SKEETER & THE SKIDMARKS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT SKY

skeeter and the skidmarks

scott freeman, edwin lacy, sandy mason, willard gayheart

 

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

Friday night, Skeeter & the Skidmarks lit up the sky over Woodlawn VA with traditional music Skeeterized. Their music holds the audience's attention and doesn't let go. Sometimes I closed my eyes to hear better and the difference was radical. It's the best example I know for how sight limits hearing. I watch these four people whose music I've listened to long enough that I know all the words, hearing them make music, watching them pick and sing, wowed by every moment, happy to be in the presence of this music as good for the soul as laughing. I close my eyes and the quality of the sound I'm hearing increases what seems like immeasurably. I understand why Doc Watson had such a good ear for playing his guitar and banjo, why blind musicians seem to hear the music they are making more clearly than ones distracted by sight. I get into a grove with my eyes closed, sit flowing with the music, open my eyes and the music changes. Eyes closed, it is more like listening to a cd at home, relaxed, grooving to the sound. Eyes open, it's a bunch of people picking their instruments, it's even social in that I see I am among about forty people and know a lot of them. I might be looking at what Willard is doing with his guitar strings while Scott is tearing up his mandolin. I'll miss much of what Scott is doing because my focus is on Willard's strings. I pay attention to what Scott is doing and I lose what Edwin is doing. Sometimes I focus my attention on Sandy, because that's when I best hear what she's doing with the bass. Eyes closed, everybody's individual sound flows with the other sounds as a unit. I like the concert experience of eyes open awhile, closed awhile. To my ear, it is two different musical experiences in one. A quarter century ago at a Frank Sinatra concert, I was so drunk that I saw two of him through the entire show. I think of it as seeing Frank Sinatra twice.

 

scott and edwin

 

scott freeman

 

I think of Skeeter as the house band at the Fiddle and Plow series. This may be their seventh show there. Not complaining. For my satisfaction, they don't play enough. Several weeks ago, I had to miss a show that was Scott and Willard. Those are the best ones for my ear. I love to hear Scott and Willard pick and sing together. They've made music together for so many years, they move together as one. If I had a big wad of money, I'd want to produce a project by Scott and Willard, Live At The Front Porch, because it needs doing and nobody has done it yet. Like Skeeter, Scott and Willard's sound is their own. To them, it's like nothing because they're so used to it. To my listening ear it is dynamite. Soft dynamite. The kind that blows your mind and makes you happy. Skeeter started the show Friday night with Willard singing Silver Dew On The Bluegrass. It's a beautiful song and Willard brings it to life. Willard likes to take old songs from the 1920s and before, and make them his own. Drifting And Dreaming, I Love You Nelly, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, a Bob Wills song. Unfortunately, the audience takes Little Red Wagon for a children's song and discourage Willard from singing it. They laugh at me when I request it, and I think in turn the unspeakable. Scott sings some good Bob Wills songs too. Another of Willard's old songs I like to hear him sing is Nighttime In Nevada. Then there is The Yellow Rose of Texas, a song Skeeter and the Skidmarks made their own, Willard singing it.  

 

sandy and willard

 

dori freeman

  

Dori Freeman and David Long opened the show with some of the songs she is singing now. David played mandolin accompaniment to her singing that flowed well with her sound. I was struck again by Dori's new degree of control with her voice. Her singing has become more conscious after some years now of performance and practice. I've seen Dori's singing grow and it brings to mind watching my baby friend, Vada, grow. Both are doing something new each time I see them. This time, Dori's singing was on a whole new level. It is still her, still her voice. She's fine tuning it. She's paying very close attention to it the way a musician pays close attention to an instrument, finding the subtle nuances, listening. I was thinking of Carter Stanley, not that she sings like him; his voice played with its own sound like Dori is doing. This is the first time I've heard her sing since she has become a mother. Her music has improved immeasurably since she has been with David. She was good before, and gets better. By now, her singing commands the hearing of the audience. It always has, but now it's in awe. David playing a mandolin is in the zone we think of as "professional," meaning extra good, and Dori's singing has entered that zone. Together, they are working very well musically. It feels like their life together is making music. Dori has a baby, she has the man of her life. She is in double love now and soaring with her music. It is a good time in Dori's life. I'm happy for her. I was hoping she would bring the baby, but it's not a good idea to be hauling so new a baby around in the cold night air. Mothers know it better than I do.

