SKEETER & THE SKIDMARKS AND THE WOLFE BROTHERS

skeeter and the skidmarks

Saturday night Skeeter & the Skidmarks played on the indoor stage at the Blue Ridge Music Center nearby on the Parkway. Expecting it to be an outdoor event, I took folding chair and a bottle of gatorade. At the door I had to turn around and carry folding chair back to the car. I kept the bottle of gatorade in the lower right pocket of cargo pants. Inside, it's announced no food or drinks. I thought: shit. I wasn't going to carry the bottle back to the car, so I didn't drink from it. Didn't see any police, so it felt like I might not spend the night in the Galax jail for disobedience. Outlaw on Government property! And, of course, I'm sitting there thinking the republicans will shut the place down first chance they get, and they're working toward it, same as they're working toward shutting down the post office and Social Security, a step at a time. Since our government has turned against we-the-99-percent, it felt like I was behind enemy lines on federal government property. I told myself to stop that kind of thinking and enjoy the music. It was easy once the music started. Republicans will shut the place down soon enough; enjoy it while we have it, I told myself.

skeeter and the skidmarks with dancers

The place was packed, full to capacity. I questioned the thinking of whoever put Skeeter to open for the Wolfe Brothers. Even the Wolfe Brothers questioned it. Skeeter gave them a booger of a musical act to follow. When the Wolfe Brothers came onto the stage, they looked a little bit in shock, like how do we follow that? Casey Hash, guitar, said right off he doesn't know why his band was scheduled to play after Skeeter. I'd say it was rough for the Wolfe Brothers, an old-time band, to step onto the stage after the audience had just been Skeeterized. By the time I walked in the door, not many seats were left. I found a seat that was good for getting pictures, but less than ideal for sound. The sound in the place was good for the audience as a whole and I was in lower right corner, kind of under one of the speakers. The only difference between where I sat and the ideal was volume. Of course, I wanted it rock concert volume stereo. I wanted Scott's mandolin and Edwin's banjo to rock my world. I'm not complaining about the sound system. Considering I had less than the best seat in the place for sound, it was still good, very clear sound. I chose the spot for pictures over sound. I'm well acquainted with Skeeter's sound. I like to hear the next new way they'll play their songbook. If I were riding in a pickup with a friend and a Skeeter cd was playing, the volume was such that I'd ask, "Could we have just a little more volume?" But it was an auditorium full to the last seat of white middle class grownups making it obvious, even to a child, I was not the only one there. At home I can hear it any way I like it, don't even need headphones.

skeeter & the skidmarks

light from somebody else's flash

I've heard Skeeter play as Skeeter more than half a dozen times. Every time I've heard them, they play in a new way they've not played before. Once, they came on strong, blew the roof off the place. Another time they sat down and made the music leaning toward folk style. At one they were playing loose and free, at another paying close articulate attention to the notes. No matter how they approach their music, it has music for its foundation and purpose. Everybody in the band is a musician who plays music first. Their approach to the music this time was very clear, very articulate, no bombast, just masterful picking and good understand-the-words kind of singing. They had on their good-behavior minds. They didn't cut up between songs like at Fiddle & Plow shows where they're at home. They played Skeeter's greatest hits. I don't know that I'd ever head Skeeter with a big audience of people from everywhere. In a way, they were giving people from Away a sampling of what is going on in mountain music of this region. Edwin's banjo wowed the audience. He didn't overdo it with a loud country banjo gettin er done. He played quietly sometimes, esp opening his Theme from Dr Zhivago and Gentle On My Mind, both of which he plays clawhammer banjo, Edwin style. At the beginning, when they played Groundhog Shuffle, most often at the Front Porch they use that tune to open with a bang. This time they slowly crept into it, Scott doing some almighty picking, others joined in and off they went.

