MAPPING MY STUDIO SPACE

the road to independence

Day 5 of blogathon I squeeze down to one sentence: Bring to life the dynamics of your studio. This is serious mind. A studio is my life. The same chair I read, talk on the phone, listen to music and watch movies in is the chair I sit in while painting. I'll move the footstool and put a portable easel there with the canvas on it. An unfinished one has been on the easel over a year. Tired of that kind of painting--painting inside the lines. I want to approach painting in such a way that I'm not bored out of my mind with it before it's finished. For less articulate painting, I lay a piece of plywood, two by two and a half feet, on the footstool and use it for table top. The desk I write at is behind the chair. The chair is at the left of the desk from where I sit writing. The desk is in a corner with a big painting of a Chinese landscape behind, and in front of where I sit, a big painting of Meher Baba by Phyllis Ott. On the left of it the collection of rock, blues and reggae cds. On the right, the collection of classical, jazz and African cds. On a lower shelf, a bunch of books. Philip Roth's Exit Ghost between George Oppen's Collected Poems and Apollinaire's Alcools. Pictures on the walls all around, some photographs, some paintings, some by me, some by other people, five African masks; one, maybe two of them, "real." Home entertainment center against the wall in front of the chair. Flatscreen on the wall, and above it an oil on canvas portrait of my beloved cat, TarBaby, I will grieve the rest of my life, a dvd player, vcr, sound system with one wire, table loaded with dvds and cds. A couple of colored pencil drawings on the wall by Willard Gayheart. One of them is of me painting a portrait of him, Willard, and the other is Tommy Jarrell playing fiddle with Paul Brown (of NPR Morning Edition news) playing banjo. Paul Brown has recently retired from NPR. He's so great an old-time banjo picker, he's one of the rare people from Flatland who took to mountain music and made music like he was born in the mountains. Alice Gerrard has that quality too, to my limited ear.

the road to independence

Pictures of Meher Baba on the walls and one of Ganesh made in a dye process on cloth, behind glass in a frame. I love it. A friend brought it to me years ago from India, bought it in the Bombay airport from a vendor for next to nothing. It's probably made by somebody who makes the same image multiple times a day in a factory-like setting for a bowl of rice, maybe. I appreciate that about it as much as I appreciate the image itself, esp that it's Ganesh. Below it is my 22"x24" photograph life-size portrait of Meher Baba, head and shoulders, b&w photo hand-tinted in India by a devotee, so subtly it looks natural. It was given to me by Kitty Davy, one of Baba's circle of women devotees who lived on the Center at Myrtle Beach in her old age. It was 1976 that she handed it to me. It's in a gorgeous rosewood frame. She said someone at the Center in India had sent it to her and she didn't know what to do with it. She had no more room for pictures on the walls. She said if I'd like it I could take it with me. I about fell through the floor. Me? I deserve THIS? I'm not anywhere near deserving of anything so fine, so precious. She doesn't know me. This has to be a mistake. She's taken me for somebody else. She knows who she's giving it to. OK. Whatever. I'm certainly grateful to accept. It was like found money, but infinitely better. She said, "One day it will come to life for you." I did not understand what she meant then, and don't understand it now. It is the central image, the central point, the hub in my house. It is the focus point in this room I'm describing as my studio. In that way, it is a living image. Under it is a bookshelf with two rows of art books, mostly 20th Century; Brancusi, Duchamp, Warhol, Rivers, Johns, Rothko, Motherwell, Hockney, Serra, Surrealism, Dada, Minimalism, on and on. That's the nature of the collection. I love the art of the 20th Century.

