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

 

 

*



AN EVENING AT HOME WITH SCOTT FREEMAN'S BLUERIDGE FAR AWAY

scott freeman and willard gayheart

Another day of rest during which I refused to hear radio news or pay attention to internet news. Let it rest. I'm listening to Scott Freeman, mandolin, and Scott Manring, guitar, pick Sweet Georgia Brown. Manring's guitar is his own, a sound he created with his ear, something like a jazz guitar, strumming slow, high-pitched chords with Freeman's fast-paced mandolin picking. Then there is Willard Gayheart singing Don't You Dare Love Anyone But Me, Dori Freeman singing harmony with grandpa. Next, Willard solos a recent composition of his own, Turn Toward The Light. The song has depth and visual presence like all Willard's songs. He tends to write a short story in a song, like Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog, The Shootin, Robin D. In Turn Toward the Light, Willard records this song the first time. He has sung it getting to know it at the Friday night shows at Woodlawn  several times. It is a good worded song and has a nice flow in his singing of it. It has a beautiful feeling. It rings the wind chime of the heart.

dori freeman and her henderson guitar

Dori singing Twilight Time flows nicely with Scott's music. This song is associated with a music quite different from bluegrass or mountain music, generally. The music on the cd collection has the effect on the listener it has on stage. Dori in her early twenties onstage with a bluegrass band behind her starts singing a 40s style ballroom orchestra song. It works. It's right. A few songs later she covers Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart. She makes it her own. At the Wayne Henderson fest one of the bands played it while Willard and I were talking. Our eyes met and he said it wasn't even close to what Dori does with the song. Not to inform me, but to speak out loud what we mutually agreed in our eye contact was so obvious there was no question. Hearing Willard and Dori singing Don't You Dare Love Anyone But Me, I recall seeing the joy it gives Willard to be singing and recording with his grandbaby. And Dori loves singing with Willard as much as he enjoys singing with her.

scott freeman fiddler

 

 

This collection of songs, Blueridge Far Away, is a sample of a Friday night in Woodlawn at The Fiddle & Plow show that Scott and Willard put on with special guest musicians every week from among some of the more interesting musicians of the Central Blue Ridge. Butch Robins plays the bluegrass banjo with his rolls from note to note making a flow line; Steve Lewis picks his guitar and banjo like an inspired wild man; Scott Manring makes electric jazz guitar sounds with his acoustic. David Johnson glides over ice on his Dobro, and Scott Freeman picks the mandolin free as a swallow flying in circles over a mountain lake, Willard and Dori pick rhythm guitar, and Scott plays fiddle. An instrumental amounts to a dynamo by musicians who complement each other racing side by side at 140mph. After four years of hearing these people make music almost every week, I know their sounds well enough that I know who is picking what on every song. I like that. Especially with these musicians. It is the sound, the vibration, the whatever, that is in Scott's and Willard's music that draws me to it. I've listened to a lot of music closely, and by this time in the life after hearing music of a wide variety, the sound of Scott and Willard's music is just right for what I like music to be.

willard and his new henderson guitar

For one thing, I regard both Scott and Willard artists. Dori is an artist. All these musicians are artists. Scott, Willard and Dori write songs and perform them with musical authority. All these musicians have what it takes to play in bands that travel in buses all the time, but prefer to live at home and have a life. Scott's musicianship, his picking articulation is clear and he gives his notes a ring. He finds the life in every note. He never strikes a dead note. Scott's singing is remarkable too. So is Willard's. They sing their own sound in the mountain tradition. Both have a musical affection for Western Swing. Both grew up listening to it at home. Willard's bluegrass band, the Highlanders, played Take Me Back To Tulsa and some others equally well. They have the spirit of the music in them. Scott is a good singer with a voice that he uses to deliver the words as articulately as he picks the mandolin strings. Dori's singing is clear and articulate. David Johnson's Dobro projects curls of cigarette smoke in the air. Willard's singing has the same quality of clarity and articulation. All three of them have the quality of singing from the heart. I can tell, because the heart is where I feel them.

