ELKVILLE STRING BAND LIVE IN CONCERT

the elkville string band

trevor mckenzie, bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd 

 

elkville string band

 

elkville string band

 

Friday night in Woodlawn, Virginia, the Elkville String Band made music at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop, The Front Porch. They came together as a band around Minton's Pawn shop in North Wilkesboro for the weekly live AM radio show early one morning, I think it's Friday, over a period of several years. Originally Jeff Michael played clawhammer banjo with the band and Drake Walsh played fiddle. Eventually, Drake Walsh died and Trevor McKenzie took his place, and then Jeff Michael left the band. Jeff was playing tonight at Rhonda NC with Carolina Grass at Debbie's Country Kitchen. Kilby Spencer's band, The Crooked Road Ramblers, played at the Jubilee in Sparta tonight. I wanted to see them all, but wanted most to go to Woodlawn. I'd not been there in two or three months. Went there not knowing who was playing. The music is always worth a two hour round trip. I feel at home at the Front Porch. It's my musical home base. Artist and poet friend Bill Nixon has been staying this week in neighbor's cabin across the road and into the trees, friends of his in Atlanta. Bill and I have several friends in the Atlanta area associated with Emory and Oxford College. Bill was a Marine in Vietnam, and recently published a long poem composed of several shorter poems of living and dying in Vietnam, BRAZEN THROATS. Bill has a John Burroughs face with Walt Whitman hair and beard. He soars as a poet and soars just as gracefully in his visual art, which includes about every visual expression. I've been reading in Brazen Throats enchanted by the flow of his lines, sentences, scenes, a visual writer. He's just right to talk with about art. He has a poet's way of talking about art, whatever the given subject. It's childhood playground fun having someone near at hand to talk with about the only subject that has ever interested me. He recognizes art in music and got an earful of the art of music by the Elkville String band. I love introducing the music to people I know who are open to the Art of mountain music. We got it in abundance earlier tonight.

 

bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 

bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 

jim lloyd

 

Last time Bill came to neighbor's cabin for a week's retreat in solitude to work on a series of drawings, I took him to Woodlawn to hear Gerald Anderson, Scott Freeman, Willard Gayheart, Spencer Strickland and Butch Barker jam for a couple hours. Every one of these guys is a master of his instrument and the music. They don't show off their command of technique, rather they make music and the quality of their musicianship gives the music the art that brings it to life. They were Bill's introduction to mountain music.  Every one of them is an artist in his musicianship. After parking the car tonight we were walking toward the door and saw on the chalkboard, Willard's humble marquee, Elkville String Band. I said, Good! I had to miss them the last time they played at the Front Porch, and automatically knew Bill would appreciate their music. We talked too much at the restaurant. He looked at his watch outside the door and it was 7. The show started at 7. We had a 45 minute drive ahead. He said, Let's go anyway. It left us an hour and ten minutes to hear the music. The band had been playing awhile when we walked in, warmed up and flowing good. They had a good motion flowing in the music. The banjo, guitar, fiddle and bass play together as a unit. Herb Key was the lead vocal. Herb has a vast catalogue of songs in his head. He lets the song tell its own feeling, articulately, with understanding of the story in his voice, telling his understanding in the delivery. Sometimes he seemed to me an ancient story teller who sang his stories, Homeric in nature, a good story well told in verse that is sung. His voice has no flourishes. He sings with the voice of a storyteller, a musical version of talking, telling a story that carries its own feeling, and follows the story with a good driving rhythm leading the way. Jim Lloyd's banjo keeps a rolling rhythm going with Herb Key's guitar and Bill Williams' bass. Lloyd was relaxed and flowing freely tonight, skipping and dancing through the songs with his fingers. He sings a good song too.  Herb Key plays a rhythm guitar something like Willard Gayheart plays rhythm, in that they don't strum. They pick one string at a time, two of them individually on the down stroke, pickin hand flying like a bird's wing keeping the rhythm going, picking on automatic pilot and singing songs from their heads, one after another. The times I've seen/heard Herb perform, it was impressive to hear and see his command of so many songs. He sings every song in his own style that is Herb Key and nobody else. He rides the flow of the music with his singing the same as with his guitar, simultaneously.