sandy mason

willard gayheart

edwin lacy

scott freeman

Introducing a song he'd written, Willard told of the time in the mountains of East Kentucky where he grew up, the women would go out on a certain day in springtime looking for greens to make salad, then called salet. In such moments, I attempted to pretend I was passing through the mountains, staying in a motel nearby, this my first mountain music experience. I'd never be the same after hearing this and being unable to hear it again. I'd be compelled to buy a cd. When I'd get home, I'd start looking for websites to find cds of more of their music and devour YouTube for it. I felt the audience connect with every individual in the band, with their personalities, with their musicianship, their singing, their songwriting, and the whole band. Sandy sang her wonderful Carter Family song, When The Roses Bloom In Dixie. To say I'd never heard Skeeter play like they played last night, is like saying one winter is different from the others. Every winter is unique unto itself. Same with the other seasons, every year unique. I was most interested hearing the band's manner of playing, like usual. Every time I've heard them play, the way they present the songs is unique, more in feeling or attitude. I've told them they are my new Rolling Stones, meaning they satisfy my ear as totally in this time of my life as the Rolling Stones did in another time. I can still listen to the Stones in full appreciation, but I'd rather listen to Skeeter & the Skidmarks. Both bands are loaded with stellar musicianship and music. Every tune Skeeter played had a polished, professional edge to it that was neither too much nor too little. It was just right. Their sound was clean and clear, relaxed at home, masterful picking that served the music without drawing attention to the musician. They made no more of themselves than would musicians in a classical quartet. 

 

casey hash and donna correll

jerry correll and dale morris

I was feeling a little bit sheepish for the Wolfe Brothers when they came on, but they did it. They busted loose and I didn't feel a bit of a let down. They jumped in and did it their way. Old-time is a square dance music, after all. These musicians have played many a square dance. They know how to make dancers kick their feet. I believe it was in 2008 I saw a show at Glendale Springs of four bluegrass bands, one of them the Wildwood Valley Boys with Michael Cleveland playing fiddle, totally awesome, and Whitetop Mountain was the last band to play. I felt sorry for Whitetop. What a thing to drop in their lap, to follow four driving bluegrass bands. When Whitetop Mountain Band hit their first notes, all that went before vanished like a mist at sunrise. It was on. Wolfe Brothers did not fade behind Skeeter, either. They hit the ground running and kept it up. It has been a few years since I had heard them make music. I missed them when they played at Fiddle & Plow, for what reason I don't remember. Dale Morris said they'd be playing at the Fiddle & Plow in the next few weeks. I will not miss this one, unless it's the night I go to Roanoke for a Willie Nelson concert. Dale's banjo is awfully sound. By sound, I mean he's right there with the rhythm, keeping it steady and clear with dancing melody. He plays a very respectable banjo. For many years Dale played bass in Whit Sizemore's band with Tom Norman playing banjo.

the wolfe brothers

Casey Hash has written another Caty Sage song besides the one Eddie Bond sang. It's a good song. I have an issue of my own that has nothing to do with anybody else, that I don't believe it was a tragic story for Caty Sage. By way of an Indian trail, she was taken to Ohio to be adopted the daughter of a chief of the Wyandotte tribe in Ohio. I expect she was handled very carefully and nicely by her captor all the way. Maybe. Maybe not. Evidently, this chief had word out he was looking for a princess. At age 6, first grade, Caty became the daughter of a chief, privileged, blond hair, the coolest kid in the tribe all of a sudden. The warrior she married became the next chief when the old man died. When the second husband died, her next husband became chief. Why would she leave that world where she had a good life with people that cared about her? She wasn't anything at all like a slave. She went native. What kind of tragedy is that? The tragedy came later when the white tsunami destroyed the tribe's way of life and forced the surviving Wyandottes to the northeastern corner of Kansas in a township of Kansas City, Kansas, called Turner, where Caty spent her old age. She's buried in a cemetery beside the Kaw River, the section that was then the Indian cemetery, unmarked. An interstate runs between the cemetery and the river. Caty's brother found her while their mother was in her later years, but Caty refused to return. It was a tragedy for the folks back in Elk Creek. She had a life. She undoubtedly had her own kids and their families, her grandkids. I just have an automatic reaction when I hear about poor Caty Sage, lost her mama and her daddy, oh poor baby. She undoubtedly was scared for an unknown, though short term, period of time. When she found out she was the chief's princess daughter at age 6, I doubt she entertained many thoughts of going back. Caty's is a Cinderella story.

