CHASING A VISION

the new project

A new project completed. A wooden box, fifteen by nine inches, three inches deep. It is for hanging on a wall horizontally. Inside the box is black. The outside of the box is white. It makes a black rectangle framed with a half inch line of white. A string is stretched tight horizontally across the black rectangle half inch above center. I drilled a small hole the same diameter as the string in each side. Then, from the outside, drilled a larger hole on top of the small hole only half way through the wood. Tied a knot in one end of the string, tied  a length of thread to the other tip end of the string, put the thread through the eye of a needle, ran the needle through the hole on the left, then through the hole on the right and pulled the string through by the thread. Impossible to push the string through a hole the same size as the string. It needed an assist. The knot in the string held it in place on the left side. I could not tie a knot on the right side that would fit in the hole snugly enough to hold the string taut. I stuck a thumb tack into the back of the box and wrapped the string around it to hold the string. Dropped some wood glue into the outer hole at each end. By morning the glue was holding the string. I tied a knot in the string, using tweezers and a toothpick, tucked it into the hole, and with pocket knife filled the holes at either end with plastic wood, sanded it later and painted over it. The string shows no sign of how it is held in place at either end. 

african mask I call balance

I wrote here a few weeks ago I wanted my art to be simple as a line of string. Next thought, do something with a line of string. It's been in my head ever since. Now I have a vertical string and a horizontal string. I don't want to get into complex workings with the string. Don't even need to make any more with string. This seems about as simple a statement as I can make with one line of string. I'll not stop looking. Won't worry over it. Will let it come forward of its own will. Already have two more in process, not a string. Both I've been waiting for and the parts came together. Assembling the parts is all that's left to do. The purpose of every project is the word simple. Once a project in my mind's eye takes a turn toward complex, I throw out the idea. This does not apply to construction, the assembly of parts. I don't care how complex putting the parts together may be. The next one has enough complexity in the construction it inhibits me, makes me wait for the day I feel like jumping in and figuring out the details. It has minimal parts. Its visual impact will be powerful and what it has to say is powerful. Fairly complex construction, totally simple result. And I'm scared to dive into it. A lot of measuring is required. And it has to be exact. I'm not good at exact measuring. Like so many steps in constructing a project, everything I do is the first time. Necessary to figure out every detail unto completion. Therein, largely, lies the fun.

car door shadow

Another one I'm imaging on the drive-in theater screen inside my forehead is ready to go, but for the labor. It is all wood to be sanded carefully until it's right, parts fitted together, and two or three coats of tung oil. Much sanding I want to do by hand. Another aspect of the art process I like is so often the first time is the only chance, one time only. I think of it like Zen archery, put out the candle flame with one shot of an arrow. Almost is not close enough. This new one I'm imaging will have two such places that are one-time-only moments. It's right the first time or it's always wrong. No erasing it and trying it again. I recall a time painting portraits of fiddlers, I finished the bow and the bow hair last. Bow hair is a delicate thing to paint. One swipe of the brush from one end to where it touches the string, and one swipe from there to the tip of the bow. On one of Howard Joines I waited two months before I felt it in the day that this is the day to do it. When the time is right and I'm feeling right, the one swipe occurs in a second and comes out just right. It has to be. It is a white line in the foreground and the colors around it largely dark. It also has to be a white that doesn't jump in your face, nor retire to the background. Those moments scare the hell out of me. I believe it works out because I'm imaging it on my drive-in theater screen over and over for as long as it takes until I feel like I understand it. Something like learning the words to a song so well there are no stuttering moments on stage looking for the next word. It has to be flawless as well-practiced.

howard joines

Some years ago I read results of a study, possibly in the science section of Time or Newsweek, that a psychologist had commissioned two guys to throw a basketball at the hoop from the free-throw line. One was to practice thirty minutes a day throwing the ball for a month. The other was to practice by visualizing throwing the ball at the hoop thirty minutes a day. At the end of the month, both showed the same degree of improvement over how they threw the ball before. I recognized at the moment of reading the article that it works. I've taken it for my principle on how to do something like make the swipe for the bow hair in one gesture and it's right. I probably painted the bow hair a few thousand times in my mind's eye. When brush touched canvas, it flowed like a golf swing. The fiddle bows scared me more for each one I approached. The potential for ruining everything his high. And that's the place I like. Some people like to climb the face of a rock cliff with fingertips and toes or ride a kayak over a waterfall. I like to ride the edge of ruining something I've worked on irreversibly. This thrill of adventure is what making art projects satisfies in who I am. There is also the edge between clever and art. I don't see art in the clever. I see clever an element of a work of art, but not the goal that I think of as art, having that certain smile, ce je ne sais quoi. I don't know that I get there every time, but do believe I have touched it a few times. The only reason that motivates this series I'm engaged in is reaching for that I don't know what.

don't worry ~ be happy

meher baba

*

  

WRITING FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES

pictures from the game-cam

A couple of mornings ago I rose around 4am. Unable to return to sleep, I decided to get at the day's writing. In just a few minutes I was engaged. That almost is never possible. Along about 8am I'd finished the writing and it was time to add some pictures. The sunlight came through the window and lit some rows of cds on shelves against the wall opposite the desk. The titles had spotlights on them. From about 8 feet away I could read them easily. My eyes stopped at GARBAGE, Bleed Like Me. I'd been aiming to listen to Garbage for several days. That was the album I wanted to hear. A very satisfying band to my ears. I put it on and cranked it up, had a rock n roll party first thing in the morning, selecting pictures to go with what I'd just written. It took about as much time as the collection of songs playing out, considering I stopped to listen for long stretches from time to time. It was good to hear them again. Extra good musicians and Shirley Manson's vocals. By the time it was done, I was wide awake and wide open. Music over and the day's entry posted, I went outside to feed the donkeys and calves their morning hay, came back in and called my friend Carole for our morning visit. I must have sounded wired on coke, talking as fast as I could go, wound up. I laughed at myself when I heard me talking like I'd ingested a handful of diet pills. After talking about an hour with Carole, I'd simmered down a good bit, gradually returned to home base.

 

A few weeks ago, Sarah Bryan, editor at Old Time Herald, had sent me a box of several copies of the new issue. I'd asked that I be paid for the article in it with copies instead of money. I wanted to give copies to people whose relatives were in the article, friends, pass them around to people concerned, like Kermit at the barber shop who let me use a photograph hanging on the wall in the barbershop to include with the article. I opened the end of the box and left the magazines in the box, a good place to keep them while I took out one, two or three at a time. Today the stack was down to three yet to be delivered. I took them out of the box to throw the box away. Under the bottom magazine I found a notecard in envelope from Sarah, the editor. If I'd opened the box another way the note would have been on top. Before I say more, I need to interject that my assessment of Sarah Bryan as an editor is way up high. The two pieces of mine she has worked with, she smoothed the rough parts, rearranged some of the information such that it makes better sense in the reading. She is a subtle editor. She pays close attention with a well-trained, quick mind. I had given my friend Lucas Carpenter a copy of the magazine. He read the whole magazine, looked at all the ads and said, "Really good magazine! Good editor!" He went on to praise the lay-out, Steve Terrill's work. Steve is a master at his part of it like Sarah is a master at hers. Lucas has recently had his third book of poetry published. He has worked with several different editors from writing stories and articles as well as his poetry. He appreciates a good editor. I was glad he was able to see it in the product without me saying "Sarah is a great editor." That kind of intro kills what follows. But she is.