 

david long and dori freeman

 

edwin lacy

 

Edwin Lacy, the banjo in Skeeter, has begun a new phase of his life, recently married to a woman named Roye. Edwin's demeanor has brightened up considerably. I don't mean he was hang-dog before, but I see in him a new light that tells me he is doing all right. I'm happy for Edwin, too. Edwin has a good woman and Roye has a good man. He was wearing a ball cap with a logo that said Wild Goose. It's the name of a new church idea he has arrived at on Tuesday evenings, rocking chairs instead of pews. People bring instruments and they make music. It's the other side of Hillsville, an hour and a half from home. I want to make the trip every week, but every Tuesday I don't want to drive for three hours at the end of the day. I'm even a little shy of driving two hours on a Friday night. This Friday night was one of those black nights that was opaque but for where headlights fell. I was not comfortable driving either way, going or coming home. Plus, I'm so paranoid about highway patrol now, I drive 45 in a 55 and use a turn signal even if there's not a car in sight. I don't like to drive anymore because of the paranoid feeling, esp in opaque darkness. This is new and I don't like it, but there it is. I had not seen Edwin in several months. I was glad to have a few minutes to talk with him before the show. Sandy too. Had a good visit with her before the show. Dori and David were asked to join the band opening the second half. Driving home, I did not play any music in the car, let my mind flow with a mix in my head of Lucinda Williams singing Ventura, and Dori singing Prairie Song. They flowed in and out of each other all the way home.  

 

dori freeman

 

dori and david with skeeter and the skidmarks

 

 

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DORI FREEMAN AND DAVID LONG SOUTHERN DUET

david long

I'd missed the music at Woodlawn for about a month. One thing after another. One night weather too bad to go out in. Later I learned the intensity of the weather quit about half way between here and Woodlawn. Another time another issue, someplace else to be. One time I just didn't feel like going out the door. I give myself permission not to go wherever it is I'm headed when I put my hand on the door and hand is not willing to push the door to open it. That's when I know for sure, I really don't want to. I give myself permission not to. Not wanting to is adequate reason for me. I'll go back and forth, justifying both ways, to go or not to go, whatever it is, until I get myself into a place I don't know what I want to do. Sometimes I toss a coin, only to go by how it comes up to see how I feel about what comes up. If it comes up GO and I don't want to, I know then I don't want to. If it comes up DON'T GO and I want to, then I know that I want to. Friday night Dori Freeman was the guest for the evening at the Front Porch. I wanted to see Dori. I always like to see Dori, half because she's awfully good and half because I want to support her in her beginning.

dori freeman

Dori has come into a new place in her vocal delivery every time I hear her sing. It brings to mind baby Vada I've seen around once a week since she was born. Every time I see her, she's new, something is new about her in awareness and/or dexterity. Awareness is where I see it most. Dori's singing voice is more and more subtle each time I hear her. I hear her playing with her voice, using beautiful ways to end a phrase or a word. It brings Carter Stanley's voice to mind. Not that they are alike, because they're not, but he likes those little country curly-Qs at the end of a phrase or word. In my earlier years I didn't like those country touches, didn't like dobro or banjo either. To quote Lou Reed, Just goes to show how wrong you can be. I'm laughing at myself from the time Flatt & Scruggs had a top 40 hit with Beverly Hillbillies. That was in the Sixties when I was listening to Clapton, the Stones, Joplin, the Who, et al. I hated it, turned the radio off or changed stations to avoid that hillbilly banjo. It's as popular a hillbilly song as Orange Blossom Special and Rocky Top in the world I live in today. Now I hear that tune and laugh at myself every time, because I love it. I appreciate Lester Flatt and appreciate Earl Scruggs. From the city perspective it was hillbilly, which meant not worth paying attention to. Like I say, just goes to show how wrong you can be.

david long and dori freeman

By now, after living the last half of my life in the mountains, I have come to hold hillbilly up the highest. The more hillbilly a banjo or a fiddle or a vocal style, the more I love it. I really love it when it gets down into Gaither Carlton's fiddle and banjo, Jont Blevins's banjo, Tommy Jarrell's fiddle and banjo, Kyle Creed's fiddle and banjo, Fred Cockerham's fiddle and banjo, their singing too. That old hillbilly twang in voice and string is what makes it beautiful for me. Pop Birchfield and Creed Birchfield played the old-time way I love. The more it screeches and squawks, the more I love it. Among the living, that old squawking fiddle isn't necessarily attractive. The living people of these hills making music have the mountains in them, have the tradition behind them, as well as influences from everywhere, television, rock, and entirely different ways of thinking and approaching life than the people had in the old days. The old hillbillies are the great-grandparents of the present generation coming out of high school. Nobody in the family has worn bib-overhauls since great grandpa. Dori's grandpa, Willard, wears khaki pants, a button-up shirt, shoe store shoes, and he has a good selection of ball caps to pick from. Dori's dad, Scott, wears old baggy jeans and a button-up shirt and store bought shoes. Willard came to Galax out of the hills of east Kentucky a little over 40 years ago, Lotts Creek, ten miles or so outside Hazard. I looked it up on google maps and it's rugged country, mountains and narrow valleys. Hazard has a name all up and down the mountains for rough people.

