HILLBILLY DJ

the carter family

From social moments I've engaged in over the last weeks I'm seeing I don't know how to talk to anybody anymore. Never did, really. Consciously worked at learning to be witty and entertaining, but it never took. Something like taking a chemistry class when I never wanted to know anything about chemistry. I couldn't learn those letters with the lines between them. It was opaque as trying to learn to read music. It never took. I understand what people who cannot read see when they look at a page of words, same thing I see in a sheet of music. At piano concerts I've been to, Peter Serkin, Artur Rubinstein, some others with familiar names and some without, I see people reading music and playing really fast, I'm in awe, even knowing they've practiced it ten thousand hours and don't need the written music but for emergency moments, like somebody coughs and distracts the musician for a tenth of a second. I'm in awe of anybody who can read music and play at the same time, even make music of it. A musician is someone who likes to play the same thing over and over working on nuances, smoothing the finger work, learning the tune so well it's automatic. Playing old-time mountain music of no written notes and no written words, passed from musician to musician, is a matter of subtle musicianship as subtle as more "serious," school educated music that is indeed more advanced for having been written over hundreds of years, studied and played by serious musicians. Years and hours of mastery of an instrument matures with age in hillbilly music as in classical. Jascha Heifetz's violin is the only classical violin that has made tears run down my face like hillbilly fiddling does when it's by Tommy Jarrell or Fred Cockerham or Howard Joines sawing the strings.

the carter family

First time I heard Heifetz play Scottish Fantasy, by Max Bruch, I'd been in the hills a few years, had a few LPs of hillbilly fiddling I didn't listen to much, but liked. I was in the house with a classical station on the radio. Scottish Fantasy came on and the fiddle went straight to my heart like a bolt of joy lightning. I flopped down in a chair and wept throughout the song. It's the same thing that happens to me at a Ralph Stanley concert. The music is so beautiful my heart overflows with joy and tears run down my face. The name Ralph Stanley comes to mind and my eyes dampen. The names of the Carter Family, Sara, AP and Maybelle, dampen my eyes. Can't leave out Carter Stanley who can make you feel a song, like Sara Carter, with a plain voice telling the story, like few other singers do for me. I think I have everything the Stanley Brothers recorded, the Carter Family too, also Uncle Dave Macon, another of the great ones. In the time I had the music store of mountain music, I had speakers outside that played onto Main St, hillbilly music all day long. One day a car parked in front, a middle-aged woman driving. She left the car to pay a bill or something, leaving an old man, evidently her dad of 90+. I noticed the bill of his ball cap bobbing up and down and his fingers tapping rhythm on the armrest of the open window, Dave Macon clucking his banjo. The old boy too feeble to drive could still be moved by good music. Dave Macon used to play in the very building when he came to Sparta to play at the Spartan theater, now the Jubilee, in the 1940s. The building in that time was DC Bledsoe's Ford dealership. Local musicians jammed in the showroom with Uncle Dave and his musicians the afternoon before the show. A fruit jar went  the rounds and everybody got right for the concert. 

the carter family

Had a radio show on Saturday mornings of regional mountain music on the local AM station, until it was sold to a preacher who shut it down and left it. It was a bitter shame for Sparta to lose its station. Every Saturday morning I went to the station from ten to eleven and played mountain music from here in this county, surrounding counties and the Central Blue Ridge. Never had to play the same thing twice, but by choice. I searched for everything I could find from here by local musicians, tapes they made practicing, recordings. Local fiddler, Art Wooten, recorded 9 songs with Bill Monroe, played the first bluegrass song to be played on Grand Ole Opry, Mule Skinner Blues, in January, 1939, with Bill Monroe's band. He forever has the title, The First Bluegrass Fiddler. I often referred to the show as music from home. Art recorded, I think, eight songs with the Stanley Brothers and four with Flatt & Scruggs. Often I'd devote an hour to a given band or artist, an hour of Whitetop Mountain Band, an hour of Alternate Roots, an hour of Big Country Bluegrass. My purpose was to give the people of the county who love their own music a chance to hear it. The radio show was one of my many art forms. It was a creative expression as dj, making an hour of good mountain music to fill the listener's ears with joy. I had no idea how many people listened, who, or anything. I talked to a black microphone. It was my listener. It took a little time to learn how to talk to a black tennis ball as though it were conscious, like Hamlet talking to a skull. I went to Dudley Carpenter at first to teach me how to dj. He was a good teacher. He taught me how to do it right. I didn't want to do it right, but wanted to know how. I wanted to talk no more than to tell who made the music and song titles. Occasionally, I'd tell a little something, but my attention was on playing the music. 

