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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CATY SAGE INDIAN MAIDEN

     caty sage memorial, elk creek


I was looking at the photograph I took of Caty Sage's grave site in the Turner section of Kansas City, Kansas. I grew up across the river from the cemetery, exactly five miles by road on account of the location of the bridge, and maybe 2 miles by crow. Had I known about the cemetery in the time of childhood, I could have seen it easily from Monkey Mountain the river made a bend around, the highest point for looking at distant landscape, maybe a half mile from the house. About the same distance as the waterfalls I live near now. I'd seen the sign beside the road at Elk Creek, Virginia, the next town after Independence on hwy 21 going north. It's 20 miles from my house to Independence, and Elk Creek is between 5 and 10 miles beyond Independence. In her childhood, Caty was snatched by evidently a trader in children. It happened then as it happens today. Snatching children goes back so far in our development that women probably have a gene for keeping an eye on their children, keeping them close in public, from countless generations of mothers carrying concern over losing a child in such a way. I've an idea Caty's mother never stopped grieving her loss.


Caty's brother eventually found her in Ohio before her tribe, the Wyandotte's, was removed from their land by the white genocidal enemy to the Turner region of Kansas, next to the river. Brother wanted to take her back to mama to ease her grieving heart. But Caty had a life. She'd been sold to the chief of the Wyandotte tribe, goldilocks, white jungle goddess. She was raised as the daughter of the chief. When the old chief died, the warrior who filled in the role of chief married Caty. When he died, some twenty or so years later, the next warrior who became chief married her, too. I think it was during her last marriage that her brother found her. Of course she's not going back. She is the tribe's matriarch. Her role in the tribe was the equal of the chief's. She couldn't be going off on a major journey through forest trails. It would take a caravan to carry her and all the warriors in the tribe to protect her. She may not have had but very few snapshot memories, if any, of life on the farm with her birth parents. Her life was with the tribe that evidently held her way up high. From the start with blond hair, the chief's daughter, other kids wouldn't pick on her so much. They must have been in a kind of awe of her at the very beginning. The chief adopting her was her shield of protection for being different.


You know she must have been scared out of her wits from the moment a strange man put his nasty hand over her mouth and carried her away running through the woods. A highway system of trails ran through the mountains in that time, days and days walking trails. By the time they reached the Wyandotte territory in Ohio, I'd guess she was depending on her captor to feed her and protect her. He was not a church kinda guy, for sure, and more than likely not an outgoing personality. He had to keep her looking pretty to get high dollar for her. That may have protected her somewhat from him. But I'd lay odds he had his way with her at will along the way. Maybe not penetration, but fondling, breathing his rotten breath on her. There came a time she knew she'd never be rescued and never see home, about the time she stopped crying. Along their travels northwest, maybe through Cumberland Gap, up through Kentucky into Ohio. He was surely good to her to keep her healthy for the long walk and to look good at the other end. If an Indian out on a long-distance hunting trip snatched her, her terror might have even been worse than with some white man traveler. There's no telling. Her snatcher might have treated her ethically. No. Somebody who snatches a child to sell it doesn't think ethically.


All we know is she survived the overland journey from Elk Creek, Virginia, to western Ohio. The man she was with surely was a hunter, a man who knew the mountains, knew the trail system well. Possibly, by the time they reached their destination she'd learned something about hunting and preparing the food. It seems like it must have been an Indian possibly of the Wyandotte tribe. Maybe he knew the chief had no heirs of his infertile seed, thought this blond jungle goddess would suit the chief and maybe get the kidnapper a significant reward. Evidently, the chief had no heirs and Caty became his prize babydoll. It may not have been very long before they had her feeling at home, the chief's wife her new mother, the chief and his wife both elated to have such a beautiful child to raise as their own. She probably grew up into a knockout, and evidently the hot thang of choice since the next man to be chief married her. And 20 years later in her late 30s probably, her husband died and the next man to become chief married her. By this time she surely was the tribal matriarch. They must have thought a great deal of her. Shaman may have divined a good story about her being sent from heaven to be the chief's heir, or whatever. I can't see a white man carrying her that far when he could have sold her probably several times along the way.


If it were an Indian, he probably would have treated her ethically, possibly having in mind getting her to the chief and himself becoming a big man for finding her and bringing her back. Her brother who spent his adult life looking for her, following every lead he could find. By the time he finally found her, he surely knew the nature of her kidnapping, who did it and why. That knowledge died with him and everyone else concerned. I can't see a white man who would kidnap a child would carry a child that far, in probably a bee-line over the landscape, and the child survive him. An Indian hunter taking her through the trails with purpose to make her the chief's prized daughter would be good to her, feed her well and more than likely be respectful with her as if she already were the chief's daughter; he's just delivering her. She may have had very little terror except when she began to realize she'd never see home again. Not to say this is how it was, I doubt if anything I'd imagine could be the case. But it's fun letting the mind run and do some investigative thinking from what I've learned of walking in these mountains, and what I've learned living among human beings all my life.


I can't see a white man of the time, a hunter, kidnapping her and delivering her overland so far away, for money, in any kind of good health, certainly not good mental health after what he'd have done with her along the way. She'd have been unfit for a chief's daughter by the time she arrived years later. If it were a Wyandotte Indian hunter who found her by chance and took her with solving the chief's problem in mind, I'd guess he surely carried her on his shoulders or made a device of straps she could ride in on his back. It wouldn't be far along the way that she would be dependent on him, not knowing where she was or how to find the way home. After a certain point, she probably took him for her protector. An Indian could strap her to his back and make some time. I can't see a white man condescending to that, or even thinking to. By the time they reached the tribal settlement, she was probably curious to see what new life she was being carried into, maybe even ready to assimilate, for survival. Caty's first day in the tribal setting, seeing and meeting people inside an Indian village, must have been an eye opener.


I learned about Caty Sage reading Bill Bland's book, Yourowquains: A Wyandot Indian Queen, the story of Caty Sage, that I found in the Alleghany library. I went to amazon and saw they have some there, too. At amazon I saw a book published 2009, The Saga of Caty Sage, by Jerry L Haynes. Both books were rated 5 star and the reader reviews of the Saga of Caty Sage made me want it now. But I'm reading something else at the moment. Can't buy everything I think I want in a gotta-have-it moment. The library probably has a copy. It must be known, then, how Caty was taken from here to there. The Jerry Haynes book looked awfully good. He evidently did a great deal of research and put it all together as a "novel" probably because so many of his sources couldn't be verified. It tells me it is written as a story, which gives it a good chance of being what I'd want it to be. She was buried in an unmarked grave, maybe originally marked with wood, in the Indian part of the big cemetery, the part with very few headstones. She was driven west with the remains of her tribe after white encroachemnt. Not by war. They were told to leave. The survivors of disease evidently took up in Turner, Kansas. This is speculative, so don't be taking notes. Faulty memory sprinkled with imagination. It amuses me since I learned where she was buried that she and I did a reversal. She went to where I grew up and I went from there to where she originated, just 25+ miles from where I am now. We made a circle. 


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