THE GRASSY HOLLOW BOYS LIGHT UP THE FRONT PORCH

scott freeman, willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

Another night of good music from home, acoustic mountain music by Willard Gayheart, guitar, and Scott Freeman, mandolin and fiddle, with Mike Gayheart playing bass. They are calling themselves the Grassy Hollow Boys, Scott and Willard with whoever they can find available for banjo and bass for a given show. They said Jimmy Zeh plays banjo with them, but couldn't make it for this show. They found a banjo player who might make it, but didn't. No problem. Scott and Willard together make the most satisfying shows I've seen and heard there at the Fiddle and Plow Show at Woodlawn, Virginia, in Willard's frame shop and gallery for his extensive collection of pencil drawings of regional people and musicians of the past and present. A second book of Willard's drawings has recently been published. It's his pictures hanging on the walls. Willard and Scott play together at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway once a week, I think Thursdays, during the summer months. Scott is married to Willard's daughter, Jill. He and Willard have made music together at least twenty-five years. They have had bands together, Alternate Roots, a stellar, first-rate bluegrass band of Scott and Willard's own style of bluegrass. And Skeeter and the Skidmarks, disbanded for several years because the banjo player had to leave the area, and when he returned years later, the band is back together. They have been called a "progressive old-time band," and I can't improve that. It's what they do.

 

willard gayheart

 

 

Willard and Scott have been giving concerts at the frame shop, The Front Porch, where they bring out about forty folding chairs for the show. Excellent sound system Scott keeps at a level where it sounds like there is no sound system, but it's easy to hear everything clearly. Tonight's sound was about the best ever. I think Scott has been working with the sound system, fine tuning it. The audience is often less than twenty, and often full. Last time Skeeter played, they had to bring up chairs from downstairs and still there were people standing against the back wall. Wayne Henderson fills the place up too. Full is about fifty. Everybody is comfortable. The people who go every week to almost every week, of which I'm one, all know each other after something like four years of hearing some of the finest music from the Central Blue Ridge every week. We're spoiled. There is no place any of us want to go to hear better music. There isn't any better music. Some more popular, some more dynamic, some more showy, but to my ear, even Willie Nelson's band doesn't compare to Scott and Willard's bands. Back in May I saw Willie Nelson and was struck by what a good band he had, and struck even more that the band was no better than what we hear at Woodlawn on Friday nights. Not less, but not better either. My respect for Scott's and Willard's music is the fullest of any music I have ever loved. They bring in different musicians of the Central Blue Ridge who play for $5 a seat.

 

scott freeman

 

Jeanette Williams has played there I think three times. She won bluegrass music award for best traditional vocalist twice. Her band, Jeanette Williams band, has made about ten albums. She's Nashville bluegrass and says every time she's plays at the Front Porch with maybe fifteen people in the audience that it's her favorite place to play. She gets no more than gas money when she plays there. Her husband, Johnny, is with her and he's fine bluegrass musician and singer on his own. He's recently played with Big Country Bluegrass, one of many he's made music with. It's some high-powered straight-ahead bluegrass when they play. The VW Boys, from Bristol, have played three times, as well. Another auditorium bluegrass band that likes to play at Willard's place for gas money because everyone in the audience listens. No coughing, no getting up and going to the bathroom. It happens, but rarely. Everyone is there for the music, because they love the music, go when they don't know who is playing. We all know that whoever is playing is music we want to hear. This Fiddle and Plow Show can come under the heading, Best Kept Secrets. They don't advertise. People hear about it in their own ways. Scott and Willard open every show with two songs. Going by my own musical taste, I'd rather hear Scott and Willard than any of the people who play there. It wouldn't do to have Scott and Willard every week. But it's great to have them give a show after ten or so by other musicians. It's always refreshing for me when they give a show. Neither Scott nor Willard take any money from it. All the money goes to the guest musicians. Scott and Willard won't have it. It's not what they're about.

 

willard's henderson guitar

 

I've not been able to go for several weeks due to one circumstance and another, and lately because city night driving through Galax blinds me with the bright car lights. This is a new condition of my eyes. Night driving with other cars on the highway gives me a fit anymore visually. It makes me uneasy and I do it less and less. I missed some really good music. And I was glad the show was Willard and Scott. Scott's mandolin is out of this world. The sound system carried Willard's guitar the best I've heard it. Willard sang the songs he loves that I have learned to love hearing him sing them. When It's Nighttime in Nevada, one of my favorites, the Bob Wills Texas Swing song, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon. This show was the best Willard has done that song, one of his I love the most. A lot of the people take it for a children's song, but it's not. It's a beautiful love song. They had a good rhythm going, a kind of Forties big band rhythm Bill Monroe used in his bluegrass that has gone out of bluegrass over the years. Willard and Mike kept the rhythm going at a pace that makes you tap your foot double-time. They played another of my Willard favorites, I Get The Blues When It Rains. It rained when I found you. It rained when I lost you. That's why I get the blues when it rains. Beautiful song, a pop song from the 1920s. He sang several songs of his own composition, Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog, one we love every time we hear it. He sang Hank Williams' song, Mama Tried. To my ear, Willard has made that song his own.  And one of his more recent songs, My Henderson Guitar.