 

bill williams and herb key

 



trevor mckenzie and herb key

 

trevor mckenzie

Trevor McKenzie, the fiddler, sang several songs, too. Trevor could make his fiddle sing. He's a strong fiddler with the bold sound of a firm bow. The whole band has a similarly bold sound. They have a full sound. That's what it is, they have a full sound with fiddle, banjo and vocals dancing in lightness supported by solid rhythms that flow. I noted over and over the flow in their music. I've wondered what it was about their sound that made it unique to themselves. That fullness in flow has something to do with it. It's a feeling the band is a unit. I'm recalling Drake Walsh's fiddle had a strong bow and absence of flourishes. I'm thinking they made music in the style of Wilkes County. Every county in the mountains has its own musical personality. Trevor, a relatively young fiddler, stepped into Drake Walsh's role, a legendary fiddler of his time, and approaches his fiddle with the self-assurance of a seasoned musician. He's an excellent singer too. I was noticing how refreshing they were as a band in that they were having fun, it was play time, play music. Bill asked on the drive home what I'd call the kind of music they played. I heard old-time, bluegrass, country, folk, all of them mixed together such that it was hard to pick one and say that's it. The best I could do in a few words was to say I'd maybe call it old-time folk. The singing is in the folk style of Doc Watson, though not like Doc Watson. Like Doc had his own style of singing, these guys each had his own style of singing the traditional songs. This is why I call it folk. The energy generated by their music I call old-time. Bluegrass is in there too, though it sounds to my ear the old-time sound is dominant, seasoned by bluegrass. It was a difficult question to answer, esp from someone who was not asking the question idly. A bluegrass banjo and a fiddler who leans into bluegrass playing old-time songs true to the integrity of the songs themselves, delivered in Elkville String Band's unique sound. They played Mountain Dew, Otto Wood, train wreck songs, murder songs, living your life as a human being songs. Trevor, the fiddler, sang Just Because, a bluegrass song and an Elvis on the Sun label song it takes a lot of nerve to cover. He did it. He made the listener forget it was anybody's song but his. I like that about the band, to categorize their music goes nowhere. It sounds stupid to call them a fusion band, so I'll call them music, like it was in the old days when it was not called old-time, but music. Whatever category of music the Carter Family fits under, Elkville String Band is there with them.

 

 

jim lloyd

 

trevor mckenzie

 

herb key

 

Bill bought my dinner on the way to the show and I bought him the band's new CD after the show. I wanted him to have a record of the music he heard, music he can play for Susan, his wife, to give her a feel for what he experienced in the hills of old Virginny, and for the good music to refresh his memory of a dynamite show. It brought to mind taking Lucas and Judy, whose cabin Bill is staying in, to a Ralph Stanley show at the Fairview Ruritan. They had only heard of Ralph Stanley and that only through me talking about him. His music was as far outside their musical experience as it was in mine before my hillbilly adventure. Like Bill, they recognize art in whatever form they see or hear it. It is the art in hillbilly music that pulled me to it and holds me with it. When I listen to the banjo and the fiddle of Gaither Carlton, Esker Hutchins, Fred Cockerham, Tommy Jarrell, to name a few of many, I am in touch with art the same as walking through the Museum of Modern Art in New York or listening to the Kronos Quartet or Pink Floyd. It is the art I hear in music I love. It is the art in the music that makes the Fiddle and Plow series at Willard's frame shop, the Front Porch, such that I need to be there every Friday night I can make it. I've missed it so many times in a row the return was sweet. Good to see Willard, shake his hand again, see Scott, shake his hand again, talk briefly with them during intermission. And to walk in on the Elkville String Band. They made a spirited welcome on return to the Front Porch. Whatever band might have been playing would have made a happy return, that it was Elkville String Band rang my bell. I regretted I had to miss them last time they played there, so this show brought me up to date with the songs they're singing now upon the release of their new CD. I gave it to Bill before even noticing the title or the label, only remember the photo on the cover, a red woodshed with stacked wood, beautiful. Can't find it online anyplace. Evidently it is too new to be up on the band's or label's website yet. I suspect the label is Mountain Roads, the label of their other CD. I took it so for granted it was Mountain Roads, I didn't think to look. Given my pick from a checklist of bands I'd like to see first time back at the Front Porch after too long an absence, I'd have picked the Elkville String Band.

