RETURN OF ALTERNATE ROOTS

 

alternate roots

 scott freeman, mark freeman, katy taylor, tony testerman, willard gayheart

 

alternate roots

Friday night, the Fiddle And Plow show at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop in Woodlawn, Virginia, the core of the band, Alternate Roots, played a reunion. Plus Scott's brother Mark, who came to hear the show, had a banjo in the car, and Scott asked him to join the band. He's a good picker, plays in the Freeman brothers band, Pathway, a bluegrass band emphasis on gospel. Alternate Roots started in the 1990s with Scott, Katy, Tony and Willard on their first album, Tales of Love and Sorrow. They added Randy Pasley on dobro, who appeared on their second album and the others following. Steve Lewis came in next with bluegrass banjo and lead guitar for their third and fourth albums. It became a dynamic band. The show Friday night seemed like a combo of the full orchestra that Alternate Roots became. After the fourth album, Planted In Tradition, the band went away, their last show being at the Carter Fold off hwy 58 a half hour or so beyond Bristol, VA/TN. I made several photographs and a few videos of the Friday night show. Caught myself while holding the video camera singing along and had to be conscious of my own unconscious singing. I've not been there in probably seven to eight months. Stopped going in winter when the dark came early and Galax headlights made my eyes crazy at a time everybody is going home from work. I fell out of the habit of going, and missed several shows I might have gone to, but let them go, dreading the drive. When I saw that Alternate Roots was playing, I made it a point to be there. It was good to be back after so long a break to see familiar faces who go every week. My friends visiting from Atlanta, Lucas and Judy, intended to go, but Lucas had a spell of not feeling well, so Judy went along and had a stellar musical experience.

 

katy taylor, tony testerman, willard gayheart

 

katy and tony

 

Katy and Willard did most of the singing. I always like hearing Katy and Willard sing. I know all the songs and sing with them inside my head. Tony plays a bass with quite a lot more going on than just keeping rhythm. He keeps the rhythm so well the musicians don't have to think about the rhythm, and he plays it in such a way it enhances the song flowing with the melody as well as the rhythm. He is not a thump-thump bass player. There were times I would like to have heard just Tony's bass, not necessarily a solo, but to hear better what he was doing with the strings. We tend to think of the people who keep rhythm as secondary to the band. But they are as integral to the band's sound as the banjo or fiddle, lead guitar or dobro. Willard's rhythm guitar playing is amazing picking when I pay close attention to what he is doing. He does not strum. He picks two strings, individually, each swipe of the pick. His noting fingers change chords without thought. He's 81 and been picking since childhood. Katy picks a good rhythm guitar too. Katy's delight was visible having a chance to pick with Willard. She told me some years ago she loves making music with Willard. There were times I saw her watching Willard sing like she was in awe. And for good reason. She hears Willard. Willard's singing and picking do not draw attention to themselves. He sings a song to deliver the words. Pay close attention to Willard's singing once and you'll always pay attention thereafter. Willard has taken the Hank Williams song, Mama Tried, and made it his own. To my ear, he has made The Yellow Rose of Texas his own. Before I heard the words Willard goes by, the original lyrics before it was changed to be the Texas state flower, I wondered why old-time fiddlers of the past liked the song. It makes a beautiful fiddle tune, and with Willard's lyrics it makes a beautiful song.

 

willard gayheart

 

willard  a-pickin and a-singin

 

Willard sings in the mountain tradition of, it's the song not the singer. In pop music, like in the Rolling Stones lyric, it's the singer not the song. In hillbilly music the singer delivers the song in his own style of singing. Being true to the integrity of the song applies to vocals as well as to the instruments. Willard sang lead vocals with his Galax bluegrass band, The Highlanders, over forty years. He sang with the bands he and Scott made together, Skeeter and the Skidmarks and Alternate Roots. He likes Texas swing, too, makes good music with Bob Wills songs, Take Me Back To Tulsa, Little Red Wagon. Scott likes Bob Wills, says his dad played Bob Wills all the time he was growing up. Willard and Scott play often and have recorded some Texas swing. Scott does a good version of Bob Wills' Roly Poly, and makes it his own, to my ear. Scott and Willard don't slow the Texas swing down, either. I used to care nothing for Texas swing, then heard Willard and Scott playing it. At an Alternate Roots show in Jefferson, the next town to the west of Sparta, I heard Willard sing Catfish John. They never put it on a recording, but that night Willard brought Catfish John to life for me. Katy's vocals gave Alternate Roots its own special sound. Her first song at the show was the John Prine song, Hello In There. Katy makes that one her own. I've heard John Prine sing it, and it's good. But after I've heard him sing it once, that's enough. I can hear Katy sing it over and over. It is on Alternate Roots first album. She sings it like a gospel song. Come to think of it, Katy sings everything with the reverence given a gospel song.

