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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SCOTT FREEMAN, WILLARD GAYHEART, JIMMY ZEH AND MIKE GAYHEART

scott freeman

 

 

 

The Fiddle and Plow show at Woodlawn VA tonight featured guest bluegrass banjo picker Jimmy Zeh, who played banjo with Willard's bluegrass band, The Highlanders. Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart accompanied Jimmy with Mike Gayheart on bass. Good picking like usual from these guys. Scott also plays fiddle. Tonight was Scott's night to my ear. He's evolved into a new place. This evening hearing what he was doing, it struck me right away much of what he was doing was new, approaches he'd not done before, subtle ways of addressing the notes, sometimes playing around the notes in ways that enhance the sound of what he's doing with new approaches to chording around in such a way I'd stare in awe at his hands working the mandolin. Once, Jimmy Zeh stopped picking and just listened, watched what Scott was doing in an awe that he was hearing something from a zone he'd never been in. On Scott's break he set out chording around the melody and picking really fast. Zeh said, "Hey, this is my song!" He was kidding, pointing a finger at what Scott was doing with humor. Like always at Woodlawn on Friday nights, the music was really music. It was music you feel. The humor tonight came when they set out to play St Anne's Reel and Jimmy took off on Whiskey Before Breakfast. The band fell in line with him before he realized what he'd done. When he caught on to what he'd done, he stopped, but it was a shame, because it made a really good beginning to Whiskey Before Breakfast. The band was fine with going on and playing it, but they backed up and did St Anne's Reel.

 

It's been a month or so since I was there. Three weeks were out due to holidays. I skipped last week out of weariness, unable to drive for two hours, and tonight it was good to be back. Seeing my friends there is important. People I know in Sparta want me to do things in Sparta on Friday nights, because they're my friends. The people in Woodlawn are my friends too. Just because they're not in my zip code doesn't mean they can't be my friends. It's become a comedy for me when I tell people in Sparta about how to get there. I tell about the show. Whoever I'm talking to wants to know how to get there. I say, "Do you know where Galax Walmart is?" Eyes light up, "Yeah." I say, "It's exactly 5 miles past the Walmart stoplight. Every time, I mean every time I say that, faces fall, every time, the light in the eyes goes out, and they say, "Oh," in resignation. Like Walmart is the edge of the known universe and anything beyond there is in the uncharted Unknown. It's a look that says, I didn't know there was anything past Walmart. I've got so used to it, since that is always the response, I've quit telling anybody about the show at Woodlawn. I'm neither a missionary nor a commercial. It's not important to me what other people do. It's only important to me what I do. Other people's business is not my own. Other people's business, like a sleeping dog, is best left be. 

 

I get awfully tired of people who are commercials for their own tastes. I don't mean I haven't been there, done that. I got tired of it in myself first. The day I realized I sounded like a commercial talking about something I especially liked, I told myself it's ok that I like it. I don't need to affirm it by pushing it onto others; you gotta, you needta, you oughta, you should. I consciously never start a sentence thus. I've finally come to realize that my own taste is my own. The next person down the road listens to entirely different music from what I listen to. The next person in the other direction has very different taste from mine in movies. No need to convert them to my tastes. They have their own. Talking with Dana Ross in the car driving to Woodlawn and back, we spoke of how odd it is now that Americans have collectively become intolerant of others with opinions differing from their own. Like if you think Rod Stewart is great and I think Rod Stewart sucks (which I don't), where's the problem? It's personal taste. By now the hate merchants have divided we the American people into opposing camps. Conservative and liberal was the initial division, but it has divided on down to simply opinions. Reagan officially sanctioned liberal a bad word. The L word. Unspoken reference to the N word. Not to be mentioned. It shut liberals down by intimidation for several years. Finally liberals are standing up as a sharp stick in the conservative eye. The Revenge of the L Word starring Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. The conservatives have used deception as a strategy to such extremes that they completed the circle, now are fooling themselves and no one else. They don't get it yet. Two things I know Bill O'Reilly was not hired for are looks and intelligence. The liberals elected an African American for president. Those same pesky liberals that halted the genocide of the Indians, the Native Americans.

