybody else's way, except the children that run up and down the stairs where I'm stationed like it's an aerobics class for kids trying to pretend to be doing something. Running is play, and they run. I stood back and let them go by. They were not in anybody's way. They were staying in the wings, so to speak. I was laughing. You get a couple of kittens together and they play chase. Get some young dogs together and they play chase. Get some kids together and they play chase. I'm not going to be the one to inhibit primal behavior so deeply rooted. It would be like training a dog not to scratch fleas. Run younguns, run. They're tickled and happy when they're running. I wasn't going to be the white-haired adult to throw cold water on their fun. In the blink of an eye, they'll be working some crummy low-paying job, making payments on cars, houses, appliances, big-screen tv on the wall; then, when they can't afford another can of catfood per month, the baby arrives with more, sometimes debilitating payments. Run while it's in ye. In another blink of an eye, you won't be able to run. 

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RULED BY HYPOCRISY AND LIES

     bullhead from air bellows



As I hear people talk on the radio, journalists largely, and as I talk with friends about what we see taking place in the world we live in, I hear much talk about how it's not government, it's not this, it's not that, it's everything going at once. We've become internationally interdependent through the corporations using cheap labor in Asia, Africa, the poor places where people will work for next to nothing. This, of course, brings our standard of living down, because American jobs have been "out sourced," to sweatshop labor in the poorest parts of the world. What's puzzling me is how it appears everything is crumbling at once, everywhere. I can't help but think of the end of a casino game when it's time to pay up. Credit, hypocrisy and lies have been the order for so very long that the world hypocrisy and lies created is, essentially, a house of cards. It's like the wind blew and the house of cards is falling. I talk with friends and the view from conservative and liberal is that hypocrisy and lies characterize our so-called representative government. Our representatives represent the ruling class, and that's it. They do not represent nor do they recognize the working class.



The Wall Street demonstrations are interesting, but I've seen in the past the corporate power of the press belittle and demonize the demonstrators, ridicule them powerless, infiltrate and arrest. I've heard speculation that these demonstrations, if they continue to grow, could become a political force. Like the demonstrators in the 60s/70s, they're naive, spontaneous, unorganized and easy to manipulate. Like the Indians, whose manner of warfare was individual, unorganized and spontaneous. The organized Army succeeded because the Indians were entirely unorganized. The corporate press and corporate control isn't going to back down from a bunch of completely unorganized non-rich people. They also control the military. They have the concentration camps waiting. Army might not open fire on Tea party activists, but they sure as hell will on Wall St demonstrators. This weekend on one of the comedy weekend shows like Whadayaknow?, somebody young was talking about the demonstrators, what the people were like, what they were about. Somebody my generation said to him for a moment of levity, "They shot us." Laughter of recognition from the audience.



One of the best demonstrations I've known of was the one documented in Michael Moore's FAHRENHEIT 911, the inauguration parade in DC after the Bush Administration coup by judicial fiat. That's the only place I've seen or heard of the demonstrations that day. The people all along the parade route were hostile. Corporate press didn't do much of a job of covering it. Like corporate press ignored the Wall St demonstrations as long as they could. I thank God for Michael Moore. He has put himself out there for character assassination and the very likely possibility of a hit by a "lone gunman," as happens in America. Johnson told the press what to report before the 1968 Vietnam demonstration, and they printed it as he directed. What the corporate press reported had nothing to do with what happened that day. And thank God for Norman Mailer writing THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT where he told what happened at the press conference. He was there. He was independent of the corporate behemoth, even had his own power.



Whatever is happening, a big change is occurring. It's kind of like everybody's hand in a poker game is called at once. Time to pay up. We're in this crazy time of prozac and zoloft and viagra, crystal meth, etc, and our humor is all canned now through television. I've been seeing videos by a French guy, Remi Gaillard, who does something off the wall in public with a video camera watching, a surprise moment that is actually funny. Like doing gymnastics on the overhead rings for passengers to hang onto in the subway. He might snatch something out of somebody's hand and run off with it. It's zany, silly, goofball, everything he does. In one of his videos, Shark Attack, he put on a furry shark outfit like a clown and ran up to a guy fishing and sprayed him with shaving cream. He ran to somebody else standing nearby, squirted shaving cream on him. He ran and the man ran after him.



I've been fascinated by a trend that's been going on quite awhile in the big cities of the world, some people of an artistic mind create public events absolutely devoid of meaning, absurd moments in public for the entertainment of whoever happens to be there at the time. Sometimes they get arrested. A bunch in New York called Improv Everywhere. You can see them on YouTube too. In one, they put somebody dressed like a jockey into a merry go round situation, where he rode one of the horses pretending to be riding in a race. A couple guys had set up a temporary sports announcer spot where two guys called the race on the merry go round. The kids on it and the parents were laughing over what had become of their ride on the merry go round. At the end, they declared the little boy riding the rabbit the winner of the race, gave him roses and a trophy. The kid didn't know what was going on, but recognized it was nutty and fun, and he went with it, played his part.