 

 

 

In her card she wrote that she "really, really liked" the article and believes OTH readers will too. I, who suffer from the mental illness ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and suffer as well from LSE, Low Self Esteem. An editor I respect as an editor and as a human being saying such as that about something I wrote, makes somebody with LSE double-take and say, "Really?" By this time in the life, I've learned to accept it when somebody says something like that, receive it with gratitude, be encouraged by it, instead of saying to self, she was just being nice--that's her job. It was one of the great joys of my life to write this account of Howard Joines, local fiddler, from other people's memories. I believed writing by "first hand" sources, information from witnesses memories, was the most reliable. Lord have mercy. A few times I had to leave out some information because of contradictory memories. Like some said Howard always played bluegrass, never played old-time. There was no bluegrass before he was 40. A bluegrass banjo player told me he didn't make music with Howard because Howard played old-time. The banjo player I knew in Howard's band played old-time. Another banjo player was in his bluegrass band. Howard had two bands, one old-time and one bluegrass. I had people telling me he only played one or the other. A woman I know said, "I aint never heard Howard Joines play nothin but bluegrass." She was born about the same year Bill Monroe first played on Grand Ole Opry. I attempted to add, but there wasn't any bluegrass before 1939. "I don't care--he aint never played nothin but bluegrass."

 

 

I'd wanted to write about Howard Joines three years ago. Talked with his son Richard on the phone for quite a while and he told me Howard's life and I made notes as he talked. I kept those notes in my desk drawer and looked at them from time to time. I had some memories from other people about Howard. I couldn't find how I wanted to approach writing about him. I wanted to write about him as a fiddler, but had pages and pages of biographical information. The biographical information made a kind of hurdle for me, one to climb over. I felt like the biographical information was important and wanted to tell it too, but then it became the purpose and I couldn't even get started. I continued to look at the notes from time to time, memorizing them, incorporating into my mind every little bit of information I could find about Howard Joines. Lucas Pasley had given me a couple of cds of Howard playing fiddle from some tapes Clifton Evans made. After three years of memorizing the notes of Howard's life, and having a couple hours of his music in the house, I felt like it was time to start. I searched and searched for a way to approach him besides biography. Couldn't find it. I decided to start and see if the writing might take its own course, see what happens. I was visiting with Richard Andrews, who grew up a neighbor to Howard Joines, and asked him to tell me something about Howard. I didn't have anything in mind I was asking for, just wanted to hear what he would say. It would be something memorable. He said, "When both his feet get to going, you're going to hear some music." That one sentence pulled the trigger.

 

 

 

I started the writing as soon as I woke up next morning, wrote all day until after 2am. Slept awhile, up again writing until 2am. Did that three days in a row and the same amount of time the fourth day rewriting, filling in blanks, and grammar editing. Then I took a rest. Didn't even want to look at it for awhile. Needed some distance only time could provide. Soon after introducing him, I started looking at Howard Joines in family context, part of it, but not the way I was looking for. I kept on writing and came to realize I've known several musicians from his generation, people he made music with over a lifetime. There it was. I was looking for the context of his life and it was the music world of this region of the mountains from Roaring River below the mountain to the south, to Galax to the north, Wilkes to the southwest and Mt Airy to the east. That was his music world. And more immediately the musicians of the county. I had been told about that period of time by other musicians I'd know from his time. I started writing about the musicians around him and found his context as a musician among musicians and went with that. It happened. And I saw that during his time as a fiddler everything was changing around him, from the Carter Family on the radio to the Beatles on tv. Everything was changing then. Electricity and plumbing were new to the mountains. Paved highways were new, and really fast cars. The music changed in that time. Howard was one of the musicians that went with the New, which was bluegrass. I surrounded him with the other musicians of his time he knew and made music with, and found the Howard I was looking for. I love it when a writing project takes its own direction and somehow guides the writing, or guides the flow in my head that is transferred to the monitor by fingers that follow thought. Thank you, Sarah, Thank you, Thank you.

The quick way to the OTH website:

www.oldtimeherald.org  

 

 

 

*

 

HOWARD JOINES AND OLD-TIME MUSIC

art wooten (left) with the stanley brothers

I've been gone the last six days while being right here. Fell into an obsessive fit of writing a ten page essay on Pine Swamp fiddler Howard Joines and his music world in the county. At the beginning, I wanted to write about his music, to get a feel for the music he played and how he played, his musician friends and accomplices, the time, the place. I had plenty of biographical information, but I don't like something written about a musician or a painter that is answers to test questions only. I wanted to write something that dove into his music and his world of music, attempting to find the musician within, not just dates and data. I wasn't sure I could do that. It looked like a very tall order. I started writing thinking I was taking the biographical way. Then right away I wanted to put him in the context of the music world he was in. That grew and I found as the writing was reaching for the feel of what he did with a fiddle, I was also telling of the time bluegrass came into mountain music. At the Fiddle and Plow show last Friday night, talking with Karl Cooler of Mountain Roads Recordings before the show, he told me he recommends my blog writings on regional music to people looking for something to help them understand mountain music. He said I have an ability to give the sense and feel of the music in a way readers can get. I was happy to hear that. It's one of those things that has to come from outside myself, because I can't see something that subjective.

The music Friday night lifted me onto a wave that felt like a surfer standing up on the surfboard at Waikiki or some exotic surf place like Durban, South Africa, where you can catch a giant wave and ride it a long time. I'm still on the wave from a week ago. By the end of Saturday I knew I was on a wave and decided to make it productive. It was a new moon. I'd been aiming to write something about fiddler Howard Joines for three years with several pages of notes made from conversation with his son, Richard, plenty of biographical and family information. I set out to start writing a couple times, but it never took. Knowing myself somewhat and how I approach things, I decided to forget about it, keep on reading the information over, absorbing it, getting it into my subconscious where I let it gestate with everything else in my head. I let it swim in the back of my mind with the confidence that when ready it would emerge of its own timing.  On the previous Wednesday I was talking with a local man, asking him about Howard as a fiddler. His one-sentence answer inspired me so much that I started the writing with his sentence. His sentence was the door I needed. When I saw that on Saturday, I knew this was it. I was on the wave, didn't know how long it would last, and went for it. Four days of all day writing fast as mind allowed. Then a day of rewriting, writing new paragraphs to fill in blanks I'd left, then another day of rewriting less extensively, looking to clarity. Made a few phone calls to get accuracy of details since the writing was from imperfect memory.

In the writing, I allowed the writing itself to lead the way. A few times I wondered if I really wanted to go there, but did, followed it and found a much greater place than I had in the front of my mind. Without seeing it ahead, I managed to tell the story of how bluegrass transformed "old-time," then known as music, almost overnight in the mountains. I found mountain old-time and mountain bluegrass so close to the same thing that the differences amounted to next to nothing. A different kind of banjo. A mandolin. The musicians take "breaks," or solos in jazz terminology. I think in the end what came through was mountain bluegrass was the direction traditional music took. What we call old-time is the stringband music pre-WW2. Bluegrass came and the younger musicians jumped on it. It was the same music, just more demanding musicianship, as much the draw of bluegrass as loving it. Early on, I wasn't aware that I wanted to put Howard in context until I started the writing. Two paragraphs about Art Wooten and I wondered if I wanted to get off that page that much, but it worked in so well it belonged. Howard was a great fiddler. Art was a great fiddler. They were friends in youth learning the fiddle together. Art moved to Kingsport; Howard wanted to live at home with his family. Family was important to Howard Joines. Art took his family with him. Then Bill Monroe made Art Wooten "the first bluegrass fiddler" til the end of time. Art is also the only musician to have recorded with Monroe, Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs, all three the first run of bluegrass bands. 

