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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SCOTT FREEMAN, WILLARD GAYHEART, JIMMY ZEH AND MIKE GAYHEART

scott freeman

 

 

 

The Fiddle and Plow show at Woodlawn VA tonight featured guest bluegrass banjo picker Jimmy Zeh, who played banjo with Willard's bluegrass band, The Highlanders. Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart accompanied Jimmy with Mike Gayheart on bass. Good picking like usual from these guys. Scott also plays fiddle. Tonight was Scott's night to my ear. He's evolved into a new place. This evening hearing what he was doing, it struck me right away much of what he was doing was new, approaches he'd not done before, subtle ways of addressing the notes, sometimes playing around the notes in ways that enhance the sound of what he's doing with new approaches to chording around in such a way I'd stare in awe at his hands working the mandolin. Once, Jimmy Zeh stopped picking and just listened, watched what Scott was doing in an awe that he was hearing something from a zone he'd never been in. On Scott's break he set out chording around the melody and picking really fast. Zeh said, "Hey, this is my song!" He was kidding, pointing a finger at what Scott was doing with humor. Like always at Woodlawn on Friday nights, the music was really music. It was music you feel. The humor tonight came when they set out to play St Anne's Reel and Jimmy took off on Whiskey Before Breakfast. The band fell in line with him before he realized what he'd done. When he caught on to what he'd done, he stopped, but it was a shame, because it made a really good beginning to Whiskey Before Breakfast. The band was fine with going on and playing it, but they backed up and did St Anne's Reel.

 

It's been a month or so since I was there. Three weeks were out due to holidays. I skipped last week out of weariness, unable to drive for two hours, and tonight it was good to be back. Seeing my friends there is important. People I know in Sparta want me to do things in Sparta on Friday nights, because they're my friends. The people in Woodlawn are my friends too. Just because they're not in my zip code doesn't mean they can't be my friends. It's become a comedy for me when I tell people in Sparta about how to get there. I tell about the show. Whoever I'm talking to wants to know how to get there. I say, "Do you know where Galax Walmart is?" Eyes light up, "Yeah." I say, "It's exactly 5 miles past the Walmart stoplight. Every time, I mean every time I say that, faces fall, every time, the light in the eyes goes out, and they say, "Oh," in resignation. Like Walmart is the edge of the known universe and anything beyond there is in the uncharted Unknown. It's a look that says, I didn't know there was anything past Walmart. I've got so used to it, since that is always the response, I've quit telling anybody about the show at Woodlawn. I'm neither a missionary nor a commercial. It's not important to me what other people do. It's only important to me what I do. Other people's business is not my own. Other people's business, like a sleeping dog, is best left be. 

 

I get awfully tired of people who are commercials for their own tastes. I don't mean I haven't been there, done that. I got tired of it in myself first. The day I realized I sounded like a commercial talking about something I especially liked, I told myself it's ok that I like it. I don't need to affirm it by pushing it onto others; you gotta, you needta, you oughta, you should. I consciously never start a sentence thus. I've finally come to realize that my own taste is my own. The next person down the road listens to entirely different music from what I listen to. The next person in the other direction has very different taste from mine in movies. No need to convert them to my tastes. They have their own. Talking with Dana Ross in the car driving to Woodlawn and back, we spoke of how odd it is now that Americans have collectively become intolerant of others with opinions differing from their own. Like if you think Rod Stewart is great and I think Rod Stewart sucks (which I don't), where's the problem? It's personal taste. By now the hate merchants have divided we the American people into opposing camps. Conservative and liberal was the initial division, but it has divided on down to simply opinions. Reagan officially sanctioned liberal a bad word. The L word. Unspoken reference to the N word. Not to be mentioned. It shut liberals down by intimidation for several years. Finally liberals are standing up as a sharp stick in the conservative eye. The Revenge of the L Word starring Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. The conservatives have used deception as a strategy to such extremes that they completed the circle, now are fooling themselves and no one else. They don't get it yet. Two things I know Bill O'Reilly was not hired for are looks and intelligence. The liberals elected an African American for president. Those same pesky liberals that halted the genocide of the Indians, the Native Americans.

 

Scott's mandolin playing tonight took me to a new place in relation to his music. I've listened closely to Scott's mandolin for the last decade, hearing his mastery grow, hearing him reach into new zones, like when he and Steve Lewis play Eat My Dust. Check it out on youtube. They git-er done. Scott has been looking, with Steve, for ways "to think outside the box." One day I was at lunch with both of them at Mis Arados in Sparta while they were talking about thinking outside the traditional music box they saw themselves in. Scott said to me, "How do you think outside the box?" It came to me as I spoke it, "Don't have a box." It was all I could think of. I don't know how either one of them took it. It was followed by a pause I couldn't read. This to say that Scott is looking for new ideas on making music, open to whatever comes his way that is challenging. To my ear, he is a master mandolin picker. Period. Then tonight I heard him reaching into places I'd never heard him go. At the end of the show, I spoke with him, initially to ask about Bobby Patterson who is on dialysis now. The conversation went from there. I mentioned he's doing things I've not heard him do before, he's reaching into new approaches to chord progressions, dancing around the melody, revealing the melody in a new way. He said he's been listening closely to musicians like Mark O'Connor, attempting to do what he did, finding it humbling, very humbling. Meaning it's a learning trip for him. He spoke of it with a relief similar to when I pick up a new book and find in the beginning that I love it, it's a page-turner that pulls me through it, like a couple days ago when I started Gavin Menzies' 1421: the year China discovered the world. On the first pages I saw this is my next read! Scott was inspired by his new discoveries tonight, fired up about exploring his new dimension of playing a mandolin