the carter family

It was my favorite hour of the week. Eventually, I got the feel for people hearing it at home, driving, living their lives. I loved the Carter Family so much and knew my listeners loved them even more than I did, people of the same culture as the Carter Family, I could not talk during a Carter Family show. Everybody knew the titles, I didn't need to introduce any song. I sat with tears flowing down my face for an hour loving the music and happy my listeners were loving it too. My style as a dj was more NPR than commercial. I talked reasonably. Mountain people don't like to hear a lot of talk. They want to hear music. I played music. When it was the Stanley Brothers, tears ran down my face the whole hour. They are so of these mountains. The Carter Family, The Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson are the voices the soul of the Southern Appalachians chose to sing through. These musicians, in my heart's way of hearing them, are of these mountains to the place they are these mountains. The only Christmas song I never tire of hearing is Ralph Stanley's Beautiful Star of Bethlehem. It tears me up every time I hear it. He can make you feel a gospel song in the heart. I had a good time sharing the beautiful music of these hills with the people whose music it was. I never imagined in earlier life I might one day be a dj playing mountain music on a local AM station in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Backwoods Beat Music Hour. I loved my listeners, even though I did not know who they were. Occasionally, in the grocery store or post office I'd fall into conversation with someone who told me they listen. I've met some wonderful people like that. The radio show was an expression of my love for the people of the county, a thank you for allowing me to live here in peace.        

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RETURN OF ALTERNATE ROOTS

 

alternate roots

 scott freeman, mark freeman, katy taylor, tony testerman, willard gayheart

 

alternate roots

Friday night, the Fiddle And Plow show at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop in Woodlawn, Virginia, the core of the band, Alternate Roots, played a reunion. Plus Scott's brother Mark, who came to hear the show, had a banjo in the car, and Scott asked him to join the band. He's a good picker, plays in the Freeman brothers band, Pathway, a bluegrass band emphasis on gospel. Alternate Roots started in the 1990s with Scott, Katy, Tony and Willard on their first album, Tales of Love and Sorrow. They added Randy Pasley on dobro, who appeared on their second album and the others following. Steve Lewis came in next with bluegrass banjo and lead guitar for their third and fourth albums. It became a dynamic band. The show Friday night seemed like a combo of the full orchestra that Alternate Roots became. After the fourth album, Planted In Tradition, the band went away, their last show being at the Carter Fold off hwy 58 a half hour or so beyond Bristol, VA/TN. I made several photographs and a few videos of the Friday night show. Caught myself while holding the video camera singing along and had to be conscious of my own unconscious singing. I've not been there in probably seven to eight months. Stopped going in winter when the dark came early and Galax headlights made my eyes crazy at a time everybody is going home from work. I fell out of the habit of going, and missed several shows I might have gone to, but let them go, dreading the drive. When I saw that Alternate Roots was playing, I made it a point to be there. It was good to be back after so long a break to see familiar faces who go every week. My friends visiting from Atlanta, Lucas and Judy, intended to go, but Lucas had a spell of not feeling well, so Judy went along and had a stellar musical experience.