 

mike and willard reflected in the window and mirror

 

Scott played several songs of his composition and sang a Bob Wills song, Roly Poly, a good Western Swing song that Scott performs so well he has made it his own. By made it his own, I mean the way Jimi Hendrix made Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower his own. He played an instrumental on the mandolin of Sweet Georgia Brown that was killer. I don't usually use that word, like awesome, but it fits here. It's the only word. My old banjo pickin friend, Junior Maxwell, would say of Scott that he has found every note there is in a mandolin. He has only said that of Earl Scruggs where the banjo is concerned. I believe if he'd heard Scott picking on every song he played he would have come away from it saying Scott has found them all. Scott would not say that. And maybe Junior would not say it. But I do. I've heard Scott smoke his mandolin such that the others in the band looked at him in awe like, What got into you? That was in an Alternate Roots show at the Blue Ridge Music Center scheduled right after Scott won the mandolin competition at the Wayne Henderson Festival. He was playing the new mandolin he'd won made by Wayne Henderson. He tore it up. Steve Lewis standing beside him playing banjo looked at him like he'd found a hole in the stratosphere and went through it. In the mountain tradition, Scott is not a show-off musician. He just plays music so beautifully he doesn't need to pretty it up with flourishes to draw attention to himself. His musicianship is about addressing the song itself as beautifully as he can make it. Scott and Willard satisfy my ear to the same degree Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys give me musical satisfaction. I feel privileged in a very real way to be one of the people who knows the Fiddle and Plow Show is happening. They are my primary source of music in this time of the life. I feel like I have grown into them over years of listening to every kind of music, educating my ear to the place I can appreciate the music Willard and Scott make.

 

 

willard

 

 

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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

 

 

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FREEMAN AND WILLIAMS CD RELEASE SHOW AT FIDDLE AND PLOW

jeanette

 

jeanette and johnny

scott and jeanette

scott, jeanette, johnny

Two nights of extraordinary examples of mountain music. Friday night, Scott Freeman, Jeanette Williams and Johnny Williams, who record as Freeman and Williams. Every one of them is what I call a master musician. That's not a western concept. I've picked it up from eastern reading. Scott can smoke a mandolin, he writes a good song, has written several, both instrumental and vocal, sings well, plays fiddle and guitar well, very well. He teaches 60 students a week. He makes his living teaching in his corner space at Willard's frame shop. He has a good rapport with the kids. They love him. They look up to him and he inspires them. I hear him play a mandolin or sing, he inspires me. Scott is a true artist. His music satisfies by inspiration. Scott speaks of me as an artist he respects. I speak of Scott an artist I respect, too. When I think about it, I'm in awe of Scott as an artist. Jeanette is too. Last night she spoke of Scott as one of the great musicians. She said the same of Willard another time. I was glad to hear that she recognized Willard's artistry. Not many people do. Mention it to somebody and they think about it awhile, then agree. Jeanette and Johnny have great musical respect for Willard.


They rocked the place. The seats had maybe five vacancies. The audience was 100% appreciative. The audience at the Fiddle and Plow shows has gradually grown of people who come back every week. We who return every week have become friends after a couple years. We are the people who fully appreciate Willard's musicianship and Scott's. For myself, it's 40 miles one way. I think nothing of the drive. If it were anything else, I'd get bored by the drive. I approach Woodlawn in anticipation of the music that will be played, Willard and Scott opening with a couple songs, then whatever band or individual has been invited and accepted. Last night, Freeman and Williams. The three of them play so well together it's like a new entity has emerged, Freeman and Williams. They flow together like water in a stream. They appreciate each other with genuine respect. The music that occurs when they set it in motion is the real deal, music. All three are songwriters. All three are singers. And all three are musicians among the ones who carry the tradition. Jeanette got bluegrass music award for traditional singer of the year in 12 and 09. I only say that as an objective measure of the quality of her singing to support my subjective feeling around what I hear.


Every one of them is an excellent singer independently of each other, and together they sing as one voice. It just now occurred to me I'd like to hear an album of them produced by TBone Burnett. It would cost too much to justify it, and them doing it their own way is what they're about. I still think TBone could draw a dynamite album out of them that would make them need a tour bus. But that's not what they want. I want for them what they want for themselves. The TBone Burnett thought was just a momentary spark. Here I go down that wrong road again, going back where I've already been. Jeanette does indeed know how to deliver a song. Beautiful bird voice. She has a feminine spirit behind her voice that shapes every note with the facility of Scott's mandolin pick. Johnny sings John Henry and June Apple in new ways that give both songs a freshness. These three getting together for a "project" is made in heaven. It won't be a big seller, but it will pay its expenses and enough for a second printing when needed.