 

katy a-pickin and a-grinnin

 

katy a-singin

 

I was glad my friend Judy had a chance to hear Katy perform. Judy played guitar and sang in her school years and let it go preoccupied with being a wife and mother while having a full time job. Now that her baby is grown and gone with a baby of her own, Judy has retired from her work and needs something to occupy her attention. She is taking up the guitar again and singing. Katy was an inspiration for her. Judy was appreciating her singing to the full. Judy bought Alternate Roots first album, the combo that played Friday night, and spoke with Katy some about singing. Judy is a good singer. I'd like to see her bring it out in the open again. So what if she hasn't played and sang in over thirty years. Tommy Jarrell and Pop Birchfield, both by different circumstances, stopped playing fiddle for forty years. When they took it up again, they were the great fiddlers of their time. Evidently, not playing for such a period of time must be to the good for the individual musician. I'm thinking of an experiment where one participant threw a basketball at a hoop half an hour a day for a month. Another threw a basketball in his mind at a hoop half an hour a day for a month. At the end of the month, both had improved the same. It tells me Jarrell and Birchfield played the fiddle quite a lot, probably every day, in their minds while working in the fields, making liquor, whatever they were doing. I imagine Judy has continued to play in her mind. Scott played the fiddle and the mandolin. His brother Mark played Scott's mandolin some while Scott played fiddle. They grew up making music together, they play in a bluegrass band together, they know how to flow together making music. It was combo music the band made, relaxed and flowing free, music made by people who have flowed together musically for a great many years. 

 

scott freeman and mark freeman

 

scott and mark

 

 

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ALTERNATE ROOTS THE BAND

 

scott freeman and willard gayheart

Yesterday, Tuesday, I learned the band I love beyond all others will be playing in Woodlawn, Virginia, this coming Friday, Alternate Roots, a regional bluegrass band. Four of the band members live in Ashe County, NC, two live at Woodlawn, VA, and one in Alaska. Like other great bands, Jane's Addiction and Rage Against The Machine, they made four great albums and disbanded due to circumstances. Bands breaking up is as intimate to members as a divorce. It's rough on everybody concerned and they don't talk about it. I learned never to ask why a band broke up, because nobody can give an answer that matters to anyone outside the band. Like after a divorce, it's hard to explain beyond a few words, a nutshell assessment. But the rest of it can't be told. It's too intimate and often too irrational to attest to. The band goes back to my time in the music store, Backwoods Beat Music, in Sparta that lasted four years. It is a rule of thumb in Sparta that if a business lasts three years, it has a good chance of lasting awhile. Finally, downloads happened, gas prices went up appreciably, work became harder to find. My local customers didn't have pocket change anymore and they were half my business. The other half was people passing through, visiting family, touring, driving, new people to the mountains. Gas prices shut down tourism in the mountains and real estate. Then in January of 07, radio and television news told every day for two weeks that the cd business is over. That was it. Shut it right down. Doctor told me I had a heart attack, though I had no recollection of it. He said it could have happened while sleeping. I don't know if that was it, but something changed. I had fallen into a state of watching the store go away, so without humor I was glad to shut down, box everything up and go home. I had achieved my purpose. I'd put thousands of copies of mountain music into the sound systems of a lot of people, spread the gospel of hillbilly music at home. Made it available to the people who love it and people discovering it.

 

scott freeman

 

It was during the first months of the store that Scott Freeman came in one day and asked if he could use the space to give music lessons one afternoon a week. I was all for it; this was what I was there for, to advance the music in whatever ways I could. I couldn't charge him rent. He drove from Woodlawn, an hour drive one way, and didn't make much from students. This was somebody giving himself to advancing the music. I felt like we had the same purpose. How could I charge him rent? He was making little and dependent on what he made. I couldn't take anything from him. Besides, he brought life into the place. I felt like I ought to pay him. Scott played mandolin and fiddle with Alternate Roots and sang. He's as good a singer as a musician. Scott I call a master musician without fear of contradiction from any musician in the region. He is an artist more interested in his own musicianship than being popular. He has written so many good songs, really good songs, and recorded them, he could be called a "singer-songwriter," though he thinks of himself more a musician playing in a band, or, in his case, two, three and four bands at a time. Like me, he makes no effort toward self-promotion. No self-advertising. He wants his musicianship to carry him, and it does. In the time of the radio show I had a computer I could make cds with, and made one with I think 18 songs on it, all songs written by Scott and performed by him with his bands and solo recordings. It made a great album. I gave it to Scott, as he had never put them together on a disk. As an artist, he is one who lives in the now. Whatever band he's playing with is where his focus goes. He worked laying cinderblock several years until he hurt his back and couldn't do it anymore. He makes his living teaching kids to play old-time and bluegrass all day every work day. He's as good a teacher as a musician, too. At a certain point in their training, he puts some of them together and teaches them how to play in a band. They give themselves a name and he teaches them how to make a recording by doing it. He also gives them experience playing for an audience.