 

katy taylor, tony testerman, willard gayheart

 

katy and tony

 

Katy and Willard did most of the singing. I always like hearing Katy and Willard sing. I know all the songs and sing with them inside my head. Tony plays a bass with quite a lot more going on than just keeping rhythm. He keeps the rhythm so well the musicians don't have to think about the rhythm, and he plays it in such a way it enhances the song flowing with the melody as well as the rhythm. He is not a thump-thump bass player. There were times I would like to have heard just Tony's bass, not necessarily a solo, but to hear better what he was doing with the strings. We tend to think of the people who keep rhythm as secondary to the band. But they are as integral to the band's sound as the banjo or fiddle, lead guitar or dobro. Willard's rhythm guitar playing is amazing picking when I pay close attention to what he is doing. He does not strum. He picks two strings, individually, each swipe of the pick. His noting fingers change chords without thought. He's 81 and been picking since childhood. Katy picks a good rhythm guitar too. Katy's delight was visible having a chance to pick with Willard. She told me some years ago she loves making music with Willard. There were times I saw her watching Willard sing like she was in awe. And for good reason. She hears Willard. Willard's singing and picking do not draw attention to themselves. He sings a song to deliver the words. Pay close attention to Willard's singing once and you'll always pay attention thereafter. Willard has taken the Hank Williams song, Mama Tried, and made it his own. To my ear, he has made The Yellow Rose of Texas his own. Before I heard the words Willard goes by, the original lyrics before it was changed to be the Texas state flower, I wondered why old-time fiddlers of the past liked the song. It makes a beautiful fiddle tune, and with Willard's lyrics it makes a beautiful song.

 

willard gayheart

 

willard  a-pickin and a-singin

 

Willard sings in the mountain tradition of, it's the song not the singer. In pop music, like in the Rolling Stones lyric, it's the singer not the song. In hillbilly music the singer delivers the song in his own style of singing. Being true to the integrity of the song applies to vocals as well as to the instruments. Willard sang lead vocals with his Galax bluegrass band, The Highlanders, over forty years. He sang with the bands he and Scott made together, Skeeter and the Skidmarks and Alternate Roots. He likes Texas swing, too, makes good music with Bob Wills songs, Take Me Back To Tulsa, Little Red Wagon. Scott likes Bob Wills, says his dad played Bob Wills all the time he was growing up. Willard and Scott play often and have recorded some Texas swing. Scott does a good version of Bob Wills' Roly Poly, and makes it his own, to my ear. Scott and Willard don't slow the Texas swing down, either. I used to care nothing for Texas swing, then heard Willard and Scott playing it. At an Alternate Roots show in Jefferson, the next town to the west of Sparta, I heard Willard sing Catfish John. They never put it on a recording, but that night Willard brought Catfish John to life for me. Katy's vocals gave Alternate Roots its own special sound. Her first song at the show was the John Prine song, Hello In There. Katy makes that one her own. I've heard John Prine sing it, and it's good. But after I've heard him sing it once, that's enough. I can hear Katy sing it over and over. It is on Alternate Roots first album. She sings it like a gospel song. Come to think of it, Katy sings everything with the reverence given a gospel song.

 

katy a-pickin and a-grinnin

 

katy a-singin

 

I was glad my friend Judy had a chance to hear Katy perform. Judy played guitar and sang in her school years and let it go preoccupied with being a wife and mother while having a full time job. Now that her baby is grown and gone with a baby of her own, Judy has retired from her work and needs something to occupy her attention. She is taking up the guitar again and singing. Katy was an inspiration for her. Judy was appreciating her singing to the full. Judy bought Alternate Roots first album, the combo that played Friday night, and spoke with Katy some about singing. Judy is a good singer. I'd like to see her bring it out in the open again. So what if she hasn't played and sang in over thirty years. Tommy Jarrell and Pop Birchfield, both by different circumstances, stopped playing fiddle for forty years. When they took it up again, they were the great fiddlers of their time. Evidently, not playing for such a period of time must be to the good for the individual musician. I'm thinking of an experiment where one participant threw a basketball at a hoop half an hour a day for a month. Another threw a basketball in his mind at a hoop half an hour a day for a month. At the end of the month, both had improved the same. It tells me Jarrell and Birchfield played the fiddle quite a lot, probably every day, in their minds while working in the fields, making liquor, whatever they were doing. I imagine Judy has continued to play in her mind. Scott played the fiddle and the mandolin. His brother Mark played Scott's mandolin some while Scott played fiddle. They grew up making music together, they play in a bluegrass band together, they know how to flow together making music. It was combo music the band made, relaxed and flowing free, music made by people who have flowed together musically for a great many years. 