 

Scott's mandolin playing tonight took me to a new place in relation to his music. I've listened closely to Scott's mandolin for the last decade, hearing his mastery grow, hearing him reach into new zones, like when he and Steve Lewis play Eat My Dust. Check it out on youtube. They git-er done. Scott has been looking, with Steve, for ways "to think outside the box." One day I was at lunch with both of them at Mis Arados in Sparta while they were talking about thinking outside the traditional music box they saw themselves in. Scott said to me, "How do you think outside the box?" It came to me as I spoke it, "Don't have a box." It was all I could think of. I don't know how either one of them took it. It was followed by a pause I couldn't read. This to say that Scott is looking for new ideas on making music, open to whatever comes his way that is challenging. To my ear, he is a master mandolin picker. Period. Then tonight I heard him reaching into places I'd never heard him go. At the end of the show, I spoke with him, initially to ask about Bobby Patterson who is on dialysis now. The conversation went from there. I mentioned he's doing things I've not heard him do before, he's reaching into new approaches to chord progressions, dancing around the melody, revealing the melody in a new way. He said he's been listening closely to musicians like Mark O'Connor, attempting to do what he did, finding it humbling, very humbling. Meaning it's a learning trip for him. He spoke of it with a relief similar to when I pick up a new book and find in the beginning that I love it, it's a page-turner that pulls me through it, like a couple days ago when I started Gavin Menzies' 1421: the year China discovered the world. On the first pages I saw this is my next read! Scott was inspired by his new discoveries tonight, fired up about exploring his new dimension of playing a mandolin

 

I am able to hear Willard Gayheart's guitar very well since some months ago when somebody Scott knows came and adjusted the mics and the amp with the speakers in relation to the space it's in. Willard's gallery is a place where the walls are covered with rectangles of glass. Harsh reflectors of sound vibrations. But it works very well. When they played a show after the tune-up of the sound system, I heard Willard's guitar the first time. Before, his rhythm guitar was lost in the rhythm. Now I can hear his picking. He picks a bass string, then one or two of the lower strings per chord. He doesn't always strike the same strings. He never looks down at the strings, but his fingers hold the pick and dance on the strings knowing exactly where they are from 70 years of picking rhythm. I watch his ease with his guitar; it's like my ease with the keyboard. I learned to type in high school, the most valuable class I had in school, along with drivers ed. Now I can almost keep up with my thoughts writing, like now. I type slowly because I follow the thoughts, pause to listen to them, weigh their tone of voice with what I think I'm saying. Like I really don't want to lose it like Alex Jones in the video with Piers Morgan about guns. The interview wasn't with Morgan as much as at him. Jones embarrassed himself. The humor is that he will never see it like that. He probably thinks he got Morgan told. I like some of his documentaries. He has become so carried away with rant by now that, like I said, he embarrasses himself. It's good comedy, the reason the video went viral. 

 

Willard's guitar comes through the speakers and I can distinguish his notes now. He does not strum. He picks. One string at a time. Per down stroke he will hit 2, 3 or 4 strings, one at a time, in the same amount of time it takes to strum it. The fingers of his left hand move into awkward chords with the ease of a bird taking a drink of water. As I appreciate Scott's musicianship in a continuing and growing way, I also appreciate Willard's musicianship the same. In Willard I see subtleties come to the surface over time. This evening I was noting how he extends the last syllable of a phrase mountain-style that comes out of Primitive Baptist singing, those long slow last words to the lines, often one syllable sung as two. Ralph Stanley sings like that, though in his own way and Willard in his own way. I described Willard's singing to Cheri Choate at the coffee shop today, saying his bluegrass is not Bill Monroe's bluegrass, but Willard Gayheart's. This is why I love Willard's bluegrass so much. It's not the bluegrass you hear over and over with the banjo that sounds like the same picker from band to band. Willard's singing at 80 is the best, to my ear, it's ever been and he's always been an extra good singer. These weekly shows keep his fingers nimble and his wits about him, keep his approach to the music fresh, keep him in such good practice that Willard appears to me to be flowering in his later years. A chrysanthemum. It does my heart good to hear Willard and Scott's music. That's where it feels good, in the heart.