 

willard gayheart

 

His number of students in Sparta dried up about the same time the store faded away, and soon after, the radio station shut down. I gave my collection of regional music I'd collected by way of the store to the library. Now they have a good collection of regional music. With both store and radio show in the past, the core of what they were about continues for the community. I feel like the store and the radio show were a success while they were happening and continue by way of the library to be a success. Neither one failed. It was circumstances coming in from outside that shut them down. Why did I start a business in a working class mountain town three years into the Bush-Cheney Depression? I did not believe it would get better any time soon, only get worse, as it did. I was jumping on the last chance to do what I felt I had to do and could do: remind the county of its own music, which was being quickly forgotten. My feeling was that people come together in community during hard times, and hard times is a-comin. When the poorest people are unable to pay electric bills or phone bills anymore, the music will thrive. Can't play country or heavy metal cds anymore, but we can make our own music. In the old days it is said on a Friday evening you'd hear a banjo ringing somewhere in a holler and people started walking to it, some with instruments. A band and dancers just come outta the woodwork. The old people I knew who are gone a long time now all said, without exception, the hard times were the best times. They were happy. Early on, I suspected different ones of looking back to the Golden Age, like the past is always better. I became convinced they knew what they were saying after several years of knowing several people, all of them in agreement that the old days of carrying water in a bucket, using outhouses, eating year-round what you grew in the summer, heat from a wood stove, men hunting rabbits and squirrels. A great old-time song comes to mind, Squirrel Heads And Gravy. My favorite title of old-time fiddle tunes, that often have beautiful titles, is Grasshopper On a Watermelon Vine. I can see a fiddler practicing his fiddle on the porch or someplace outside, sitting on a stump where he split wood by the barn, the garden close by, working out a new fiddle tune he had in his head. Having a hopeless time trying to  think of a title that is right, not good with words, eliminating everything that came to mind for one reason or another. Gazing off into space, playing the tune, looking inside his mind, distracted seeing a grasshopper land on a watermelon vine and stand there. The rhythm in the fusion of these words might have sounded just right with his tune as he heard it in his fiddle.

 

scott freeman

 

It was becoming acquainted with Scott that I learned about Alternate Roots. Kept their cds in the store. When they recorded what turned out to be their last cd, Planted In Tradition, I put ten copies in the store on a table. When somebody asked, "What's the best?" I'd hand them a copy. "This is it." To my ear, it is a magical album. Scott said they just threw it together, didn't get anxious about it, just let it happen. He was thinking it was their worst, and I was saying it was their best. I'd put it on now and play it, but I'd never get anything written for listening. It would take me over like Prince or Patti Smith. I checked amazon and found all the Alternate Roots cds are available either new or used. I asked Scott by way of facebook if Randy, the dobro player living in Alaska now would be there. No, he won't be there and Steve Lewis, banjo and guitar, won't be there. That's ok. Willard Gayheart, guitar and vocals, Katy Taylor, guitar and vocals, Tony Testerman, bass, and Scott Freeman, mandolin, fiddle and vocals, will be there. I call Alternate Roots my favorite band and Katy Taylor my favorite bluegrass singer, not exaggerating. A moment came to mind, possibly ten years ago, I had been visiting friend Jr Maxwell after work, was leaving to come home. Turned on the car, the radio came on, WBRF, the Galax station. A song I knew was just beginning, Out Of The Blue. The female voice was familiar. Rhonda Vincent? Almost, but not. Allison Krauss? Almost, but not. I could only think, Who is that? I know the voice, who is it? I couldn't think of any female bluegrass singers it could be. It almost could have been Vincent or Krauss, but it was not. I puzzled and puzzled with it, listening to a song I knew the words to. At the end of the song, the dj said it was Alternate Roots. I knew the song better than I knew any song by Vincent or Krauss. I'd been to fourteen AR concerts, had all their albums, listened to them, played them on the radio show. It was Katy Taylor singing a song Scott wrote. I was looking in my mind for Nashville bluegrass names, never thinking local. Nothing about the band sounded anything short of Nashville musicians. It was that moment I heard Katy and Alternate Roots the first time without associations of knowing them. In that moment I declared Katy my favorite bluegrass singer. Katy, to my ear, was the same as any that might be called the best, though with her own voice, her own way of singing. I so look forward to hearing Katy, Scott, Willard and Tony play Alternate Roots songs again.  

 

scott and willard between songs

 

 