 

elkville string band

 

 

*

 

 

 

ANDERSON, STRICKLAND, BARKER AND FREEMAN AT THE FIDDLE AND PLOW

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson, butch barker

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson, butch barker

 

 

Friday night at Willard Gayheart's Front Porch Gallery in Woodlawn VA, five miles past Galax Walmart, behind Harmon's, is the Fiddle and Plow Show. After several years of listening to the music played at the Front Porch, I forget my initial attraction to the music, how much I loved Scott Freeman's music upon first hearing an Alternate Roots project. I have never grown weary of his music, rather appreciate it more every year. It's about the only music I hear anymore, except when I want to rock and put on something like the Clash or Garbage, or want to hear Schubert quartets or Thelonious Monk with Charlie Rouse, Straight No Chaser. If that were the only jazz album in my house, I'd be satisfied. It seems like I appreciate the Rolling Stones more as I get older, for their musicianship as much as for their music. Musicianship has always been important to my musical ear, but since discovering mountain music, in particular the music of Scott Freeman, Willard Gayheart, and the acoustic musicians of their world, SW Virginia and NW North Carolina, a high grade of musicianship has become my norm. Every week, bands or particular musicians are invited by Scott and Willard to play to an audience of most often less than twenty, though this show had an audience of about 45, full house. I'd missed at least the last six weeks of shows. Hearing the band brought me back like I'd been underwater too long, breaking the surface, inhaling the music of four mountain musicians whose musicianship is out there past what words can tell. Everybody who came through the door knew we were going to be hearing some music when these fellers set to jamming.  

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland

 

spencer strickland, gerald anderson

Gerald Anderson, Spencer Strickland and Butch Barker evidently play together as a band. Anderson and Strickland have been making music together quite a number of years. I heard Spencer Strickland at the Wayne Henderson Fest eight or nine years ago when he was in his late teens. I'd not seen him since, though had heard him on a few cds. He can tear up a mandolin. He and Scott played mandolins together on one song. They had a good time, something like kids playing catch. Scott played the fiddle mostly, and Strickland played the fiddle some, and Scott played mandolin some. Strickland could make the fiddle do its thing, too. He had a good touch with it. Good mandolin touch too. His picking and his fiddle have a lyrical lightness about them. I mean lightness like a chickadee, no weight, can cavort in the air like a swallow. He and Scott were enjoying making music together. Both are masters of the mandolin and both excellent fiddlers. It was visible they were tapped into each other musically, were flowing. They've known each other several years and flow very well together. It seemed like there was understanding between them throughout the show. No one-upmanship was going on. They made music together, flowed together with Anderson and Barker like a jazz quartet jazzing some traditional songs in their own style. Like in the be-bop period, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, jazzing Broadway standards, these guys jazz traditional tunes from another songbook.

 

gerald anderson

 

scott freeman

 

scott freeman

scott freeman, spencer strickland

 