scott freeman, willard gayheart, mike gayheart

Scott started this album, Blueridge Far Away, the same way I would start a radio show when featuring a musician or a band for the day's show. I'd start with an instrumental that gave examples of how everybody in the band could pick. From there, it's whatever comes next. Sweet Georgia Brown starts the album and lets the listener know these are musicians that deserve attention. The picking itself pulls my ear into the album from the start. Then, once he has the listener's attention, he turns it over to Willard to sing a couple songs. I felt like it was Scott's way of featuring Willard's incredible singing. Willard sings in the mountain tradition of drawing attention to the song, not the singer. His voice, like Scott's, pulls no attention to itself, no see-how-good-I-can-sing flourishes. The point for both of them is to deliver the song from the heart with their voices, all attention on the song. Scott's mandolin playing is an objet d'art itself. Banjo throughout that is a good part of the music but not dominant like top 40 bluegrass. Scott is a master musician with mandolin and fiddle, that includes vocals. You can hear music by him and everyone mentioned here by writing any one of their names in the search box at YouTube.

dori freeman and willard gayheart

The album is self-produced and recorded by GROUNDHOG SHUFFLE RECORDS, 2906 Cranberry Road, Woodlawn VA 24381. I've listened to this album like watching a movie; sit back and let it run from start to finish. It holds my attention as well as a movie. It's so much better than the news, I wonder why I'm slow to shift my attention away from the news. Steve Lewis picking guitar strings and banjo strings, Scott Freeman playing fiddle and mandolin. I missed Woodlawn last Friday night. Playing this cd brings Friday night at Woodlawn into my living room. This is the very music we hear on Fridays. I don't even tell anybody about it anymore. Too many times I've heard how do you get there? where is it? when is it? how much is it? and that's the end of it. Turns out when the subject comes up it amounts to an oral exam I'm given to no purpose, but filling up the silence with noise. I don't want too many people there anyway. It holds up to 50, though it's usually around 20 in the audience. When Wayne Henderson is there, it jumps up to 50, and I stay home. It's all people we never see otherwise, Easter Christians, who come out for THE BEST, the celebrity. And that's a good thing. It keeps them paying attention to mountain music, believing somebody is best. Everybody has their own reasons. In mountain music I stay away from calling any musician or band the best. It's like Billy the Kid, there's always a faster gun in the West. Or like 2-Pac in da Hood.  

willard gayheart laughing

 

 

 

*

 

A DAY IN THE SUN AT THE WAYNE HENDERSON FESTIVAL

wayne henderson

A one hour drive this morning to Mt Rogers in SW Virginia for the Wayne Henderson Fest. The drive through the western part of Alleghany, through Piney Creek, across the state line and river to Hwy 58, "The Crooked Road." 58 goes to Highlands Park where the road goes up, up, up, then down into a hollow full of new cars parked on grass. It looked like a new car commercial for all the new cars at once. I tend to get uneasy when a parking lot is full of new cars. It tells me none of my people are there. No pickups. My car was by far the rattiest looking car in the parking lot. Helped make it easy to find later. Driving home I figured out a way to stick a ping-pong ball on the antenna. A few decades ago it became a hot thang to have something on the top of the antenna to find one's car in a mall parking lot. Fast food joints were giving them out and parking lots filled up with these little things on top of the antennae until it became ridiculous. They all went away almost overnight. Now that nobody does it, a ping pong ball would be the only one in the parking place. Of course, to have one now would identify me as one who doesn't get it that the trend is over and has been over for a long time. Then they say, Oh, it's TJ. That's WHY he's doing it. Yeah, like why not?

henderson fest audience

At the Wayne Fest I took my time, stopped by Willard's tent and spoke with him, Scott and Dori a little bit. Went on and found a place to sit. I chose a spot near a dog. The Crooked Road Ramblers came on soon after the band that was playing, Cabin Fever. Crooked Road Ramblers was the band I wanted to hear of all the bands playing. In their third tune I stepped to a place I could get a good stage shot. Took the picture. Camera told me to insert the card. It was at home in the computer. Oh well. Camera in pocket, out of mind. No more composition thinking. I was glad to be free of it. Kilby Spencer has come quite a long ways in his fiddling. He has been a really good fiddler all the time I've known him, but as I hear him now about once a year I hear immense improvements telling me he practices a lot in his mind, with or without fiddle in hand. Kilby is becoming a great musician. He's always been a good musician, but he's transcending that. He's going off into a zone of the great fiddlers down through time. He played GB Grayson's Lee Highway Blues with as clear a tone as I recall ever hearing it. It's one of my favorite fiddle tunes, so I pay attention hearing somebody play it. Kilby brought it to life. Gave it breath.