For Scott, this trio seems to me the next step beyond Alternate Roots. Every album I have with Scott on it is a supreme example of music of the contemporary Central Blue Ridge. I won't go at best and best of, none of that. Like Scott told me the day I mentioned Alternate Roots is a goo-ood band. He said, "There's a lot of good bands." Yeah. There's an awful lot of good bands. I look at YouTube a lot. and see anything, everything there. One of my favorites is the Hillbilly Gypsies doing the Hazel Dickens song, West Virginia My Home. When I hear the Hillbilly Gypsies I think of what Scott said. There are the Moron Brothers, the list could fill a library. Alternate Roots had a special sound that was their own. Each album was a stair step ahead of the one before. It was that way from the first to the fourth. The fourth was, to my ear, their apex album. I actually grieved for six months after the band's demise, as for a friend of many years.



Scott's music runs through his different bands, Skeeter and the Skidmarks, Alternate Roots, The Hungry Hash House Ramblers, Freeman and Williams. The music he makes with Willard I like/love as much as all the others. Scott and Willard have a musical rapport like Scott and Steve Lewis, though in its own way. With Steve Lewis, they have Josh Scott's bass keeping rhythm. With Willard, Willard's guitar keeps the rhythm for Scott to skate on with his mandolin, fiddle or guitar. They sing well together. Uploading the videos of Scott and Willard to YouTube I've listened to every one of them at least once, many of them multiple times, I'm always struck by how good they are together. I never tire of hearing them open the show every week. Everyone who goes there feels the same. We look forward to it.  


*

FREEMAN AND WILLIAMS NEW RELEASE

the cover--jeanette williams, scott freeman, johnny williams

photo by gail agett cooler

Finally got a copy of this new release, this month, Scott had for sale at the Front Porch this week. The week before, they were all in Nashville for the spbgma bluegrass awards where Jeanette scored best female traditional singer. She shows her singing talent on this album like on all her others with The Jeanette Williams Band. This project, FREEMAN AND WILLIAMS, makes me want the radio show back so I could play this beautiful music to my listeners, who, by this time, would know all these musicians and be happy to hear this new music by three of SW Virginia's finest. I get this longing every time I find a new cd from the region, like when Larry Richardson's lp with Buddy Pendleton playing fiddle was re-released on cd and I heard it the first time. I wanted to play it to my listeners. Kevin Fore's Round Peak cd with Kirk Sutphin makes me long to play it to my listeners when I hear it. This one, Freeman and Williams, is another one of them that makes me long for Sparta to have its radio station back so I could put their music in the Alleghany County air on Saturday mornings. I'd play the album all the way through, every song. I'd play some other things by Jeanette, by Johnny and by Scott for context.

The song list is arranged so the experience of hearing the music flows from one song to the next naturally. These three people like a good-worded song, making a collection of their pick of songs a full album of songs that hold your attention by what they have to say, word by word, and the equally good musicianship and vocals. All are good singers. The album opens with a Tom T and Dixie Hall song, Always Looking Back. You can't see where you're goin if you're always looking back. That train that you're waiting for is way on down the track. The past is gone forever, that's a natural fact. You can't see where you're going if you're always looking back. Scott sings The Grandpa That I Know, a song that has depth of feeling Scott likes in a song. I like every song on this project. Every playing of the album, when a song starts, I'm delighted to hear it again. Jeanette singing, here I go down that wrong road again, even though I know where it will end, here I go down that wrong road again. Jeanette Williams' singing voice is beautiful.

Johnny Williams, Jeanette's husband, has been with Big Country Bluegrass the last few years. He's made music with Jeff Michael (fiddler), calling themselves Grass Tank. Johnny has been in the music world of the Central Blue Ridge all the way along. A couple years ago he made a solo album, Last Day of Galax, titled after a song he wrote. On a collection of regional musicians called Close Kin, Johnny sings Chilly Winds the best I've ever heard the song. He brought it to life for me. On this project, Freeman and Williams, Johnny sings his arrangements of June Apple and John Henry that give both old songs a new refreshing life. Like Scott, Johnny and Jeanette like to take old songs and give them a refreshing new touch. Johnny and Jeanette have played a couple of the Fiddle and Plow shows, making music with Scott and Willard at the Front Porch in Woodlawn, Virginia. They play before an audience of a dozen, Jeanette telling the audience she'd rather play for a few people who listen than to a big auditorium. They drive from Danville to play at the Front Porch.