Anderson is a noted luthier of the region. His mandolins are prized instruments to the musicians who play them. He makes a good guitar too. He is one of the mandolin players of the region in the same league as Scott and Spencer, also a guitar picker who can knock your sox off listening to what he can do with his guitar. So far I've stressed musicianship, which is an aside in relation to the music. The music is what they play. Their musicianship gives them a broad range of sound possibilities. Gerald Anderson played guitar at the Front Porch once before, accompanied by Scott and Willard. These are all musicians who play music first. The depth and breadth of their musicianship is what they play the music with. They are not musicians to show you all the tricks they can do, not at all. They show their musicianship by playing the songs about the best you ever heard them. They draw attention to the music, not themselves, in the mountain tradition. Butch Barker's bass was one of the instruments in the band. He kept the rhythm, but he also picked the bass in a way that made it all the more interesting to the ear. He played guitar in the Ashe County bluegrass band, Rock Bottom Bluegrass. They were good listening. The band is no more, and Butch is now playing bass with Anderson and Strickland. They make a musical team with their own sound. The show was a good welcome back for me after such a long string of circumstances that prevented going. The welcome back from the others who go almost every week was like family. Appreciation for this music is our bond.

 

butch barker, scott freeman

 

gerald anderson, butch barker

 

spencer strickland

butch barker

 

 

 

*

 

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

 

 

 

*

 

ELKVILLE STRING BAND AT THE FIDDLE AND PLOW

the elkville string band

trevor mackenzie, bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 

 

Another Friday night of good picking at the Fiddle and Plow Show at Woodlawn, Virginia. The Elkville String Band came from Wilkes County, NC, where they started around ten years ago to play the music in a local play about Tom Dooley. The show was such a hit and the band such a hit the band played more and more gigs and by now have available cds. Herb Key announced they have just finished recording the most recent project that yet needs mixing. Drake Walsh (son of Dock Walsh, banjo, Carolina Tarheels) was the band's original fiddler. Herb Key said Drake died in 2010. The band's present fiddler is Trevor MacKenzie. He stepped into some big shoes and they fit. Herb Key is an excellent guitar picker and singer. He is the MC at the Wayne Henderson Festival that is coming up in a few weeks. Jim Lloyd is a barber in Rural Retreat, Virginia, on the Robert E Lee Highway. Lloyd is best known for his guitar work, though he can keep up with a banjo pretty good. I believe he played guitar with the Konnarock Critters, Brian Grim fiddle, Debbie Grim banjo, an old-time band that made 2 cds several years ago that are now out of print. I was supposing Jeff Michael would be playing the banjo, but he was not. This is the third time in a row I've been to see a band with Jeff in it and he didn't show. He's not playing fiddle with Big Country Bluegrass any more. I'm wondering what has happened to him.

 

 

scott freeman and willard gayheart



Scott and Willard opened the show with a song Willard sings, Don't You Dare Love Anyone But Me. It is on Scott's new cd just released today. I brought home a copy, but haven't played it yet. It's fun that I know intimately nearly every song on it, how Scott does it and whoever else, like Dori and Willard. It blows my circuits that I know such super fine musicians, people who are artists at making music. That's not to say other musicians fall short of art, just to say it stands out in Scott and Willard. The pencil drawings on the wall are Willard's. The space for the show, The Front Porch Gallery, is Willard's gallery where he sells his prints, frames them, and has his studio downstairs where he applies the graphite to paper. I've found very few visual artists in the mountains and a lot of music artists. I suppose it goes back to the old days when making music was the only art form in the mountains. Souls born with the need for some sort of artistic expression took to music. Scott and Willard both are not just good musicians, they are artists at it. Sometimes on the stage with Scott will be Willard, Scott's father-in-law; Dori, Scott's daughter and Willard's granddaughter; Mike Gayheart, Willard's son; also Dori's man of her destiny, David Long. Sometimes I forget they're all kin. When the music is going, none of it matters but the pickin.

trevor mackenzie and herb key

 

 

Herb Key is a guitar picker and singer who knows a great number of traditional songs. He's also a bass player. I've known him before Elkville String Band as Wayne Henderson's bass player. He has many a year of stage experience, and as an MC he can think on his feet a whole lot faster than I can. I've heard him make music several times and heard him MC several times. I know a lot of people who know him, but I've never met him. It's just a matter of how chance works out. Herb is a good singer of the good old hillbilly songs. He likes a good story song. He sang about Tom Dooley and Otto Wood. He sang train songs and he introduced songs with a brief story about each one. Like before the song Lorena, he told of how both sides of the Civil War knew the song and were known to have sung it together across a river or whatever divide during the night when they weren't shooting at each other. While he was singing Wreck of Old 97, a woman sitting in front of me cringed slightly to the words, "was scalded to death by the steam." Herb Key has a strong stage presence singing as well as with his Henderson guitar. He doesn't mind picking it so it can be heard. He's a serious picker who deserves a Henderson.