There is Philippe Petit who stretched a cable between the world trade center towers and walked back and forth on it. He also did impromptu events by surprise in cities. He'd dress in black with a tophat like a mime, and ride a unicycle, especially good for a quick getaway from cops. I saw him once in NY walking around the lip of a fountain in robotic style, a smooth flow, unreal balance. He's as comfortable on a thin line as I am on the ground. I didn't know that was Petit I saw at the fountain until I read in his book MAN ON WIRE that he did things like that in NY. He was arrested regularly. Photographs of him in that time tell me it was him. He puts on a moment of street theater to lift the spirits of a random selection of people by surprise.



I can't help but put the two together, that "the end of the world as we know it" is here, a time when the absurd has meaning. It's like Yeats said at the beginning of his poem, The Second Coming,

     Turning and turning in the widening gyre
     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;
     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
     The best lack all conviction, while the worst
     Are full of passionate intensity.



I like the comedy of people like Remi Gaillard and Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere. We have so little public art in our cities and towns and so little access to art, and we carry so much time-sensitive matter in our heads it makes us numb to whatever art we might see. Out in the world of other people and suddenly, out of nowhere, a bunch of people start singing and get the attention of all around, a performance, and then it's over. No admission fee. A moment all that witness it will never forget, like I never forgot the Philippe Petit moment. I'm glad civilization has reached a place where we have people who do these things. It had to get so bad we needed comic relief, so I can't say I'm completely glad. But it's the nature of how things are. Like it's cold in winter and warm in summer. I'm grateful to these people with that turn of mind to think up these clever things to do and set them in motion. We don't have street theater in the modern world. Against the law, I suppose. But we have these guerilla street theater artists and we have YouTube at the same time. It's not all bad.



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STRANGERS AND LEAVES OF COLOR

       trees of air bellows

This morning I talked with a woman who was recently retired military computer in-charge type role out of Washington DC. She had a brilliant mind. Fast. I was interested talking with her to get a feeling for her vibe coming out of military life in DC, working with computers. Serious computers. We spoke a little bit about politics, cautiously, peripherally, and I mentioned seeing Oliver Stone's film, W., reporting it's a brilliant film. I was beginning to see she bought the package of successful government employee belief system, and we'd best stay away from that subject. She mentioned something about Stone's "spin." To be clear before we went further, I said, "His spin is mine." I liked her, found her alert and, like I said, brilliant. When I meet someone with a good mind, I don't want to waste time on politics. Let's talk about something interesting. She left not long after finding out I'm a lefty. I don't believe it was because of that, because I took her for not of that small a mind. She wasn't. But I wanted to steer her away from politics before it got started. Or at least define where we're coming from.

It's interesting talking with people who are essentially random people from anywhere on earth. The experience with my store helped make me fluent in talking with strangers. It's such a tightrope walk in this time when a conversation between a couple of strangers often amounts to establishing our places on the status ladder. It's rare a man doesn't play rooster games. I actually don't find one gender easier to talk with than the other. It's all about individuals. Some women are open-minded, allowing people, some are shut down control freaks. Same among men. You just don't know who is what until you talk some and establish some points of view. Some people are easy, non-judgmental, relatively uninhibited about allowing true self to be seen, and some are the opposite; judging everything you say, everything you're wearing, behind mask on top of mask on top of mask. In that way, speaking with strangers is a risk, albeit minor as minor gets, setting oneself up for varieties of judgment. How you handle that is don't give a shit. Judging is what people do. Like gossiping is what people do. It's happening in every collection of people. It's the nature of what we're like as people. Judgment is self-undermining, which is why Jesus recommends against it. But if you don't care, go ahead.

And there is something enlightening in a minor way visiting with strangers. Getting to listen to and talk with someone whose experience is different from my own in about every way is a refreshing interlude from habit. Like a French doctor on vacation riding a motorcycle on the Parkway. He was kind of interesting to talk with until his inate superiority apparenlty needed establishing. I turned away and let him talk with whoever would listen. In cities you see strangers everywhere you go. The strangers here are people passing through or new in the county. It's interesting to talk with someone from Michigan passing through who played acoustic guitar and sang with Wade Mainer in Michigan, in Mainer's old age. I like to allow the person not from here to talk as much as they like. I like to hear people tell me their stories. It's a form of movie. I started to say an audio form of movie, but the visual is there too, the story teller. I love it that every person has thousands of stories that are their own. Every one a valid and good story. I don't mind when they're embellished with lies. That's part of human nature to make ourselves look better than we think we look. It's the self-serving nature of the subjective, which makes the subjective so unreliable for fact finding, but great for story telling.

The leaves have about peaked here at Air Bellows. The colors are full and vibrant. Yellows, oranges and reds mixed with plenty of greens. We haven't had a freeze yet. Like last year, they are turning without the frost that I believed started them turning. Temperatures at night have only been to 38 or 39 when it's below 40. Who knows what the trees know? This weekend past was perhaps the weekend for peak colors for the people who drive to the mountains to see the leaves. This coming weekend might be better. I doubt it. Right now is as good as it gets here on the mountain. Down the mountain it's less colorful. The next couple weeks will be beautiful colors and spaces opened up that all the leaves obscured. We'll soon be able to see through the trees again. Then the trees will be gray lines on white snow, like a pencil drawing on white paper. I'm imagining this next week will be the peak all over the county. It's beautiful landscape to drive through. 

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