Their new project is with Mountain Roads Recordings, Bristol, Virginia. http://www.mountainroadsrecordings.com/  Karl Cooler put together a label for music of the Central Blue Ridge in Bristol. On his list is Big Country Bluegrass, Whitetop Mountain Band, the VWBoys, Jim Lloyd, Elkville String Band, Pathway, Johnny Williams and some others. I'm glad to see a new label on the scene for the music we have around here. Cooler's label has made a home for some of the better music of our region. With this album, I feel like I'm seeing Scott Freeman's artistry coming into its maturity. He's always been extra good, but now he has the flow of somebody who has played very well for a long time until he and the music he makes are one. I've watched Scott's musical life for the last 9 years. We met in 03 when I opened the music store in Sparta and Scott was needing a corner to teach in once a week. He was with Alternate Roots then. They'd just released their third project. He gave me a pass to Alternate Roots shows. I saw 14 of their shows, drove to Hiltons, Virginia, to the Carter Fold to see AR's last show. When they disbanded I felt the same grief as for a friend dying.

Hearing Jeanette and Johnny play at the Front Porch with Scott and Willard twice, this new project is music I'm already familiar with. It would be wrong to leave out saying I feel privileged every Friday night at the Front Porch. For a couple years I've been there most of the time, excepting ice storms and the Hillbilly Show, and sometimes too tired or out of money. I'd guess I have about 85% attendance. The music played there has become the music that plays in my mind during the day. I don't hear pop music any more except at other people's houses. I don't know who's doing what out there in pop culture world. Don't want to know. I'm happy with a concert every week by two musicians I respect the highest as human beings as well as musicians, and their visiting musician friends like Doug Rorrer, David Johnson, Wayne Henderson, Katy Taylor, Butch Robins, Buddy Pendleton, Bobby Patterson, Edwin Lacy, Steve Lewis, VWBoys, Johnny and Jeanette Williams. Scott's music has become the music that satisfies me in this time of my life. The privilege I feel is having a friend who is a musician the equal of Sonny Rollins or Taj Mahal. It blows my mind to know someone who is a musician as exceptional as Scott. He's a true artist. My respect for Scott is not only for his musicianship, which is stellar, but for his character, for who he, himself, is.

I've uploaded onto YouTube several songs by Jeanette and Johnny with Scott playing at the Front Porch for the Fiddle and Plow audience. Write their names in the search box and they'll pop up. Or you can write my channel's name in the box, hobblealong1 and they'll all come up. You can scroll down until you see Jeanette and Johnny. Or write their names in the search box. It's about 20 of us that go semi-regularly, and we love it like it's the best kept secret in the world and we're the ones blessed with the opportunity to hear the music of the Central Blue Ridge as good as it gets in a context as comfortable as home. Every week. We're a diverse bunch of white people in there. We're gradually getting to know each other, and after a couple years everybody is comfortable talking. One thread that runs through all of us is the feeling of privilege to hear music such as Scott and Willard make and their friends they sometimes accompany every week. At every show, during intermission and at the end, everybody I speak with is lit up exclaiming joy over the music. Everyone returns home fully satisfied every week. Sometimes people passing through, looking for "something to do," turn up for a show. They're blown away every time. Scott, Johnny and Jeanette are today's hillbilly music. Hillbilly music has always been amazing music. Today's is amazing music too.  

freeman and williams at the fiddle and plow, 8/6/2010

photo by tj worthington

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MY PHOTOS AT THE FRONT PORCH

willard and sandy

Yesterday I spent the day into the night putting 999 photographs from the computer to a dvd. Have about half that many to go. Putting together all the photographs taken at the Front Porch of the Fiddle and Plow series that Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart put on weekly. 999 times hitting the same three keys on the keyboard. Takes awhile. I'm not somebody who could do something like that every day as my work. It's why I'm not an accountant. I'd rather be mowing hay. I want all the pictures I've taken at the show over the last couple years on dvd, which I'll pass to Scott for his archives to pick pictures he'll want to use for one reason or another, if he wants. I don't want copyright and all that. For me, it was my fun at the time. I enjoyed it so much, this is my form of gratitude. About 135 pictures of Willard, then about the same number of Scott, then about half that many of them making music together. Then pictures of all the guests from beginning to present.



By the end of the experience, I came away with the picture above as one that catches perfectly what I'm looking for in a photograph. I don't want magazine "quality" pictures. They're dead to my eye with their perfectly sharp edges and everything perfect. I don't live in that world. It's not a world anybody lives in. It's a 2D image on a piece of paper. I don't mean to make little of people like Elliot Porter, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon et al, not at all. I'm only looking at what I want of my own photographs, subjectively. This one above was taken with a very slow shutter speed, which usually makes them somewhat fuzzy and does a kind of vaseline lens thing with the light, very subtle, thankfully. Saying slow shutter speed, I don't mean to imply I know camera lingo or want to appear to. I want my photos to have a living sensation about them, which is I want for my paintings too. I like the blur of the right hand striking the guitar strings. I like the slight blur around Willard indicating motion contrasted with the still guitar that has no blur of motion about it, the still point the music flows through. I don't mean to get symbolic about it either. Just following associations.