kilby spencer plays at the jubilee in sparta

When they were finished I went back to the car to get the camera out of my pocket. I saw a few people I know, most of them among the volunteers in the parking lot. John Sherrill gave me a start when I entered the parking lot. He was at the road directing cars to a lane to get into for parking. He has a beard now and I am slow getting used to it enough to recognize him on sight. He got down in my face at the car window and told me to step out of the car, cop style. I must have wrenched up my face in a busted look and he broke out laughing. I recognized his laugh. This is a retired prosecutor. He knows how to put on that authority of the law voice. I thought it was funny. At the moment I thought: What? Just a couple days ago I was driving up the gravel road to the Richardson farm and a big white dually pickup came around the blind curve in the center of the road. It was John. I wasn't alarmed, because I used to it. On sight, each one steers a little to the right and there's no problem. It is the same feeling, surprise. Surprise is fun. Kittens love to play surprise on each other and their humans too. Not only does it make us laugh to see cats jump, but cats get a laugh out of seeing cats jump, too.

black cat laughing

In my walking about I felt a good feeling in the air. I thought of all the news we're getting, how much it looks like everybody hates everybody to the point it makes leaving the house a scary thing to do. I get out among a big bunch of people and everybody is peaceable and friendly. Makes me want to get out among more people than I usually do. Hanging out at Maxwell Equipment for the rest of the summer will get me out among friendly people. I enjoy the people who drop by and hang there from time to time. All of them knew Jr Maxwell, whose shop it was before it became Ross's. It feels like something on the order of a planet entering a house, bumping me into a more interactive life and art form. I don't want to be the only one working on these sculptures. I want them to be a group effort. I may be the one putting them together, but I want to encourage ideas. One thing I'll be looking for is how to devise a sensuous feminine form out of motorcycle parts. That will be a fun goal to reach toward. Straight lines and circles I'll largely be working with. Seeing that I am moving into a more interactive time, I felt the energy today among a few thousand people in colorful clothes, everybody in a friendly spirit. This is why I feel like it is a good time for me to get out among other people regularly now. For constant reminder that we really are good people who tend to treat each other well. Hearing too much news I tend to walk around in the crowd and wonder how many people in the crowd are carrying concealed weapons. I figured about a dozen.

willard plays his henderson guitar

I worked the tshirt tent in the afternoon with Rita Scott, fiddler with Appalachian Mountain Girls, and Trina Varner, old-time bass player. Lynn Worth came by and I spoke with her a minute. She's always a light in my eyes. Lynn is one of my very favorite people, for who she is, a woman of integrity, deep personal integrity. And a terrific musician. I enjoy the momentary chit-chat in a place like that. I recall a conversation with a couple of white haired women from the area. One was looking to buy a couple of Wayne's CDs from a selection of several. I gave her an idea of what each one was like. I picked out two for good enjoyable music to be playing in the house. The others were virtuoso demonstrations of high-powered guitar picking that is impressive, but not so enjoyable to have playing in the house for everyday listening. Mostly I told people that all tshirt sizes above M were sold out. Talked with Rita, always fun. She's an awfully good fiddler. She's light-hearted as somebody who can juggle flaming torches. I like seeing people I know at these events. Hugs galore, good feeling galore, everybody feeling happy having a day off with good music and good weather. I saw an old boy I first took for 80 wearing a Pink Floyd tshirt. That didn't seem right. Saw him a little bit later and he looked more like an old-looking 70, a little closer to the range of people listening to them then. 80 seemed just a little bit over the cusp of the first Pink Floyd listeners. How strange it is now to be speaking of old people in relation to pop culture. My generation.