 

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FILMING THE HIGHLANDERS

jimmy zeh at front porch gallery



Been looking at videos hearing the Highlanders from last night, playing every one of the tunes recorded, going through them, culling the ones that didn't take for one reason or another. Last night the music was good, but next day on video I heard a lot I missed. The Highlanders have been a band 40 years. From the beginning, I could hear these guys know how to play bluegrass together. I have a cassette of Highlanders music. There's none on cd. Last night's performance was better than the cassette. Last night was memorable. The recorded music is good, but there's nothing like a concert. The concert is the present form of theater. I've seen concerts of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly & the Crickets, Fats Domino, the Chantels (a black girl singing group I loved in high school years--had two hits, Maybe and Every Night), Bill Haley & the Comets, Ricky Nelson, Grand Funk Railroad, the Cars, Bob Dylan, Parliament/Funkadelic, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Burning Spear, Papa Roach, Bo Didley, Rufus, Kiss, Dr Hook & the Medicine Show, and a bunch more.



I've always found a concert a theater experience and tend to prefer concert albums by a band to studio recordings. Like Sade's concert gives her songs a dimension not heard on the studio recordings. In like manner, hearing studio recordings of the Highlanders is good bluegrass, but in concert with an audience of ten and the cat that lives there is another experience all together. A ways into the concert, a man in the audience said to the band they "would be a good professional band." The bass player picked it up and said, "Would be?" What the man evidently didn't know is they have been and have, in effect, had their day. They played at the World Fair in Knoxville in the 80s when they were a driving Galax band. I was seeing this concert as one of those great moments in the music of SW Virginia, a Galax bluegrass band that is mountain music as good as it gets, Willard the vocalist. Willard put up a display of posters advertising their shows in the past. Buddy Pendleton was their fiddler. He couldn't make it last night. Buddy Pendleton is one serious fiddler. The man knows how to get every note there is in a fiddle out of it. Scott Freeman played the fiddle.



I feel like I'm archiving this music at the Front Porch Gallery putting it on YouTube and on dvd disks. I feel like every one of these concerts is important to record the best possible. At Walmart on the way home picking up some dvd blank disks, I saw a small video camera for $500 and laughed passing by on the way to find the disks. What I have for a whole lot less does as good as that one does. It may have something about it that makes it better, but it couldn't give better visual quality. Only the sound could be improved and it probably is not much better on the expensive one, if better at all. The only part I'd want different would be silent gears zooming the lens in or out. On mine, the zoom gears get recorded into the soundtrack. As a result, I don't zoom during a song. I'll put it where I want it at the start and leave it there. I feel like this music happening at the Front Porch is a testament of mountain music as it is played in this particular time and place.



Willard has been with Highlanders 40 years. At the same time he was associated with that band, he was working with Skeeter & the Skidmarks in the early half of the 90s. Skeeter's 2nd album is titled Alternate Roots. When Edwin Lacy had to leave the area, Willard and Scott pulled together another band they called Alternate Roots. I think I saw AR in concert 15 times. I say freely that AR is my favorite band. They made 4 albums, every one of them a gem. It's funny about the Highlanders not having anything on cd. Bobby Patterson, mandolin in the band, has the recording studio where he records the old-time and bluegrass bands of SW Virginia. The magazine Old-Time Herald was begun in the basement of his Heritage Record Shoppe when it was in Galax. Now it's at Woodlawn, next to Willard's Front Porch Gallery. It's like the guy working at the auto body shop drives a car that looks a mess. The house painter's house needs painting. Bobby doesn't pay much attention to recordings of his own band.



