IN CHRIS DURGIN'S WORKSHOP

chris durgin

I dropped in on friend Chris Durgin earlier in the day to make video of him working on a resonator guitar. A young talented musician is putting it together with him, Justin Willey, who picks bluegrass with his dad, Jerel, and his uncle Joe. They are not afraid to make music. When they pick, it's music you hear. Justin likes playing Chris's guitars. He has been playing resonator guitar, Dobro being a brand name, and talked with Chris about helping him make one. Chris's skill and Justin's knowledge of working with wood, which he does for work. He works in a cabinet making shop with his uncle Joe. Justin picked the wood he liked, beautiful, broad stripes of grain. The wood is from a tree of northern Australia, a tropical mimosa, albizia lebbeck, Woman's Tongue. It has leaves like a mimosa, flowers like a mimosa, the tree itself shaped like a mimosa. Chris and I questioned how it came by the name Woman's Tongue. We deduced a suggestion might be in the leaves. I was reminded of a long-leaf house plant, the Mother-in-law's Tongue, long and pointed. I remembered a story from the past of an old preacher who said in the pulpit one day his wife could stand to have about ten inches cut off the end of her tongue. He was referring to an old saying that a gossipy woman had a long tongue. His wife divorced him. They were living in old-time mountain tradition where you don't get a divorce, certainly not a preacher's wife. She meant business. I knew the old boy. He wasn't much in the pulpit.

chris durgin

Chris is making guitars, acoustic guitars for serious musicians. He is wanting to make a dvd of video made from him putting the guitar together he's working on now, step by step all the way to completion. A couple times a year a local arts group has a day of people driving from artists studio to studio around the county. Chris has a bluegrass band jamming, refreshments, talk with Chris, see his shop. He wants to have video on the tv of him putting the guitar together, a day at a time. We started this project with an unclear vision of what we wanted to do. We fumbled about. I was waiting one day for him to tell me when he wanted me to start the video when he said, Don't get this. So I didn't. When he'd finished he asked why I hadn't made video. I said, You said not to. He laughed. He meant not to run it while he was cussing. He was having issues with a tight spot and let go a streak. He meant, don't record that. We realized we need to communicate better. Without even talking about it, we agreed we'll communicate better in a split-second and we were flowing together. I saw what we were doing visually. I got it. He got whatever he saw for himself. Today's filming I had a feel for the flow of what we were doing and followed his hands sanding the edge of the recently glued binding all the way around. I stayed with him until he wore himself out. I move around with the camera, take a digression and examine the wood grain up close, follow the curves, watch the rhythm of his hands with the sandpaper. At this moment I can smell the sawdust and feel it in my eyes. That's pure suggestion. I don't want to hear what a psychologist would call it.

chris durgin

We started the project unsure of it as a project, though after a few shootings, we have it. For my part, I was unsure of what he wanted it to be. For both of us it was an idea finding its own path. I feel like the moment it came together for me was when I followed the grain of the inside of the side like a track I was driving with a car and followed it up overhead and around. I did it just from looking for a new way to look at the form, a piece of wood sculpture, while he was doing something else. He laughed and said, Yeah, a roller coaster. And it came to me, yeah, a roller coaster. Hesitation fell away to let go and follow the wood. Let the wood guide me. Let the wood be the landscape. Chris doesn't want it to be on him, but on the work. He can be sanding in one spot for a long time. It gets boring after awhile. The rhythm is interesting itself and holds the visual interest, but after awhile, I like to let the camera drift, a technique, or anti-technique, learned from Andy Warhol's 1968 film, Lonesome Cowboys. A horse standing still, the camera looking at the horse's face while story is going on nearby, camera drifts down the horse's neck, to the ground. I like to play with letting the camera meander without my mind involved and see what it finds. Not too much, just something to do for my own kicks. I've got it that what Chris wants me to do is get my kicks with the camera, play wide-open freely and see what happens.