 

the road to independence

 

I am currently exploring writing in my studio. I sit at a beautiful walnut desk of straight lines with a quarter inch sheet of glass on top. I bought it from an artist friend for so little it was the same as a gift. An HP laptop sits atop it. To the left of the laptop stands a block of wood 3.5 inches square, the cut off end of a 4x4. Around it on the desktop are 7 rounded stones of different colors, origins and sizes, and two such stones on top of it. I stack rocks on the wood block in moments when I'm writing and pause to scratch my head and ponder the next sentence, wait for it. I stack rocks to see how many I can stand. Four is the most I've been able to get. Can't make it with five. One of them is my universe rock, roundish from one way of looking at it, oval from the side. It is black with small whitish specks all over it of different speck sizes, like the night sky. It is smooth as a hen's egg and fits the palm of my hand like it's made for it. I call it the universe rock. I see in it the universe. Found it somewhere on the ground nearby, I have no recollection where, thirty-five-plus years ago. I always know where this rock is. It has spent several years outside living with the weather and the seasons as rocks do. I brought it back inside recently. It ended up on the desk. Then the block of wood came and the rock sat on top of it. I found some other rounded smooth rocks close by and stacked them. It doesn't hurt the glass top when they fall. They make a loud clack sound, though it's a soft landing with no sharp edges, no danger to the glass. How many rocks are on top, and which ones, has evolved into something like the arrangement of the day, since I stack rocks there every day. It took up spontaneously; the parts came together seemingly of their own volition. Now there are three rocks. Beside it, a 2cd case for Derek and the Dominoes Live at the Fillmore, 1970. One of the cds is in the player.  

 

the road to independence

 

The only studio need I can think of that would allow for ecstasy would be a warm floor in the winter. The floor is the same temperature as outside. When it's zero outside, the floor is zero. Waist-high it is 65 in the realm where the heater's air current flows. Cold feet make winter creativity difficult. It takes the zeal out of the will. This year I've bought especially warm socks and some good warm indoor boots. Tired of cold feet in winter. Best to sit with feet up and watch movies. Last night I watched a good documentary of the Persian Empire through existing ruins. It brought forward the realization I know nothing of Persia but Persian miniatures, Rumi, Hafiz, Zoroaster, and none of them very well. The Persian Empire played a role in the fate of the Old Testament Hebrews. And the Babylonian Empire. These are the foundations of the Middle East, like the Roman Empire is the foundation of Western Civ. Knowing nothing about the Babylonians or the Persians, I can't understand anything about the Middle East. The documentary brought it forward that the history of the Middle East is a vast gap in my at least cursory understanding of world history. I carry a great curiosity about origins. My wish list for what I'm exploring in my studio right now is more learning about Persia. It seems like I ought to know at least something about Persia before leaving the body this lifetime. This room I'm calling my studio is the inside of my head. It is where I live all day every day. One door goes to bedroom, another door goes to kitchen and bathroom, another door goes to storage rooms, and one door to outside. Three windows with no blinds or curtains, open to the world outside. It's the human zoo, here, where the critters outside look at the human behind the bars in the windows. As long as they can see the human is in its cage, they feel safe. When the door opens, they go flying in all directions, squirrels run across the road and up the trees. It's mayhem. And here come the donkeys. It's the ice cream man that lives in the human barn. Maybe he has a carrot.     

whitehead primitive baptist church

 

 

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THE ART OF WILLARD AND SCOTT

     scott freeman and willard gayheart

     by tj worthington

Decided not to drive to Woodlawn tonight. Of course, I regret it. Fog and forecast of much rain. Darkness, fog, rain. I don't care to drive two hours in it. I wouldn't mind it like it is now, minor sprinkles, light fog. I couldn't foresee it would be so little when the forecast was full of alarm, snow possible Sunday. We'll see. Anyway, I'm staying at home tonight missing Willard and Scott together. I'd rather hear Scott and Willard than any of the other people who come there. That's not saying little of the musicians that play there. It's saying a lot of Scott and Willard. I'm thinking of putting together all the videos I've made of them together on a DVD and play it at home. Same differ'nce. They're both good singers, good musicians, good songwriters, good people. They've made music together for well over 20 years. Scott is married to Willard's daughter, Jill. Jill looks like she could be a singer in a bluegrass band, though she's not. She'd make a good bluegrass singer. She has the style. I mean a mountain woman bluegrass singer, not Nashville. Willard has a son, who is an old-time and bluegrass bass player, and one who is a Primitive Baptist preacher. Willard is his own self. He's humble as a man can be, and it not forced, but true humility. Inside the quiet, humble man who is fine with the back seat, is a man who has his life, his way of seeing, that is uniquely his own.