 

scott freeman and mark freeman

 

scott and mark

 

 

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LIGHTNESS IS LIFE

a truck load of wood gathered while I was inside writing

Today begins the blogathon I am reluctant to set in motion. I find I would rather sleep, would rather read, would rather make some coffee, would rather feed the cat, would rather watch a movie, would rather just about anything. I find myself in avoidance behavior like I do given an assignment. Time to get out the checkbook and pay bills, I start looking for something else to do. Went to take a nap a little bit ago, because considering the assignment, I wanted to sleep. We are to get a "prompt" daily. Today's prompt was six essay questions. I felt like I was facing a final exam with six questions to answer in three hours. GO.

melvin and gail saw the log

 

First question: Why do I exist? Only one brief answer enters my mind. Sexual intercourse. I take existence to mean with a physical body in a physical dimension. That's why I exist. A 21 year old guy and 19 year old girl doing what they're supposed to do, got married and had a baby. They were conforming, not long out of conformity training.

 

done for the day

 

Second question: What is my purpose on earth? To live my life. That's all I know.

melvin

 

Third question: What is the why behind my creative work? Necessity. It's like a beagle is bred to chase rabbits and finds its fulfillment chasing rabbits. Art has been the only subject of my interest since first memories. I suspect very strongly many past lives an artist. Never had an art class. It was like I already knew how when I started. The high school I went to had an art class, but looking in the doorway at what they were doing, it looked to me like a bunch of silly shit and I didn't want to do silly shit. Growing up I was told "take business administration courses, that's the only way you're gonna make money." I hated business administration class. Failed it because I hated it so much. All the adults in my life were telling me to make money. Money was the only purpose I was given while growing up for a reason to live. Then there was church making adult life look like the worst existence possible. Go to church all the time, never drink, suppress sex, believe stuff nobody in their right mind can fall for, and live in guilt calling it God's will. Parents, public school, church and military all taught the same thing: conform and make money. Forget art, it doesn't make money. All my training to the time I entered college after doing military first was make more money. Ya gotta make money. The kind of work that paid best was the kind that took over your life. I was coming into discovering my life my own and did not want to give it away to making money. When I flunked business administration, I settled with myself that I will never make money. I'll work low paying jobs and live on little. Low paying work does not require that I BE my job. No status, no problem.

gail

 

Fourth question: What do I want to be remembered for? I suspect I'll be remembered for tuning the people of Alleghany County to their own musical heritage they'd largely forgotten. Had a music store for four years that sold mountain music cds and a radio show for seven years on the local AM station of local and regional music. Helped put together a 4-cd set of musicians from the county. Gave my collection of regional music to the library. Have written some articles for Old-Time Herald magazine concerning local musicians, the most recent a fiddler named Howard Joines. Have worked with people doing field recordings and have done a few. My goal was to set in motion an appreciation that would take a life of its own, which it has done. I paint portraits of local musicians.  I'm known by the mountain people as somebody who came in from the outside and appreciated their way of life and who they are. I'll be remembered by some an asshole and by some a cool dude. How I'm remembered has never entered my mind before today. I have a name for being an artist, so that's probably the first way I'll be remembered. I don't even like to think about post-death, except for the tunnel of light and angels leading the way. The question was what I want to be remembered for. What I'd want would be something like, was good to animals. Anything that happens after the moment of my mortal frame's last breath, I care nothing about, except for my own celestial experience. Some will cry as I have cried in the past losing friends, and some will be glad, as I have been in the past. It's not my concern.
 

justin

 

Fifth question: Three or more words why I create art. Art is fun.
 

melvin, gail, justin

 

Sixth question: A tshirt message about my purpose or mission creating art. LIGHTNESS IS LIFE.