I like the ceiling light reflected in the glass above Sandy's head. Can't make out the light source. It's like a glow in the nest of her wavy hair, like an aura. The blur around Willard gives me a sense of aura. I like how the light reflects on the rims of his glasses. I like the reflection of the ceiling lights on Sandy's glasses. I especially love how the image of them singing together feels like you can almost hear them, at least hear the emotion in that moment of the song. The very slight blur doesn't alter the lines of their faces, but gives a living sense, almost like the light is coming from them. Brings to mind Robert Bly's book of poems, The Light Around The Body. I picked it up earlier today after not looking at it for almost 40 years. So much has changed since then. I read two of the poems, chosen randomly. Knocked my sox off. I remembered right away how much I loved his writing in my college and post-college years. loved it a very great deal. Then I went to the mountains and my urban interests fell away after the first few years. Back to Willard, that line of white light that outlines him is something like the black line in Japanese painting.



And most important, the photograph caught both their faces such that they look like the people I know, who the image represents. This is how Willard looks while he is singing. This is how Sandy looks when she is singing. I love that the harmony they are singing is visible in the photograph. The credit I have to give largely to chance, my friend chance. The camera has a delay in the push-button of a portion of a second, but long enough that somebody singing into the mic when I push the button will have the head turned to the side, mic ruining a good profile, when it clicks. This means I never get the picture I push the button for. It doesn't work to anticipate the next second's motion, because it never happens as I anticipate. I've learned to get 4 or 5 pictures of the next second after I click the button, because eventually one works. I just keep on clicking, one after the other. The others make good pics, too, with a spontaneous feel about them. I like that feel of spontaneity captured in a still image. It's one of my guiding lights to catch the feel of the spontaneous. This picture above does that for me.



I see them both in motion, not still. I've found, making the videos, that I like to hold the camera allowing for jiggles, the occasional cough, keeping it in motion. The ones made early on that were held as still as I could manage, attempting to be a tripod replacement, bored me immeasurably. They were so still, they were dead. I like to zoom in on one or two musicians and move the camera around the band, showing 1 or 2 at a time, back and forth, following the action. Focusing on the singer, then moving to the instrument taking a break, like when Scott takes off with his mandolin or fiddle. That's another one. I've been looking for the one photo of Scott that captures him like this one above gets Sandy and Willard. My favorite of Scott is one that the camera took the picture just as somebody else's flash went off, brightening him with halogen light, the shadow of his arm and hand on the front of his shirt as he lifted his hand from the strings on the last note. I don't use a flash, but I love this flash, because it was from somewhere else, making a nice shadow contrasting the brilliant light he's bathed in. I think it's my favorite of the Scott pictures. It feels like the electricity of his picking. I don't mean he's plugged-in, but his picking itself is electrical.



These are not pictures I'd put in a competition, because taking a "good" picture is not what I want to do. Per show, I pick one place to station myself, usually in the back so I won't be standing up in front of anybody. I also like to get tops of heads of the audience in the pictures when it's natural. I don't like moving around getting interesting angles, close-ups, arty type things, and I don't like being in the way of people around me. So I stay in back and use the zoom. I don't like using a flash; the light is unnatural. The zoom with slow shutter speed makes its own kind of blur with the light. That's the source of the vaseline lens look. Vaseline lens is too extreme an example, because it is way subtler than that. It's a sense of softness in the light. When I say I like it, love it, it's not because I think it has anything about it seen objectively that is extraordinary. What I like and love is that it has in it what I want one of my photographs to be. Not thinking competitions and prizes and money and fame. I just want to make photographs that accord with my own particular aesthetic sense, which I can't put a name to or a finger on. It just is what it is. I'm not cutting edge. That's for them that want it. I want to live my life as I live here at home and evolve my own aesthetic according to my experience. Found a nice one, too, of Jeanette Williams.

jeanette williams

Nearly all the other pictures of her are facing the bass full-front, and her beside it, an incredible study in curves. They're too much magazine type pictures for my satisfaction. In this one, I see Jeanette and the bass as one. It's not a matter of curves; they're all implied, like the "you" left out of "get me a beer." It's Jeanette bass player one with her bass, it standing there like a big ONE. Her beautiful face glowing light. I like too, how the glow from the slow shutter speed and the minuscule blur of the zoom have put a soft glow of light on her face. She and the bass really are one. She sings while she plays it, uses it to enhance her singing and for expression of emotion. The pictures of her curves standing beside the bass's curves, makes a better picture. I like this one for the symbolism in it, mainly. When she plays the bass and sings, her flow is one with the bass. In this picture it looks like the bass has arms and a head. This is how Johnny, her husband would see her from standing beside her playing his guitar. I snapped this picture when she'd turned it sideways for a moment, turning its vibration toward Scott who was tearing up the song with his mandolin. Jeanette, Johnny and Scott recently recorded a new project to be released this month. I feel so privileged.