In the course of the writing, I let the reins go, inspired by Karl Cooler affirming that I really am able to give in words a sense of hearing the music, how it feels, where it hits inside. Jr taught me in the years of our conversations that mountain music is all about feelings. You've heard the saying about somebody plays a piano "by heart." We all know that means without reading notes, from memory. It also means by feeling, as the heart is the seat of feeling, or emotion. They play by feel, heart, not by notes, mind. Mountain music is played by feel only. If it aint played from the heart it aint music. I found him to be right, as he always was in everything he said. Because he never said anything without knowing before he said it there was no bullshit in it. I remember a time in his later years a young guy came to him asking Jr to teach him how to play a banjo. Jr said, "If you can't figure it out on your own, you don't want to play the banjo." It wasn't like he passed more test questions than anybody else, but that he didn't bullshit in any way, not even a fart. He was dead set inside himself against saying anything that could be called bullshit. It's not like everything he said was right, but it was correct in his way of seeing or he wouldn't say it. In a way, it can be said I found my heart in mountain music. I have sat through an entire Ralph Stanley concert with tears of joy running down my face. Ralph Stanley does that to me. Carter Stanley wells up the tears of emotion too. The Carter Family fills me with so much joy it bubbles over in tears. They all sing "from the heart." All their music is from the heart. When the music comes from the heart, it goes to the heart of the listener. Music made from the mind goes to the mind.

Howard Joines's fiddle has a dance of joy in it. His bow has an apparent freedom that allows the music to make it move. All the time in the first half of the writing, I listened to Howard making music with his old-time musician friends on one cd made from a reel-to-reel tape in 1953. Oh it was good. He was a magnificent fiddler. Smooth sound---a smooth sound with guts. He has a clarity that makes his sound refreshing, happy to the ear, and his fiddle often sounds joyous. In the second half I listened to Howard playing bluegrass in 1966 with Jr Maxwell playing bluegrass banjo and Wayne Henderson in his 20s. It was the same music, just in another gear. In the bluegrass is where I really hear the joy in Howard's fiddle. There were times, esp playing Dance All Night With A Bottle In Your Hand that it sounded like Howard stepped aside and let the fiddle and bow do everything without his interference. It's the kind of letting go I don't hear a lot of. I believe that's what is meant by let-go-and-let-God. Just step aside and let it happen. That "it" is an aspect of God. I've come to believe that all art forms are doorways to God within. Like Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is within. It's not "just over the clouds," though it's there too. But we don't need to go there to find it, because it's in each one of us, all living beings. It's in our hearts, our innermost selves, where mountain music comes from. I'm not saying they don't play from the heart other places, only that it's the rule of thumb in the mountains.

I came out of the experience surprised at what I have learned about mountain music from Jr first, musicians and the music itself. I've read nothing about it. I'm only interested in the living quality of the music as it is played by today's musicians to today's audiences and dancers. We are very different people today from what we were a hundred years ago, and we're also very much the same. Those people then were no different from us except in the gadgets available to them. In matters of the heart there is no difference between us. We wear bluejeans and tshirts, ride motorcycles and pickups, watch NASCAR and football on tv, listen to Rage Against The Machine, smoke reefer and drink beer, carry guns illegally, take sex where we can get it. In the time when old-time was simply called music, it wasn't like we do it now. It was work like hell all week and get drunk on the weekends. All the men carried guns. About all the men drank white liquor. They fox hunted and made music. Their spiritual life was the same Bible stories we have today without the commercial cartooning of the entire Bible over and over continually. They were the tail end of the Age of Fire. The mountains were overtaken by the Age of Electricity all at once. And bluegrass came with it. The mountain people changed, traditional music changed. And, like the people stayed the same, the music stayed the same. It was the same songs, same tunes, just played faster with more complex musicianship. That's a pretty good description of our minds as they are now compared to how their minds went then. We're cranked way up. So our music would be too.

*

PAINTING FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES 2

howard joines, fiddler of pine swamp, chicken reel

Here is the photograph of what I wrote about yesterday, Howard Joines. Last night it was too dark to go outside and hang it on the side of the house. I have a good light inside, but it makes glare, lotsa glare. Took this picture in the gloaming, after sunset, before dark, no glare. It worked out all right, a bit dull in the colors, but you get the drift. It reproduces the image. All that's left to do is put the strings on the fiddle, which comes after everything is dry. I lay a yardstick on it and draw the line with a colored pencil. It works really well. Also, I suggest them. I'm drawn to do both on this one. My preference is to suggest. I'm not using assists for the painting, though for an instruments strings I'm ok with a yardstick and pencil. But for painting straight lines, I don't use a stick to rest my hand on to still the jitters of having a nervous system. I let my inaccuracies have their say too. If I can't paint a straight line, an almost straight line will have to do.

I'm happy with the fiddle. It was as exacting as the face. I wanted the face to be one his relatives would recognize on sight. I want the fiddle to be the same way. Not exactly like his fiddle, but have the look of being a particular fiddle, not painted with measured exactness, a little bit off in this curve, a little off in that curve, nothing exact, esp perspective, but it's close enough that from the distance of 3 feet or more it looks like it's approaching photographic realism, but up close, all that just goes away. Loose lines, fuzzy edges. Looking at it from a distance I see a study in triangles. His shirt is loaded with triangle lines, the fiddle and the bow make a triangle, the roost the hen is on suggests a triangle, the window is a triangle. A triangle of negative space between his arm bent at the elbow holding the bow, and the side of his shirt. Inaccuracies seem to me to dance before the eye. I like the dance they do with the viewer's eye. It seems to my eye, a little bit offness all around ads a little life, like a subtle movement. I don't think I'm saying this as a justification, but may be. Either way is ok.  

I didn't realize when I started painting mountain fiddlers how satisfying it would be, and how necessary it would become. By now it feels like I'm making icons of the people who carry the spirit of mountain culture. The religion doesn't work any more, and the spirit of the culture is weak. The music is the living spirit of mountain culture. It's very much alive. Howard was one of the carriers of the fire. One of the great ones. We don't have much of his music recorded. What I have in my collection I treasure. I would do well to put all my treasures such as field recordings, videos, cds, tapes, in a box for the library. Since the radio show is no more, I have a good collection of regional music that belongs in the library. Already I've taken a bunch to them. It's time for another batch. What it does to me is take all my best music out of the house. It's ok. I don't listen to it all the time. When I listen to old-time music at home, it's largely old-timey banjo pickers like Gaither Carlton, Morgan Sexton, Jont Blevins, the kind of music that has a good flow to it. I forget how much I enjoy the cd of Howard Joines and Jr Maxwell, both of them superlative musicians. I tend to put my treasures away and not listen to them, when that's where the music is I really want to be listening to.

It surprised me when Lucas Pasley turned up with some recordings of Howard and Jr together. I'm thinking the guitar might have been Clif Evans, whose tape I believe Lucas got it from. Jr told me he and Howard didn't play an awful lot together. They're known all around for playing together. Howard played mostly old-time and Jr liked bluegrass only. Old-time was "draggy" to him. For them to be playing together, Howard would be playing bluegrass. They took old-time tunes and bluegrassed them. Howard was as good a bluegrass fiddler as he was old-time. I think what Jr meant by they didn't make music much together was they were not in a band together. They were in different bands. They might show up at a jam together, or during fiddlers conventions, many kinds of possibilities. I think they played together fairly often, just not on a regular basis. Like when it happened it happened. Jr had tremendous respect for Howard's fiddling, for Howard himself, his mother's brother, Uncle Howard. 

I expect when Jr was young playing old-time, before bluegrass came along, he played a good bit of music with Uncle Howard who lived at the other end of Pine Swamp Road. Ed Atwood, clawhammer picker, lived across the Little River Creek from Jr, and was banjo with Howard's band. Jr's older half-brother, Welter Maxwell, was an old-time fiddler. Jr's cousin Richard, son of Howard, played guitar. His cousin Carol, Howard's daughter, played guitar. The whole bunch of the Pine Swamp Joineses were good musicians and good singers. Among the living ones is Dennis Joines, bluegrass singer and guitar picker. Last I heard his band is New River Bluegrass. He also has a responsible job that keeps him on the road between home and Winston-Salem a lot. I always think of Dennis when I think of Pine Swamp musicians. He can sing a bluegrass song. He has a singing voice, like Jeff Michael, that is right for bluegrass and does it right. Jeff would rather be poor and make music, while Dennis would rather have a nice house, good woman, some kids, a home. To afford the home he wants, he needs to make some money. Howard was Dennis's uncle too. Dennis's dad, Walton, also a good singer and musician, was Howard's brother and Jr's mother's brother. 

