SPARTA ROCKS

big daddy love at the silver dollar in glade valley

Cool air is moving in. This afternoon a bit of a breeze is carrying the cooler air in on us. It will be cool until Friday when it warms up. I'll be going in a few hours to hear Big Daddy Love. The JAM kids will open for the band. I'm looking forward to that too. Good night for pictures. In the meantime I'll listen to the Laurel Fork Travelers. Arnold Spangler is a fiddler who sings. Singing fiddlers, like GB Grayson and Tommy Jarrell, Spangler and others, tend to vocalize the fiddle notes in ways only fiddlers sing. Spangler's singing voice and his fiddle are very much alike. Spangler sang in the old-time mountain accent that has since softened considerably over the years of television.

It does me good to hear that old way of singing. I can enjoy music and enjoy music, but when I hear that old-time fiddle, banjo and singing, something deep inside relaxes, feels at home within. I think it might be something akin to the human dimension. We're in a mass culture now guided by marketing. Michael Jackson and Britney Spears are good examples of corporate commodities. I think of it as something like a jet plane in relation to old-time that is more like walking or riding a horse. Our civilization hovers on the verge of abandoning the human dimension altogether. The Laurel Fork Travelers were not named by a corporation, not guided in any way by the pablum of corporate thought. They're not about money. They're about making music.

This morning's radio show was a great deal of fun. I told a little bit about last night at the Front Porch in Woodlawn, the music of Taylor Rorrer, Doug Rorrer and Scott Freeman, played from 3 different cds they all played together on, with others. My concern today was how I was going to insert a couple of rock songs into the program in a way that doesn't seem like an aside, or a digression. Played the first half hour of this driving acoustic music. Weather/Farm Bureau commercial put a stop to the groove I had going. Good place to insert something new. Played River Runs by Big Daddy Love and it sounded awfully good. The next one, American Sycamore, showed what each of the musicians can do, the banjo and the electric guitar, and gave a good sense of the kind of rock they play. How to get the groove back to acoustic music I solved by playing Forked Deer with Doug Rorrer and Wayne Henderson picking guitar together. Forked Deer is a high energy fiddle tune. The transition was just right. Seamless. Finished with Doug Rorrer playing solo guitar and singing Keep On The Sunny Side. Good ending.

I took a break and went to Big Daddy Love concert at the Silver Dollar in Glade Valley. The place was nearly packed. Sparta turned out for the band. Every age and all different kinds of people. Going by who was there, I see Sparta is happy with their home town rock band. After hearing the album, I told my friend Carole it was not a noise band. After the show tonight I have to say they are a noise band. I have to say they have the potential to go as far as they want to go in the pop music world. I've been listening to bluegrass, the music of masterful musicianship, and old-time, both of which are about the music. I wasn't able to figure out if it was me or the band tonight, but I never felt the music. These guys are good musicians and people were jumping all over the dancefloor. I was most taken by the turnout of Sparta people to fill the place up for 3 homeboys. I can't make out why the music didn't take hold of me. One thing I can think of is listening to Arnold Spangler and Laurel Fork Travelers for 2 hours before I went. I was hearing some really well played fiddle and banjo, guitar and vocals, as well as the songs themselves by a band that plays music first.

That must have something to do with it, that and listening to a lot of mountain music over the last several years, hearing the artistry of Lester Flatt's singing and Earl Scruggs' banjo, Ricky Skaggs' mandolin, Scott Freeman, Doug and Taylor Rorrer, just about anybody who plays at a fiddler's convention on Saturday night, Carter Stanley's singing and Ralph Stanley's singing and banjo, Bill Monroe, the Osborne Brothers, Steve Lewis, Wayne Henderson and a very long list of others. With my ears attuned to master musicianship of acoustic instruments, the switch to the roar of electric was a kind of shock. Though it's not a shock when I hear on cd the Clash, Generation X, Garbage, Mazzy Starr. I still have an ear for rock, but somehow was unsatisfied with what is actually a really good band. I noticed as the concert went on the audience seemed to grow less excited. The beginning was a big rush of electric rock that got everybody going, and some little old ladies I'm afraid might have listened to my show this morning and went to see what this was they might have thought I was recommending. I hope not. The drummer. He was not subtle at all. Seemed to me one of those drummers who believes loudest is best. They could have turned his volume down about half way. I've never liked drummers that give it all to loud. The electric banjo sounded like an electric piano. The Allman Brothers guitar was awfully good. The rest of it sounded something akin to toned down thrash. I don't mean to be insulting to the band. I'm just searching for why a really good band didn't reach me musically tonight. It reached a majority of the people there. When I had my bluegrass ear I went to a Papa Roach concert at a small venue like tonight and loved the music of it. It was 10x louder than tonight.