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JOHNNY AND JEANETTE WILLIAMS AT THE FIDDLE AND PLOW

     scott freeman, jeanette williams, johnny williams

     scott freeman, brandy miller, edwin lacy

              jeanette williams

              johnny williams

              scott freeman

     willard gayheart

   

     scott freeman, brandy miller, edwin lacy, jeanette williams, johnny williams

All the way to Woodlawn this evening just after dark I saw something in the sky above Galax. It had 2 white lights and one blue light above white light on the right. It didn't move. I watched all the way until getting close to Galax it was overhead and I couldn't see it for the car roof. Galax was having a parade this evening, causing me to wonder if it might be a blimp or something having to do with the parade. That didn't quite satisfy. It wasn't stars, because the sky was overcast and no stars were showing. These lights I saw were this side of the clouds. On the way home 4 hours later I saw it again (first time, 5:30 - 6:30, second time 9:30 - 10:30), this time looking like it was over Sparta. As I approached Sparta, it looked to be more like over Cherry Lane and possibly on its way in super slow motion, 10 mph or less, toward Elkin. (I imagine it's over Elkin now as I write) I looked for every kind of way I could call it something besides a UFO, but couldn't find it. It wasn't a helicopter, didn't appear to be a blimp and didn't look like a balloon either. I took two photos of it. It appears as a tiny dot. Enlarge it and there comes a time just before it turns into a pattern of square pixels I can see the 2 white lights and the blue light like what I saw. I can't make out anything but the lights, but it looked awfully much like one thing only. I've not spotted one in awhile. I'm glad to see they're still around. 

It feels good to be in the presence of live bluegrass when it has good mountain drive played by mountain people. Johnny Williams is from Fries (pron freeze), Virginia, and they live now at Danville, Virginia, not too far north of Winston-Salem. Jeanette Williams band has made 10 or more cds and she won female bluegrass singer of the year in 2009. Jeanette plays the bass and sings. Her band is the Jeanette Williams band. Her website: http://www.jeanettewilliams.com/   Willard and Scott opened the show with 2 songs like they always do. Then Scott played mandolin and sometimes fiddle with Jeanette on bass and Johnny rhythm guitar. They harmonize together nicely too. I thought I heard Jeanette say the three of them have recently recorded a an album of songs, the album due I think I remember February. I later confirmed it with Willard, and sure enough, the three of them have a "project." I already know it's going to be one super fine collection of music. Johnny and Jeanette laying down the rhythm and Scott tearing up his mandolin and fiddle, singing, Jeanette and Johnny singing. There's no way around it being anything but an incredible example of music from the Central Blue Ridge.

An audience of around 20, everybody charmed by the music in the band's playing. Jeanette asked a 14 year old girl who had brought her banjo, sitting on the front row with her dad, to pick a few songs. She started off with John Hardy and right off let us all know this girl can pick. She's a student of Steve Lewis in W Jefferson. Steve is a good teacher. It showed tonight, too. She played so well with the band, playing well on songs, too, that she'd never played or heard before, that toward the end of the show Jeanette emphasized Brandy's playing, saying she's been struck by how she can jump right into a song she doesn't know and by the place in the tune where it's time for her break, she's ready and does it well. Jeanette was watching her hands all through the latter part of the show. The band was asking her to step forward and play something several times. Everybody in the band liked her banjo. Jeanette is with a band called Daughters Of Bluegrass, all women. I had a feeling that after the show, Jeanette and Brandy and Brandy's dad had a conversation about Brandy's near future, and possibly some sound counsel from Jeanette to Brandy that Brandy will never forget. The evening felt an awful lot like it was a star is born performance. It wasn't like there was a beginner in the band. She was no beginner. Steve taught her well. In the later part of the show, her dad was beaming. 

Jeanette asked Edwin Lacy to join the band. Bluegrass banjo and old-time banjo together. It worked. There seemed to be a spirit in the air tonight of the project Johnny produced, CLOSE KIN, recently released by a fairly new label at Bristol, Mountain Roads. Website: http://www.mountainroadsrecordings.com/   Mountain Roads has titles by Johnny Williams, Elkville String Band, VW Boys, Scott Freeman's band of his brothers, Pathway, Jim Lloyd, all of them Northwest North Carolina and Southwest Virginia. It's the music of what we call the Central Blue Ridge. The Close Kin album brought bluegrass and old-time together. Jr Maxwell has told me about Galax fiddler Otis Burris, Alleghany fiddler Cleve Andrews, Pine Swamp fiddler Howard Joines, that they played bluegrass in a style that was a mix of old-time and bluegrass. The early years of bluegrass saw quite a lot of old-time tunes bluegrassed. The album has I think 29 musicians from this region. They play in different mixes, not always people they usually make music with. They take old-time tunes and bluegrass them. It has very much the sound of this region. The bluegrass from these mountains tends to bluegrass old-time tunes. Jr Maxwell's band, The Green Mountain Boys, bluegrassed a good many old-time tunes. Art Wooten, one of their fiddlers, played in that zone too.