casey hash and donna correll

 

That was my own personal aside, a play within a play, my Shakespearean device to keep the drama moving. LOL. Believe it if you want to. It's more correctly called a rambling mind that's in the delta of this lifetime that forgets from one moment to the next. I like the delta. The water flows smoothly in the delta, shorebirds, fish, gators, skeeters. Yep, lots and lotsa skeeters. Virtual skeeters of the mind. They leave skidmarks when they come in for a landing on the runway in our minds. In stage humor, Skeeter as well as in Alternate Roots, Willard happened to be the one the jokes were pointed at. Scott made some remarks about Willard's old age and the audience didn't take to it. Most often it cracks an audience up. Willard bends over laughing. This audience felt to me like it got its back up in defense of Willard. They liked Willard. And a lot of them were old, too. Things like that work with some audiences and not with others. The only way you find out is do it and see. It was no more than a joke that didn't work. Kinda like if I'd told a joke. Plop, face down on the floor, dead joke. That didn't hurt anything. Willard had already proven himself singing a couple songs, picking his strong rhythm guitar with his new Henderson guitar. The director of the show's series, fiddler Erynn Marshall, pointed out that the walls displayed large reproductions of some of Willard's drawings, like in a gallery. The Blue Ridge Music Center is a spot that can be held up as a place and time our government did something right. 

sandy mason and willard gayheart

 

 

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MUSIC OF EAST TENNESSEE AT BLUE RIDGE MUSIC CENTER

joseph dicosimo and mike bryant

The Blue Ridge Music Center is on the Parkway exactly 4 miles from the NC/VA line into Virginia, Milepost 213. Saturday night, June 1, they presented music of eastern Tennessee. Started off with two guys from SE Tennessee, one, Joseph Dicosimo, from just a few miles from the home of my ancestors at Ninemile, on highway 28 between Crossville and Pikeville. I was especially interested in hearing the music of these two guys as they played the sound of the region, the Sequatchie Valley of the South Cumberland Plateau. I look to hear the sound of the SE Tennessee region whenever I can. Another banjo picker from central Tennessee played, Daniel Rothwell, accompanied by his dad on guitar. Quite good. The Dave Macon part of the state. He plays Dave Macon style very well.

joseph dicosimo

I remember Dicosimo's name because I bought his cd titled Sequatchie Valley. He has a smooth fiddle that is fast. I took my friends Lucas and Judy Carpenter from the greater Atlanta area. They have a place across the road from my house. They appreciate mountain music. They have such a wide range of musical interests their daughter in her teens had a difficult time finding a music to rebel with, to call her own that her parents could not listen to. She found Enya. They have listened to enough mountain music to have something of a feel for it. I took Judy to the Albert Hash Festival at Whitetop a couple years ago, mountain music all day long. Not many city people have an ear for it. Lucas and Judy's ears are wide open, always, to hear something new.

daniel rothwell, banjo

 

 



                                                                                                                thomas maupin, buck dancer

Dancer Thomas Maupin of the Cumberland Plateau did some buck dancing to the music, with the music, became one of the musicians. Beautiful dancing. I took it for the dance my ancestors danced when they listened to their old-time music. I'm interested in the music of that region, because I want to hear the music my ancestors heard. Maupin danced a polished version of the dance they did more than likely. Hearing the music is another aspect of my ancestors. I went to Ninemile some years ago, stood in one spot and looked at the landscape all the way around, very slowly, soaking it in so I'd never forget it. That's another aspect. I've seen the place where great-great grandpa Jesse Carroll Worthington had his house, which has been replaced by another house. He drank white liquor. It may be what drove his boys out of the county, to get away from the old man.