 

justin, melvin, gail

 

That wasn't so hateful. Turned out to be fun by the end. I never ask myself why I exist. Conception happens. Writing the daily blog for almost five years, it has become my daily purpose. Just the writing is the purpose. I don't want to write or make any kind of art with an agenda, attempting to convince somebody of something. I am the anti-commercial. I'm self-taught. Everything I do is the first time. That's what I like about art. Every time is the first time. My friends who hunt speak of hunting the same way. One says hunting is better than sex, because hunting is the first time every time and sex is the same thing over and over. The chrysanthemum is my flower, the late bloomer. This lifetime is a learning lifetime. Learning has been number one since my beginning. In the later part of the life, I'm weaving together what I've learned into my art expressions.

 

 

down south

 

 

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

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson, butch barker

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson, butch barker

 

 

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

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland, gerald anderson

 

scott freeman, spencer strickland

 

spencer strickland, gerald anderson

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

 

gerald anderson

 

scott freeman

 

scott freeman

scott freeman, spencer strickland

 

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

 

butch barker, scott freeman

 

gerald anderson, butch barker

 

spencer strickland

butch barker

 

 

 

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FEELING IS EVERYTHING

australian aboriginal art

Sometimes a picture I see in facebook or someplace else will be a problem for my visual interpretation. Just now I saw one of a white man in a black uniform pushing a corpse wrapped in white on a gurney into the back of an ambulance, at night, seen from the side, light source inside the ambulance, a red light. I had to look at it for a long time before I could see anything but an abstraction. I'm so used to seeing abstractions in art that when I can't make out the subjects in a photograph, it automatically looks like an abstraction of colors. Just before that I saw a thing on facebook of an animated woman turning on one foot like a dancer. If I'm right-brain dominant, I'll see her go clockwise. If I'm left brain dominant, she'll go counter-clockwise. First time I looked, she was going clockwise and I could not see her going the other way. I looked away at something and when I looked back, she was going counter-clockwise. Then I could get her to change direction by looking away and looking back at her. Evidently that means I've a fair balance of left brain / right brain. Under the twirling image was a list of what constitutes right brain and what constitutes left brain. I read them both. Right brain tends toward intuitive and left brain toward reason. I feel like it's true to say that I live by a fair balance of left and right brain. I imagine anyone who reads these writings more or less regularly can see it, and possibly it is your base reason for reading them.

alex katz

I'm recalling a conversation with a lawyer friend a few months ago when he said of somebody we were talking about, "That's not logical!" It stunned me to hear someone say that. In a nano-second I processed in my head, he's been a lawyer all his adult life, he knows humanity, and in his sixties believes logic has something to do with human behavior. I blurted out a little too much in my shock to hear it, "Logic? Logic only matters in math." We don't do no logic round here. It caused me to reflect that the only place I've seen logic apply in adult life is in court, or somebody deciding not to kill somebody for pissing him off, the logic of considering what's next. He spends his time in court where logic matters. I was looking at it from outside court where logic doesn't have much of a role, except maybe sometimes making a given decision when you have to weigh the odds. I found it interesting that logic was a given for him in his world, and barely anything at all in the world I live in. In my world, emotion still plays a large role in someone's life, people who live by the heart. It's when we live by the mind that logic becomes an issue. Urban living is more of the mind than country living. In the country we're not on the climb for more money and status, and we're more relaxed to live our lives completely illogically if we can get away with it. It's like the law takes care of logical thought for us and we do our best to stay out of trouble with the law. That takes care of our need for adherence to logic.

morris graves

I remember in my first years in the mountains being astonished by logic having little to no importance. They were still living by the heart when I went off to school and the urban work world where logic sometimes has value. What I'm getting at, it's been a long time since I've thought that way, the urban, college-educated way of using logic. I do, but I don't use the word. I've seen in the mountain people I live among the value of living by the heart. I felt I was heart-deficient when I came to the mountains, too much emphasis on mind, reason, logic. People who live by the heart are often guided by their emotions making a rollercoaster ride of everyday life. I was struck in the beginning years of observing mountain culture that emotion played such a leading role, even in tone of voice and rhythms of speech. I've talked with a very few old-timers who continued to talk in the emphatic every other syllable iamb like in Shakespeare, Elizabethan rhythms. Old-time fiddlers used to keep the rhythm while playing melody from the days when the fiddle was the only instrument for square dances, before banjo and guitar came along to take care of the rhythm. The iambic emphasis carried emotion very well, could be used for emphasis of emotion behind the content spoken. The oldest time old-timers I met years ago sounded like song when they talked.