 

I am able to hear Willard Gayheart's guitar very well since some months ago when somebody Scott knows came and adjusted the mics and the amp with the speakers in relation to the space it's in. Willard's gallery is a place where the walls are covered with rectangles of glass. Harsh reflectors of sound vibrations. But it works very well. When they played a show after the tune-up of the sound system, I heard Willard's guitar the first time. Before, his rhythm guitar was lost in the rhythm. Now I can hear his picking. He picks a bass string, then one or two of the lower strings per chord. He doesn't always strike the same strings. He never looks down at the strings, but his fingers hold the pick and dance on the strings knowing exactly where they are from 70 years of picking rhythm. I watch his ease with his guitar; it's like my ease with the keyboard. I learned to type in high school, the most valuable class I had in school, along with drivers ed. Now I can almost keep up with my thoughts writing, like now. I type slowly because I follow the thoughts, pause to listen to them, weigh their tone of voice with what I think I'm saying. Like I really don't want to lose it like Alex Jones in the video with Piers Morgan about guns. The interview wasn't with Morgan as much as at him. Jones embarrassed himself. The humor is that he will never see it like that. He probably thinks he got Morgan told. I like some of his documentaries. He has become so carried away with rant by now that, like I said, he embarrasses himself. It's good comedy, the reason the video went viral. 

 

Willard's guitar comes through the speakers and I can distinguish his notes now. He does not strum. He picks. One string at a time. Per down stroke he will hit 2, 3 or 4 strings, one at a time, in the same amount of time it takes to strum it. The fingers of his left hand move into awkward chords with the ease of a bird taking a drink of water. As I appreciate Scott's musicianship in a continuing and growing way, I also appreciate Willard's musicianship the same. In Willard I see subtleties come to the surface over time. This evening I was noting how he extends the last syllable of a phrase mountain-style that comes out of Primitive Baptist singing, those long slow last words to the lines, often one syllable sung as two. Ralph Stanley sings like that, though in his own way and Willard in his own way. I described Willard's singing to Cheri Choate at the coffee shop today, saying his bluegrass is not Bill Monroe's bluegrass, but Willard Gayheart's. This is why I love Willard's bluegrass so much. It's not the bluegrass you hear over and over with the banjo that sounds like the same picker from band to band. Willard's singing at 80 is the best, to my ear, it's ever been and he's always been an extra good singer. These weekly shows keep his fingers nimble and his wits about him, keep his approach to the music fresh, keep him in such good practice that Willard appears to me to be flowering in his later years. A chrysanthemum. It does my heart good to hear Willard and Scott's music. That's where it feels good, in the heart.

 

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WILLARD GAYHEART AND BOBBY PATTERSON AGAIN

willard gayheart

Friday night Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson picked guitars and sang traditional songs. Sometimes Bobby played old-time banjo and sometimes a bluegrass banjo. Both sing very well. I was telling my friend Justin earlier that I would rather hear them than Doc Watson. Not to throw off on Watson, he draws a huge crowd and it's a good show, but he's so big and famous, that fans cried and waxed emotional when he died. I was asked by somebody same day how I felt about Doc Watson dying. I said, Nothing. Why nothing? I said, I didn't know him. I only know his singing; he has over thirty albums I can listen to any time whether he's living or dead. I saw him in concert once and felt very cool about seeing DOC WATSON in person, live, on stage. Yet it was no different from hearing Bobby and Willard picking and singing when it comes to good music and enjoying what I'm hearing. I enjoy Bobby and Willard more because I know them, which is far from the only reason. I've heard them half a dozen times in concert and declare them Doc's equal when it comes to performing good old songs. Bobby picks a good lead guitar and Willard picks good rhythm guitar.  Together they made some music that makes me happy I'm nowhere else.

Bobby and Willard have made music together in their bluegrass band THE HIGHLANDERS for 40+ years, they make music together at the Blue Ridge Music Center through the summer months once a week. Bobby has made some cds of them that sell pretty well to people passing through wanting a mountain memory to take home. Bobby plays mandolin in the band, and other places plays banjo and bass, too. Willard came to Galax from Kentucky about ten miles outside Hazard. He managed a five and dime store in Galax awhile, his pencil drawing took off and he opened a frame shop \ gallery, The Front Porch in Woodlawn where the music happens Friday nights. Minnie, the twenty year old white Maine Coon, was with us as always, it being her home. At first she didn't like all the people filling up her space and making such a racket on Friday nights. Eventually, she settled into the routine and by now seems to enjoy having all the people around. I always pet her and talk to her telling her she's a beautiful cat. Being a Maine Coon, she doesn't like much physical attention. She'd actually prefer not to be touched, so I limit my petting to a finger on the top of her head between the ears. She likes that, but only so much. I know not to push her too far, so I stop after a short time. There is a time she likes it, then a time she does not. Keep it up and she'll bite. Not hard, just enough to say, Cut it out! My friend Caterpillar is a Maine Coon, so I have good training.

These two seasoned musicians, Bobby 70, Willard 80, have a relaxed maturity in their music making that lets the music breathe. They know so well what they're doing with the strings that the music flows free of thought about what they're doing. I watched their fingers move with amazement at how freely their fingers of their left hands danced about noting the strings, too fast for thought from chord to chord, never missing a lick with their right hands picking individual strings. To hear Willard tell it, he can't do any better than basic picking. To hear Willard's guitar and see his fingers in motion tells me Willard is quite an advanced guitar picker. After thirty to forty years of his pencil drawing, he has become a subtle artist. Bobby Patterson has a music store in the next building where he sells mountain music cds and he has a recording label, Heritage Records, where he has recorded old-time and bluegrass music of SW Virginia for the same period of time. Alice Gerrard started the magazine Old-Time Herald in the basement of Bobby's shop among all his recording equipment.