The show tonight made an intimate connection with the audience. Jeanette and Johnny, both, have audience inclusive personalities. They speak directly to the audience, not to an idea of an audience. Jeanette mentioned between a couple of songs that she prefers to play for a small group like us than for a million people that don't listen, the same observation she made last time they played at the Front Porch series the Fiddle and the Plow. I always forget that the show is called the Fiddle and the Plow. I call it the Front Porch, because that's where it is. The spirit in the air among the musicians appeared to be a celebration of that sound, bluegrassing old-time. They played the Carter Family's Foggy Mountain Top. Brandy Miller played Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Backstep in such a way it told me she is in touch with her banjo. The girl can pick. She was a treat for the audience, too. Everybody projected support to her. The music flowed. The musicians flowed together. The audience flowed with the band. Johnny Williams produced the Close Kin album. Jeanette and Scott are on it, too. I love the entire album, but Johnny's song at the start, Chilly Winds is the finest I've heard that song and Johnny singing. For my ear, he made this song his own. Johnny's album, Last Days of Galax, is a good one too.

Edwin Lacy has recently put together a cd of him playing songs of his composition. I already know the songs on it, so I can hear in my head what it sounds like. I'll need to get a couple more next time I go there for Christmas presents. Edwin playing bluegrass with the band tonight gave it an interesting sound. His old-time banjo played very well with the bluegrass banjo. They sounded good together. Brandy Miller was the star of the show tonight. It was her night, the night she played with the big dogs. Like Courtney Burroughs playing fiddle with Dale Ann Bradley at the National Folk Festival in Nashville three months ago. Courtney is a good young fiddler, who has played at a Fiddle and Plow show with the Hungry Hash House Ramblers. You can find a lot of videos on YouTube of Courtney. These are the young ones coming on to learn the music and pass it on to the next generation. I think of old-time musicians as carriers of the music, the keepers of it during their time, then passing it on, teaching and encouraging the young ones. Tonight was a good example of the tradition in mountain music of giving the young ones a moment to shine. 

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JEANETTE AND JOHNNY WILLIAMS BLUEGRASS

 l to r: scott freeman, jeanette williams, johnny williams

jeanette williams

johnny williams

scott freeman

trevor watson

willard gayheart

Jeanette and Johnny Williams of Danville, Va, played at the Front Porch tonight with Scott Freeman. The three made a good trio and some good music for a couple hours in Woodlawn. What a great show. It wasn't dynamic and in your face, just good, well played, well delivered bluegrass with music flowing all the way along. It was like art bluegrass in place of sensational pop bluegrass. Bluegrass the way we like it in the mountains. We like it the other way too. In the mountains, we like bluegrass any way we can get it.



Jeanette has a stage presence of many thousands of hours of stage experience, comfortable on stage, good bluegrass singer and bass player. I've an idea she's a good woman to her man, Johnny, guitar player with Big Country Bluegass. He can pick a guitar and sing a song too. Both of them write songs and win awards with the songs they write. Again and again I feel privileged even to know about the music at Woodlawn, let alone to be there, hearing it live, raw, the real deal.



To hear Jeanette Williams and Johnny in such an intimate space is something truly special to me. Jeanette told me she loves playing for this size audience the best. I didn't count, but guess an audience of about 40 or 45. Some examples of their music tonight will be on YouTube soon. There are already several videos at YouTube of Jeanette Williams Band and some of Johnny with Big Country Bluegrass. They're not big name bluegrass, but they are certainly music worth listening to bluegrass. They both sound good on the cd player at home.



I wanted to buy one of Jeanette's cds, but Dori's new cd came available today and I made it a point to have money for Dori's if it were there. It was. I got it first thing. I want it, first, for the good music I know it is, and second, to support Dori's first effort at putting an album together, to support the artist in Dori in the early years when honest support is most needed.



Willard opened the show singing Little Red Wagon, a song he has taught me to love. It's a song I never gave a thought until I heard Willard sing it. Like Yellow Rose of Texas, I never paid that song a bit of mind as anything I wanted to hear, even as a fiddle tune, until I heard Willard sing it on the Skeeter project, the original words. Then it was a beautiful song on top of a beautiful song, double layer. And Willard's singing of it is the icing. He finished the show tonight with Little Log Cabin In the Lane. Banjo picker Trevor Watson of Lou Reid's Carolina bluegrass band was at the show. They invited him to pick 3 songs with them. He played a very respectable banjo, didn't make much of himself, just picked along with the music and did a request of Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Always a good show at the Front Porch.