Scott used to lay cinder block for a career, until his back went out and he couldn't do it anymore. He went to teaching full time. I don't know if he prefers teaching to laying block, but his teaching is a very valuable thing. He is passing the music of the region to the new generation of kids in their teens and pre-teens, and some adults. He's an excellent teacher. Kids pay attention to him. He connects with them. This is what is unique about Scott. When you're talking with him, he is engaged, he is paying attention, he speaks consciously, he connects who you are with who he is. Just eye-contact across the room is a communication, no more than, "hey," but it's living. Scott is very much a living being. Perhaps this is the artist in him, as artists tend to be alert and responsive, real artists. And Scott is as much an artist as Picasso or anyone else called an artist. Musicians are not often called artists, but they are; music is an art form. Scott's art form is tearing up a mandolin. I've got several pictures of him playing the mandolin; the ones I like best are closeup with his noting hand way high up on the strings close to his picking hand, him bent over that little bitty mandolin, something like a pianist playing a toy piano to look at. When he's really getting with it, he's way deep inside that mandolin.



When Willard speaks of Scott, it's always in awe of his artistry as a musician and a songwriter. Willard makes music and writes songs too, very well, but Willard sees in Scott an artistry beyond his own. Scott appreciates the artistry in Willard too, that Willard doesn't notice as art, like his perfect rhythm playing rhythm guitar, his excellent singing, his excellent songwriting, his excellent pencil drawings. Willard throws off on himself, there's really nothing much to what I do. I look around the walls, hear him singing Catfish John in my mind, listen to him play his Henderson guitar in my mind, look at him and say, I respectfully beg to differ. The artistry in what Willard does is in the life he puts into his art forms. He thinks his pencil drawings are just likenesses, but every one of them has a life in it that takes it beyond likeness. It becomes itself. Therein is the art. Anyway in my estimation. Willard committed to what he likes; he does his pencil drawing through the week as a full-time job, and keeps a frame shop that is also his gallery of prints of his drawings for sale. Commissions keep him going. He's good at doing commissions. Willard took the deep plunge and made it work. He makes his own living like he makes his own art. Self-sufficient comes to mind. He is his own company. His friend Bobby Patterson has done the same, contained his art forms and his living into a self-sufficient unit. For anyone who thinks mountain people are stupid, I offer these two examples to the contrary, to start with.



Willard has a spot at the Galax fiddlers convention among the vendors where he sells his prints and takes orders. He's drawn nearly all the mountain musicians, original bluegrass musicians. I recently came into one Willard made of Tommy Jarrell playing his fiddle and Paul Brown playing banjo. That's Paul Brown of NPR morning news. He's an old-time banjo picker in the tradition of Round Peak, on the order of Kyle Creed and Benton Flippen. Flippen played banjo as well as fiddle. Haven't found a place on the wall for it yet. It's propped up on a chair in front of where I'm sitting. It's in color. Willard hasn't done much in color. None of that has anything to do with why I love this image. The image itself is what I love about it. That it is Tommy Jarrell and Paul Brown is part of it, too. This is hillbilly music I can hear just looking at them. I know the sound they're making. And I love the sound they're making. Willard caught in this one, like he does in the others, the act of making music. The engagement between the musicians is invisible, but it is there in the image as in life. You can feel it in Paul's gaze at Tommy's fiddle strings. It has the same feel that I like to get in my musician paintings, the connection between the musicians in the making of the music. Each one is inside himself and in tune with the others. It's a way of saying we really can get along with each other as individual human beings. We are able. Musicians have the key to getting along with each other. Make music.