plum tree japanese

I grew up in urban culture schooling where reason has come in to replace emotion as the next step in our collective development. In the mountains, I found that the people still valued emotion, didn't mind talking with hearty emotional emphasis. I loved hearing people talk with emotional emphasis. I had shut down emotion in myself in childhood, except of course, for anger. By mid thirties when I arrived in the mountains a year after engaging myself with the Divine Will, whatever that is, which I set to find out, my spiritual path was about opening my heart to love. My parachute landed me in a world of people who continue to live by heart, a subculture. Living among the mountain people I have found my heart among people not afraid to flare up in rage, get drunk and be stupid, fight, cuss, threaten, and on the other hand help, support, love, care for, look after with generosity of heart. Mountain men like to act like they're hard-hearted, but when their women leave them and take the kids, they break, they break all the way down, and many pop a cap in their heads to quiet their agony. From the outside, that looks kind of pathetic to be such a slave to emotion, but from the inside, from inside the culture, it's how a man feels. Jr Maxwell of Whitehead, banjo picker, welder, tractor mechanic, told me at the table over a dram of good mountain liquor with emphasis, "Feeling is everything."

christo

Mountain music is not music when it is not played from the heart. Almost every Saturday morning after my radio show on the local AM station of mountain music I'd stop by Jr's to visit with him for a few hours on the way home. I almost only played musicians of the mountains born in the mountains playing mountain music as it is played in this region, the Central Blue Ridge. That would be northwestern North Carolina, northeastern Tennessee, southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. It's a fountain of music all up and down the Appalachians, each region with it's own sound, or personality as I've come to see the differences. One Saturday morning I decided to play an old-time band from Durham that seemed to have a pretty good mountain sound. The fiddler played well, banjo too. Jr would usually tell me what he thought of the music I played that day. He leaned more to bluegrass than old-time and I leaned more toward old-time than bluegrass. It kept me reminded this was the case among my listeners too, people who liked both, so I didn't want to make one dominant over the other. After playing the Durham band he didn't say anything. I asked what he made of it. He said, "Weren't no music in it." I said, "I know," at that moment understanding for the first time after wondering for some years what he meant by the word music. Music comes from the heart. The urban old-time band from the flatland was playing from mind. I never played another band from outside the mountains on the radio show. It's not that their music is invalid, just that I called the show "music from home," from the heart. My listeners knew the difference too.

 

barnett newman

 

The evidence convincing me that mountain music is played from the heart, is that mountain music is the only music I've ever heard of any kind of music that can make me weep for the beauty of it. I have sat at the radio station, tears running down my face, unable to introduce songs or talk at all while playing the Carter Family or the Stanley Brothers. They bring up my tears I love their music so much. Sara Carter sings in as plain a voice as there ever was, yet her singing goes straight to the heart, because she is singing it from her own heart. It's the resonance of the heart that makes mountain music mountain specific. It is that something in mountain music the people from outside the mountains tend not to be able to put a finger on or even hear. By now, after half a century of television and more years than that of radio, of city people moving their culture to the mountains, that old thing about the music needing to be from the heart is not necessarily a rule anymore. Through school, television and work, reason, logical thinking has been coming to the mountains. Being cut off from the coastal cities until the age of technology, the mountains were slow to pick up the next step in our collective development, from emotion to reason. Our next step is intuition, which age we have already entered. Intuition somehow transcends reason and emotion, mixes them up in a special blend, shakes them good like a martini and serves a new way of tasting the ingredients. Feeling and reason work together, one balancing the other, letting go and allowing the flow.

robert ryman

 

 

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SCOTT FREEMAN ~ BLUERIDGE FAR AWAY

scott freeman and Willard gayheart

 

 

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

 

 

dori freeman

 

 

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

 



 

steve lewis

 

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

 

 

 

david long and scott freeman

 

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

 

 

scott, willard and mike gayheart (son of Willard)

 

 

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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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