Also, I've been listening to r&r since the beginning. I've heard all the musical trends in rock from the rockabilly beginning to Rage Against The Machine and Thrice. The band tonight seems like they threw all their high energy music into the beginning and toward the end lowered the energy and brought it down to a place where the people were talking to each other more than paying attention to the band. When they left the stage, there was piddling little applause calling them back. When they came back for an encore, I thought: doesn't take much. I was ready to go home and left during the 2nd encore song. The concerts I've been to in the past have started with a bang, then settle into lower energy music and build to the mayhem climax and gets the audience going nuts. These guys started out high energy and faded down as time went by until the end when it was too low energy for the audience to call for an encore. I don't mean to sound unappreciative, because I'm not. I do appreciate they're a really good band.

It was a good show and, as I said before, the best part was seeing the turnout of Sparta (Alleghany) folks in support of their hometown band. I'd say tonight Big Daddy Love established themselves as a Sparta band, a band the local folks who listen to rock, about everyone under 67, and everyone who watches television, can appreciate as a band heading for the charts. Rock is the music of our time. I've loved a great deal of it and listened to an even greater deal of it. Janes Addiction continues to knock my sox off as does Siouxsie and the Banshees. It wasn't that it was rock I wasn't able to connect with. I can't find it. I don't know what it was. Largely, it was a blur of the instruments but for the drums and electric guitar. Rarely heard the banjo, though he was playing all the time, and the vocals seemed to blend into the blur. Possibly it was the sound system, acoustics, I don't know what. Perhaps I expected too much. That's more than likely it. I might have been expecting something like Three Doors Down or Linkin Park. I do think that's it, high expectation met with a really good band that is in its beginning. This is the celebration of their first album as a band. I'm not looking at the Clash at the moment their first album was released, but later when they were getting it together. It was still a good concert, despite my jaded mind. I had my fun watching this big crowd of Sparta people jamming, supporting the homeboys. That was the very best part. I'm glad it was such a success for Partnership for Children. It guarantees the band will be back next year, a year into growing together as a band. These guys will be better every year.

SPARTA BOYS

big daddy love--image borrowed from bdl website

The mountains are as beautiful as they get this week. Weather that's agreeable with short sleeves, sunshine all day, puffy clouds floating overhead, landscape in the fresh new green of meadows and trees. Stopped at Blue Ridge Gallery on the way home from a trip to town to see Melia and Judy. We sat on the porch and looked out over the long ridge from where Bullhead meets 21 on the left, then panning right, the humps of Bullhead, then Green Mountain with what used to be the fire tower and now looks like a cell phone tower and other towers, Air Bellows Overlook, the place where Air Bellows Gap Road meets the Parkway, the hairpin turn and the the rock bridge that has become the Air Bellows Outdoor Art Museum Of Spontaneous Teenage Angst (ABOAMOSTA). The ridge and Parkway recede on the right at Low Notch and on toward Doughton Park. The view is Pine Swamp and Whitehead. Melia and Judy are Jr's second cousins. Jr's first cousin, Claude Edwards, was their daddy.

Judy had a CD for me to hear toward playing on the radio Saturday morning. The band, Big Daddy Love, is playing here Saturday night at the Silver Dollar in Glade Valley. Three of the guys in the band are from Sparta, Dan Smith, Brian Swenk and Joey Recchio. Laura Thornburg wrote an article in this week's paper about them. The concert Saturday night will be a benefit for Partnership for Children. They said they wanted to play here once a year a benefit show for the Partnership. They're a 5 piece band. I put them on the soundmachine later and was struck by what a good band they are, right off. Dan Smith does the vocals and wrote all the songs. They are every one respectable songs in the wording and the presentation with music. The band plays very well together, they're all good musicians, good vocals. All the songs are well conceived musically.