I scrolled up to look at the picture and immediately saw a Pine Swamp Joines in his face. I saw Walton and Howard's son Richard, Dennis, and Jr's mother from photographs I've seen, the structure of the face. That's what I see when I see somebody is the structure of their face. I see it in the Joineses of Pine Swamp distinctly. Another thing I see that runs through them is they're all good people. They were Regular Baptists and went to New Salem on Pine Swamp Road. Howard is buried there. I remember seeing Walton's name carved on the back of one of the benches in the church. Walton left this world several years ago, and he did that when he was a kid, probably a teenage boy tied up in hormonal knots. Richard and Jr are the ones of these Joineses I've known the best, to sit and talk with awhile. I didn't mean the church reference as a qualification for someone to be "good people." Jr was not a church goer and he did everything "good" people aren't supposed to do. He was among the best when it comes to good people. I suppose by good I mean perhaps the least abrasive, generous, people you like to see again. That's it. People you like to see again. 

*

PAINTING FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES

tapo

Back to work on the Howard Joines fiddler painting. Repainted the fiddle, all of it, with colors closer to my satisfaction. Also put in the chicken, a ghostly chicken of the imagination, white on a white roost. She's leaning down toward his ear like she's singing into his ear. I'm happy with it. The hen is white and transparent like a spectre, like a memory, or a thought. I have her singing her note into his ear, because when he plays Cluck Old Hen, Cacklin Hen and Chicken Reel, old-time fiddle tunes with notes in them that are chicken notes, he plays the note of a hen cackling. Howard kept chickens, and you can hear it when he plays those tunes. They have notes that sound exactly like a chicken when old-time fiddlers play them, fiddlers who grew up with chickens. In the old days, about everybody raised chickens. Howard's chicken notes were perfect. Tommy Jarrell played a good chicken note. All the old-time fiddlers found those notes. That's changing now. The new fiddlers don't live with chickens. You can hear it when they play these tunes, it's a note approximating a chicken's note, but there's no chicken in it.


It was a good project to set this one back in motion. Had it going good and then froze when it came time for the fiddle strings and the bow. I finished two others while it waited. Didn't get the f holes perfect, but I don't care. I don't want perfect. I don't even care if it makes it look "folk art." That's what it is, so it doesn't matter if somebody says that. I'd be as happy with that title as any. The fiddle had already been brought up to the final coat of paint, which was applied today. I was ready to go, knew what had to be done, bore down and done it. Something I've not articulated before is the risk involved in painting, the constant need to apply each touch of paint just right, or close.



Years ago, friend Don Smith who liked to climb rock cliffs straight up, loved the risk. He told me I needed to get out and do something that involved some risk. I couldn't ever explain it, so I didn't try, but I set out on an adventure every time I approach a blank canvas. And when it comes toward the end when I have to paint 1/4" slightly curved line on a white shirt, no mistakes, the line having to cross the fiddle too, the line 2 feet long, I get paralyzed mentally and can't start, though I know I can do it, know I will do it, know that when it happens, it will take no more than 5 to 10 minutes. That part just about paralyzes me from knowing I have one chance and one chance only. It can only be done when I'm ready. One day I feel it, and it gets done in just a few minutes. When I start, instead of holding my breath, I control my breathing, keep it going so I don't pass out from lack of oxygen.


And there was getting the chicken right. Again, one time only. It's not perfect, which means it's just like I want it to be. I've put on a cd of Howard Joines playing fiddle with Jr Maxwell playing banjo, and I'm guessing Richard Joines playing guitar. They're playing Bear Tracks, Jr's banjo in the lead. Sounds good. Now I won't be able to write for listening. They are so good their music draws all my attention. Jr is picking something else now, beautifully. If I'd ask him the title, he'd say, "You don't know the name of that?" and he wouldn't tell me. I'd have to ask ask again. It would be in fun, making fun of me for not knowing. Not that he knew the names of all the songs. Howard's fiddle is working with the banjo that is going where the fiddle takes it. I took a risk when I put this cd on of letting the music take me over and it has. It pulls my ears and occupies my conscious mind that shuts down and receives this something that is so much better than anything that runs through my mind.



They're playing Just Because, a song Bill Monroe also recorded. I knew it before from Elvis doing it early when he was on Sun label just before he became a household name overnight. Jr plays well with a fiddler. He supports the fiddler, keeps the rhythm for him, doesn't get in front of him. Dance All Night With A Bottle In Your Hand. Howard plays this one especially lyrically. What a great fiddler. Jr's banjo works right along with the fiddle. Howard was Jr's uncle. Jr's mother came from an especially musical set of Joineses in Pine Swamp township. Oh it feels good hearing this good music. They're bluegrassing old-time fiddle tunes about like Art Wooten did. Art made two albums in his later years, one old-time and one bluegrass. Same bluegrass bands both times. This is how Art played the old-time tunes on his album, bluegrassed them, keeping the dancers in motion.



This rendering of Howard Joines is looking at being finished tomorrow. Just a little bit more to do. Could have done it today, but I wanted to give it another day. Looking at it, the chicken is right. She is present, but not overtaking. She's whispy as a spectre. This is the chicken he's hearing in his inner ear when he's playing the chicken note in Cluck Old Hen and Chicken Reel. I had to listen to him playing his fiddle to remind myself I'm painting an icon of a master fiddler. The chicken is part of the whole. She belongs. Her presence adds a kind of living quality to the whole. She draws attention from Howard's face, when the eye reaches the hen, it's drawn back to Howard's face. It sets up a rhythm like that with the viewer's eye. Unconsciously. The hen became an essential element to the whole as soon as she appeared. A couple of brush strokes, 2 red dots and a tiny yellow dot, the combs and beak, leaning from the roost toward the fiddler's ear, singing her note to his inner ear.



* 

LIVING APPALACHIA

by the side of the road


More snow in the night. Maybe 3 inches of powdery soft snow. Forecast for tomorrow is wind. This is good drifting snow. Fog settled on the mountain all day with temperature at 27. It froze to the tree limbs and twigs making them white. In the morning when the sun hits the mountains at a slant, they will glow. This has been an exceptionally long-lasting cold spell for winter. I love the snow, am glad especially for the ground water. A good day to stay at home.


Today's movie was UNDER THE VOLCANO, made by John Huston from the novel by Malcolm Lowry. It's a book I meant to read years ago and never got it read. Glad now I didn't. The story of a drunk self destructing doesn't entertain me. The film was beautifully made, but didn't reach me. I meant to get some painting done when it was over, and set up for painting half way through it and finished the film painting. I could hear it fine. There wasn't anything to see, just a stupid guy being stupid. I don't really enjoy stories of somebody falling through the bottom, like in the movie Drugstore Cowboy. Cold, dark tale of a loser acting out his loser nature until he self destructs.


Listening to some Howard Joines fiddle music today from a reel-to-reel tape by Clifton Evans, who played guitar with Joines. Sometimes a banjo comes in. Might be Ed Atwood on some of them. I don't recognize the bluegrass banjo on some. I'm hearing it from a cd Lucas Pasley made from Clif Evans's tapes. Howard Joines was quite a fiddler at old-time and bluegrass. Old-time was his music, though he loved to play bluegrass too. He was respected all over the county for his fiddling, like every good musician in the county is known all over the county. This music is reminding me of the gulf between the culture of the mountain people and the culture of the people coming into the mountains. The population is now about half and half. There is very little cross-cultural interest. City people bore mountain people. Mountain people bore city people. The mountain people are working class culture. The city people are middle class culture. Very different viewpoints.