chris durgin

It's not about being good or bad. It's about putting a guitar together, working with the wood. I'm getting acquainted with the grain up close, following its lines, looking at the grain from close and a distance, while being sanded. Now I want to make the wood itself the star, the focal point, the purpose. I know Chris well enough to keep my hands off things in his workshop. Everything is where it belongs for its reason, and fingerprints on wood. Like I've learned to keep my hands off the donkeys because they really don't like hands crawling over them, I've learned to keep my control of my hands in Chris's workshop. And I don't like to be in his way. This makes my camera operating easy for him to work with. I stay out of his way, am able to get up close to his hands and not be a bother. We're flowing together better every day. By the time we're done, we'll be ready to start. Though I feel like the beginning was rough, the results look good. We've been not talking while making video, but today I think we broke that ice. We decided to go ahead and talk. Give it some kind of sound track. I can ask questions about what he's doing. He can give illustrative answers while he's working. He's good at explaining what he's doing. We'll do more talking. Allow conversational talking too. A reality show. Anyone who knows both of us would roll around on the floor in a fit of mirth imagining us at work on a project and calling it reality. I am discovering wood in a new way, seeing deeper into the wood itself. I learn from him telling me what he is doing and why, tells about the wood. I'm getting a good education and having fun too.

chris durgin

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AN EVENING OF MUSIC FROM HOME

joe willey

jerel willey

Last night a good round of music, bluegrass played by pickers from Whitehead, Pine Swamp and Miller's Creek. The Willie brothers, Joe picking mandolin and Jerel the bass, with Jerel's boy, Justin, picking resonator guitar, better known as the Dobro. Gary Miller from Miller's Creek picked banjo, and Bobby Wagoner from Pine Swamp picked guitar. Bobby, Jerel and Joe sang the songs. Chris Durgin picked guitar. It was a jam at Chris's house of guys who like to pick together. I saw Chris last week, he told me to come on by for the jam. Different ones get together on Friday nights at his house to jam. They've been doing this for a few years. I knew about it, but, like everything else, it takes necessity for me to turn the key in the ignition to go someplace. I've become so jealous of my time, I don't want to go anywhere. I like to see people I'm close to and that's about it. Social for the sake of social is not enough to inspire me to leave the only place I want to be. Gas is expensive. I like to do my part keeping the pollution down by staying home. Now and then I feel a need to get out among some people I am comfortable with, like tonight, a bunch of Whitehead fellers I've known for a long time with a great deal of respect. Chris I've known for several years. He was new here about ten years ago. Bobby and Gary I met the first time when each one walked in the door. Bobby's singing took hold of me. He knows a lot of songs, good songs, country classics like, You Win Again, I Still Write Your Name In The Sand. Good singer and good guitar picker. Gary's banjo was not showy, but listen closely and he's right there every lick of the way. Justin started on mandolin, by now is playing guitar and banjo, and tonight was playing his resonator guitar. I'd heard Jerel play bass a few times, but had never heard Joe play mandolin, though I've known he was a good picker for some time. The best part of their music, to my ear, was their drive. They make music when they play. It's not just playing a tune and having a rhythm. They do all this and they make music too. By music, I mean infectious, makes feet tap the rhythm, forces body to move with the rhythm.

bobby wagoner, joe willey, jerel willey

Seeing and hearing Joe and Jerel, a moment from the past took its place in the front of my mind and stayed there. It was the time I missed hearing Joe pick at Jr Maxwell's 80th birthday party. Several musicians showed and had a dynamite bluegrass jam. I intended to be there. It was a special occasion, Jr's 80th. A woman Jr knew declared no liquor at the party. No liquor at a birthday party for Jr is not even a consideration. Of course there will be liquor. I'll drink before I go, thought I'd get my head right. It's a back road down the mountain. Thought I'd get my head in a place where it would last awhile, then go. Went past that place before I knew it. It weren't no bonded liquor, neither. A time came right away when I drank more than I knew I oughta and it was too late. Too many trees between here and the bottom of the mountain. I did not want to bounce from one tree trunk to another like a pinball on its way to the hole at the bottom. Milly called telling me to get my ass down there, some good bluegrass music is going on, people are asking, where's TJ? I said I'm on my way out the door, and didn't make it to the door after assessing the chair I was sitting in the best possible place to be, considering I did not want to run into a tree, did not want to mess up the front of the truck. Thought I'd stay in place, let the liquor wear off. It didn't happen. I stayed in not quite a stupor, but unable to move about accurately. Milly called again letting me have it. I didn't want to say I was unable to move with certainty of balance, said I'd be there soon, on my way out the door. I sat feeling I'd done something dumb, and realized, too, that I drank that much to make it impossible to go. I did  not want to be there. I accepted it, because it was the case. I did not want to be there. I wanted to see all the people there, but individually. I do not do well in a big bunch of people, whether I know them or not. My inner Taurus objected to the ban on liquor as pretentious, having nothing to do with reality. I didn't feel like honoring it, objecting to the control issues going on. I didn't want to be there. By this time in the life, I'd given self permission many years before to honor I-don't-want-to as valid a reason as any.