 

 

trevor mackenzie, bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 



That's Bill Williams playing the bass guitar. It was an electric bass, which he played keeping good time for everybody in the band. He has been with the band since its beginning. The fiddler looked to be in his early twenties. He knew a lot of songs well. He played  his fiddle with the confidence of somebody who has a lot of hours experience twisting four strings into some mighty fine hillbilly music. He played a fiddle tune like he was having fun, didn't want the tune to end, couldn't wait to start the next one. Jim Lloyd, banjo picker, played some good music with his bluegrass banjo he played clawhammer. During one of the songs, an Uncle Dave Macon song, he flipped his banjo around a couple times like Macon for a good laugh. Lloyd has an interesting ear. I found in his banjo picking attention he was giving every note, the same way he plays a guitar, like his ear is guiding what he does with each note. He plays something like a blind man in that way, Doc Watson for example. My feeling was that he was an alternate to fill in for the missing banjo player. He didn't know some of the songs they played and didn't feel so familiar with the band, though he knew them all. I looked at the website and saw Jim Lloyd and Eric Ellis are the band's alternate banjo pickers. Lloyd's own band is the Skyliners. They also record with Mountain Roads Recordings www.mountainroadsrecordings.com. Elkville String Band's website is www.myspace.com/elkvillestringband. Bill Williams is the band's contact person: elkvillebill@gmail.com.

 

 

herb key and jim lloyd

 

 

*

 

JEANETTE AND JOHNNY WILLIAMS AT FIDDLE AND PLOW

scott freeman, edwin lacy, jeanette williams, johnny williams

 

 

Johnny and Jeanette Williams returned to the Fiddle and Plow Show Friday night. Scott Freeman played with them some of the songs from their album FREEMAN & WILLIAMS, available from Mountain Roads Recordings. Edwin Lacy played banjo. He and Scott played some songs from their album 2 CHAIRS NO WAITING, where they call themselves the Siamese Cousins. The music was clear and crisp. Sometimes I closed my eyes to hear better. That's when I heard the clarity of Scott's mandolin especially. Edwin's banjo rang out nicely, as always. Jeanette had an electric bass with her, something she "can throw in the back of a Toyota." Johnny played his guitar and all sang. All are good singers. For me, it is a powerful feeling being in the presence of such superb musicians. Hearing their music is where the powerful feeling comes from. These people play music. I took a mess of pictures of all of them. Thought I'd put up pictures this time.

 

 

jeanette williams

 

 

scott freeman and edwin lacy

 

 

jeanette williams and johnny williams

 

 

edwin lacy and jeanette williams

 

 



scott freeman and jeanette williams

 

 

edwin lacy, willard gayheart and jeanette williams

 

 

jeanette williams and johnny williams

 

 

*

EDWIN LACY AND JIMMY ZEH BANJO RAMA

scott freeman, edwin lacy, jimmy zeh, willard gayheart

 

 