willard gayheart

Dori's mother is Willard's daughter, Jill, of his life in Galax. Scott and Willard were playing as Skeeter and the Skidmarks when Scott met Jill. She did not tell him she was Willard's daughter until the moment came together when he saw. Scott is from a Mt Airy family of musicians. When he was born, he was assigned the mandolin; his older brothers and their dad had the other instruments for a band taken. Scott and Jill joined in holy matrimony and Dori's soul embodied. Dori's grandpa Willard, the pencil artist, made drawings of Dori all the way through her childhood. For Willard it is beyond a thrill to make music with his grand-baby and sing with her, even record with her. He loves to listen to her too. Singing on a stage was not something Dori wanted to do until it happened. It's like it crept up on her. As would be the case with Dori, Dori being who she is, she sings in her own style, which is the way of the mountains, sings like nobody in the tradition. She took Hank Williams' song Cold, Cold Heart and made it her own. I don't say that lightly. She put it in her pocket and said, Mine. She has a little bit of 40s big band singer in her delivery of what are called dreamy sorts of songs. I don't think that word gives the sound justice. It doesn't completely do it for me. But I don't know a more descriptive word or phrase. She doesn't imitate the period. It's like an accent for her. And she sounds a little bit country, as in country music, the old country where they sang with rural accents.

scott freeman

 

 

Best of all, about Dori's singing, is that it came from home. She has her foundation, her roots in the music of the Central Blue Ridge, directly through her dad and her grandpa and most of her uncles. The Galax bluegrass band, Pathway, is her uncles and her dad. I wonder if her soul was drawn to Scott and Jill for the music in them. Jill is a good bluegrass singer, but doesn't perform any more. Scott, as a parent teaching his child over a period of years never encouraged music as a direction for her to take. He knew the music world from the inside and wouldn't recommend it to anybody who didn't need it. Dori's mother has her reasons for not singing with a band, and her dad doesn't recommend the music world. But, when Dori made the decision to take the musician path, Scott was with her all the way. It's not a case of rebellion, at all, in Dori. If it were rebellion she'd be screaming at rock clubs. She brings to the ever-changing tradition of this region of the mountains the attitude, mind and spirit of her generation. She has a rational relationship with her mother and dad. They treat her like she is a consciousness unto herself; they respect that she is an individual, an adult individual, an intelligent individual. Both Scott and Jill came from a tradition that values being who you are and receiving someone for who that individual is. Dori is hearing her own sound and vocalizing it.

david long

Her dad has the experience in the music world with bands and recording to be able to encourage her to go with her own sound, bring a new sound into the tradition. It's always looking for something new. The times I've been in an audience hearing Dori the first time, I hear and feel throughout a quiet awe. In audiences that have heard her before, it's a quiet satisfaction. I don't know what Dori's goals are, and would rather she keep them close to herself. There's no reason for me to know. And things like that change from year to year, decade to decade. To say it would be a way of sealing it and I don't want to do that to her. She seems to me like when she was a child, she was grown up inside, impatient to have an adult body. Dori writes a good song. She has found the man of her heart and they make music together as a duo beautifully. David plays mandolin and guitar. Dori plays guitar and autoharp. They sing together, they harmonize. David has become the new member of the Gayheart-Freeman Family Band. I'm remembering the first time David played on a Friday night once it was established Dori and David were an item. Scott and David cut loose playing a mandolin duet that carried a big wave of energy. Dori was sitting out the instrumental, her face a beam of light,
her daddy and her man making dynamic music together, and her man was keeping up with Scott. Seeing her face told me she found a man she can open her heart to. Wade and Julia Mainer, the next, next, next generation.

scott freeman, david long, dori freeman, willard gayheart

 

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DORI FREEMAN AND DAVID LONG AT THE FIDDLE AND PLOW

 

dori freeman and david long

 

 

willard gayheart's new Henderson guitar

 

 

scott freeman, Willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

 

dori freeman and willard gayheart

 

 