joseph dicosimo and mike bryant

That's my theory, being a Worthington with an idea of the temperament that goes with the name. A rugged, tough man. Worked with railroad in Alabama making money to buy some land back home, got a farm going and the War of Yankee Aggression took him and his 3 brothers away for four years. He rebuilt the farm after the war. I've seen the big spring where great-great-great grandpa Big Spring Bill got his name. I've seen the graves of my great-great grandparents, the Hales, parents of great grandfather Jim's wife Dora, my great grandmother. I met her a few times when I was little. The last time I saw her I was 7. She and Jim moved to Perry, Kansas, after they had a few kids. What a trip that must have been, by wagon, possibly pulled by oxen, and a horse to go hunting with along the way, maybe more than one horse.

the roan mountain hilltoppers

 

 

Finding a spot on the grass to sit when we first came in for the show, I heard, "TJ!" I look up and it's Sandy Hayes from Boone and her husband Tony with their granddaughter. I'd not seen them in several years and they're the sort of people I miss. We talked as fast as we could go. Sandy is one of my hillbilly friends. She's from Wilkes County and related to the Millers of Alleghany. Their boy Josh I'd known when he was around 12 maybe, early teens. He was taking up banjo playing. Sandy said, "He's really good now." Then she said he was playing banjo with the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers. I said that's all I need to know. He's good. And he was. Old Bill Birchfield used to play the guitar for the band, and his daddy, Pop Birchfield, played fiddle and Pop's brother Creed played the banjo. Creed Birchfield's shoes are some mighty big ones for a banjo picker to step into. Josh has it. He plays that old music right. The Hilltoppers gave a show. Bill has been playing fiddle for some time now and has become a serious old-time fiddler, made his own fiddle. The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers have drive in their music that sets them apart. Janet Birchfield who plays the washtub bass is the band's speaker. She's a character, as is Bill. It's always good to hear the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers.

 

bill birchfield

 

 

janet birchfield

 

 

josh hayes

 

 

bill birchfield and josh hayes

 

 

roan mountain hilltoppers / josh hayes flat-footing

terry tester banjo,  bill birchfield guitar

 

 

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THE FIDDLE AND PLOW NOW A CROOKED ROAD VENUE

     the steve lewis trio, 17feb2012

Friday night the 7th was the induction celebration of the Fiddle & Plow series in Woodlawn becoming a venue of the Crooked Road traditional music of southern Virginia from Rocky Mount to the mountains. Crooked Road is another name for Highway 58. It really runs crooked over Mt Rogers and Whitetop. It used to be the highway from SW Virginia to Richmond in the days of Model A's. An older lawyer I once new, Lorne Campbell, whose practice was in Independence, Virginia, from 1932 until 1989, in the middle of the 1930s his dad came to visit from SanDiego. Lorne had him take the train to Abingdon. He picked him up in a Model A and drove him over back (unimproved) roads all the way to Independence. At the time he told me I took it that he was playing a prank on his dad to make him believe Lorne's circumstances were Xtreme rural. As I've grown older and more in love with these mountains the way Campbell was, I realize he was showing his city-slicker dad the beauty of the Blue Ridge from the inside. Highway 58 is a beautiful scenic highway through the southern part of Virginia, a beautiful state in all its regions.

The Crooked Road is a tourism idea to encourage attention to local music, featuring music venues along the length of the highway. The Piedmont has its own music tradition, like Charlie Poole. A book has been published with cds that play music from along the road. A venue needed to be in operation two years to become a part of the Crooked Road tour. A few months ago, the Fiddle & Plow show passed the two year mark; tonight Joe Wilson and Jack Hinschelwood, who is evidently director of the Crooked Road, presented us (audience too) a Crooked Road banner for display and talked a little bit about it. They brought with them Kenny Price, banjo picker from Mountain City, Tennessee, just across the state line. He is son of fiddler Fred Price who toured with Clint Howard, Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley in the early 1960s at universities all over the country, playing traditional music. It was Doc Watson's first recording. Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's, a 2-lp set. On cd it is a 2-cd set called Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley, 1960-1962. It's one of my very favorite old-time albums up there with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed's June Apple and Whitetop Mountain Band's Bull Plus 10%. Can't leave out The Bell Spur String Band. Fred Price's fiddle on that album is up there among the very finest old-time fiddles.