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IT'S SUCH A PERFECT YEAR

found art

Day 6 of blogathon concerns one's idea of a perfect year in art. I don't have a perfect year for art. I am not one for factory production, nor am I one for perfect. "Art" is not a career, a business, something I worry over and push myself to accomplish and keep on accomplishing. I don't put things in shows or competitions--have a little bit in the past, where I learned not to. I don't pursue galleries. In Sparta some artists who have moved here from other places have socialized into an artist co-op. I've been asked to join, but it's $40 a month and I don't have the money. I could volunteer a day a week and do it for $20. I still don't have the money. I don't want to anyway, but don't have the money, so it doesn't matter if I want to or not. Forty dollars was a tank of gas last year. I've been told in a snippy way by Ms Bizzibodi that it would be to my benefit to pay more attention to that bunch. One of those moments when she was talking with somebody in the coffee shop, time to put on her coat and go out the door, on the way it's, Oh, TJ, It would be to your benefit to pay more attention to these people. All I could think was, My? Benefit? Couldn't say anything, it was such an obvious bitch-slap. Satisfied she had her say, she wiggled her tochas out the door. One day I walked into their showroom and was met by another of them that starts with a B, "How long has it been since YOU'VE been in here!" I about turned and walked out the door, but said casually, "About a year." She said, "That's what I thought!" I said, "Then you'd be right." They talk down to me like that because they think I'm stuck up for not wanting to be a part of them. OK. I'm stuck up. I confess. Besides, I'm not necessarily drawn to company that only speaks to me in wisecracks. If I were to talk to them in the tone of voice they use to talk to me, their ass-ends would be hopping up and down like Donkey Jenny's looking for somebody to kick. Stuck up is the least they'd be saying about me. They'd call me stuck up for a compliment.  

 

jeff gordon pit stop

 

Long before these artists showed up from the Flatland suburbs, I'd found my artist friends in musicians. At least my first whole lotta years only a few other visual artists were here. We knew each other. I've found my need for the company of other artists in musicians. I fell into appreciation of mountain musicians for their art. Mountain music is an art form, an art form as pure as Chinese poetry, until recording and money got involved. The people that played the pure art form, fiddler Arnold Spangler, banjo Bertie Dickens, are long dead and gone, and everybody before them. Fiddlers conventions changed the music, recording changed the music, money changed it. I'm not saying it's better or worse now than it was a century ago, only different. The culture has changed. It's automatic that the music changes with the culture. I found in the musicians I became acquainted with some serious artists. Scott Freeman, who is around 40, has composed I can't imagine how many songs in the contemporary style mountain music is played. He's made at least ten cds, every one of them dynamite. His band Alternate Roots played music as art. His other band, Skeeter and the Skidmarks play music as art too. He and his musician friends do not draw attention to themselves, on or off stage. They just make music. Scott is a master mandolin player and fiddler. He's an artist. Back when I had the radio show, I made a cd for a show from every song Scott had recorded to then that he had composed. It had at least 16 songs, just the ones that he had recorded himself. It made a great radio show. I have found mountain music to be an art form I hold as high as any other art form and any other form of music. I have the same artistic respect for fiddler Pop Birchfield as for Jascha Heifitz. There is a kind of joke that goes around, what's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? The answer is, Whoever is playing it. Then I met Tim Smith, who is from this county, bluegrass fiddler with the Bluegrass Cardinals when younger, has played fiddle with several bluegrass bands and has done fiddle tracks on albums by about every bluegrass band recording. Several bluegrass albums of his own. He also plays classical. He teaches classical violin, and he teaches bluegrass fiddle. When Tim plays it, it's both violin and fiddle.

 

bill birchfield, son of pop birchfield

he made the fiddle

it sounds good too

 

Seems to me, this year is as perfect a year for art as I could ask. I mean I'm well into the flow of writing in the blog every day, such that it's become what I do. I usually keep something of visual art going. Have just finished the Sparta courthouse boxes. Have begun a Walt Whitman box. And I have another wooden box with a specific plan. It just needs the doing. It is a square box with a sliding lid. It was made to hold two bottles of George Dickel Tennessee whiskey. I don't know what it is unless it would be bourbon. I can't drink bourbon. Once my palate discovered "mountain spring water," nothing else satisfies. I'm looking at putting a mirror in the bottom of the box so it will be a mirror hanging on the wall, and in the front of the box vertical posts like prison bars. Slide open the lid and there you are behind bars. A surrealist toy. Fun. Today I attempted to paint Donkey Jack in a dark red with blue lines. It was a "sketch" toward something I'm wanting to do next. I'm wanting to find a way to paint Jack and Jenny simply, but it still has to look like them. I'm making pencil sketches of donkeys. The one today showed I'm not there yet. I did it for the experience of it. Next one will be closer to what I'm looking for and the next one closer than that. Donkey proportions are peculiar. Huge head in relation to the body, body like a barrel and thin legs. The big ears are another feature out of proportion. No matter how big I make them, I go back and make them bigger. It is the proportions that are giving me a fit. It doesn't seem like a head that big goes with the body. It is their huge jawbones that make their heads big. I want to make donkey images that are not Hee-Haw humor. An awful lot about donkey falls under slapstick. Might see about bringing out the humor in them, but not the cliché humor associated with donkeys. I want to somehow make them give the appearance of a rubber stamp in bright colors, all colors maybe. Wouldn't a black donkey with white belly and nose be fabulous on a field of just the right green. Blue donkeys, red donkeys, yellow donkeys. That's the direction I'm looking, colorful donkeys suggesting big rubber stamps--if I can get that. It may change before I get there. I'll let it roll and see where it goes. Did you ever see two kittens tear into each other and roll around on the floor like a wobbly bowling ball? Let it roll.