Bobby's singing is a good example of good mountain singing that draws no attention to the singer, puts all attention on the song. Where other singers might raise their voices, Bobby goes lower instead of higher. First time I heard him sing, I thought it a little odd, but only because I'd never heard anybody do that before. By now, after hearing him as much as I have, I call it excellent singing. Willard's singing is different from Bobby's and they fit like hand and glove. Willard even seems to get emotional in his singing compared to Bobby. Bobby is straight old Primitive Baptist delivery, where Willard sometimes gets to shaking his head, bending his knees, moves with the music, which is a bit out of the ordinary for his generation of musicians. Such motions used to be frowned upon by musicians and audiences. By now, the younger old-time bands are jumping about like rock stars. How music has changed from Bobby and Willard's generation to present. The young musicians have rock in their growing up and they bring into old-time a new freedom to move with the music. Willard I suppose got it from being lead singer with the Highlanders on stage for so many years. Then with Skeeter & the Skidmarks through the 90s and Alternate Roots in the 00s.

I see in Willard's stage presence an intimacy with the audience like Doc Watson had, though each in his own way. I felt in a Doc Watson concert like he was sending love to everyone in the audience and everyone sent their love to him. It became a big flowing circle of love that I found awe inspiring. Willard addresses his audience with the same loving familiarity as Watson. No matter how many times Willard sings his own songs, they're the ones the audience wants to hear most, especially Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog. Hank Williams' song Mama Tried is one of Willard's songs that to my ear he took away from Williams and made it his own. Willard sings it like he wrote it. Bobby is best known in my mind playing guitar with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed on the classic old-time album, June Apple. To my ear that is one of the great old-time albums with Bell Spur String Band and Whitetop Mountain Band's album Bull Plus 10%. Can't leave out the Laurel Fork Travelers. Hearing Bobby and Willard make music is more than just hearing music. They're the present manifestations of mountain music carrying the flame to the next generation.

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BOBBY PATTERSON AND WILLARD GAYHEART @ THE FIDDLE AND PLOW

     bobby patterson and willard gayheart

 A night of good singing, good picking and good company. That's any Friday night at the Fiddle and Plow show at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop, The Front Porch. And it is particularly tonight. Bobby and Willard playing again for us. After a couple years of going to these shows weekly, I've come to a place where I'm as happy when it is Willard and Scott or Willard and Bobby. These people make music as good as anybody. Bobby and Willard have been making music together over 40 years. They've been in the same bluegrass band all that time, The Highlanders, a Galax band, played at the World's Fair at Knoxville in 1982. They play together at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway Tuesdays 12-4 for free. They have made two cds together they sell at the Parkway venue. Bobby has a recording studio below his store Heritage Records on Coulson Church Road behind Harmons on Hwy 58. He has a label, Heritage Records, where he has recorded old-time and bluegrass bands from SW Virginia, a good catalog of the music of the region.

I met Bobby the first time after I'd started the music store when I ordered cds from him. By the time I drove to Galax to see him, we were somewhat acquainted by email. By the time we met, I knew the magazine Old-Time Herald was begun in his recording studio space when his business was located in Galax. I knew Bobby recorded every Galax Fiddler's Convention and condensed each one into a single or double cd for each year. I knew he had recorded original Whitetop Mountain Band when Albert Hash was fiddler, Whit Sizemore. Otis Burris, Art Wooten, Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, Bell Spur String Band as a few examples. I knew that in Bobby's younger years he played rhythm guitar with Tommy Jarrell (fiddle) and Kyle Creed (banjo) on the classic old-time album, June Apple, which he published. I knew Bobby worked directly with the Moose Lodge presenting the Galax Fiddler's Convention. He is the one who shows the banjo to be raffled and picks a tune on it to give an idea how it sounds. If you've been to the fiddler's convention, that was Bobby Patterson.

Upon meeting Bobby the first time, we shook hands, I told him that in my way of seeing he's the most important man in SW Virginia. He knew what I meant. For his involvement with old-time and bluegrass music of the region. The word important is most often given to people who are not important, people like fickle politicians and people with the most money. Just because somebody has more money than anybody else does not make that individual important in my way of seeing. Bobby has dedicated his life to providing access to the traditional music of his region. He is something of a folklorist in his own culture. Not many people realize the value of their culture at an early age. His daddy was a fiddler, John Patterson. Bobby has also published a book of photographs of SW Virginia musicians from first photographs to near present.

Bobby is a humble man of true humility, much like Willard's humility. Willard, too, is a humble man, not forced humble and not self-righteous humble. They defer to others, they pay attention, they listen, they are who they are, no more, no less. They look up to other people instead of down at them. My friend, Jr Maxwell, bluegrass banjo picker, had the same kind of humility that is in Bobby and Willard. It's a natural humility. It's a who-they-are humility. It's not a humility that draws attention to itself. It is actually invisible until you notice it in them. Both are lovers of God. Bobby plays and sings with a gospel group, Sugar Creek, presently. I'm not 100% certain about that name. When it comes to the question, who is good people? Bobby and Willard would be at or near the top of the list of people who know them.