The music was made by Scott Freeman, mandolin; Steve Lewis, bluegrass banjo and guitar; Josh Scott, bass; Willard Gayheart, guitar; Dori Freeman, guitar and vocal; Edwin Lacy, clawhammer banjo. They brought up Kenny Price to pick the bluegrass banjo a couple times. Quite a picker. I felt like it was an interesting connection with Fred Price, Kenny's fiddler papa, and all the people on that album with Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley. On the way to Woodlawn, I stopped at the Subway in Independence. Inside was a man about my age with a big gray beard and a rugged face. I saw in him the people of a century ago, not even that long ago. I had a flash of what it would be like if all the men looked like him, the way they looked in the old-time ways. A very different world. Yet it's the world of the music we listen to called old-time. We tend to look at somebody from the past and pat ourselves on the back for being advanced beyond that. But after some years of living among the people that used to look like rugged farmers, I doubt we're advanced the least little bit beyond them. There is an awful lot they have on us. And it's gone to the graves with them.

We have televisions and recliners, but that doesn't make us anything that can be called better than what they had. We think what we have is better, because we don't know what they had. Every peep I've had through the keyhole of culture into those days tells me we have nothing on them. What I see them losing as they conform to the new television culture is so substantial and of such value I feel sorrow that it is gone. I attempt to keep it alive in myself, and some other people do too, but there aren't many of us. Mountain culture is gone as a culture; even though I understand the changes we're going through that take centuries are about demolishing all traditional cultures, all traditions, and starting over with a new set of values, ethics, for the next period of time with electricity > computer > a whole new world. I'd like to see the next world be more in line with democracy than it is now. I'm seeing democracy evolving toward the ideal, constantly evolving toward the ideal. Like the hokey-pokey. Two steps forward, one step back. One step forward, two steps back. The ideal being democracy. It's a big thing to undertake, considering it is happening to all the people living on the earth. It's like the next new thing.

The music tonight was all made by people with a lifetime respect from the heart for old-time mountain music. The tradition has gone away, but the music remains. The people making the music were, every one of them, people who embody the finer qualities of the old-time people. We don't gut hogs anymore and we don't carry grain in bags on our backs to the mill to be ground into flour to carry back home on our backs. From Air Bellows that's a three mile walk to the mill at Whitehead. We don't do that anymore. We have jobs and payments. We live in a world where the old-time values don't apply; yet for people who live by them they are very much alive. I know all the musicians on stage, the Steve Lewis Trio and friends. Every one of them is someone whose character I admire, people whose character I respect. That's how it is in people who know them. Down here on ground level, down from the mental sphere of television belief systems as reality, values continue to apply between individuals who don't figure because we're not rich or celebrities. We're the "ordinary" people. That's a good way to be considered. Brings to mind my friend Jr Maxwell whose daddy told him, "Stay away from important people." Let's stay among the ordinary people where we can find people of true character. The wise are among us too.

I go to Woodlawn on Friday nights to be among these people I believe to be of true character, whatever that means, people honest with themselves and others, people who are who they are without excuses or apologies. And I don't mean walk the "straight and narrow." I tend to think of them as the real people. I don't mean nobody else is real people. It's just that I see it in every one of the people making music tonight and every Friday night since first show. The twenty or so people who go almost-regularly as I've come to know them are people of character too, the kind of people I feel comfortable among. In a non-religious way it feels like a kind of "church" (fellowship) with them. Tonight there were over 60 people present. It took all the reserve chairs and half a dozen stood in the back. Minnie the white cat kept her seat throughout. I think she saw that she'd lose her pillow if she got up for a stroll among the feet of the people who take her space over on Friday nights. In the beginning she seemed to be out of sorts with the invasion of all these people in her home without being asked. By now she seems to like seeing all the people that come to her house to listen to music.