Dan Smith, songwriter, vocalist and rhythm guitar, gives a good description of their sound to Laura in the interview, "We call our music roots and rock. It speaks around a lot of our influences; we call it the sound of bluegrass with the soul of the Allman Brothers." When I read that before hearing them, I thought, 'Whatever.' When I heard their sound, it was evident he knew what he was saying. The sound of bluegrass with electric guitar and drums. He didn't mean they sounded like bluegrass. The band has the sound of bluegrass. Listening to the album I listened for bluegrass and there was none. But there was, indeed, the sound of bluegrass. The Allman Brothers soul he mentioned hit the mark. Joey Recchio playing the electric guitar really does have the Southern soul of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. Again, it's the soul of the Allman Brothers he pointed to and indeed it's there. The soul of Greg Allman is in the sound as well as Duane. Yet Big Daddy Love's sound is their own.

The band has a website http://www.bigdaddylove.net/. It's a good site. They kind of present themselves in the Americana vein, pictured in a boxcar, that kind of American identity. I can see them at Merlefest in a few years. They also have a MySpace site that can be reached at http://www.myspace.com/bigdaddyloveband. Their concert schedule can be found there and some songs for free downloading, and some for playing while at the site. These are very talented guys. They'll have cds for sale at the show Saturday night. I'd been seeing the little posters around town about Big Daddy Love, but never stopped to look at one. Then Judy called them to my attention. They're a band Sparta kids can be proud of. Before I heard it, I thought I might play it all on the show. Now that I've heard it, I've found 3 songs I'd play. In the interview in the paper, they said they have something for everyone on the album. I want my listeners to hear them. 3 of the songs, River Runs, American Sycamore, A Letter to Love, seem accessible to my listeners. I don't mean to put off on them when it's my own decision. I'd guess at least half of my listeners like rock and can listen to it and enjoy it. The other half, drums and electric guitars hurt their ears. They hear it on tv all the time in commercials and soundtracks, so it doesn't hurt their ears too bad. It's not like rock & roll is revolutionary any more. It's not the kind of music that touches my listeners, but I believe they will still be interested to hear what some fellers from Sparta are doing. I want to use songs that will be accessible to my listeners ears, "the sound of bluegrass." While the squawling guitar is ratcheting up the soul in their sound, and beautifully, the show isn't quite Rock FM. At the same time I want to represent the ones making rock and country as well. I don't want to be exclusive, even of region. I like to be open for a fiddler from Missouri who is especially good. The show is foremost about good music.

I have to grant that sometimes a banjo and fiddle get to going in some bluegrass jam, like Ricky Skaggs can do, that can get the same energy going as a good Southern rock band. But Skaggs isn't electric guitars and drums either. I want to give my listeners a chance to hear the new band that's playing some very respectable rock & roll, a couple of songs that are accessible to my hillbilly listeners' ears. The show celebrates local musicians. These are local musicians. I want to and will play them. The show starts at 7 Saturday at the Silver Dollar. It will be an excellent show. Track 1 on their album, To The Mountain, is called Hometown Radio (WCOK). It is a very cleverly conceived and carried out brief review of BDL's first album, with the original crew, like looking for 1060 on an AM dial, passing stations, hearing a phrase, back to static, another phrase of a rock song that was playing there, more static, then the dial gradually settles and the dj announces this is WCOK. I take it that's Dan Smith being the dj.

If Sue doesn't have this CD at the station, I'll leave it with her. There are times of the day every song on here could be played to mix well with what's playing, like country, even gospel. The songs can't be labeled gospel, but they are, like in the way Reggae is a gospel music. They need to be played on WCOK, everything, all the time. I hope they've sent a promo copy to WBRF. These fellers are good musicians from NW NC. They way I see it, if they were playing violin, viola and bassoon in the Greensboro Symphony, at least something needs playing on WCOK by the GSO because some home boys are in the band. Even if they're Mexicans that grew up here and are playing Mexican music. As Alleghany changes, the music changes.