This evening, during the intermission, I bought two copies of Dori's new cd and gave the money to Willard. We talked of Dori. I told him the audience response to her performance Saturday night at the Mountain Hearth Lodge big outdoor party. We spoke of her charisma that she is not yet aware of. The charisma is in her voice. Willard and I both expressed our astonishment at her talents, her ability to handle herself, her intelligence that Willard recently has had the chance to see that caught his attention. He said, "When I was twenty-one...." and bent over laughing at what an ignoramus he was at 21, and I had to say the same. I told him I went to college because I needed it. After high school, I realized I didn't know anything. I couldn't live my life that ignorant. We both are astounded at Dori's talents, her natural seeming flow. He was telling me she even knows what she wants the accompanying instruments to do, instructs the musicians how she wants them to play their parts. He said this does not happen, a young person comes into making music and instructs older, more experienced musicians, but the musicians see that she knows what she's saying and when they follow her direction, it works. 

Getting to their music, consider first that these are really good musicians who have been picking all their lives, from when they were very young. Bobby is 70 and Willard is 80, They have a good bit of musical experience, much stage experience, and both are well respected in the music world of SW Virginia. The picking was good mountain pickin. Bobby played guitar, old-time banjo and bluegrass banjo. Willard played rhythm guitar. They took turns singing. Willard sang several songs, many of them songs he composed. Bobby sang several songs. They presented some of the songs with a story that was humorous. On one of the tunes, I don't remember which, Bobby was playing old-time banjo in such a way it sounded like two banjos, one playing rhythm, the other playing melody. About all that moves is Bobby's fingers when he's a-pickin. Willard gets caught up in the rhythm when he's singing  and sways his head while he's singing. A little bit like Stevie Wonder, but not. Often, I'd close my eyes and listen to the guitar and banjo and the singing. Hearing the music without visuals enhanced the music considerably. It was good with visuals too. Again, as usual, tonight I heard the music in awe for the musicianship and the music. It felt good hearing Willard and Bobby again.

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THE HIGHLANDERS BLUEGRASS THE FRONT PORCH

     bobby patterson, scott freeman, jimmy zeh, marvin cockerham,           willard gayheart

     bobby patterson, scott freeman

     bobby patterson, scott freeman, jimmy zeh

     jimmy zeh, marvin cockerham, willard gayheart

The show at the Front Porch last night was the Highlanders, a Galax bluegrass band that started around 1970 and grew into a spot onstage at the 1982 World Fair in Knoxville. It was something of a CD release concert as Bobby Patterson, mandolin player in the band, has a label where he publishes old-time and bluegrass bands of SW Virginia. His catalog has some of the finest music of this region that can be found; Whit Sizemore's band The Shady Mountain Ramblers, The Rock Mountain Ramblers, early Whitetop Mountain Band with Albert Hash on fiddle, Otis Burris, Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, The Bell Spur String Band. When Bobby was much younger, he played rhythm guitar on the album JUNE APPLE with Tommy Jarrell playing fiddle, Kyle Creed banjo, Audine Lineberry bass. It's about the finest old-time album I've heard. In the time of my store selling regional music, somebody would come in and ask for "the best" of the old-time, somebody new to the area. I handed them June Apple and they always returned wanting more "like that." I'd have to say, "There isn't any more like that. That's it. There are plenty of close seconds." Bobby will forever be a star in my eyes for being a part of that album.

Knowing a little bit about the music of SW Virginia, the list of musicians he's recorded is impressive. In several cases their only recordings are with Heritage. Bobby tapes the Galax Fiddlers Convention every year, makes a compilation CD of selections from what happened on stage. He has recently given all his fiddlers convention tapes to Ferrum College at Martinsville VA for their Appalachian music department. If you've been to the Galax Fiddler's Convention, you might remember Bobby as the man who tells about the banjo to be given away to the lucky one chosen from tickets sold for a dollar apiece for some benefit. He gives a demonstration picking that knocks my sox off every time I hear him. He doesn't set out to be impressive; it's just that the man makes music with whatever instrument he plays. Bobby is presently with a gospel group, Sugar Creek. The Highlanders recordings were all in the time of LPs. Bobby has now put a selection of 20 songs from their albums onto a CD called BIG SHOW TONIGHT FEATURING THE HIGHLANDERS. Of course I bought one. I've wanted it quite awhile. I jumped when he said he'd brought copies like a firecracker went off in my seat. The feeling inside was like in the late Sixties waiting for the new Bob Dylan album.

Bobby's website: http://www.heritageshoppe.net

The bluegrass the Highlanders play is Galax style with musicians of the region with no inhibitions about making music. Bobby gave out a sheet of paper with the CDs with a list of the names of the original Highlanders, and a long list of names of SW Virginia musicians who have played with the band in one capacity or another, from a guest at a show to played in the band a number of years. I've listened to the first half before I started writing. It wasn't long after putting it on that I had to crank up the laptop and satisfy the craving to write you about last night at Woodlawn. Several of the songs they played were written by Willard. These songs are on the CD. Willard has recorded them with his band Alternate Roots as well. He and Scott sing them at the Front Porch to entertain his fan club of about 20 who return every week for some of the finest music in SW Virginia and NW North Carolina. Ern and Zory's Sneakin Bitin Dog is one of Willard's compositions we all love to hear him sing. Robin D is another, possibly my favorite of Willard's songs, the story of a man in West Virginia who built a river boat to go up the New River to the Ohio to the Mississippi "to the sea." In my head, the tune is wed to Randy Pasley's Dobro in the Alternate Roots recording.