Steve and Scott knocked our sox off as usual. Josh too. The bass is as much a part of it as the banjo and mandolin. They brought different guests to the front to play a tune. Erryn Marshall from the Blue Ridge Music Center was invited to play fiddle, which she did. She is a very respectable fiddler. She is an awe-inspiring fiddler. Dori Freeman sang beautifully again. A couple years ago I thought Dori had promise. By now she has fulfilled that promise and is on her way to getting better all the time, which will be her path. Carl Jones was asked to pick banjo. Good musician. I like hearing Carl Jones. Edwin Lacy was there to pick some. He picked and sang Gentle On My Mind. Edwin really likes that song and he sings it right. Toward the second half of the second set, Scott, Steve and Josh were smokin. I meant to leave off the G. They were cutting loose making music the way they like when they get together. These three guys who go by The Steve Lewis Trio can tear the roof off the place with acoustic instruments. They played Angelina Baker, or Angeline the Baker, a Stephen Foster song, that makes a great fiddle tune, great banjo tune, great guitar tune. It's a favorite at fiddlers conventions and other competitions. They took Alabama Jubilee and revealed the music in it to such a degree that if I'd known Alabama Jubilee had what they found in it from the first time I heard the song, I'd have loved it all my life instead of just the last few years of hearing Scott, Steve and Josh play it.

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SKEETER AND THE SKIDMARKS GET IT DONE

skeeter and the skidmarks

scott, edwin

sandy

willard

edwin

scott

edwin, sandy, willard

Skeeter and the Skidmarks did it to it again Friday night in Woodlawn, Virginia. We're in the third year now of the Fiddle and Plow series at Willard Gayheart's frame shop and gallery, the Front Porch.

It felt good to hear them again, not only to me, but to all the audience. Tonight it was mostly people who go regularly, but for one new woman who was liking what she was hearing. We who go almost every week have developed a fondness, even preference, to hear Scott Freeman and Willard Gahyeart with Edwin Lacy and Sandy Mason Grover. They are the original Skeeter and the Skidmarks from the first half of the 90s, reunited after several years Edwin was away at Presbyterian seminary, then stationed in Indiana. He came home a few times for activities with the Hungry Hash House Ramblers, a band with Scott and Doug Rorrer and Taylor Rorrer. When he went away, Scott and Willard put together Alternate Roots, a superb band that found Steve Lewis for lead guitar and banjo on their last two of four cds. Driving home I listened to an Alternate Roots tape in the car, Katy Taylor singing Killing the Blues, Out of the Blue, fine Alternate Roots songs with Randy Pasley on resonator guitar.

Alternate Roots is over, due to one thing and another. It's not good etiquette to ask band members what happened. A band is like a marriage. Their dysfunctions are not an issue to talk about. To say that one reason was it, everyone knows is just one of several reasons, possibly the straw and the camel's back. Skeeter and the Skidmarks is back. Edwin is back, stationed in Bristol this time. Takes him about as much time to drive there as it does me. He may have 15 minutes more. Skeeter came together for us, gave another stellar show of music that satisfied everyone who was spending their Friday nights listening to Scott, Willard, Edwin, Sandy, our friends. Every week we hear Scott and Willard open with a couple songs before the attraction. We of the audience have a warm affection for everyone in this band personally, individually. We're the core of their fan base. We're the ones who love them like family, good family. An interesting collection of people. When we run into each other somewhere else, our bond is Scott and Willard, the Front Porch music. We are the ones who love their music so much we return week after week.

Because I let Scott use a corner of my music store in Sparta one afternoon a week to teach kids from around here, he gave me a pass to Alternate Roots shows. I went to 14, and drove with my friend Jean when she was living, to Hilton's Virginia, for their last show at the Carter Fold. One of my favorite moments from that night was outside during intermission, talking with a man from the area about the Carter Family. The ground there was sacred. In the clear night I saw the Clinch Mountains in the light of the half moon. My first view of the Clinch Mountains the Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers made into a place as reverential as Wordsworth's Lake Country. For me, the Clinch Mountains are legendary, a place the Carter Family came from and the Stanley Brothers. Both Carter Family and Stanley Brothers bring tears to my eyes from the beauty of their songs and the singing, as well as my love for their tradition and the mountain culture that is theirs. That was a very special night for me. The Carter Family museum it cost 50c to enter that was AP Carter's store where he lived upstairs after Sara went to California to be with her Blue Eyes.