My friend Cynthia is teaching an Appalachian history class at WCC in Sparta. I'm wiggling with curiosity to know what it's about. I don't know any history of the region past the lives of the oldest people I've known. Tom Pruitt told me a great deal of history, living history, about relatives, friends, church, preachers, revivals in my house that was then the school house of Air Bellows, sheriffs, murders, catastrophes, rain storms that washed out sides of mountains, working horses, making old-time haystacks and rail fences, fox hunting, making liquor, fox dogs, the ways of what he called the old people, the people who were old when he was young. I heard his brother, Millard, the Regular Baptist preacher talk of his lifetime, how they lived, what they did. It was a living book, better than any book, because it was all told from first hand experience. No interpretation, but their own.


In a way I was a moron for not writing what they told me when I returned home from a visit. But it felt too invasive, too exploiting. It felt too much like I was using them for something quite other than our person-to-person conversation. I didn't want to break the authenticity of a truly real human communication in a time when we're so overwhelmed by television and telephones real communication by sitting and talking, like an old-timer telling a new-comer his life. My rationale back then was this was between us when the conversation took place, about like wearing a "wire" to record him talking. It felt too unreal. I came to the mountains to get away from the unreal and find something real. I couldn't exploit people I respected and admired for any reason. When I write about them it's with high regard to give a picture of who they were, and no need to do any more than that.


I came to the mountains with the conviction that I was here to learn the new culture I was entering, not to teach the culture I'd left. I was all eyes and ears. I knew the people in Millard's church, people they knew. An old friend of Millard's came to mind who drove up the mountain with his wife from Low Gap from time to time to visit Millard and Malissie. Claude Brown. He was always laughing and telling comic tales of something somebody did or said that was especially hilarious. Old-time situational humor, telling something somebody did that was funny, or that self did. Humor now is jokes. Situational comedy is seldom noticed. It has to be on tv to be noticed.


Saw a good commercial for some kind of video screen with a Paula Abdul look alike jerking her long hair and limber body on ultra high heels, the left side of the tv screen, and on the right side the same image gyrating on this particular monitor advertised for better than life. The white guy who has never seen anything but television stares at the image on the screen. Paula Abdul gives up trying to catch his attention and huffs off the stage. The maker of the brief video knew very well what he was saying. Television has become reality.


*

ALLEGHANY BLUEGRASS AND THE NEWS

seen in pine swamp

On the news I just now heard that enemy missiles can reach US aircraft carriers. I figured that was settled back in the 50s. Maybe news is like fashions, retro-news. Poke the off button. Get that noise outta my house. Click. Done. Mmm, quiet. Refrigerator running, fan on the heater going, crickets inside my head. I prefer this trio of the sounds of home to somebody talking about missiles and ships over pretend news. There comes a time it's just a noise. It's come to the place I don't believe any of it I hear and I talk back to it. Like hearing them talk about the tea party a "grass roots movement" makes me gag. It's a Karl Rove creation, the Master Propagandist. I listen less because I believe less every week. Yet I continue to catch a five minute top of the hour news every day to see if the end of the world took place yet, if N Korea has nuked S Korea, or if Pakistan nuked India while I slept.

To get that nonsense out of my head, I put on a cd Lucas Pasley gave me some months ago of Howard Joines playing fiddle and Jr Maxwell on bluegrass banjo. Probably Richard Joines playing bass. Sounds good. Made perhaps in Howard's living room. Now they're playing Sally Goodin. They're making music. It's mountain music from down the road a couple miles. Among the greatest gifts these mountains have given me is the music. I've been trained all my life to believe that only the big recording stars are any good as musicians and anybody that don't play on the radio can't cut the mustard. Au contraire. Now, when I hear the great Eric Clapton pick acoustic guitar, I think there are at least a dozen men and probably women inside a 50 mile radius of my house who can pick circles around Clapton. More than a dozen more than likely.

I've grown into a time of the life when I prefer to hear music of field recordings, recorded at home during practice sessions, jams. That's where mountain music lives, besides at dances. At home practicing is for the dances and fiddlers conventions. Now they're playing the Bill Monroe tune, Just Because, that Elvis recorded around 1955 and made Bill Monroe a pile of royalties. It's refreshing to hear Jr's banjo again and Howard Joines's fiddle, especially them together. I hear a guitar that may be Howard's son Richard. A guess I assess pretty close.

These I'm hearing are ones Lucas Pasley has put into his computer to download them onto cds for a preservation effort. It would have been a serious shame to have no recordings of these people, especially in a time when recording is easy. They were too good as musicians to never be heard again after they've died. While Jr was living, I was only able to find a cassette of his band the Green Mountain Boys and a video tape of the band playing in his basement. When he died, 3 more collections of his picking fell into my lap. One with 2 tunes of Jr with fiddler Cleve Andrews, 15 tunes of Jr with fiddler Art Wooten, and a dozen tracks of Jr with his uncle Howard Joines. This is one of the wonderful treasures of Alleghany County music I want with all my might to be able to put them on several cds to give out to the people who need them. I can name off a list of a hundred easily.

I like being able to preserve what little bit I'm able. My contribution to the whole is small, but an integral part of the whole, a part that belongs, small though it may be. One is plenty. I like having a small part in the world of the traditional music of NW NC and SW VA. I've helped preserve a little bit, and gathered together some of Jr's lost recordings for the archives. Seven years of radio show was satisfying and 4 years of the store Backwoods Beat Music distributing the music to people wanting to hear it. Unfortunately, it's too small a market for any place with any overhead to make a go of it, all the more going into a Depression called an Economic Downturn. It might be an economic downturn on the stock market, but it's a depression in the working class. Big O's allusion to self as FDR replacement didn't work out. He was no FDR. He's not showing much Abe Lincoln, either. There is still plenty of time for the Lincoln likeness to come to the surface if it's in there. Sorry for mixing up the inner world with the outer world, but they do weave together in everyday life.

*

FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES 2

the doors



Hearing Howard Joines play fiddle and Jr Maxwell banjo. It's a jam at somebody's house. No idea who is playing guitar and bass. Both are good. Jr had told me he'd made a lot of music with Howard. Here it is. Probably it's Clifton Evans on guitar. I believe it came from his reel-to-reel tape Lucas Pasley is transferring to computer. Evans went to see as many musicians in the county as he knew of who made music. Fortunately, his tapes found Lucas. Jr is now playing banjo Bear Tracks. Bass and guitar are going along with him. Next, he plays one I don't know the title. It's really a beautiful banjo piece. Good bass and guitar with it. Pardon me while I sit here and listen to the music. Howard's fiddle is playing something I'd love to be seeing him play. Sounds like his bow is bouncing on the strings. Mandolin came in playing with the fiddle. Might have been Richard Joines. They're layin it to it, whatever it's called and whoever they are.



Howard's fiddle is going all over Bill Monroe's Just Because. They're tearing it up. Howard Joines is fulfilling every praise I've heard of his fiddle over the years. This is some dynamite music. I want to play it Saturday morning so bad. But I'll do better than that. Don't know what it will be yet, but it will be. I'm not going to stop searching for music of our county. I am painting portraits of these people. From here on I pay tribute to the music of Alleghany and surrounding counties. It will manifest in different ways over time. At this moment Howard's fiddle is illustrating for me what Richard meant when he said of his dad's fiddle, "bears down on it, gets it out of it, doesn't just tickle it." Suddenly Lucas has tapes from different sources of Howard Joines and the different musicians he made music with over time. Quite a lot of the songs have good sound quality. The musicianship on everything is good as it gets.