gary miller and justin willey

It was not an intelligent move. My life is not characterized by intelligent decision making, so it was nothing out of the usual. But it was another of many times I've had to remind self, I did not come here for this. I like knowing the people and do not like crowds. It's my right and I hold to it as such. Jr loved the music and all the good picking going on. He talked about Joe Willey's mandolin picking as something to regret missing. I believed him. He talked of Joe's mandolin with the satisfaction of an older musician seeing a younger musician he'd watched grow up turn out able to pick and make music too. Jr talked for weeks and months and years about Joe's picking. When asked why I didn't show up for the party, I answered straight up, I didn't want to, told him I got shit-faced to stop myself from going. I did regret bypassing a chance to hear Joe pick, knowing he would be good, just by knowing Joe enough to have seen he's good at everything he does. At work, he's a cabinet maker, a lifetime of working with wood, paying attention to detail. Joe's mandolin style struck me something like Bill Monroe's. I can't explain. It's a fast kind of strumming to keep the strings ringing. Noting with left hand determines the tune that flows on the wave of continuous mandolin strings ringing. A few times during the music, I felt like I heard a fiddle. Where was the fiddle coming from? I knew Gary played fiddle, though only brought a banjo. I searched for the location of the fiddle sound, knowing my ears were playing donkey tricks on me. I think it was three times I heard the fiddle. Each time zooming in on the fiddle strings, I found it coming from the mandolin. Only then did I hear the rhythm of his licks. It sounded like a long draw of the bow on the high strings, the noting fingers telling the story. I watched Joe's noting fingers dance on the strings as casually as my fingers dance on the keyboard. I'd think, Joe has been doing this for a long time. Joe likes a strong driving rhythm that pushes the music forward. He plays a mandolin like somebody who races motorcycles. Bluegrass is his music. He plays country and old time, too, though it's bluegrass that lights him up. 

justin willey picks chris durgin's guitar

Jerel is a bluegrass bass player who picks the bass instead of thumping rhythm with it. He carries the music in the bass in association with the other instruments. Jerel playing it, the bass becomes an integral part of the music. He doesn't overwhelm the other instruments with the power of a bass's vibration. The bass flows in the music. I'd heard Jerel's bass a few times before. His boy, Justin, who was playing Dobro, then was in a band with a couple other kids in high school, and English teacher, Lucas Pasley, on fiddle. Jerel with them, Borderline, I felt like Jerel was using the bass to back up the younguns, take care of the rhythm for them, keep the music flowing. I saw in Jerel with the band in Chris's living room cut loose on his bass and do some bluegrass singing too. He and Joe were bluegrass singers to my ears' satisfaction. Their voices have the mountain ring to them that is the heart and soul of bluegrass. Their music making all the way around is particularly bluegrass of the central Blue Ridge. Justin grew up musically with these musicians, one his dad, the other his uncle, and everyone they make music with. He was at home musically. Justin learned his way into music with a mandolin, became a respectable musician in a short number of years. During a break he picked up Gary's banjo and picked some licks. Another time, he picked Chris's guitar, feeling its sound. Perhaps my greatest appreciation of the Willeys as family, Jerel and Joe are friends with their kids, friends who can be counted on to the grave. I call it good people. First thing they wanted to do when the instruments came out of the cases, was work on a song they were learning, Angel On My Shoulder, recorded by bluegrass singer Larry Cordle. They had a good groove, a good flow with it, singing it the high lonesome bluegrass way, made a beautiful song of it. A second audience member came in, Pam Sundstrom, a facebook friend who knows a lot of people I know, though we'd never met. Her art form is silver. Interesting woman to visit with. Brought refreshing feminine energy into the circle. An evening of mountain music by musicians from home restoreth my soul.        

chris Durgin

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