david long and dori freeman with her henderson guitar

I was happy to see Dori in her heavy with child look. I am happy for Dori with her life now. She has found her man, the one worth waiting for, and next she'll have a baby to love. She's lit up with love right now. Good loving from her man, David, from her family, from her grandpa, and coming up soon, from her baby, and love from her fan base. I'm enjoying knowing Dori through this time of her life, starting the time she left college because that just wasn't it, and she started singing with Scott and Willard on Friday nights in Woodlawn, getting the feel of singing before an audience. At loose ends, wondering which way to turn. By now she has the self-confidence of experience before several audiences. She's writing songs as good as the songs she covers. Last year she wowed the Wayne Fest. This year she is on a new CD of music from the Carter Fold with Wayne and other musicians of the region. I meant to buy a copy today and forgot to. I'll find one soon. At the end of my tshirt tent time, Roseanne Cash was coming on. I was tired. I wanted to be home. I did not want to hear Roseanne Cash. I know she would have been good. I would have enjoyed it. But I preferred to spend her stage time on the road home. The beautiful drive down the mountain this time instead of up the mountain. At the house, I walked through the door straight to the bed, fell down and slept for two hours, got up and saw the Bourne Legacy the second time, only recognizing maybe 3 scenes.

 

 

 

 

*

 

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

 

*

SCOTT FREEMAN ~ BLUERIDGE FAR AWAY

scott freeman and Willard gayheart

 

 

I'm hearing Scott's new self-produced cd, BLUERIDGE FAR AWAY, a collection of songs that have a vibe about them that doesn't jangle me out of my nervous system relaxed at home. I've got to where I tend to listen to old-time banjo solo by old-timers like Jont Blevins, Gaither Carlton, Kyle Creed, Fred Cockerham. Whenever I want to put on some music to have in the air, I pick up one of them over and over. This project of Scott's has that non-hysterical vibe I've come to like more and more as I drift deeper into simple living. In my mind's eye I can see the musicians like a concert, and am able to pick out who is playing by their styles of picking. This is the music I have listened to the most over the last four years. It satisfies my ear totally. This project was familiar before I heard it. This is what we hear on Friday nights. Just reading the song titles I heard the album. It is a perfect album to have in the air at home. Every note of the musicianship is stellar. Scott makes his mandolin sing as beautifully as Dori sings. And when it comes to singing, Scott himself is a good singer. His talent with the mandolin and fiddle dominate how Scott is taken musically, but his singing is right there with his picking. I've noticed along the way the fiddlers who sing are excellent singers. They tend to play the notes with their voices. Scott's voice has a full range he uses subtly. He seems to be singing just plain like AP Carter, but paid attention to, he uses his voice to play music as much as his mandolin and fiddle.

 

 

dori freeman

 

 

This project is like a sampler of what we hear on Friday nights at the Fiddle and Plow Show in Woodlawn, Virginia. Everyone Scott chose to accompany him has played more than once at the Friday night show. Willard sings three songs on the project. Willard, too, is a singer who can deliver a song with reverence for the song itself. Dori sings two of the songs and sings harmony with Willard, her grandpa. It gives Willard a thrill of his life that his grandbaby is making music with him and sings so beautifully; they do shows together, record together, make music together. A few years ago Dori wasn't interested in singing or being in the music world. Then she sang publicly a few times, immediately starting her fan base, which has grown every show she performs. She writes a good song too. Wayne Henderson, who has known Dori all her life, made her guitar. Last Thursday evening Dori and David Long, the man she'd been waiting for, who plays mandolin and guitar, sings and writes a good song, played music at the Sparta library with Scott. As always, when I see Dori perform, the audience's focus is on her, every minute. On sight it seems like an audience is automatically drawn to her. Then they hear her sing and they are with her to the last note, no coughing, no chattering. Ears wide open. Dori has a quality in her singing that makes the songs she sings her own. She's singing Twilight Time at this moment with Scott's mandolin. This song from another time Dori brought into her time.    