 

dale junior a-runnin his wheels off

 

I like these points in the daily prompts for each day's writing. I chose today not to go there, because it doesn't apply to me. And when I get right down to admitting what I'm seeing, it seems somewhat academic, though not meaning the standard association of the word, the reason I hesitate. The perfect year sounds too much like a church retreat question to answer in a circle of folding chairs. That's kind of vicious, and not how I mean it, but I think what this is getting at is not something that applies to me. If I were in the city and showing at a gallery, getting set for the next show, I'd have to set goals and so forth to keep myself going. At this time in the life, I don't realistically look too far into the future. I can entertain looking a year ahead. I look forward to Jenny's baby donkey a year away. I can look ahead to something like that realistically, but as for watching my baby friend, Vada, grow up, not practical to look forward to it. Don't feel sorry for me. This is the best time of my life. And given the direction our racist government is going, I don't want to live very far into police state with tanks in the city streets and troops everywhere. I cannot ask for better than what I have. Netflix keeps me in international films three and four times a week. For me, that's the same as heaven. If heaven turns out to be a movie theater with all international films, I'll be at home. I've never been one to look to the future. I figure I'll go on like I'm going now, writing daily and painting some. I'm hoping more frequently over the next year. The DCP group is so inspiring to me I'm looking at new things to do, new ways to approach what I do. I look at this coming year being one of figuring out how I want to paint donkeys by trying different approaches. I see what I want, it's just  matter of getting there. Without it being a goal (gaol) I'll let it roll like a ball of two cats on the floor and see where it goes.

    

the eyes of the blogger, by Cheyanne, age 6

(that's some serious eye bags--it's a new day)

 

 

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THE GRASSY HOLLOW BOYS LIGHT UP THE FRONT PORCH

scott freeman, willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

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

 

willard gayheart

 

 

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

 

scott freeman

 

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

 

willard's henderson guitar

 

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

 

mike and willard reflected in the window and mirror

 

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

 

 

willard

 

 

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FREEMAN & GAYHEART @ THE FIDDLE & PLOW

scott freeman, mike gayheart, willard gayheart

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


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

helen white & wayne henderson at fiddle and plow

 

 

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

 

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

 

   

 

 dori freeman at the wayne henderson festival 2012

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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HEARING ALTERNATE ROOTS

The race today at Kansas Speedway was another race of the best driver in the best car won. No wrecks to put drivers out of the race who might have had a chance at the top 10. The only times we saw visibly aggressive driving came after the green flag following the yellow when the drivers were positioning themselves for the long run when they're strung out and not so easy to pass. They'd go 3 and 4 wide and the announcers went berserk anticipating some cluster wreck action, but nobody ever lost traction enough to hit another car, and only a few scrapes with the wall. Montoya left a long tire mark on the white wall. Truex in 56 led most of the race until Hamlin in 11 passed him with 30 laps to go and Truex never could catch up with him. With just a few laps to go, Truex made a desperate lunge to swing below Hamlin coming out of a turn and it didn't work. He became the more interesting driver to watch; he was running the tires off his car, giving it everything, but it just couldn't get past Hamlin.


Driving to Justin's in Ennice, I took a tape to play in the car by Alternate Roots. I say over and over that Alternate Roots is my favorite band, and when I hear them I always remember why. Katy Taylor singing Killing The Blues, Single Girl/Married Girl reminds me why I call Katy my favorite bluegrass singer. I maintain that with a million hours stage experience Katy would be the equal of Allison Krauss and Rhonda Vincent. That she doesn't have a million hours stage experience has a lot to do with why I listen to Katy and not the others. I'm tired of polished pop music. Never took to it. I've always liked music on the fringe, what I call art music. Like Patti Smith Group with Lenny Kaye guitar, an artful rock band. Rage Against The Machine too. In this time of my life I want music in the raw, live music by people of the region I live in, as well as recorded. People playing mountain music in its variety of forms is what satisfies my ears. Field recordings do it best.


I've listened to Scott Freeman's music and Willard Gayheart's for so many years I sing along with their music. It's in my horoscope and it works out that when I find something I like I stay with it. When I discovered Kenyan coffee, that's it. I don't care for any other but Ethiopian, which tastes the same. I can drink others, but my choice is always Kenyan. Columbian is good, Guatemalan is good, but Kenyan satisfies me completely. The others are good, but Kenyan totally satisfies. I like Scott and Willard's music so much that it's about all I care to listen to anymore, besides a good old-time fiddle band, like the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers. Since Alternate Roots disbanded after 4 superb albums, Willard and Scott have revived Skeeter and the Skidmarks, the band I like most to listen to now. Scott and Willard playing together satisfies my musical ear like Kenyan coffee satisfies my palate. The drive up highway 18 from Whitehead to Ennice with Alternate Roots in the sound system I felt joy the entire drive. Every song was my favorite. Every song I wanted to hear again, but it's too complicated with a cassette to do that, so I wait between songs for the next one that will make me want to play it again.