We have been talking about putting together a cd of Howard Joines to get several copies printed and out in the world, like with Jr's, to family, friends and musicians. At least get a cd of this music to the library for their regional music collection. I'll put together something from what I have and get it to the library as first step. I like making the music videos too for Youtube. There is some really good music in every one. One of my ways of making the music here available to as many as want it, these videos are a testament of a moment. On Youtube anyone who wants to download it into their own computer is welcome to it. Wide open and free to the world. I want this music available to the people who need and want to hear it. I'm not looking at making anything from it. My reward is this music out in the world. That's it. Just because is what they're playing now, just because the purpose and the reward are the same. These musicians are too good for their music to go to the grave with them. I can't do a lot, but I can do a little bit. Lucas does a little bit. Two of us gets two little bits done. That's better than none. Keeps a momentum going that is already in motion.



Involvement with getting this music out into its own world has become important to me. Alleghany County having a rich musical heritage that continues to the present day has a need to be heard by people of the county. The Crouse House Pickers on Monday nights is a place to hear music by musicians of the county and nearby counties who drive to Sparta on Monday nights to play. The Jubilee Tuesday and Saturday nights. Mountain dance music is what it is. What Jr and Howard are playing is dance music. It's meant to make you move. Them playing Sally Goodn together is a hard one to follow. Richard had told me Howard's playing of Sally Goodn was just right. It was. Jr's rolling notes weave in and out of Howard's long fiddle notes like duck feet splashing over the water, wings flapping taking off. Hearing this music takes me to the radio station studio where I had a ball every Saturday morning. Good associations. Good music. Good vibes. It's music from a time when the notion of being an individual was held to without question. As I heard an old feller say one time, "in them days people thought somethin of one another." It's true. They really did. Seems kind of inconceivable there was such a time.



It's also inconceivable that I'm listening to Howard Joines and Jr Maxwell making music. Just as inconceivable as it was hearing Cleve Andrews and Art Wooten with Jr. I never dared dream there'd come a day I would hear any of them. These recordings are surfacing a little bit at a time. I regard every one a treasure. On the radio show I would introduce this music I'm hearing as one of our county's treasures. It is, indeed. The best part is I'm not pushing it. This is really good music. Music so good it needs to be heard for the music itself. That it's people of our county makes it all the better. I might look for a place online to put some of it, just to give people who chance upon it an earful of the music of Alleghnay County. It's the real deal, hillbilly as hillbilly music gets, from up in them hills. Mountain goats. A billie is a goat, like in the fiddle tune, Billy In The Lowground. It's a billy that aint in the mountains where a billy belongs.

MUSIC IN CROUSE PARK

chris johnson and justin willey

borderline@crousepark





At noon the old-time band Borderline played at Crouse Park for an hour. It was Blue Ridge Mountain Fair, I think. With the outdoor bandstand, it seems the town has found a place to gather people for these outdoor events. On a weekend parking is every place and in easy walking distance. I wanted to see Borderline do a whole show. I'd seen them play at the Jubilee several months ago. I learned that night they were quite a band, good drive. I wanted to be sure to make it to the park by 12. Found a good place in shade under a big tree. Brought the fold-up chair that slips into a carrying bag with a shoulder strap. Ideal lawn furniture. I took the camera with video feature to get videos of whole songs. Got 7 or 8. Also several stills.



The band is Chip Moyer playing rhythm guitar, Jerod Willey, bass, Lucas Pasley, fiddle, Chris Johnson, banjo, Justin Willey, mandolin. Chris, Justin and Chip learned their instruments and the music in the Junior Appalachian Musicians after school program in the schools. It doesn't seem right to call it a program. Helen White set JAM in motion bringing in regional musicians to teach the kids that wanted to learn after school. JAM has been teaching the young of Alleghany to play old-time music very well for several years. Chris Johnson took up banjo about 7 years ago, when Justin Willey was taking up mandolin. Their band Borderline has been holding together with different fiddlers and different guitars, Chris and Justin the constants in the band. The band was out of a fiddler. Lucas, teaching with JAM took note of how good these fellers had become. His band, The Old Town Revellers, never got a real groove going and faded away. Lucas has been looking for a band to play fiddle with.



As Mr Pasley, he is their English teacher at school, their music teacher with JAM, and friend. Lucas regards the kids with respect, doesn't talk down to them, listens to them, is fair with them and above board. I can see how popular a teacher he is when I am talking with someone in high school and mention his name. In every case their eyes light up hearing his name. Lucas cares about being a teacher, believes in education as the glue that holds civilization together, wants to be a good teacher, give his students some understanding they didn't have when they came into his class. He is a good musician on all 4 old-time instruments, plays all of them with ease and mastery. His great uncle was fiddler Fred McBride of Stone Mountain Old Time String Band. His great great uncle was fiddler Guy Brooks of the Red Fox Chasers, the first to record from this county. Fred was Lucas's mentor on the fiddle, banjo too.



It came to Lucas that the JAM band Borderline needed a fiddler who could stay with them at least as long as they're in school. He's also their teacher in music. He can help them with playing in public, playing in a band. And they can help him with their energy. They get a good drive going and make it work. Lucas's fiddle floats right along with the rhythm they're putting down for him. The bass player, Jerod Willey, is Justin's dad. Chip Moyer has been playing guitar about as long as Chris and Justin have been pickin. As soon as the band started, I could hear that Lucas had found his band. They have no problem delivering the drive. It's like that's the only way they want to play, get it going and keep it going. The band backed Lucas allowing him to open up and let the music out of the fiddle. They made some music that kept the audience listening from tune to tune, and liking what they were hearing. I was happy to hear how good they had become as a band. Glad to see Lucas has a band that can support his fiddle like a good wave a surfboard.



After the band had played out their time, Lucas came by to talk a bit, just home from at two-week drive to Canada in a van. He told me of some music he'd found by Howard Joines from Clifton Evans' reel-to-reel tape which Lucas transferred to computer, then to cd. He's in process of going through the tapes that were almost too old to do anything but dissolve, cataloging them, treasures in Alleghany County music of the time, the mid 60s. Lucas found a lot of Howard Joines and we talked of doing the same with Joines as the cd with Jr, make a hundred copies and give them out to individuals concerned, relatives, friends and musicians who know him and made music with him. Get them out in the county.



Later, after getting a few videos of the next band, Mountain Park Old Time String Band, Johnny Gentry's band, went to the stage to play. Gentry plays a guitar to get the music out of it. He plays so audience can hear it and makes music first. I've heard some guitar players who play with artistry but lose the music in the forest of the artistry. Willard Gayheart plays his guitar with the music the number one priority. It's immensely enjoyable to watch a musician who is a master with his guitar or whatever it is, playing music that makes a body want to dance. Getting up to fold my chair and pack it for the walk to the car, I saw Lucas had left his camera and a photograph someone gave him of the band. I drove it by the house and he wanted to give me some cds he'd made from the Evans collection; 2 of Howard Joines, 2 of Lucas's great great uncle, fiddler Lon Brooks, brother to fiddler Guy Brooks. And one cd of Mack Brooks.



I carried home these treasures of the county. I don't need them for the radio show any more, but, since my regional collection will all end up at the library upon my demise, I'll certainly get these to the library before closing time. Finding music of our county by people no one knew ever recorded anything, even a cassette at home for practice, has become something we're attuned to like metal detectors combing the beach. I believe and Lucas believes it is important to have everything that can be found by musicians of the county. A lot of them are in boxes in attics, basements, garages, forgotten. Since the 4cd set of Alleghany music Ernest Joines collected last year, it seems like the county is taking an interest in its own music. This was the unfortunate part about the radio show being over, that more and more people were taking an interest in the music that's all around us close to home and doesn't cost a lot for admission. The music today was free. Quite a lot of people came out to hear the music. I believe everyone was well satisfied.

FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES

new salem regular baptist cemetery

 

Three years ago Richard Joines told me an awful lot about his fiddler dad, Howard Joines of Pine Swamp. I made notes as fast as I could scribble. That's one thing school is good for is learning how to make notes as fast as you can go while the professor talks. Richard talked and I wrote. I didn't get every word by any means. It's more like a long list of notes than something you just read through in story form. Yet all the notes together tell the story. I was aiming to write out my notes and email them to Lucas Pasley for the website of Alleghany musicians. http://sites.google.com/site/tradmusicalleghany/home I had this information in the computer and the computer crashed and I lost it. Then I didn't remember where I'd put the notebook I wrote in talking with Richard. I found it in the desk drawer recently, in the back, a "safe place." I've lost more things in safe places than anyplace else. Found, I decided to put the information here and then on the Alleghany site. I'm putting it here because it's interesting. Maybe 3 more people will see it here that might miss it on the website. Howard was a good fiddler and a good man.

 

Richard said of Howard's fiddling style, "he bears down on it, gets it out of it, doesn't just tickle it." He said Tal Holbrook, fiddler down the mountain at Roaring River has a style similar to Howard's. He said Howard and Art Wooten made a lot of music together when they were young. It would have been old-time as bluegrass was yet to happen. They were about the same age. Howard played at VFW dances with guitar picker Roy Martin, also guitar picker and singer, Clifton Evans. Ed Atwood played banjo in Howard's band. Ed lived in Whitehead on Air Bellows Gap Road, a white house across the road from the Peaceful Valley Trout Pond. Ed grew up on the farm there on that side of the road. And Kyle Smith played banjo with Howard a good bit. Kyle was killed when his dozer slipped off the truck bed and landed on him.

 

Jr Maxwell played banjo with Howard when he was younger. Howard was his uncle. Richard, Jr's cousin, played guitar with them. They played together for dances at Laurel Springs. Howard played old-time and Jr took up bluegrass. Jr could play old-time, but it bored him. Howard played bluegrass too. Jr liked him an awful lot and had nothing but praise for Howard's fiddle. When I was first here, Tom Pruitt told me about the fiddler Howard Joines in Pine Swamp. Tom and Howard fox hunted together in their fox hunting years. I believe they went to the same church too and were close to the same age. I knew of Howard the whole time I've been here, but never met him. Richard said Howard could hear a tune played once or twice and have it.

 

Richard's grandmother, Howard's mother, Lillie Holbrook Joines, wife of Beler, said when Howard was 6 or 7 he started playing fiddle tunes on a tin fiddle. When people came to the house and he was asked to play for company, he would play standing behind a door. When Howard was 18 he bought a fiddle from the Montgomery Ward catalog. That would have been 1926 when his older sister Loretta's boy, Wiley Jr, was 4. Fred Roupe liked this fiddle Howard bought from Montgomery Ward the best of any fiddle he ever played. Richard said the fiddle was a copy of fiddles made by a violin maker named Nicholas Amada, German. I'm not sure about the spelling. He is said to have worked as an apprentice with Stradivarius. It cost $50, which he worked for at 25c an hour helping build Roaring Gap. Richard said, "It was a big price then, a premier fiddle for the time." Howard's last fiddle he found in a flea market in Florida. He bought it for $10 or $15. He said Howard would find old fiddles in flea markets, put strings and bridges on them and get them going.

 

Richard said of Howard's playing of Sally Gooden, "He played it as good as anybody I ever heard play it." I believe I know what Richard means. First, he wasn't bragging or being partial. He was telling it like it is. He's heard many a Sally Goodin played at fiddlers conventions and around. He paid attention to about every one he heard, the better ones. Richard has heard an awful lot of fiddlers take on Sally Goodin. He knows the tune, knows how it's played. He said Howard liked Kenny Baker as the best fiddler he ever heard. Especially liked Baker's Big Sandy. Howard liked to play Kenny Baker tunes with Fred Roupe, bluegrass banjo, and Jr Maxwell, bluegrass banjo. Haywood Blevins, old-time piano player from Ennice, made music with Howard quite a bit. A field recorders collective album has some tunes by Howard and Haywood playing together. It can be found at http://www.fieldrecorder.com/. It's in the 2007 collection. I don't recall the title of the particular album, and I gave my copy to the Alleghany library. If you want to hear Howard, the library has some of his music. The library has a collection of music from this region, the Central Blue Ridge, that is remarkable.

 

Richard said Howard's mother's side of the family, Holbrook, is where the music came from. I believe he said Howard's mother played spoons. Beler, Howard's daddy, taught school in Pine Swamp when it was Brooks NC. He later had a store and the post office. Richard said of Howard, "He was easy going, always wanted to be a friend to everybody." His nephew Jr Maxwell was the same. Richard said of Howard's playing, "He kept the bow going--didn't take short strokes. Most of his playing and timing was done with the bow." He said Howard raised honeybees as long as Richard remembers. I'd say he always had chickens too. When he plays the chicken songs, Cluck Old Hen and Chicken Reel, I can see the chickens. He hits those chicken notes just right.

Alan Mastin, bass player with Big Country Bluegrass from the beginning 22 years ago, was killed last night in a car wreck on the way home to Elk Creek from a show at Rocky Mount, Virginia.

*

BLUE NOTEBOOK

first applications of color

This afternoon I was looking for my Stanley Powerlock 12' measuring tape in the desk drawer. That's where I keep it. It wasn't there. I opened the drawer all the way. It still wasn't there. Then I realized it was on the table beside the reading chair. I spotted a a little blue 4"x 6" spiral notebook. It seemed like it had a light on it. When the computer crashed last year I lost my notes on Howard Joines from a phone conversation with his son Richard. I wrote down everything he said like taking notes in class, fast as I could go. I copied it into the computer and put the notebook in a safe place. The same as putting it in a black hole, which is what I've found safe places to be, and still use them. Like, duh. I'd looked everyplace I could think to look and places I wouldn't think to look, the same as lost. I didn't give up all the way. I don't often go to prayer for such as a lost notebook, but this was more than that. The notebook had a brief of a man's life in it. I felt like that made it ok for prayer. That was just a few days ago. When I saw that blue, I thought, if I'm not wrong, I wrote it on several pages in a small notebook. A little bit of memory coming in. It could be false memory too, so I didn't get excited. I opened it and there it was. Phew. Thank you.

I've read them over and thought I'd tell you about his life as told to me by his son Richard 3 years ago. Tomorrow I'll enter the notes on a website Lucas Pasley put up for information about different Alleghany musicians. I like Richard's description of how Howard played. It's a good example of musician language that says specifically what they mean, though to a nonmusician sounds like mush. Richard said, "He bears down on it, gets it out of it, doesn't just tickle it." To any mountain musician, that is perfectly clear. He bears down on it, obvious, lays it to it with the bow, digs into the strings. Gets it (music) out of it (the fiddle). He doesn't just tickle it (the fiddle). His bow doesn't just glide over the strings. He bears down on it. Gets him a full bodied sound out of the fiddle.

Of the very few tunes I've heard him play, maybe 5, every time I hear him play Cacklin Hen I can see the chickens scratching around, making their chicken sounds. Then there's the cacklin hen. Howard gets the chicken notes in that song like there's a chicken in the fiddle and he found it. I've noticed that the old timers who lived with chickens all their lives always get those chicken notes in Cacklin Hen, Cluck Ol Hen and Chicken Reel to sound just like a chicken. Fred McBride never came close to the chicken note and neither does Lucas Pasley. Neither does anyone else who didn't have chickens. I am only aware of it because I grew up with chickens, and had chickens here the first 10 years, until rambling dogs, one thing and another made it impractical. I especially like Howard's playing of Cacklin Hen because I can see chickens when he's playing it. They're everywhere.

Richard said Howard could hear a tune played once or twice and have it. Howard's mother said when he was 6 or 7 he started playing tunes on a tin fiddle. She said he'd stand behind a door playing for people when he was a kid. He bought his first fiddle for $50 from a Montgomery Ward catalog when he was 18. He was born in 1908, so that would make it 1926. Fred Roupe liked it the best of any fiddle he ever played. Richard said the last fiddle Howard bought he found in a flea market in Florida. He paid 10 or 15 dollars for it, put strings and a bridge on it and got it going.