 



 

steve lewis

 

Steve picks guitar some on the project. Steve is a picker who wins guitar and banjo contests all over the country. He has won a good collection of guitars and banjos. He and Scott make music together as one. Steve's guitar artistry I think of in relation to Wayne Henderson's as the difference between Earl Scruggs and Don Reno. Both truly excellent pickers with very different personal styles. Steve and Scott like to stretch way out there with one foot outside the box. Scott and Steve picking David Grisman's Eat My Dust is pickin hot as it gets, and cool. Everything they pick together is hot and cool as it gets. Steve is picking banjo and guitar with Scott singing, playing fiddle and banjo, bluegrassing Curly Headed Baby like it wants to be bluegrassed. Scott announced on facebook a week or so ago that he, Steve and a handful of their musician friends were recorded recently in Boone for a future Prairie Home Companion radio show. His note indicated the band would be called The Bluegrass Boys. It's kind of an audacious name to call themselves, but they are up to it. Steve picked his banjo and guitar one-after-the-other on the tune King's Carolina Bill. David Johnson played some good Dobro licks and Scott ended it with mandolin like a yellow jacket in attack mode. Everybody in the band has played Friday nights in Woodlawn. They will make a musical statement on Prairie Home Companion. Scott now playing Sweet Georgia Brown on mandolin with Scott Manring on guitar. Amazing. I hear every time I listen to Scott's mandolin the subtleties in his touch, juxtaposing loud and soft notes in a kind of iambic way, though certainly not restricted to that. 

 

 

 

david long and scott freeman

 

I've become tired over the years of the "contest favorite" Sweet Georgia Brown, but when Scott Freeman and Scott Manring play it, it's music again. I've heard Willard sing Don't You Dare Love Anyone But Me so many times I know all the words. Willard takes songs from the past and revitalizes them, like Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon and Nighttime in Nevada. I especially like Willard singing his own songs, the songs he has written over the years. It's good to hear Steve Lewis's banjo again in Kings Carolina Bill. Scott's song Talking To The Wino is another one of Scott's soulful songs he puts one of on each of his projects. One was Jean Ritchie's song, Black Water, about coal production in West Virginia and east Kentucky mountains. He also sings a gospel song soulfully. The label for this project, BLUERDIGE FAR AWAY, is Groundhog Shuffle Records, 2906 Cranberry Road, Woodlawn VA 24381. After about a decade of knowing Scott and hearing multiple times every song he has ever recorded, by now the music of this album is a review of the music I have come to love since first hearing his then existing band Alternate Roots. I find I think of Willard with Scott together musically. Willard has been Scott's rhythm guitar and vocal accompanist, musical partner for at least a quarter century, about all of Scott's adult life. He also married Willard's daughter Jill. Something about the vibe of their music corresponds to my own vibration. I've listened to every kind of music and by this time in the life am happy to have found this music. Their music and I fit like puzzle pieces. This is what I share in common with the twenty or so regulars that go to Willard's frame shop on Friday nights to hear the Scott and Willard sound.

 

 

scott, willard and mike gayheart (son of Willard)

 

 

*

 

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

 

 

*

FREEMAN & GAYHEART @ THE FIDDLE & PLOW

scott freeman, mike gayheart, willard gayheart

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


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

helen white & wayne henderson at fiddle and plow

 

 

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

 

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

 

   

 

 dori freeman at the wayne henderson festival 2012

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

*

DORI FREEMAN FRIDAY NITE

I love this photograph of Dori

 

 

 

Dori Freeman performed with Scott Freeman, her dad, and Willard Gayheart, her grandpa, at the Fiddle and Plow Show at the Front Porch Gallery in Woodlawn. It was music to the full satisfaction of the entire audience, twenty or more, mostly people who are there every week. It's interesting how much of a group identity we have amongst ourselves by now. We were slow getting acquainted with each other, though after a few years we did become acquainted and by now we talk freely with each other. This evening before the show, I went around and spoke to several, and during intermission I spent the whole time talking with some of the people I've become acquainted with there. It seems like we're all so well acquainted by now we know each other almost as friends, because we're the ones who love Willard and Scott's music and the music of the people they bring in to play there. We who have been going regularly since the beginning, about 3 years ago, have seen Dori develop her performance on stage singing for an audience. I don't know how she sees it from her own perspective, but I have seen her rise up from a self-conscious girl who wasn't sure she really wanted to sing in front of people. She began to sing with a little better self-assurance with each performance. She would go to the front, sing a couple of songs and leave.