Steve Lewis's bluegrass banjo and lead guitar knock my sox off every time I hear him pick. Steve draws the best picking out of Scott that he has in him on the mandolin. Together, they are dynamic. I remember hearing a piece by Cannonball Adderley on alto sax and his brother Nat on trumpet, them playing with George Shearing on piano. The Adderley brothers played back and forth, in and out of each other so smoothly I thought of Scott and Steve jamming. They will play in and out of each other and get things going. Jazz is what they're playing. Scott understands that bluegrass is the jazz form of old-time, using old-time tunes in the early years the way jazz musicians played show tune standards in the be-bop period. Bill Monroe jazzed old-time initially for his own style. It took a life of its own and became bluegrass. Scott doesn't make bluegrass the same way Monroe or Flatt & Scruggs or Stanley Brothers made bluegrass. They made bluegrass their own way. Scott and Willard make bluegrass their own way. They satisfy my ear for bluegrass totally. So do the Stanley Brothers.


I never dreamed I'd grow into somebody who loves the Carter Family so much they make tears run. Stanley Brothers too. I've reached a point in my life where I can hear them without thinking them old-fashioned, of another time, or generally having no relationship to my life in the 21st century. They have a very direct relationship with my life. I love their music. That's all that matters to me. I think I got a clue to what it is in the music of Alternate Roots and Skeeter & the Skidmarks, Scott and Willard I like so much is that they play their music with soul. I know saying anything about soul in music is reserved for black, but a lot of white people have soul, and not all black people have soul. I noticed when Edwin Lacy was talking in his capacity as a Presbyterian preacher at Willard's wife's funeral, that Edwin had soul in the pulpit. Then I realized he played his banjo with soul. That's what it is that makes his banjo so special. From there, I realized it's the soul in Scott and Willard's music that appeals a great deal to me. That's not all of it, by any means, but it's a good part of it.


All the way home I heard Alternate Roots some more. It's an hour round trip and the music on the tape lasted an hour. Pulling into my parking space the first song was starting again. It was a heavenly drive hearing Randy Pasley's Dobro weaving in and out of the music, Katy's singing, Willard singing Robin D, Steve's banjo and guitar, Scott's mandolin and fiddle, the whole, including Tony Testerman on bass, carried me down the road in a state of good mental health. The clarity of the music, the soul in all the musicians, and especially the music itself. These people all play music, the real deal. Driving down the road hearing Alternate Roots again, those familiar songs I know so well, the banjo, mandolin, Dobro licks, the singing, the songs they chose to play. The tape I made years ago from their cd Branching Out, a beautiful work of art. Nice drive on the highway tonight.


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THE HEART MUSIC OF WILLARD GAYHEART

    where I spent life's happy hours in the vale of shendoah

I've been sitting here watching a YouTube video of Willard Gayheart and Katy Taylor singing the Carter Family song, Mid the Green Fields of Virginia. Eyes started running. Nose started running. Tears running down my face. Mountain music has always done this to me. From the first time I heard it. It is the only music that has ever made me weep from loving it so much, feeling the joy in it. It's only played right when it's played joyfully. The Carter Family get to me the most of any of the music. I can't hear the Carter Family without tears running. Their grandson Dale Jett does the same to me when he's singing one of their songs. Ralph and Carter Stanley, both, make tears run. At one Ralph Stanley concert at Fairview Ruritan, I had tears running down my face the entire concert, tears of joy. The kind of joy you feel at the end of a really legitimate feel good movie like the Swedish film, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. The kind of overwhelming joy that wells up from the heart and pushes water out of my eyes.

Mountain music is heart music. It is only played right played from the heart. Music played from the heart in the musician goes to the heart of the listener. Music played from the mind is received by the mind. In mountain music the very first thing is play from your heart. If you're not playing from your heart, you're not making music. I can hear a mountain fiddler like Buddy Pendleton or Thornton Spencer or Richard Bowman and be moved to tears because they're playing to my heart. A fiddler who learned mountain music playing cds by these fiddlers, copying them, learning to play like them, they play to the mind, because that's where their music is coming from. My friend Jr Maxwell, bluegrass banjo picker, said of the copiers, Th'aint no music in it. I recall a time I played on my radio show an hour of an old-time band from off the mountain. He said of the show, I didn't hear no music in it. All of a sudden I knew what he meant when he said they weren't no music in it. He meant what he said. Wasn't no music in it. Music comes from the heart. They were playing from the mind.



I was talking about this once with Kilby Spencer, fiddler son of Thornton Spencer, and he said Thornton was the same way. He could say of a band there was no music in it, when it sounded fine to Kilby. It puzzled both of us. But there it was when Jr said he didn't hear no music in it. I said without thinking, "They weren't none." I knew what he meant. And I spent the whole hour regretting I'd chosen to play such soulless mountain music. My show was for the mountain people who love their own music. That was my first and last venture into playing an old-time mountain band from the Flatland. I got it like an epiphany when Jr said that. I spoke my answer in the language of his meaning. I was grateful for that moment. Jr taught me a very great deal about mountain music from the inside. He informed my radio show all the way along. He had a good ear for fiddles and banjos and guitars. We'd listen to Blue Ridge Backroads, the bluegrass show on WBRF 98.1, and he would be listening to a banjo in a certain band, say something about it, and I don't hear a banjo at all for all the other instruments. He had a subtle ear for bluegrass. I loved listening to bluegrass with him. He loved bluegrass the same as home. His fiddlers convention winning tune was Home Sweet Home. He taught me a lot, not information, but understanding.