Scott made the decision some time ago not to go after the tourbus bluegrass road circuit. I don't know his reasons; they're his. I'm glad he made that decision not to play anywhere that he cannot be home to sleep in his own bed at night, exceptions by choice. I don't mean I'm glad for my benefit and his expense for not doing it. No. I'm glad for my benefit, of course, but even more glad for his benefit. He has self-discipline such that he can motivate himself. Staying at home, laying cinderblock and teaching the next generation of musicians, he's had two really terrific local bands, Skeeter and the Skidmarks, and Alternate Roots. Xcellent bands. They made some fine albums of a new bluegrass sound. The musical path Scott has chosen, staying at home in the Galax - MtAiry zone and living his musical life in that very active community, close to home, though it doesn't pay much, seems to keep him relatively relaxed. He's not tied up in knots or living on painkillers, as far as I know. He's making a solid contribution to the music of the region. Like Willard, he took the deep plunge and supports family by giving lessons in fiddle, mandolin and guitar, and his own musical ventures with Hungry Hash House Ramblers, Steve Lewis Trio, Skeeter and the Skidmarks, the McPeak Brothers, Pathway, Freeman and Williams, festival appearances, fiddlers conventions, recording. These are not bands of the past. These are bands he's active with in the present.

*

FIDDLER BENTON FLIPPEN

benton flippen of mt airy nc

The August-September issue of Old Time Herald arrived in the mail Saturday. At the mailbox I opened the envelope and pulled it out to see the cover. Steve Terrill, the cover designer, has a good eye for making an excellent cover image. It made my eyes jump. White in the midday sunlight was the first thing, then the lines. Ink drawing of 3 old-time musicians making music. The curving, curling lines in their clothes and faces made the patterns of the music they were making. 3 people sitting still and the rendering of the picture itself so active the picture comes to life on sight. That's what jolted my eyes: the picture was lines dancing all over the paper, the subjects making the music the lines visualize. The image has a living presence about it. I brought it in the house, sat with it a few minutes, flipping through the pages, looking at the pictures and the headlines, looking through the reviews of new projects to see if any from the mountains were among them. None this time. I was getting a feel for the nature of the issue.

This evening I was in good spirit after the day's movie, Harold And Maude, from about 1972. Had seen it twice before. One of my favorite movies. When it was over I didn't feel like getting up and doing something. I was comfortable. Good time to peruse Old-Time Herald. I looked at the article about Earl Murphy pictured on the cover, looked at the pictures, looked at the picture of the fiddler from southern Maine, Uncle Steve Kimball, deep-sunk eyes younger than his white beard. Noted the Bear Family ad for the 5cd set of the Bristol Sessions. What a treasure that must be. I think it's price is a treasure too. It looked like the issue would be a good one to read everything in it. Looking for something to read, my eye fell on the obituary, called Final Notes. Bold print Benton Flippen caught my eye in the middle of the page. I saw Paul Brown had written it, saw it was a page and a half, good. I'd been wanting to see what Paul Brown would write about Benton. He has made music music with Benton Flippen just about every summer since Benton's Camp Creek Boys days. He recorded quite a lot with Benton and made music with him. 

One of the first things I noticed when I heard Paul Brown's banjo on some tracks of Benton Flippen's Old Time/New Times, was he had the mountain sound in his pickin. When Kyle Creed died, banjo of Camp Creek Boys, and Fred Cockerham died, fiddle of Camp Creek Boys, Benton took Cockerham's place and put Paul Brown in Kyle Creed's place. That gave me a measure of Benton Flippen's regard for Paul's picking. If he can fill in for Kyle Creed with Creed's band, these guys respect Paul's picking. Paul has some projects of his own, Red Clay Country, and he plays banjo on fiddler Matt Brown's projects. I wanted to read what Paul Brown had to say of Benton Flippen, knowing Benton and his music as well as Paul does. I started seeing other names in bold print. An old-time fiddler from the eastern part of North Carolina, Smith McInnis. Fiddler Vernon Riddle of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Fiddler Kenny Baker of Gallatin, Tennessee, Bill Monroe's fiddler for 16 years straight and frequently before then. Tom Norman, banjo with Whit Sizemore's band, The Shady Mountain Ramblers, Galax, Virginia. 