 

Every time she gave a performance, she was a little bit better than the time before. Better in that she was more comfortable singing before several people. There came a time when she passed from a self-conscious singer to one who sings outward, projects her singing to the listeners with assurance she is connecting and she's not being judged. By tonight I was delighted to see/hear Dori opening up even further as a result of increasing stage appearances. She sang at last year's Wayne Henderson Festival as a featured guest. She gave a terrific performance. It was a big crowd. I was thinking it must be intimidating for her, such a big crowd, and she handled it beautifully. I noticed in the big audience of people who had never heard her or heard of her a hush run through the crowd and all eyes and ears were on Dori from just about one minute after she started. Scott with mandolin, Edwin Lacy banjo, Steve Lewis guitar, Mike Gayheart bass, and Dori with guitar gave the appearance of a bluegrass band when they came onto the stage and positioned themselves with their mics. Dori started singing her kinda Peggy Lee style, a moment of broken expectation ran through the audience, like they weren't expecting this. As quickly as the audience heard what she was doing, she had them. The entire audience focused attention on her the same as at Woodlawn with an audience of fifteen or twenty.

 

I've seen every time I have witnessed one of her performances that the people in the audience give her their literally undivided attention. She has a charisma that holds your attention just by her appearance on the stage. It's not just her looks, not just her hair, not just her guitar; her entire presence seems to hold an audience's attention. Every audience I've been in that heard Dori perform has loved her. After the Henderson fest, I felt it would be to her benefit to have an idea that she has a charisma she's not able to see from inside herself. I could see she had no idea of it. It seemed to me like she needed to know in her beginning, something to boost her self-confidence, and it's not something everybody has. It's a gift is the only way it can be named. I felt like it would serve her to know it, so I ok'd myself to tell her. It's one of those things artists of any sort cannot see in themselves; it takes somebody outside themselves to point to it, feedback. I didn't want to give her the bighead, and knew Dori well enough that I did not believe it would give her the bighead. She's given several stage performances at different venues, even the Carter Fold, and I don't see her with a swollen cranium. I meant for her to have the observation of her charisma to be a kind of tool she can use consciously. A year later, my sense is that she has a self-confidence in performance now, possibly somewhat assisted by her own recognition of her natural stage charisma, along with increasing stage experience finding that audiences really like what she is doing. Every show is that many more people in her growing fan base.

 

Dori is also a good short story writer, a very good short story writer. She is now writing songs as her musical talent is taking hold and pulling her in that direction. She gives a vocal performance with the same feeling of her writing. Her writing is clear and visual without any unnecessary words. I've read three of her stories, each one in awe. I was in awe that a young woman, then 19, was writing with such a mature style. She writes like somebody with a good many years writing experience. She came out of high school writing like she'd been doing it for a very long time. Her writing, too, has a kind of charisma in that I read it with fascination. She writes a song as good as songwriting gets. Her singing is trim and spare like her writing. I was noting at this performance how she brings Sara Carter to mind in her outwardly expressionless singing, like Ralph Stanley too, traditional mountain style. The point is, it's the delivery of the song from the heart through the voice. It doesn't need facial and other physical gyrations to make it's point. Everything is in the words. Like Sara Carter and Ralph Stanley, Dori Freeman doesn't take the cheap way of making a spectacle. Her vocalizing the words is all the song needs. She tells the story in song.

 

I don't like to project future expectations on her. I like appreciating her as I hear her. She brings to mind my year and a half old baby friend, Vada, who I see once a week. Every time I see her she's a little bit different, a little more confident of herself in a baby's body in a world where everything is new. I've seen Dori grow very much like I've watched baby Vada grow. In both cases it is largely a coming into awareness of a new life. Dori is growing into her life as a musical vocalist a little bit more self-confident every time I experience one of her performances. I won't live long enough to watch Vada grow up into a woman, and I won't live long enough to see Dori the Emmy Lou Harris of her generation. In Vada I see the woman in the baby, I see the woman she will be, and in Dori I see the singer who commands big audiences in her beginnings. Therein I find satisfaction. I have full confidence that thirty years from now Vada will be a remarkable woman. Like her mother in that way. And Dori thirty years from now will be a very widely respected singer, songwriter, guitar player and possibly short story writer too. Maybe even novels by then. The one thing I know is that both women in their maturity will be remarkable human beings in their own ways. That makes me happy. Gives me satisfaction.   

 

 

*