I feel privileged every day of my life that my parachute landed me in the Central Blue Ridge, the fountain of American music, a place where every weekend offers a great selection of places to go dance to old-time or bluegrass, or sit and listen. Local music that doesn't cost a lot for admission, and is good music. Whitetop Mountain Band, Crooked Road Ramblers, Slate Mountain Ramblers, Mountain Park Old-Time Band, Zephyr Lightning Bolts, Big Country Bluegrass, just the first ones to come to mind. The Blue Ridge Music Center, noon through 4, on the breezeway of the giftshop a different group of musicians Sun thru Saturday. Willard and Scott play there on Thursdays. Willard and Bobby Patterson play on Tuesday.

That music center is a gift from the USA Department of the Interior to us, the citizens. It seems like an awful lot, when nothing has been the rule since Reagan. It's such a sensible use of taxpayer money, money the working people worked for that they rendered unto Caesar against their will. The 1% don't like it when something happens to benefit anyone not of the 1%. Take the tax money from the people and put it into excessive military force to police the world protecting the  financial interests of the international corporations with bank accounts offshore, dodging taxes. In this time the way it is, I can't help but be in awe that the Dept of Interior trickled something down to us. It may have been approved before the Reagan administration. That's the only way I can see it happening. But I have a jaundiced view of the world; it's never as awful as I make it out to be. Hiroshima was a blast. Does the man who gave the order, and everyone down the chain of command to the one flying the plane carry a karmic debt. Did "wartime" absolve them from karmic return?

I digress. The music center is a jewel in these mountains in what it provides for us. I don't go a lot, but have gone quite a number of times over the years. I saw Alternate Roots play there. Alternate Roots was and still is my favorite band. I came to a place where pop music wasn't it any more; I'd found the pre-pop music of these hills, field recordings of old-time musicians living out in the mountains, unknown outside their music circle. I learned to appreciate local musicians in these mountains. I learned their musicianship is the equal of radio and tv musicianship, even better, because no corporate influence. I tell Scott, Willard and Edwin they are my new Rolling Stones. And I'm not kidding. I've always appreciated the Stones' musicianship, their unit as a band, the lyrics, the music. That's how I feel about Skeeter and the Skidmarks now. When Scott lights up the mandolin and the fiddle, it's awe every time. Same with Edwin's banjo. Sandy singing her Carter Family songs. There were times Willard's guitar came forward with some pretty strong rhythms working with Scott and Edwin. They had a nice, smooth flow. Each time they play, they approach the music differently. Sometimes a rhythm assault, sometimes like folk music. That's how I characterized in my mind their sound this time, nice, smooth flow. A good flow and it was smooth.

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THE MASTERS

bobby patterson and willard gayheart

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

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

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

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

WILLARD AND SCOTT AT BRMC

willard gayheart, guitar / scott freeman, mandolin

Today was a day I left the house to get some things done I've been letting slip by, like run out to the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway (exactly 4 miles into Virginia) to see/hear Scott and Willard playing for passers by, people stopping by who are traveling the Parkway at leisure. It's a beautiful place in a beautiful landscape, the United States Government giving we the people a wonderful return for our tax dollars. I don't have a problem with paying taxes, I just have a problem with 2/3 of it going to military. That is so incredibly out of proportion to need that I have a problem with it. I saw along the Parkway repairs made, new wooden sides to places in the road where it goes over a creek with a culvert under the road. They look good. Stimulus money. Several people working. Men out of work with a temporary job that benefits everyone. This is the first improvements I've seen on the Parkway since the Reagan Junta stripped Dept of Interior's budget to bare necessity 30 years ago. When I go to the Blue Ridge Music Center I'm reminded every time how beautiful the place is. The buildings are very well built, and they're beautiful inside and out. I appreciate the architects, whoever they are, every time I see it. Also, every time I'm there I feel patriotic in a way military doesn't satisfy at all. My patriotism is not about the glory of war. It's about things like this, the American people's heritage, who we are as people, what works to the good for us, unites us in friendliness.