Jimmy Zeh's banjo has a sound of its own. When he's playing it, it sounds good, but he makes it look like he's not doing anything. It doesn't look like he's doing anything complicated with his fingers or going for subtleties. Looks like he's just pickin, relaxed, riding the wave of the music, having a ball, doing what he likes to do best. When I hear it next day in the videos it feels like I missed an awful lot last night. His banjo today is much more intricately played than what I heard in concert. It's the same thing. Only difference is my own hearing at one time and another. His banjo in concert seems low key, takes the background. In the recordings that banjo is dancing all over the place. I hear much more deeply what he's doing. Perhaps there are a lot of distractions at the show, like holding the camera, but with or without the camera the music sounds the same. I may even pay closer attention holding the camera. My mind doesn't wander when I'm focusing on holding the camera still as possible.


Half a dozen of the videos are up by now. To find them, go to: http://www.youtube.com/ and write in the Search box, hobblealong1. There you will find near the top the music I'm putting in today and all that went before.



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JIMMY ZEH AT THE FRONT PORCH

      mike gayheart, bass; jimmy zeh, bluegrass banjo

Tonight was Jimmy Zeh (pron: zay) playing banjo at the Front Porch in Woodlawn, Virginia, with Mike Gayheart (son of Willard) playing bass, Willard Gayheart, guitar, and Scott Freeman, mandolin. Everybody sang, Willard mostly. Jimmy Zeh and Willard have been with the Galax bluegrass band, the Highlanders, 40 years. Tonight was like a Highlanders get together for them. It was a good band for a couple hours of music. Scott's artistry with the mandolin is like the waves on a lake the moonlight dances on. As usual, I leave the house with expectation high as the sky and come home satisfied every week. Jimmy Zeh wasn't one to put himself forward and be the star of the show. He made music with the other musicians, the four of them a quartet.

He's a good entertainer and a good banjo picker and everything about his demeanor says he's a good man. His wife was along. She was so comfortable with him it told me he's as good a man at home as he appears out and about. I had the feeling loud and clear that what I was seeing of him is who he was. The man inside is the very man on the outside. He was interesting to me in that way, a man open and friendly other people tend to like, and it's all from who he is, not what he thinks he ought to be or putting on fakery. His wife sang a song with him and when they were singing she was looking at her best friend. I felt good for both of them. They seemed truly happy they're together. I can't help but admire what I see as genuine love between two people who have been mates a long time. It's not particularly common. Or, anyway, it's not common in my experience.

As I'm painting Willard now, I find I'm thinking more about what Willard has done musically in his time in Galax. He's made several albums with the Highlanders, 2 albums with Skeeter and The Skidmarks, 4 albums with Alternate Roots, 2 with Bobby Patterson of their duo. He's done countless performances on stage, has been a bluegrass singer all the way along. He writes good songs. All these bands have a foundational sound that runs through all of them that is the Willard Gayheart sound. Willard and Scott, his son-in-law are intuitional partners in music. Most importantly, they inspire and encourage one another, make music together as one. It's family music with a guest artist each week.

Next week is Butch Robbins, from Pulaski, Virginia. He's played quite a while with Bill Monroe and is one of the better respected bluegrass banjo pickers up there with Terry Baucom, meaning he's that kind of good. Getting Butch Robbins there is as good as getting Jeanette Williams there. These are people who command pretty fair rates for musical performances. They play at the Front Porch for gas money. It's a fun jam with good musical friends who play so well it's a joy to make music with them. All the musicians who have played there love making music with Willard and Scott, because they're such seasoned musicians, so good at making the music flow, and so generous musically in that they support the guest artists, not outshine them.

Good show tonight. It felt like a band playing tonight. They made good music together and worked well together passing the music from one to the next. I took Josh Willis along from the Willis farm next door. He's passing through on his way from Philadelphia to New Orleans via Chattanooga to see his brother Hank. Josh is a musician with an old-time banjo and a bass. He came away from the music tonight saying it inspired him. I'm willing to spend my gas money to drive to Woodlawn and back every week to hear this music that is among the best in the central Blue Ridge by musicians playing for gas money. There is something very real about this music and the people that make it.

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