These were on the two pages as the magazine lay open. On the previous page was fiddler Charles Summer of Buffalo, South Carolina. Spencer Moore, a guitar picker and singer from SW Virginia, around Chilhowie, Virginia. George "Speedy" Krise, a dobro picker from eastern Virginia, born and grew up in West Virginia. Several really serious musicians. I decided to read all of them, Paul Brown's remembrance first. Paul knew the musician in him best. I wanted to see what Paul had to say. In one of his insights into the man Benton Flippen, he said, "He believed in the obligation to be one's self while living the divine gifts of life." He added, "I don't know where he got that, but he believed in it." It sounds to me like something he got from Primitive Baptist church all his life, the Old Orchard Primitive Baptist Church. It's certainly an illustration of the mountain belief system, that it is an obligation to be yourself. Tenet number one in mountain culture.

Paul wrote of Benton's fiddling, "He made notes the way no one else did. His syncopations were like nothing I'd ever heard. His drive would have sent a frightened mule right through a thicket of hackberries." He gave a brief sketch of Benton's life that showed his character as shy and warm, Paul told about his years working in a sock factory, winning fiddlers conventions in the summers on weekends. Paul gave his kitchen the night of a jam at his house, Paul's house, where Benton spoke the sentences I found at the end of the album liner notes with the album, Old Time/New Times. I'd copied it into the computer, gave it a bigger font, cut it out and put it on the bulletin board at the store among other quotations. He said, "No point to sound just like the other man. Don't even try, 'cause you can't. You've got to sound like yourself, have your own style. That's the way it's supposed to be. Like the old feller said, It's all creamed taters, just fixed a little different." Paul wrote a beautiful memory of his friend.

*

  

PAUL BROWN BANJO

For all two of you reading this who listen to NPR news on the radio, you've heard Paul Brown read the news on the hour in the mornings. Paul has been with NPR for a long time. He is also an old-time banjo picker who comes to the mountains every year for fiddlers conventions from the DC area, lived here for a few years back in the 70s when he was soaking up the mountain sound in banjo picking, learning from pickers in our area. He's also picked quite a lot with MtAiry fiddler (and banjo picker) Benton Flippen. On Benton's Rounder album NEW TIME / OLD TIME, Paul Brown plays on two of the songs. Two of the only three commercial recordings available with Esker Hutchins of Dobson playing fiddle are on that album too.

Last year an album was released of Benton Flippen and his band The Smokey Valley Boys recorded by WPAQ in MtAiry, 1984. Shortly before this time Benton was fiddler with THE CAMP CREEK BOYS, a high-energy old-time band of the Round Peak sound around Low Gap. Kyle Creed also played fiddle. It's one of the great old-time albums, up there with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed's JUNE APPLE, Whitetop Mountain Band's BULL PLUS 10%, Fred McBride's STONE MOUNTAIN OLD TIME STRING BAND, the league of good as it gets.

AN EVENING AT WPAQ, 1984, by Benton Flippen and the Smokey Valley Boys is in that league. Paul Brown plays the banjo in the place of Kyle Creed, who had died by this time. Benton carried on the Camp Creek Boys minus Creed as the Smokey Valley Boys. Just the company Paul keeps on this album tells you the man can pick. When you hear it, you know for certain he can pick. This is music of northwest North Carolina, specifically Surry County, just across the county line to the east. Benton Flippen has played at the Jubilee in Sparta for several years. Closing in on 90, Benton is still winning fiddlers conventions every year.