Last Friday night at Willard Gayheart's Front Porch Gallery, the Fiddle and Plow Show featured the banjos of Jimmy Zeh (bluegrass with resonator) and Edwin Lacy (open-back) with Scott Freeman's mandolin and Willard's guitar. Everybody did vocals. Jimmy Zeh plays with the Highlanders with Willard and Bobby Patterson, a Galax bluegrass band of 40 years. Jimmy is an easy-going kind of guy it takes a good bit to incite a problem with. I've an idea if Jimmy were threatened he'd come out of his corner doing some serious damage. Give him a banjo and Jimmy Zeh is about making music. Both he and Edwin were asked to tell how they started playing banjo. Jimmy told a story similar to mine, in that he had been listening to rock and other music when one day he went to the Galax fiddler's convention without much anticipation. When he heard the music it was a question for him similar to mine: where have I been? This music has been in the world all my life and I'm just now hearing it! I heard my first mountain music at the Independence fiddler's convention. I remember hearing Kyle Creed, Albert Hash, Ernest East, The New River Ramblers (James Burris fiddle) and a fun old character from Zephyr NC, Melvin Slaydon. He danced while he played the fiddle. Sent the crowd into a roar. Slaydon later became mentor to Jacob Bowen of Zephyr Lightning Bolts, who grew up next door to Melvin. Jimmy's response was to start learning how to play a banjo. Mine was to put my mountain music interest on hold because punk had just started in rock and I was following its progression.

 

 

edwin lacy of skeeter & the skidmarks

 

 

I knew if I started paying too much attention to mountain music it would swallow me whole. So I stayed focused on rock for the music I listened to. The late 1970s. Patti Smith was happening, Nina Hagen, The Clash, Siouxsie & the Banshees for the start of a very long list. What I heard first time I listened to mountain music (old-time) was acoustic punk. No kidding. In punk there is no lead guitar. No long solos. Punk is everybody in the band playing all out. Few of the old-time tunes were familiar to me, so they were as fresh to my ears as a new punk album by the Ramones. In every band I heard at the fiddler's convention, acoustic, everybody in the band played all out. It was hard driving mountain music. Punk is hard driving. The only difference I was hearing was acoustic and electric. Also, in punk, the bands write their own songs, whereas in old-time they play traditional songs, each band in their own way. I was seeing pop music coming full circle, starting with old-time, then country, then bluegrass, then rock, then punk, then old-time. I can go to a Papa Roach concert or a Thrice concert with the same enjoyment I get at a Crooked Road Ramblers show or Skeeter & the Skidmarks. To my ear, it's all the same. In late Seventies I mentioned to a few people in conversation that I saw a link between punk and old-time. No Way Ho Zay! A quarter century later punk rockers around the country were discovering old-time, acoustic punk, and put away the electric guitars, took up acoustic instruments and became very respectable old-time bands. It's been something of a trend ever since, electric rockers taking up acoustic traditional music, even jazzing it like the Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show.

 

 

willard and his new henderson guitar

 

 

Anyway, that's why it took me awhile to come to mountain music after first discovering it. Later, when punk became mainstream and was no longer interesting, I started listening to mountain music and, like I knew it would, it reeled me in like something I had no control over, like destiny. For the first time in my life I found music that made me weep for the beauty of it. The Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers consistently tear me up. I have wept through an entire Ralph Stanley concert for the beauty of it. On my radio show I wept every time I played Carter Family. I could never say anything. I'd mention Sara's name and would choke up, silence, push the button to play the next song. On Carter Family days I played music without talking except weather at the half hour. Couldn't say anything. Didn't need to say anything. All my listeners loved the Carter Family. At the time I started the music store I became acquainted with Scott Freeman who needed a place to teach in Sparta. He'd been at one place that didn't work out. He offered to pay me for the time spent there, but he wasn't making any money. He made a little bit, but it went to gas. I couldn't take what little pocket change he had left. I wasn't about money anyway at the store. I wanted it to be a place where mountain music could be available. I wanted to give people who love the music a chance to have some for their home sound systems. As it is, to find a cd by the Slate Mountain Ramblers, you have to go to one of their shows. That's not a problem, but they don't play all the time. For my part with Scott, I was honored to have him using my store's space. I felt like we were both doing the same thing.