The songs Willard wrote I know "by heart" after hearing Alternate Roots in concert 15 times, Willard and Scott opening shows with them, listening to Alternate Roots CDs like I used to listen to Rolling Stones LPs. I don't hear as big a difference as many who would compare AR and the Stones might. A great difference in instruments and volume. Both are ass-kicking bands with musicianship as good as it gets, people in the band playing as one. After listening to Alternate Roots, I could easily put on something by the Clash or Jane's Addiction and feel no shock from one to the next. In my ears, both rose out of old-time. It's old-time electric, new songs instead of traditional, new ways of playing instead of traditional. Same energy. Bluegrass same energy. I'm inclined to see the Highlanders historically, like from a hundred years from now, when the people in folklore studies say WoW when they hear it, or a thousand years from now, no matter what the music is like then. Anybody with ears hears truly superb music with the Highlanders. I love the way they did on the album with Willard's song Ballad of a Minstrel. Willard sings it beautifully as I've heard him sing it at least a hundred times. The instrumental accompaniment was light and percussive, sounding very much like dance music out of central Africa. It was incredibly beautiful. I'd never heard any bluegrass band approach a song so lightly, almost like making the notes with wind chimes, though only by suggestion.

Willard doesn't believe he is much of a song writer. Guess what. I beg to differ. I just look at the titles and see song after song I know the words to: The Shootin, The Salad Song, The Working, Sweet Virginia, Kentucky Memories, plus the ones mentioned above, Ern and Zory's Sneakin Bitin Dog and Robin D. Every one of them is a beautifully worded song. Willard sang them as well back in the time they were recorded as he sings them now. Automatically I feel inclined to mention Robin D may be my favorite. Then, I have to say, No. The Sneakin Bitin Dog. No. Kentucky Memories. No. The Workin. No. All of them. Yes. I feel blessed that I've had the opportunity to put all these songs on YouTube with Willard singing them. Some of them are on there several times because he sings them differently according to circumstances. Sit-down with guitar on knee, he sings in a folk manner. With Skeeter and the Skidmarks stand-up he sings another way, the same though with different energy. I like the different subtle ways he presents a given song per manner of delivery. Some may think it overkill that I upload so much of Willard and Scott on YouTube, but I am entering into the archive Willard's different deliveries of The Yellow Rose of Texas, a song that Willard made his own simply by revealing it's inner beauty.

To find Willard at YouTube, write his name in the Search box. There is a lot to pick from, as I believe it necessary to archive Willard and Scott and all the rest that play in the Fiddle and Plow series at the Front Porch Gallery. It's easy, it's free, I believe it's important; therefore, it's mine to do.

To give you an idea of the energy of the music last night, at the end when they realized it was time for the last tune. Somebody said Orange Blossom Special. In a yelp of desperation, Willard said, "No!" Remembering Willard's 80th birthday is this coming Tuesday. He had just played guitar with gusto and sang for two hours. He was worn out. Different ones talked about it awhile, then the band started playing Orange Blossom Special. Scott ripped it to shreds with his fiddle. Willard was right in there with them on the rhythm guitar keeping that train in motion. He gave it everything up to the finish line. Scott was all over the fiddle from first note to last. Mostly he plays a fiddle in his most excellent manner, not showing off, just playing fine fiddle. On a couple of the tunes he let loose and wrung every note out of the fiddle it had in it. Again, the word privileged comes to mind in relation to hearing this music every week. Privileged that I live in these mountains. Privileged to have found the music world in these mountains. Privileged to hear Scott and Willard make music almost every week. These are the musicians of the region I want to hear anyway. They play every week. I'm there. Privileged is the only word that feels right when I'm there. Hit don' git no bettern'at.

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WILLARD GAYHEART AND BOBBY PATTERSON

willard gayheart

bobby patterson

the audience

many the resident cat

Another evening of stellar music from Woodlawn, Virginia. Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson made music and sang good old songs at the Fiddle and Plow Show at Willard's gallery and frame shop, the Front Porch. Bobby Patterson came from the Heritage Record Shoppe next door, brought a bluegrass banjo, old-time banjo, and his #6 Henderson guitar made when Wayne was in high school. Bobby is the mandolin player in the Highlanders, the bluegrass band he's in with Willard. They've made music together over 40 years. They're musical partners like Willard and Scott are musical partners of about 25 years. Willard is held very highly by traditional musicians all over the region. He thinks he's nothing at all, but when others talk about Willard, you hear about a man who is such a good rhythm guitarist that musicians love making music with Willard. Bobby too. I came to realize tonight that they are now the old generation of the great musicians in the region. They are now what Luther Davis and Tommy Jarrell once were, the great old master musicians of the region.

It was an audience of 9 tonight, but that didn't slow anything down. A father and son were visiting from Arlington, Virginia, where the boy is doing a school project of the Crooked Road phenomenon,

highway 58. They'd been to a few other events around and showed up for Willard and Bobby. I filled them in at the beginning that these are important characters in the tradition. The magazine Old-Time Herald was started in Bobby Patterson's basement. Bobby has recorded quite a number of SW Virginia old-time and bluegrass musicians, some truly classic albums among them, The Shady Mtn Ramblers (Whit Sizemore, fiddle), Whitetop Mtn Band (Thornton Spencer, fiddle / Albert Hash before him), Art Wooten's bluegrass album in his later years, fiddler Otis Burris, and selections from Galax fiddlers convention every year for quite a lot of years. Bobby is a busy man. Bobby's work is the musical heritage of SW Virginia. First time I met him, I told him I believed him to be the most important man in SW Virginia. I still mean it. He's been at the heart of Galax music all his life. His papa was fiddler John Patterson.