Paul Brown recorded a solo album in 2006, RED CLAY COUNTRY. He plays the banjo with a band of his friends. Young fiddler from southern PA, Matt Brown, plays mountain fiddle awfully well. Paul aslo plays fiddle on some of the tunes. It's definitely mountain music made by somebody whose soul is in these mountains. Paul plays banjo on Matt's solo, LONE PRAIRIE. Another good album of mountain music.

I've been playing WAY DOWN IN NORTH CAROLINA, recorded 1996 by Rounder, with Paul Brown and Mike Seeger (Pete Seeter's half brother). Only the two of them playing different instruments on the different songs. At this moment they're playing LITTLE MAGGIE. Mike Seeger played fiddle with the New Lost City Ramblers from 1958-62. New York City boys playing mountain music as an old-time band such that lovers of old-time music respect them.

Mike Seeger has traveled these mountains as a folklorist throughout his life. He field-recorded old-time musicians all up and down the mountains. Recorded too much to list, but I have to mention he plays autoharp on Ralph Stanley's album of Carter Family songs, A DISTANT LAND TO ROAM, plays it beautifully. John Cohen, who played banjo with New Lost City Ramblers, has traveled up and down the mountains field-recording too, mostly interested in banjo pickers. Both Seeger and Cohen have recorded a large number of musicians in our area. Cohen made three beautiful b&w films of old-time musicians that are collected together on a dvd called THAT HIGH LONESOME SOUND. Cohen has a book of b&w photographs. He's another contributor to the legacy of old-time music in our mountains. These are people who know old-time music inside out. They live it with their entire lives.

I was keeping the volume down considering Jr was in his bed resting. He doesn't stay out of the bed for very long at a time any more. He's worn out all the time. A little bit ago he came pushing his walker in here, eyes lit up, saying, "That's good music!" He wanted to sit in here awhile to hear it better. I was a bit struck, because he doesn't like old-time much. The only music Jr ever wants to hear is bluegrass. Other musics are "just a racket" to his ears. He listened with much interest, which surprised me, still does, but less as I think about it. It's the musicianship that siezed and held his attention. It's musicianship that holds his interest in bluegrass. Some months ago I was listening to Benton Flippen at WPAQ when I first found the copy, feeling a little apologetic to Jr playing something I was afraid grated on his ears. He liked it. Liked it a lot. Again, it's the musicianship and he knew the older guys in the band, made music with them many years ago.

Paul and Mike don't make you feel like you need to get up and run to the kitchen to flatfoot by commanding your attention to the exclusion of all else like a lot of old-time tunes do. The musicianship is so fine and arrangements of the songs in new ways that are still the old ways so masterful, both the front of the mind and back of the mind enjoy it. Though it's all about sound, I found a stillness in it that I can only think of as meditative. A very comfortable stillness. It's like the music is dancing on the silence behind it. When the phone rings I don't feel like I have to turn it down, because whoever is on the other end will enjoy what they hear. It is music you can listen to while doing something else, and hear it as well as listening to it in the foreground, like I'm doing now. My attention never leaves it though my attention goes other places simultaneously. Every note rewards the listening. It's also accessible to ears not of the mountains, which an awful lot of mountain music is not.

The song that makes me stop to listen is Little Maggie. This is the 4th time I've heard it since the writing began, and I have to give it all attention every time. Beautiful rendering of that great old-time song Ralph Stanley more or less adopted. Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham did it their way. Grayson and Whitter did too. It's one of those old-time songs that continues to stay fresh down through time and however many times I hear it.

Paul Brown has a website worth visiting:

http://www.brownpaul.net/

A good place to find mountain music on cd:

http://countysales.com/

County is the definitive place to find mountain music, located in Floyd VA and Charlottesville VA. What they don't have isn't available, just about. Everything I've ordered from County has been in the mailbox just a few days later, surprisingly quick every time. They treat you right with prices and shipping too.