The Fiddle and Plow show at Woodlawn Friday night featured Dori Freeman and David Long making music and singing together. Dori's singing is new every time I hear her. It's Dori singing in her own style, which expands into some vocal improvements that tell her stage experience is broadening her voice to where she sings out a step beyond last time I heard her perform. It was Dori's singing that held my attention focused on what she was doing with her voice throughout the concert that included lead singing by Willard, Scott and David. They invited Harrol Blevins to sing a couple songs. The music at Woodlawn rewards the drive there and back such that on Friday nights there is no other place I want to be. I spoke with a few people when the show was over, and everyone I spoke with remarked how beautifully Dori's singing is progressing. I'm noticing that her singing style is drifting away from what I call her Peggy Lee sound to what sounds to my ear like Emmy Lou Harris, without Dori imitating her. Not at all imitating her. Not even trying to sound like her. It's just that Dori's voice and Emmy Lou's are naturally similar. Dori's voice from the beginning has brought Emmy Lou Harris to my mind. Dori is also an excellent song writer, as is Emmy Lou.  

 

 

David plays mandolin and guitar, sings too. He also writes an excellent song. The songs he sang of his own composition were as good worded as any of the other songs they sang. If Dori and David stick together, which it looks like they will do just from the vibe between them, I see them developing into a fairly dynamic duo. They are comfortable together musically. Dori is now playing an autoharp as well as her Henderson guitar. She and David sang songs by the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, Townes van Zandt, EC Ball and the Carter Family as well as their own. It was a happy audience, Dori's original fan base, everyone pulling for Dori, delighted to hear what she is doing now. From my own observation, I see her moving forward step by step. Like seeing baby Vada once a week, just a few months from 2, every time I see her she is new. She has learned a week's worth of wide open paying close attention to everything around her. I see similar advancement in Dori's singing. Every time, it's new. Dori is opening up so much with her voice I'm thinking it won't be long before she doesn't need amplification. Scott, Dori's dad, has the sound through the amplifier into speakers set so it does not sound amplified. It's a subtle sound operation that works perfectly.

 

 

Though it was Dori and David's show, it was a multi-talent night. Dori sang one of Willard's songs, The Workin. Willard is Dori's grandpa, her mother's dad. Scott's mother and dad, Dori's other grandparents, were in the audience. I think it was their first time. I'd never seen them before. When they walked in the door, I heard Scott say, "Hi mom." I took it as an aside, never imagined she was his mother. Later, he said, "That's my mother." I said, "That's why you called her mom." He laughed, "Yeah." He told me once that when he was a kid his dad played Western Swing records more than anything else. Scott is familiar with Western Swing. He sang a song in the Western Swing style and his dad, who was sitting two rows in front of me, started moving his feet, his shoulders moved to the rhythm, and his head was bobbing. He was into it. I was thinking it must have made him feel something special to hear his boy picking and singing so well. Scott is as fine a singer as he is a mandolin picker and a fiddler. And he does a Western Swing song right. The talent there making music was actually awesome. It was music to my total satisfaction start to finish.

 

 

Upon walking in the door Willard told me right off that Minnie the cat had died, just faded away. She is Willard's cat that lives in the frame shop / gallery. I've known Minnie almost four years. She was at every show. She'd curl up on a chair for awhile, get up, walk around, look at the people, hop onto another chair and curl up for awhile. In the first months she didn't seem very happy to see a crowd of people invading her home by surprise at night after the store was closed and the place all hers. She'd walk around with a scowl on her brow. She'd walk up to the front to look at the musicians, the people she's known all her life, then walk back down the aisle looking at the feet of the people she was walking by, sometimes weave among the feet to an empty chair to curl up on. It frustrated her on nights when all the seats were occupied. I spoke to her every time I saw her. She didn't want to be touched at first. I'd rub a finger on top of her head between the ears and she'd allow it for a short time, then let me know in the Maine Coon way, a movement toward withdrawal. If you don't stop, look out. She only warns once. Caterpillar has Maine Coon temperament too, so I had an understanding of Minnie's ways. I'd put my hand down for her to smell it before touching her, because that was what she wanted at first. After maybe a dozen or so times of giving her my hand to smell, I put my hand down for her one evening and she dismissed it like she was saying, "I know who you are." And she never wanted to sniff my hand after that. She came to liking me to pet her, It was about a year before she started liking having people in her place. Over the last year she's acted like she's happy to see everybody come into her space when her papaw is making music. Everyone who goes there regularly misses Minnie. She was 16. It was her home she shared with us every Friday night.  

 

  

scott freeman, dori freeman, david long,

willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

dori freeman and david long

 

 

dori freeman

 



Minnie the cat

 

 

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