Mid the green fields of Virginia in the vale of Shenandoah. Willard sings that song like it's his own. Hearing him sing it, I think of Sara Carter. Willard's style of singing is not vocal gymnastics that call attention to the singer instead of the song. He sings much like Sara Carter in telling the words, telling the story to a rhythm. Lou Reed does that in rock. Willard's singing is mountain singing to a T. He plays music, music you feel in your heart, with his Henderson guitar. Willard always plays music that makes me feel satisfied I'm hearing music. Of all the bands and musicians Willard and Scott have featured every Fri nite at the Fiddle and Plow show in Woodlawn, I and the other 20 who go regularly enjoy a show of Scott and Willard with Dori more than any of the other performers. This is saying Scott and Willard are the equals of the best of them and Dori at her beginning is among the best of them. Next show will be January 6. I hope it is the three of them. It has a good chance.



Willard as a mountain singer is certainly among the best. So is Scott. When they sing together, it is mountain music as good as it gets. Not too many people that feature their singing really support it with driving music. Willard and Scott always have drive in the songs they sing. Willard's Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon with a western swing is a tune that moves right along. People could dance to it and get some motion going. All of the guys will be jealous when they see my playmate so sweet. Before I heard Willard sing it, I laughed at that song. Now I love it. Willard opened my ears to its inner beauty. I like to hear Bob Wills sing it on YouTube. Willard and Scott do the western swing well. I love it every time they get into playing western swing tunes. They do Take Me Back To Tulsa exceptionally well with a western swing.


Willard and Scott are musicians who play together as one. Around 25 years they've been making music together. Scott married Willard's daughter. When they started going together, Scott didn't know Jill was Willard's daughter. He and Willard were in their band Skeeter and the Skidmarks at the time. Later, they got Alternate Roots going, one of the very finest bluegrass bands of a new kind of bluegrass that was their own. Katy Taylor sang and played rhythm guitar. I maintain Katy is the equal of Allison Krauss and Rhonda Vincent, just shy a million stage experiences. What I'm getting at is with as much stage experience as they've had, Katy is their equal. Only to say she's a really fine bluegrass singer. Katy with Alternate Roots was good bluegrass. Scott Freeman and Steve Lewis, Randy Pasley, Willard Gayheart, Tony Teserman and Katy. It was a magical group in their field like Jane's Addiction and Rage Against the Machine in rock, bands that made 4 great albums and went POOF.



The four Alternate Roots albums are mountain music classics. They were not a band to self-promote. No one in the band was a self-promoter. They just liked making music the best they could. They'll be discovered in the future when half of them are dead, and hailed as a great band of their time. Willard Gayheart and Scott Freeman are two musicians of the mountain tradition that the other musicians of the tradition love to make music with. They all say Willard's rhythm guitar is such that they don't have to think about the rhythm, Willard's got it. And it doesn't get any better than Willard's singing. I told Scott and Willard and Edwin Lacy before a Skeeter and the Skidmarks show, Y'all are my new Rolling Stones. I meant it. I appreciate their musicianship at this time in my life like I appreciated the Rolling Stones' earlier in my life. Skeeter works more with my flow in this time in the life in love with mountain music. Skeeter playing Running Through The Graveyard satisfies me as much now as Honky Tonk Women used to, still does. We have a world of beautiful music. The music is the best part of the modern world. Today in the coffee shop I heard Michelle Shocked sing Anchorage, and Faith Sandoval sing Fade Into You. Hadn't heard either one in awhile. Both moved me to silence, but not to tears.



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ALTERNATE ROOTS REUNION

willard gayheart

katy taylor

skeeter roots: edwin lacy, tony testerman, katy taylor, willard gayheart

tony testerman and katy taylor

edwin lacy

Tonight's show at the Front Porch Gallery in Woodlawn, Va, we decided to call Skeeter Roots. Tony was the one to come up with it while several of us were fishing for a name to call the band that was partially Alternate Roots and partially Skeeter & the Skidmarks. Willard told me a little over a week ago that tonight's show would be Katy and Tony. First thing I thought was Katy Taylor and Tony Testerman, both from the band Alternate Roots with Scott and Willard. I figured it was a little too obvious for it to be them. They had to be from somewhere else getting their mountain creds making music here. I assumed Willard and Scott knew them through the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway, heard them, liked them and invited them to play at the Front Porch. Any way I looked at it, I figured they'd be pretty good. In an email with Edwin Lacy I asked him who Katy and Tony were. He said he would be playing banjo with them. Who are they? Turn up Friday night and find out.