I parked the car in this political arena, let all that fall aside and went to the space where Scott and Willard were playing. Willard is usually there with Bobby Patterson, who couldn't be there today, and Scott filled his place. A dozen or so people sat in chairs where people listened. Everyone was happy with the music. Enthusiastic applause after each song. Everyone recognized they were in the presence of some really good music played by master musicians. No matter what the music is, when it's really good, everyone hearing it notices. They listened in silence. I like to watch Scott's fingers dance all up and down the mandolin neck like a spider on a hot plate. I like watching Willard's command of the guitar strings, the ease with which his fingers move into a complex chord for the fingers like it's easy as A. Willard sits relaxed like he's not doing anything at all, yet his right hand is burning up the strings and his left hand moves from chord to chord with no effort like it's as easy as breathing. He has a subtlety about his pickin that is all about the music. Scott has the same kind of subtlety, able to do so much more than he is doing that what's he's doing is like coasting downhill on a bicycle. I've heard him lay it to it twice, going out there on an extended break like a surfer on a good ride with the water breaking over the top of him.

I left a little bit after they'd done that set. Wanted to stay as some of the people from Friday night showed up, but in the mind the day's schedule was calling. Grocery store, dump, stop by to see Agnes, stop by to see Tina, and made it home around 4. Much to do here. Put up groceries, feed Caterpillar and Tapo, change their litter box, which I haven't yet done. Phone ringing all the time I was home today. Phone almost never rings. Today call after call, one of them a wrong number, though a voice I recognized and couldn't place, like a tune I recognize and the title is lost. Took Jr's cd to Drew and Carol I'd been holding for a long time waiting to see them. They weren't home, so I left it. Considering whether to go or stay, I realized I wouldn't enjoy the music for thinking about what I could be doing on my schedule in that hour. When I leave the house, it's never for just one reason. I have to have several reasons. When using the laundromat, I'd put clothes in washer, go to the bank, gas station, drug store, come back, put clothes in dryer, go to grocery store, come back, put clothes in basket and come home. That's been my pattern for so many years that I tend to only go to town when I have several things to attend to.

Bobby Patterson will be there with Willard the rest of the week. Having lunch with Winfield Thursday. I may suggest he ride out there with me after lunch. He may not. He's clearing out some old and dead trees and selling them toward funding his trip to India November through February. He can live a month there traveling from place to place for quite a lot less than it costs to live for a month at home. He's a savvy traveler. Never uses tourist hotels. After a career with the Peace Corps in Ecuador, he has an affection for people of what we call now the Developing World, used to be the Third World. If he has to get back to the timber in the afternoon, I'll go on. I want to get some video of Willard and Bobby. These two are among the best of the Grayson County musicians. They've made music together 40 years, both in the Grayson bluegrass band, the Highlanders. Bobby's music shop and Willard's frame shop are almost adjoining buildings.

Willard has a website, http://www.willardgayheart.com/ for his pencil drawings. He is known as the pencil artist of Appalachia. He does beautiful work. His pictures are of the old mountain people, the old ways, the musicians, farmers, women, kids. The feel of the old time way is in Willard's pictures. They have a quiet stillness about them that is especially visible in the gallery where they hang all around the walls. A book has been made of his drawings. Willard is diligent. He keeps at it. His life is guitar pickin, singing and making his pictures. He markets them well. People who know him as the artist seldom know he's a musician as well, and people who know him as a musician don't know much about his drawings. He's not somebody to be out advertising himself. He's in a time in his life where it's getting along to his satisfaction. He has a good rhythm going with his two equal talents. He does commissions and gets a fair price for an original. His life is dedicated to these mountains, keeping memory of the old ways alive as long as possible, keeping the music of the mountains played, giving it voice. I have a lot of respect for Willard, his talents, his persistence, the man he is. Both Willard and Scott are truly of these mountains in the same kind of way Ralph Stanley is.Their musical style is different from his because they are different people. The mountains are in them.