Bobby and Willard also play at the Blue Ridge Music Center through the summer months on Tuesday afternoons for a few hours. Willard plays there on Thursdays with Scott. It's an open space outdoors with a roof. It's music that gets made when Willard and Bobby get together. They do some good picking, but it's all in service to the music. The good picking is not about itself, not saying look how good I can play a guitar, not saying that at all. It's about making music first. That's the thing about mountain music: it's music first. They never do any flourishes to show off how good they are. These are masters of their instruments and understatement is their style. When they sing, the words are in service to the song. It's not about how well they can sing. It's about delivering the words in the song. Good mountain singing can seem expressionless to an ear new to it. Like Sara Carter's singing was a nearly deadpan delivery of the words, but she told the words from the heart and they touch the heart of the listener as if she were emoting like Janis Joplin, and all the better because she's not. From the heart is the key to mountain music. Played from the heart in the musician, it touches the heart in the listener. Therein, is the art in mountain music.

Throughout the show, sitting there listening to their music, their talk between songs, I felt awe the entire time. I was in the presence of two bluegrass masters of the Galax music world in the Central Blue Ridge. I'd like to write a biography of Willard. I feel like his story needs telling. Bobby too. Both are carriers of the tradition through their time on earth. Both their lives have been devoted to the music of SW Virginia. They are both major figures in the evolution of the traditional music of SW Virginia. I am honestly in awe of both of them as human beings. Of people I know, I have always felt comfortable in the company of both of them. They don't play rooster games at all. They don't play any games. They'd rather be making music. One of the feelings I feel in the presence of both men is absence of judgment. I very clearly never have a feeling of being judged by either one of them in all the times I've been around them. They're people who don't drain your energy. They both have a clarity of spirit about them. Both are lovers of God. I'm grateful for the opportunity to know them, each of them and both.

First time I met Bobby Patterson, I felt the awe that I might feel meeting Ralph Stanley, somebody really important. I'd known of Bobby Patterson several years before I met him. I especially knew him as guitar player with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed on the old-time album, June Apple. I knew him as his role in the music of SW Virginia, recording so many good bands that otherwise might not have recorded, and he seemed so small and humble when I met him. He was a giant in my imagination. Bobby is not important to a lot of people's ideas about what's important, but in my own personal notion of what's important, Bobby is up there among the most important. What I respect in Bobby after getting to know him is his character. Willard, his character too. Like when I watch Scott Freeman and Steve Lewis make music, both are master musicians I respect as human beings as well. It's the same kind of respect I have for Willard and Bobby, their humanity, in the best possible meaning of that multi-faceted word.

We had a visitor tonight, David Williams, once with the Red Clay Ramblers. Bobby and Willard asked him to come up and sing a song he'd written about the furniture factories in NC going away, in reference to a film he'd been involved in making, a documentary, WITH THESE HANDS. It can be streamed at http://www.folkstreams.net/ . Looks like an interesting site. I could spend a lot of time watching documentaries there. I look forward to seeing With These Hands. Evidently, it covers the social consequences of furniture factories leaving North Carolina and Virginia for Asia. He did some respectable picking and sang a good song.

Scott Freeman was in Nashville with Jeanette and Johnny Williams over their new album, the 3 of them, a bluegrass spgbma awards night.   

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THE HIGHLANDERS BLUEGRASS THE FRONT PORCH

     the highlanders

     scott freeman, fiddle; jimmy zeh, banjo

     jimmy zeh, banjo; marvin cockerham, bass; willard gayheart, guitar

     scott freeman, fiddle; jimmy zeh, banjo

       bobby patterson, mandolin; scott freeman, fiddle



The Fiddle and Plow show happening at Willard Gayheart's Front Porch Gallery, Woodlawn, Virginia, featured tonight the Highlanders, a Galax bluegrass band of almost 40 years. Willard plays guitar and sings with the band. When the World's Fair took place in Knoxville, Tennessee, back in the 80s, the Highlanders played there for a week. Buddy Pendleton was their fiddler. Pendleton recorded an album playing fiddle with Larry Richardson & the Blue Ridge Boys, a classic mountain bluegrass album recorded in 1965, http://www.oldbluerecords.com/. Buddy was a youngun then. He had a great career started as a fiddler with Bill Monroe for awhile and then the Greenbriar Boys, a New York City folk revival old-time band. From there he returned home and worked to retirement at the Floyd, Virginia, post office. He's a frail, honest, thin, seemingly weightless man now with gray hair. Oh, but he can play a fiddle. He played at Fiddle and Plow a year or more ago. I spoke with him a few minutes before the show, asking permission to make video of him playing, and wondered what this frail little guy would do with a fiddle. It didn't take long to find out. Once he started playing, I knew this was a master.

Buddy wasn't with them tonight, so Scott Freeman played fiddle in Buddy's absence. I was hoping Buddy would show up, but he didn't. Scott played a beautiful fiddle. Musically, Buddy wasn't missed, but I would like to see him and hear him play fiddle again. His fiddling has an airy quality about it. By airy, I suppose I mean like an apple tree pruned such that birds can fly through it. I put up several videos of Pendleton on YouTube, which I was very happy to do, to make his fiddle playing available to whoever might chance upon it or find it by looking for it, whoever sees it. Buddy Pendleton is too great a fiddler to overlook. I don't mean to imply Scott's fiddle wasn't up to Pendleton's. Scott is so close, it doesn't matter if one is better than the other. I like to hear both of them play a fiddle. I don't know if it communicates a sound to say Scott's fiddle playing has a full bodied sound. He bears down on the strings and makes them work. Visually, I see Scott's manner of fiddling in VanGogh's and Edvard Munch's paintings of women. I can't explain it. It's a subjective feeling. Where Pendleton's fiddle might be of the air, Scott's is of the earth. He uses his bow to dig the notes out of the strings, he takes charge of the strings. Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other. It's different styles of playing a fiddle.