 

 

scott and willard of skeeter & the skidmarks

 

 

Scott's band at the time was Alternate Roots, to this day my favorite band. He gave me a pass to get in at Alternate Roots shows. I saw them fourteen times, and drove to Hiltons, Virginia, to the Carter Fold to see Alternate Roots' last show. I found a Carter Family tshirt that night, my anti-cool tshirt. Willard played with Alternate Roots. I think of Alternate Roots an art band, like in rock I think of Garbage as an art band or Patti Smith Group or Mazzy Star. By art band, I mean full of truly excellent musicians making original superb music; in Alternate Roots' case, some traditional, some their own compositions. I later came to think of the Alternate Roots sound as another form of "bluegrass," or jazzed old-time. Bluegrass is Bill Monroe's jazzing of old-time, and Alternate Roots was Scott and Willard's particular jazzing of old-time, which doesn't have a name yet. Unless it might be Skeeter. Their band before Alternate Roots was Skeeter & the Skidmarks, a band that was called "progressive old-time." That's another way of saying they were jazzing old-time like Bill Monroe jazzed it, but their own way, which is not bluegrass. The band has a sound of its own that is the composite of each individual in the band. When they take on a new song, they "Skeeterize" it. Skeeter is a high-spirited rhythm and an acoustic sound assault by musicians that blow the mind with their musicianship and the music itself. When the Skeeter sound is happening, it is fully alive. That might be what characterizes Skeeter, makes their sound their own. Their music is the equivalent of a Merriam-Webster audio to define the word music.

 

 

edwin and jimmy

 

 

Edwin Lacy picked banjo with Skeeter & the Skidmarks, an early l990s band. Anyway, that's when their two cds were released. They'd been playing together quite awhile before recording. By the time they recorded they were solidly a band used to playing together. Edwin was called to a Presbyterian seminary because the Presbyterian church needed soul. Edwin is soulful in the pulpit as he is singing and picking his banjer. He's a soulful man. He has a great deal of silence within. Skeeter without Edwin was not Skeeter. No other banjo could be the Skeeter sound. Scott and Willard put together Alternate Roots and took a leap into a new sound that also was their own. They made four great albums and then the band went *poof* and was no more. Soon after, Edwin got himself stationed in Bristol TN/VA. There wasn't much traditional music in the Indiana sea of corn. Edwin ached to be making music with Scott and Willard again, and to make music with other musicians in the mountains where they play the music he loved. Skeeter & the Skidmarks got back together. They've played several shows since Edwin's return. They've played I think seven times at the Fiddle and Plow Show. When it's Skeeter night, the audience is ready. We all love the Skeeter sound. We feel blessed that it's twenty or so of us given the privilege to hear this band we all love as much as we love music itself. It is indeed a privilege to have this music happening an hour's driving distance from home. Scott and Willard's music resonates with my soul in whatever band they're playing in as well as together.

 







 

raymond oakes

 

 

The bell on the door rang not long into the music. In the corner of my eye I saw a man sit in the empty seat with cushions the cat used to nap on. Later, at intermission time I saw it was Raymond Oakes. I'd met him twice at Bobby Patterson's music store in the building almost connected to Willard's shop. I remember my first impression in conversation with him that he talked freely for a man of his generation from the mountains. That was the musician in him. Jr Maxwell, the banjo player could talk freely with people he didn't know. I suppose it comes from stage experience, people you don't know coming to you after the show, having to talk with all kinds of people in the music business, people in bands, a wide range of people. Bobby told me Raymond had played guitar with the Lilly Brothers at the Hillbilly Ranch in Boston for a year, and played on a country music show on tv in Richmond, Virginia, for several years. Raymond told me Everett Lilly asked him to stay with them, but Raymond had to get back to Virginia. That yankee world didn't suit him. Virginia is home and he loved his family, wanted to be close to them. This was what it took to provide for them, and he did. It just meant he had to be away a lot. That's a musician's life. I sat and spoke with him during intermission. He accompanies himself and sings country songs. The Blue Ridge Parkway produced a cd of Raymond Oakes singing some classic old country songs. I hear of him playing every once in awhile someplace in SW Virginia, close to home, like the Floyd Country Store and at Flat Ridge Community Center. I felt like he was the show's special guest. Not because he's a star, because he's not. He's an interesting man of these mountains to talk with who has a lifetime of experiences.

 

 

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