Fabulous surprise. Willard had written on one of those white boards you write on with magic marker that tonight would be Alternate Roots Reunion. Except, Scott was just home today from the hospital where he had an appendix removed. He didn't have the strength to make 2 hours of music. When I drove up, Katy and Tony were getting out of Tony's van, taking out his bass and Katy's guitar. It was good to see them again and to hear them again. The bass wrapped in its carrying case, Tony looked like the vet pulling out the calf that was turned around inside the cow. It wasn't quite an AR reunion with 3 of the 6 missing. Edwin was from Skeeter & the Skidmarks and so was Willard. Katy, Tony and Willard had been in Alternate Roots. While we were looking for a way to name the group tonight, Tony said Skeeter Roots and everyone laughed. Willard was the link to both bands. 

Alternate Roots I call my favorite band. When they disbanded I grieved for 6 months the same as when a friend dies. I loved the band. I heard them in concert I think 14 times. The same number of times I've seen Purple Rain the Prince movie. Just yesterday, I took a time-out and put on Alternate Roots last cd, Planted In Tradition. Listened to it, start to finish, like it was an audio movie. Hadn't heard it in awhile, was refreshed hearing the artistry of these 6 musicians who had their own style of bluegrass. It was bluegrass, but not like charts bluegrass, not like anybody else's bluegrass. They had their own sound. They were not a bombast band to get an audience excited and stomping and hollering. They played for the artistry of playing music well. They were a little bit too much of an art band to attract a big following. They had a following that was increasing in number, but they were not yet very well known. The people who listened them, loved them, but it was a relatively small number of people, considering the band was more interested in the artistry of making bluegrass and old-time music than playing cheap riffs to thrill the crowd. 

Hearing them at the Blue Ridge Music Center in their last year, they played artfully to the max. Scott delivered some mandolin licks with sound that seemed independent of the mandolin. Steve Lewis on the banjo played incredible banjo all the way through the concert, low key, not drowning out the band. Some guy in the audience hollered "Fire Up The Banjer!" He hollered it 2 or 3 more times. Steve just smiled and kept on pickin such that if they guy would listen, he'd hear that Steve's banjo had been on fire all the way along. Last tune, they played I think it was Sourwood Mountain. Steve cut loose on the banjer so it had the old boy that was wanting him to fire it up hollering his satisfaction. Several others were hollering their satisfaction too. A good banjer can get an audience going. 

A lot of memories swirled through my head around Alternate Roots. Like 5 or so years ago when I took a highway trip through ancestral land in eastern Tennessee and all the way to Kansas to see relatives of 3rd and 4th cousin I'd never known in Perry Kansas. I took along ten cds of Alternate Roots album Planted In Tradition. Turned out my relatives there like bluegrass and were happily surprised to find they really liked this band. I've an idea they were expecting a squawking fiddle and clucking banjo hillbilly style. Gave one to a niece's new husband, who liked it a lot. I felt like I was Johnny Appleseed spreading Alternate Roots out into the world beyond their audience. Katy, Scott and Willard the voices of Alternate Roots, good music, a sound all their own with Randy Pasley's Dobro giving long, slow notes, and fast notes, as strong a part of the band's sound as Scott's vocals and mandolin. I learned tonight Randy and his wife have moved to Alaska. He's found bluegrass musicians there. 

I only made video of the first half of the show. Second half, about all the songs they played I'd uploaded more than once on YouTube in various combinations of musicians. I wanted to sit and listen to the last half, get into the applause with the audience, about 15, I didn't count, and hear the music without having my little tech device going. I enjoyed both. First half was visual, second half auditory. It would have been really special with Scott in there vocally and with mandolin. It was really special as it was tonight without him. Either way is good. Edwin filled in for Steve on the banjo, playing it Skeeter style, Willard singing some Skeeter songs. Since we've been having these Front Porch Concerts, a year and 3 months now, I hear the sound of Alternate Roots in the music of Willard's and the music of Scott's. Katy has been there twice now to sing. Steve Lewis has been there a couple times picking banjo and guitar. The full band of Skeeter has played 3 times. Scott and Willard of both bands play every week. They are the sound of both bands. Tony's bass and Willard's rhythm guitar kept familiar rhythm to one who loves every note Alternate Roots picked. 

Just now caught myself drifting off into imagining Scott Freeman, vocal and mandolin, Edwin Lacy, banjo, and Willard playing guitar. Scott singing Rocky Top. It's a song bluegrass bands tend to avoid, because they'd be having to play it every show. The song belongs entirely to the Osborne Brothers, Bobby's vocal and mandolin, his brother's banjo and harmony vocals. I believe Scott could do it his own style and it could be a worthy effort to take on such a high calling. The way he sang Who Stole The Train From The Tracks, that approach he has to singing. if he could deliver it like he'd never heard the Osborne Brothers do it, he could give it the Scott Freeman sound. And Willard, he could go at like he did Hank Williams' Mama Tried. Made it a Willard song. I don't think either one of them would take enough interest in such a project to manifest it. Musicians have to find the songs they want to learn. I'd never suggest it, because I want to leave them the freedom they need to decide what songs they want to learn well enough to play often.  

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