A LIFETIME OF NEW MUSIC

the milestone, charlotte nc

 

I've put on some music. I never have music on when writing. The music takes over my mind completely, whatever it is. If it's Prince or Thelonious Monk, Burning Spear, Muddy Waters, Nina Hagen, Joy Division, the list goes on and on, Philip Glass, the Alban Berg Quartet, Steve Reich, 20th century Russian and Eastern European composers, Thomas Mapfumo the Lion of Zimbabwe, SE Rogie a palm wine singer of Sierra Leone, Baaba Maal of Senegal, Femi Kuti of Nigeria, Ralph Stanley of the Virginia mountains, I am unable to do anything but listen. I put on a band called Tinariwen from Mali, Sahara Desert. Some electric guitar, regional instruments and singing. Complex rhythms, North African desert music, contemporary descendants of the kind of music King David used to play, where they have a one-string violin and other curious instruments that look easy and only a master can play well. I've had this album about ten years. Didn't care for it much first time I heard it. Waited awhile, still didn't care much for it. Put it on last week and have been listening to it since.

dirty south revolutionaries @ the milestone

 

I feel in tune with it today. It's exactly what I want to be hearing right now. Before, my head was probably going too fast for it. Now, the music is telling me what I want to hear. The music makes me move my shoulders and head with it. It's music you'd make if your daily rhythm was riding a camel. I like singing in a language I don't understand. Pop song lyrics are most often so boring I don't even want to hear them. I saw Taylor Swift is up for Grammy or something and likely to win. I've never heard her and don't want to. I've never heard Justin Bieber and don't want to. Corporate music. In the Sixties I got used to music you could not hear on the radio, had to buy the albums to hear them and listen to albums of friends. By the time the radio started playing Sixties rock, it was popified and I quit listening to it and shifted to punk at the beginning. Only college radio stations played punk for the first twenty-five years.

turd/cutter @ the milestone

 

Then I heard old-time hillbilly music and later did what I knew I would do, dove into it. Punk had been going on a few years when I went to my first fiddler's convention in Independence, Virginia, and heard the first hillbilly music of my life. I heard acoustic punk. A band of young musicians played, The New River Ramblers, James Burris on fiddle, his brother on banjo, and they rocked the place. It was raw hillbilly music for square dancing. The audience went crazy over them. I remember seeing legend Kyle Creed play his banjo and Albert Hash play fiddle. In old-time music, the whole band plays together, no fiddle breaks, no banjo breaks, the whole band plays all out. Fiddle, banjo, guitar and bass, as they say, jist a gittin it. Nobody in the band stands out. It's the whole band. It was like that in early punk and early rock n roll, everybody playing together and no lead guitar. Old-time had a list of standard songs to play from. The bands write their own songs in punk. One band is acoustic. One band is electric.

dollar signs @ the milestone

Punk was so vibrant and new at the moment, I wanted to follow where rock was going, its evolution, having been with it from the beginning, back to Lonnie Donegan and Eddie Cochran. I never wanted to lose interest in rock. I've taken an interest in punk bands playing in Charlotte and Winston-Salem now, regional bands. It appears a vibrant punk scene is happening all over the country in every city. Charlotte's punk scene is an awful lot like the beginnings of the London punk scene in 1975. Bands travel in vans from city to city. They're making a new kind of punk now. I should hope so. Punk has been going for forty years. I've been waiting to see where it's going next. Punk seems to have so much potential for self-expression, the changes happening are inside punk instead of leaving it and going someplace else. A couple decades ago, some punk musicians discovered old-time music. They'd become so familiar with electric guitars, they wanted to expand their abilities with acoustic and took up old-time. It became a trend that goes on today. The young now play old-time with a rock n roll drive, which is natural to old-time. In the old-time music world, it isn't music if it doesn't have that drive.