Jeanette has a passion and an energy on stage that flows with her music. Her long red hair stays in motion throughout the show like a candle flame in a draft. She keeps that bass going while she sings same as while she's not singing. She has a certain grace with the bass that flows with its shape, with its sound. It's kind of an oxymoron, such a petite woman and what me might call Big'n. Beauty and the beast, beauty and the bass that has it's own feminine beauty, a shadow of Jeanette's. They make a good justaposition and fit together like it was meant from the start to be.

The quick way to her website: http://www.jeanettewilliams.com/


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AT THE FRONT PORCH GALLERY

jeanette and johnny williams



Tonight at the Front Porch Gallery in Woodlawn, Virginia, the music of Johnny and Jeanette Williams. As every week, the music is superlative. Right away when the music started tonight, it was music, not something trying to sound like music, but the real deal. Both good singers and both good musicians. Scott Freeman accompanied them on mandolin. Scott sang some too. Scott's mandolin tonight was something special. He picked tonight with an artistry I knew was in him, but he's not shown a great deal of. Scott is one to emphasize the music and let artistry take the back seat. His artistry was right up front tonight. It was like he was inspired by Johnny and Jeanette's music. They, in turn, seemed inspired by Scott's pickin too. They played music like they'd made music together a long time.



Scott and Willard open every week singing I'm Going Back To The Blue Ridge, the story of somebody of the mountains who has been away for a period of time on his way back home,"goin back to stay." It's a favorite song of theirs and becoming a favorite of mine. I like the way they sing it and pick it. I feel the sentiment every time I hear it. It makes me think of how desperate I would feel if I had to leave these mountains. Johnny sang a couple of songs of love for the mountains. Something flatlanders don't know about the mountains is they are more than just hills and winding roads. We know the mountains under foot. They are fountains of life like they are fountains of music. For me, they are the same as grandmother's arms. Everybody has their own relationship with the mountains.



The feeling at the Front Porch tonight was happy, the music had such good spirit about it, relaxed, at home, while at the same time it was mountain music with good drive. Johnny and Jeanette have different bands and don't make a great deal of music together. Jeanette is with the Jeanette Williams Band, bluegrass. She's made several albums and they're all good. You can hear her sing 2 songs, Dreamer and Thank You For Caring at: www.jeanettewilliams.com Quite a good song. Gives you an idea of what I heard for a couple hours tonight. Johnny has been with Big Country Bluegrass and appears on their most recent album with Lynwood Lunsford the new banjo in the band. Both Johnny and Jeanette are well experienced in the music world of our region. At Jeanette's website I saw she won the best female vocalist award in traditional music. She rates it. She is that good a singer. Johnny is a good singer too. He's a good songwriter. He's a good guitar picker. He has a fairly recent album The Last Day At Galax. it's named for a good song he sang tonight. Johnny has recorded a good bit with Jeff Michael over the years. They made an album together calling themselves Grass Tank, with Lynwood Lunsford pickin banjo, on Doug Rorrer's label Flyin Cloud. Johnny and Jeff made another album same label of Jeff playing mandolin and Johnny guitar. Both sing. They made some respectable music. Jeff is a great fiddler and all around musician. Now Johnny, Jeff and Lynwood are back together in Big Country Bluegrass.



Jeanette has a good love energy about her. Johnny does too. The energy that flows between them when they make music is love. A happy feeling in the music uplifted me and the rest of the audience. They started right off with the music and it wasn't long before I was permeated with the music, really feeling it. It felt like the audience had caught the flow of the music the same as I had, relaxed into it, flowed with it. It was a happy feeling that flowed through the dozen or so of us attending. Jeanette has a feminine grace about her that flows through her singing, her music, her presence as a woman, her movements, her voice. Her song Dreamer is a good vocal example of the feminine that flows through her voice. I notice much use of the word flow. Flow is what happened tonight in the music. It was a good musical flow and there was a flow that went from the musicians to the listeners and back to the musicians, back to the listeners and became a circular flow like I've felt at a Doc Watson concert. Doc Watson sends a love feeling to his listeners and they send it back. It gets going in a circular flow and it feels extra good to be in that circle.



Early on in the music tonight I was feeling humbled by it. Humbled by the incredible musicianship of people as good at what they do as anyone on the pop charts, which they are. I was humbled that I was able to be there. With all the good feeling flowing around the place, I felt fully present. I remember for one moment my thoughts left the place, but came right back and stayed. For 2 hours my mind was free of itself, held in the present by the music that never ceased to hold my attention. When I say I was humbled, it's not because they do something I can't do, it's like quiet inside, setting self aside in the presence of something awe inspiring. Perhaps by humbled I mean a quieting of the mind.