Howard held Kenny Baker as the best fiddler he ever heard. Richard said he liked to play Kenny Baker tunes with Fred Roupe and Jr Maxwell, both bluegrass banjo pickers, both really good. All three of them had a lot of blue ribbons from fiddlers conventions. Jr and Howard made much music together through their lives, Howard Jr's uncle. But Howard played old-time and Jr played bluegrass, so they didn't make as much music together as they would have if they'd both played bluegrass or both old-time. Jr could play old-time, knew the tunes, but found it boring next to bluegrass. He played banjo when young, old-time. Then came a time when he quit playing because it was too boresome. Then bluegrass came on in the early 40s and he picked up the banjo again to learn bluegrass and loved it.

Howard's mother and dad were Lillie Holbrook and Beeler Joines. Richard said the music in the family came through the Holbrooks. I think he said Lillie played spoons. Beeler taught school at Pine Swamp, had a store and operated the Post Office for Pine Swamp. I believe Richard said Pine Swamp was then Brooks, NC. Lillie's sister Maggie played an organ like Heywood Blevins played piano, by ear, and played every note together with Howard on fiddle. Aunt Maggie sang Old Time Molly Hare every time they visited. About all the boys played an instrument. Mama said Howard was the most talented of the boys.

If I got it right, I think the last band Howard played with had Richard Nichols playing bass, Jack Handy, guitar and vocals, Kyle Dean Smith on banjo, Richard Joines, mandolin, and Howard fiddle. If these names have no meaning for you, I can give you a hint: they're all master musicians that don't stop short of making music. Ed Atwood, who lived at the bottom of the mountain in Whitehead, grew up in sight of Jr's farm, played banjo with Howard for many a year. They played a lot of dances. Clifton Evans played guitar with them. I used to know Ed. He smoked Camels by the carton. And he could pick the fire out of a banjo. I didn't know Ed picked for a long time. I was invited to a neighbor's house for some music and it was my first up close old-time music, Fred McBride, fiddle, Faye Brooks Wagoner, guitar, George Eller, banjo, and there was Ed Atwood clucking that clawhammer like nobody's business. And Faye, I didn't know she picked until that night and could sing so well.

Tom Pruitt knew Howard Joines. They both had fox dogs and foxhunted together. To both of them, the chorus of the dogs' voices was music. If I'd lived in that time, I'd have had fox dogs. I can hear that music in a dog's voice. I know what they're talking about, that appreciation of the music, but I've never had anything near the foxhunting experience as done in these mountains, or at all. Catching the fox was not the goal. If you catch it, then you can't run it again. The goal was to listen to the dogs run all night long. I expect every man brought his own fruit jar. You drink all night (if you're a drinker), listen to the dogs, talk with friends all night, listen to the dogs. Tom had mentioned Howard Joines to me over the years, a fiddler hard to beat, foxhunting friend, a good man. A Pine Swamp Joines.

MOUNTAIN RADIO STATION

sue @ wcok 1060 am

Today I got in the groove painting the first time since starting a month or so ago. Before, I was painting mountain musicians on used wood. I liked that, but after a certain point, wood gets scarce. Now I want to paint mountain musicians on canvas. Working on Pine Swamp fiddler, Howard Joines. His face came together for me today. The likeness I'm after isn't far away. I'm giving him a 5 o'clock shadow primarily to show he's a working man playing old-time music, not somebody with a violin chair in a symphony. The shirt, white, could be either. There was a time I was thinking it looked more like Heifitz, the violinist, than Joines the fiddler. By now, I have him at least looking like he could be a Joines.

The fiddle is the main concern from here on, and the shirt and fingers. The fingers are ok. The fiddle takes as much attention as a face. I like to build colors on top of colors. It seems to me a variety of colors on top of each other make a more luminous finish coat. By the time it's finished, I want you to hear the fiddle when you see it. The fiddle is a little bit off, but I like it. I like leaving something a little bit off. Gives it life. I read somewhere long ago that in Islamic art, like architecture, mosaics, the geometric designs they use, the tradition is to leave a flaw in everything. The flaw is there for a kind of signature that this is a creation of the human mind, therefore imperfect before God, as we are. I like that, so I don't worry over some flaws. I'm not after perfection, but a feeling. I want it not just to look like the subject, but to be the subject. I want it to feel like his presence. I've never met Howard, but I know a lot of his kin. Jr was his nephew.

Working toward a series of musicians of primarily Alleghany County and central Blue Ridge. In my way of seeing, these musicians are the truly important people, when it comes down to who's important. They carry a tradition that goes back all the way across the ocean and way back in time. They keep it alive. Old-time is the original American music, the root out of which all American musics grew. This region of the Appalachians is a fountain of traditional music. All up and down the mountains is, but the central Blue Ridge got the name and attention from Bristol where The Carter Family, The Stonemans and Jimmy Rogers made the first country music recordings in I think 1927. Later, the Stanley Brothers started with a job at the Bristol station playing at lunch hour. One of these days soon I'm getting in the Catfish and driving to Bristol to see the museum there. Might drive to Dickenson County, Virginia, to the Ralph Stanley Museum another day. I want to get over to MtAiry to WPAQ to go in and get acquainted. It's the model for my radio show. I'd love to see WCOK play all mountain music. It does, considering Sue is playing what the listeners want, mountain music.

Sue invited people to call and tell her what kind of music they wanted to hear and wrote it all down. Country, bluegrass, regional. And that's what she plays. People are listening to the station again. Advertisers are coming back. Sue is looking at getting new equipment to replace things like cd players and such. She is getting that place on its feet. The guys spent the last 18 years running off advertisers and listeners, then took all the station's country cds over that period of time, plus Rhonda Vincent. One of them liked Dolly Parton and Rhonda Vincent passionately. It wasn't because Rhonda is bluegrass, but because she looks like a mannequin. She looks so much like a mannequin he can bear the bluegrass for the look.

Sue has already brought the station back. I remember the day or 2 when the station had nobody there, because the silly boys left the same day and that was that. End of station. The station manager had a job at WBRF in Galax and didn't get over here much. He found Sue at church, a woman out of a job looking for one. Never been in a radio station. He took her to the station and showed her everything in one morning. Next day she was on her own to figure everything out. And she did. She's done figured everything out and has it in order so she can put her hand on it in a hurry. She likes to fulfill requests if the song is in the station. Sue is committed to the station. It is her own. She has created it and it's working. It makes me happy every Saturday morning when I go in there and see Sue. It's like the captain is on deck, all is well with the ship. In this time when conscientious is little more than a word that's hard to spell, Sue stands out.

When the awards people in Sparta are handing out awards for outstanding contributions to the community (I don't know that any such award has ever been given), I elect Sue for someone who saved WCOK for the county. She has, in fact, become the voice of Alleghany County. She's a good one too. She cares 100%. And she doesn't do anything half way. She dives into whatever it is she's doing and she goes the whole hog. She wants to put together a radio station that serves the community, and she has done it.

It's almost back to where it was when Arnold Clodfelter, Judy Halsey, Nelson Harrell and Ron Brown were at the station, and Jeff Michael had live bands every Saturday morning perform for an hour. It's that show I'm replacing with mine. I tried having live music in the beginning, but I am not inside the music world enough to be getting bands to come in on Saturday mornings. I'd rather play their cds. Everybody makes cds now. They can be made at home with a computer. And I love playing the music to the listeners. I want every show to be entertaining to the max.

People who love old-time and bluegrass, mountain music, are the people I play for. They've become the people I paint for now. I don't paint for galleries. I want to paint for the people in my world in the county. I want to honor the people of the county painting their musicians in the same way I honor them by playing their music. I have to say I feel a certain fulfillment, that I've done something worth while, spent the later years of my life honoring the people of the mountains, saying, in effect: This is you and this is good.