the seduction @ the milestone

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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SHOULDA BUT DIDN

the seduction the band

Fiddler's convention weekend is here and gone. I kinda wanted to go, but couldn't open the door to leave home. The thought of carrying a portable chair, finding a place to put it, sitting for hours in place is boring already. Somebody appears onstage, plays a traditional tune on an instrument and leaves. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else goes onstage and does the same thing. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Somebody else does the same thing. Sit and wait. It looks bad to take a book, looks intellectual in an anti-intellectual context, thus pretentious, but if I'd chosen to go, a book would have gone with me. The alternative to sitting and waiting for hours is to walk around in the parking lot among campers and visit different jams going on. This is always emphasized as the best part of the fiddlers conventions. But I don't enjoy this either. I prefer my live music in a program with a band playing several tunes, or a jam at somebody's house, getting into their musical groove and playing the tunes from the groove. I know it is fiddler's convention tradition and I'm supposed to like it, but I've tried it several times and never liked it. Supposed-to means as much to me as should, nothing. 

daniel biggins, guitar, vocals

Have felt minor guilt Friday and Saturday nights over expectation, expectation in self, not coming in from outside. Every year I have to analyze why I don't want to go when I feel like I should. There's the word. Every time should pops up anymore, I delete it. A meaningless word like needta and oughta. I make the decision not to go to the fiddler's convention and hear an imagined voice in my head, a voice presumed from outside self, "Well, you should." Next thing, I'm thinking, "Should? Not necessarily. By what authority?" Next time I talk with somebody in town, I may be asked if I went. I'll say no. Then, You should have. I'll say, Not necessarily. And that sets us off to a bad start. Should have gone, a meaningless word. To say I should have done something in the past other than what I did cannot be correct, because I did something else. What I did is what I should-have done. 

brandon hamby, guitar

My focus on the present, on living the life, has relaxed considerably since realizing the meaningless nature of the word should and it's siblings, needta, oughta, haveta, gotta. There is nothing I needta do that I don't choose for myself. Like somebody says the Stones are gonna be in Atlanta, you needta go. Uh, really? Spend a hundred dollars on gas round trip, at least a hundred on a place to stay overnight and food, and however many hundreds it costs to get in. Uh, I don't think so. I'd rather go to Charlotte to a small club and hear local punk bands for five dollars. Much rather. Big auditoriums and mega-parking lots don't do it for me anymore. It was cool seeing Jane's Addiction  and Siouxsie & the Banshees with 50,000. I could not get to London in 1978 to see Siouxsie, like I couldn't get to LA in 88 to see Jane's Addiction at a small venue. It was a matter of take what I can get. Though a huge mega-concert has its own thrill. I like a small place for the immediacy of sound. Last time I saw Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, when they'd finished their set, people around me talking sounded like they'd inhaled helium. The sign of perfect volume. 

jacob shelton, bass

All my life I've heard and read that rock n roll is ruining the hearing of the young, you shouldn't be listening to it. It's just three chords. Yeah, tell that to Jimmy Page. I've committed the sin of listening to rock n roll since age 12 when Bill Haley's Shake Rattle & Roll was first played on the radio. I remember at age 16 sitting on the floor in my room, holding the speakers of the tin-can stereo to my ears listening to Chuck Berry and Little Richard as loud as it would go. Home alone. Not knowing right from wrong. In late twenties, I sat about ten feet from a wall of speakers at a Grand Funk Railroad show, County Hall in Charleston. My ears rang for three days and nights. I loved it. Bands like Van Halen, The Cars and Kiss, I've heard so loud no ears were needed. The sound waves I felt in my skin. That's a good concert. I let myself be a guinea pig to see if there's anything to losing hearing. Haven't lost it yet. It may not be perfect, according to this study and that, and I know it's not, but I don't care. Hearing Johnny Winter in my head, "I was raised on rock," one of my rock n roll anthems of the mind. Shoulda? I shoulda done exactly what I did, listened  to all the rock n roll I wanted to. After college, I saw people I knew put their rock albums in boxes in the attic or basement and call it a youthful thing---like good grown-ups they're supposeta listen to something less committed, American Idol. Not me.    

the seduction the band

photos by tj worthington

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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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