Willard was the lead singer for the band, and such a good singer Willard is. There is quite a number of songs of Willard singing on YouTube. Write his name in the search box and everything with him on it will come up. Willard's singing is good mountain singing. By "good" I mean like Sara Carter was good at mountain singing. Willard is that kind of good at delivering a song. He doesn't dramatize the song with his voice, he delivers the words and lets the words tell the story. He keeps ego out of his singing, out of his guitar playing, out of his performance, in the mountain way. I and several others see Willard as the best kept secret in SW Virginia. Willard doesn't know how good he is. He doesn't promote himself. Scott Freeman married Willard's daughter, Jill. Scott and Willard have been musical parnters ever since; first with Skeeter & the Skidmarks, then Alternate Roots, then Skeeter & the Skidmarks redux. Willard and Scott make a great duo. Willard also plays duo with Bobby Patterson.

Bobby Patterson is a good singer too. He plays mandolin with the Highlanders. He plays guitar and banjo when he and Willard play together. Bobby Patterson is best known, for me anyway, on the album June Apple with Tommy Jarrell on fiddle, Kyle Creed, banjo, Audine Lineberry, bass, and Bobby Patterson rhythm guitar. He was young then, playing with the old fellers, the masters. Audine Lineberry played bass with Whit Sizemore's band, the Shady Mountain Ramblers. She sang Ruby the way it was meant to be sung. I personally hold Bobby Patterson as the most important man in SW Virginia, for what he has done for the music of Grayson County, in particular. He has a small label and a recording studio. He recorded local old-time bands and some bluegrass. He recorded the Shady Mountain Ramblers, Whitetop Mountain Band, Otis Burris, Art Wooten, a mess of others and made collections from the Galax fiddlers convention every year for cd. He started with LPs, then cassettes, then CDs. Bobby is a great musician and a noble man. 

Everyone in the band I could say is a noble man. Noble is a word not used any more, and that's a good thing. Now it is free of connotation, and it's meaning can be what I mean without sentiment mixed in. I mean they are noble in that they, each one, is who he is. Each one has worked hard all his life, has raised a family and made music on weekends. They are, every one, what we call here in the mountains good people. Give them a chance to make music and they're happy. Jimmy Zeh came to Galax from West Virginia. Willard came to Galax from a little township 10 miles outside Hazard, Kentucky. Scott is from MtAiry, lives in Woodlawn, Marvin Cockerham from Meadows of Dan. Bobby Patterson has lived at Galax all his life. Willard lives in Woodlawn. Bobby Patterson's Heritage Shoppe and Heritage Records is right there by Willard's framing shop.

From the moment the band started they played straight ahead mountain bluegrass and they never let up. Scott's fiddle came forward from time to time and raged for us. I think it might have been Katy Hill he cut loose on. I wasn't prepared with the camera when he started up, I missed the beginning, so I used the time to get still shots, wishing I'd got that fiddle on video. Then I always tell myself it is not at all necessary to have it all on video. It is not necessary at all. Enjoy it raw, straight from the fiddle to my ear. It gets to be like a Warhol fixation to want to record everything. I do it to archive this moment in time in the evolution of mountain music. I believe it needs doing. Nobody else is doing it. Then it's mine to do. I get to do things like this because I don't do it for money. I don't care about copyrights. I just want to share this mountain music with anyone around the world who wants to hear it.

*

THE MASTERS

bobby patterson and willard gayheart

I've put on Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson's album, Virginia Beauty, bought from Bobby Thursday when they were playing at the library. They make an excellent duo. Bobby plays banjo as well as guitar. He plays the bass too. He also plays mandolin. Bobby's studio is such that he can make individual tracks and put them together with this computer program that has made all his other expensive equipment obsolete. He does it with a computer now. He played the bass track with an electric bass. He and Willard did their parts in separate rooms. Bobby plays mandolin and bass on two tracks and banjo on another, per song. Willard takes care of the guitar very well. Both of them sing, both well. It's Carter Family kind of music. Good vocals and good rhythmic pickin with mountain drive. Both men have played bluegrass and old-time all their lives. Both are what I call master musicians. They make music when they play.

If you'd like to hear them, and see them, go to YouTube, write hobblealong1 in the search box and all the videos I've been uploading there will appear, the most recent first. Or you could write in Bobby's name or Willard's and everything with them will turn up. Bobby is late 60s and Willard is mid 70s. I suppose to the young it's old people music. They're my peers, so to me it's right there. They play at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway Tue-Fri 10-3. They don't get paid, but are allowed to sell their cds. Willard told me they sell quite a lot of cds. This one, Virginia Beauty, is their second one made for the purpose of selling there. It is most often people from Away, often from Far Away, Everywhere. Willard and Bobby play for people passing through, driving the Parkway, vacationing, stopping at the music center to see what it is, what's there, buy souvenirs, sit a while and listen to Willard and Bobby, or Willard and Scott, play mountain music. People inclined to walk on by will pause before they get to the door and listen, go do what they have to do, come back and have a seat. It's the kind of music that catches your attention by hearing the music in it.

Maybe what they're doing would be cagegorized Folk for the same reasons Doc Watson is. I would personally call them mountain music. Folk is too New York for what they do. They play traditional American music mountain style. Mountain music. Much mountain music is not accessible to people from the Flatland. The old-time music all sounds the same to the ear accustomed to electric music, rock, television. In like manner, rock all sounds the same to the ear tuned to old-time. Willard and Bobby play songs in the old mountain duet styles, emphasis on songs not so mournful. Americans don't like mournful songs or sad endings anymore. But some of the mournful ones are genuinely beautiful. Sorrow has its place in art too. Bobby plays Poor Ellen Smith, who was stabbed through the heart, etc, instrumental as a banjo demonstration song. Plays it all the way through clawhammer, the old-time way, then bluegrass all the way through, Earl Scruggs style. That's how you make an audience feel cheerful playing a sad song.

I see two mountain boys, Willard from E Kentucky 10 mi outside Hazard, Bobby from the Galax area. Willard came to Galax almost half a century ago. They've played bluegrass together more than 40 years. When they play at the Music Center, they have a great deal of experience making music together, respecting each other's musicianship. By this time in their lives making music together is automatic. They know each other's styles of playing well. For the tourists they are genuine mountain musicians, among the best of them, true hillbillies playing hillbilly music. The people I've seen come in to listen to them are struck when the leave the car, walk over to the building for toilet and/gift shop, a rest area with attractions. They hear the music and return to hear some more, buy a cd and listen some more. They take home with them some music to listen to in the car and tell their friends about seeing these people play on the Parkway. Like the Laurel Fork Travelers playing at Mabry Mill on the Parkway for years. I have to give it to the Dept of the Interior for what they do with mountain music along the beautiful road.

MOUNTAIN MUSIC AT THE LIBRARY

bobby patterson and willard gayheart

Music at the Sparta library tonight, Bobby Patterson and Willard Gayheart of Woodlawn, Virginia. If I remember correctly, Debbie told me when it was over 48 people were there. And there was room for more. A comfortable number of people for the space. A small few of the people in the audience know of either one of them. Before they started, I was talking with people, looking about seeing who was there to hear this music. I was thinking, y'all don't have any idea you're in the company of 2 masters. By the end of the first song, everybody knew the music we were hearing was the real deal. Bobby can pick a guitar and banjo, both with mastery. And he sings well. Willard's music is his guitar and singing. They've known each other 40 years and more, have played in the same band about all that time too, the Highlanders. Their businesses are the nearest thing to adjoining buildings, just a driveway space between them.

For all that Bobby Patterson has done in the course of his lifetime, I have no hesitation to call him the most important man in SW Virginia. His record label, Heritage Records, started doing lps, then cassettes, then cds of the old-time music of SW Virginia and some bluegrass. His recording studio is in the basement of his Heritage Record Shoppe in Woodlawn. He keeps a good supply of cds of music of the central Blue Ridge. Some of the bands he's recorded are fiddler Whit Sizemore's Shady Mountain Ramblers, The Bell Spur String Band, fiddler Otis Burris, early Whitetop Mountain Band when Albert Hash was the fiddler, Laurel Fork Travelers, New Ballards Branch Bog Trotters and a long list more. All the music he has put on record might never have been recorded if Bobby Patterson had been born someplace else. He played guitar on the most classic old-time album there is, June Apple, with Tommy Jarrell, fiddle, Kyle Creed, banjo, Audine Linebury, bass. He was a youngster then, in his twenties. He was with the big dogs, the old guys of his early life who have been dead 30 years by now.

Old-Time Herald began in the basement of his shop when it was in Galax, the 1970s. Grayson County has a music association Bobby moderates. He records the fiddlers conventions and puts selections onto cd for each year. He has given all his fiddlers convention tapes to Ferrum College's Appalachian music collection. At the Galax fiddler's convention, he is the one to come out and announce the banjo giveaway. He'll pick a tune on the banjo to show how it sounds. That's where I first learned Bobby could pick. The music is in him. His daddy was a fiddler, John Patterson. Bobby grew up in the Galax area old-time music world. I'm in awe of the benefit to his world Bobby has been all his life. A man who has made his world, southwestern Virginia, a better place than it would have been without him. He has contributed what seems like an unlimited amount to the music of his region.

Willard grew up about 10 miles outside Hazard, Kentucky. He came to this area more than 40 years ago, possibly close to 50. He's been with the Galax bluegrass band The Highlanders for about 40 years, Bobby too. Bobby plays mandolin with the Highlanders. Willard plays guitar and sings. When I listen to their music I hear Willard's sound. Willard is a good song writer and a good arranger. After hearing Willard's bands, Alternate Roots and Skeeter & the Skidmarks, I heard the Highlanders and there was Willard's sound again. He won't take credit for it, but Willard is a creative individual. He writes a good song. He can pick an acoustic guitar with the best. He is also known for his pencil drawings of mountain people. He keeps at that like a medieval monk. Thus a book of his drawings was published a few years ago. He gets better as he goes along. It's the same with his music. The music is effortless for him. He and Bobby had played at the Blue Ridge Music Center from 10 to 3 today, then to Sparta to play 3 hours at the library.

Willard is a good musician and a good performer. He has experience with every size of audience there is. With Alternate Roots and Skeeter, as well as the Highlanders, Willard has played a countless number of shows. He talks well between songs, sometimes telling the story behind one of the songs he wrote. He's personable with the audience such that when you're in the audience he's talking to you. Willard's vocals are such that you understand the words as articulately as the notes on his guitar. Willard's music has what is called heart and soul in jazz. When the music gets hold of Willard while he's singing, he feels it and you feel it. He has played his guitar and sung for so many years it appears automatic in this time of his life. Willard's music has mountain drive that keeps it moving along. The Carter Family had that drive too. Willard says in his song, My Henderson Guitar, the one thing he'd rather be doing by far, of all the things in the world he might be doing, is playing mountain music on his Henderson guitar.