PICTURES OF MY WORLD

vada, 2

Day 7 of the blogathon asks for pictures of one's creative space. My creative space is my head and heart. I'll start with the heart. Above is baby Vada, the child I fell in love with the day she was born. Her mother painted a wall flat black and Vada practices her art there.

vada art, age 2yr 2wk

 





Vada drew this image sitting on the kitchen floor. Her mother asked her to draw a picture of TJ and this is what she did. She concentrated such that she never lifted her mind from the image until it was done. She was drawing from her mind. It makes a perfect mask. I could cut out eye holes and wear it for a mask if it were on thicker paper. But I wouldn't cut holes in it. You can see the eyes, nose, mouth and an ear. She filled in the whole face. It is framed now and hanging on my wall. Willard Gayheart framed it. I was tickled out of my mind to get something by her before she evolved into stick figures.

 

 

found art

 

found art

 

found art

 



Found art is a regular feature of my blog. At top is what was left after a bank changed locations and took down the old sign. They left the fluorescent bulbs turned on at night, making this fabulous piece of Dan Flavin art in Sparta. Sparta doesn't have much public art. So I appreciate it where I find it. In the middle is a huge pile of silage (ground corn stalks) for dairy cows. The mound of silage is covered with white tarp held in place by black circles. I see this once a week and love it every time I see it. At bottom is something found in the basement at Crystal and Justin's. Crystal had been spray painting something. While I was getting some pictures of it, she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Found art." She said, "Oh my God!" (She said God a few notes higher than Oh my, Southern style.) These are examples of art I see everywhere.

 



steve lewis and josh scott

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

scott freeman

edwin lacy and willard gayheart

 

bobby patterson

the crooked road ramblers at the Jubilee in Sparta

 

Above are my artist friends. These are the artists I spend time with and call my friends. At top is Steve Lewis, Master bluegrass banjo and guitar picker, good story teller, and his step-son Josh Scott, who Steve raised as his own, who became his best friend and his bass player. The painting on the wall behind Steve is my portrait of Willard Gayheart, the guitar player with Skeeter and the Skidmarks. Willard is 81 and has been picking all his life. This means he's good. He plays rhythm so well the musicians of the region love to make music with Willard for his near-perfect rhythm. Willard doesn't strum. He hits an upper string and a lower string, individually, each lick. When he has Orange Blossom Special going on, it works him. The pencil drawings on the walls are his. The venue is his frame shop/gallery. Willard has been singing with a Galax bluegrass band, the Highlanders, over forty years. The ones living are all old guys now. Their fiddler, Buddy Pendleton, is one of the great ones. He's near gone now, I hear. Skeeter and the Skidmarks made two cds on Hay Holler label in the early 90s. Then Edwin Lacy, banjo, had to leave the area for several years, so Scott and Willard started a new band, Alternate Roots, an amazing bluegrass band. Steve Lewis played banjo in the band. They made 4 albums and the bass player had to leave the band. Alternate Roots disbanded, Edwin returned and Skeeter started back up. You can hear them on YouTube. I've made hundreds of music videos that are on YouTube. My name there is hobblealong1. The fiddle is Scott Freeman, who also plays mandolin. He is married to Willard's daughter, Jill, a good bluegrass singer who doesn't like the stage. That's Sandy Mason's head sticking up from behind Willard. She plays bass. Oh they have a good sound. Scott and Edwin composed several of the songs they recorded. The song they open shows with is one of Scott's compositions, Groundhog Shuffle. It is mandolin and banjo mayhem. They're putting together a new "project" now.           I put Bobby Patterson's picture in there because Bobby is important in my life. He has a music store in Woodawn, Virginia, and a recording studio in the basement. Old-Time Herald magazine was begun in his basement in the 1970s. Over the last 40 or more years he has recorded old-time bands of Southwestern Virginia, Heritage Records, and has a catalog that is out of this world for music of the region. He played guitar on the finest old-time album my ears have ever beheld, JUNE APPLE, with Tommy Jarrell on fiddle, Kyle Creed on banjo and Audine Lineberry on bass. Jarrell and Creed have been dead at least thirty years. Both are legends and were legends while they were living. Bobby is one of the Highlanders and also sings with gospel groups. First time I met Bobby, we'd known OF each other for years, I said, "In my way of seeing, you're the most important man in Southwest Virginia." He said, "Thank you." He knew what I was saying. Thanks to Bobby we have a great collection of old-time music of this region on record and he puts together recordings of the Galax fiddlers convention every year. Plus, he's a terrific musician. His dad was a legend fiddler of his generation. Our bond is our dedication to the music.          At bottom is Kilby Spencer on fiddle with his band the Crooked Road Ramblers. Great fiddler, son of a great fiddler, Thornton Spencer, who is in his later years the great old fiddler of his generation. Thornton's wife Emily plays banjo and sings with their band, Whitetop Mountain Band. In my own personal estimation, WMB is the hottest old-time band in the region right now, and has been for years. They are most characterized by their drive and their musicianship. Kilby knows so many songs he's become a living encyclopedia of the music of the Central Blue Ridge. Kilby's aim in life is to be a great fiddler. He is well on his way and has a momentum going that will take him there. His band has good drive too.   

 



medea by tj worthington

on the side of the house approaching from parking space

donkey jack

 

Closer to home now. The painting above, Medea, I did something like 15-20 years ago. It doesn't leave the house. It is on my wall all the time. I don't put it up for sale because I don't want to lose it. Plus, I'm the one it's important to. I see it a stage with Medea in foreground planning what she has to do, pacing, the rock behind her a Greek rock mountain and the Greek archipelago, the night sky howling its horror seeing what Medea has in her mind. Below Medea is the a little sign I put on the house soon after I moved in. The first one rotted away with time. This is the second one. And here comes Donkey Jack. This is one of the first pictures I got of him. That's my friend Jack the saxophone player. I put hee-haw and braying out of my mind and I hear a saxophone. It is the same sound, low range tenor, a note John Coltrane might have found. The donkeys have been a great source of creative inspiration since they've arrived in my life. I thank God every day in my heart I've lived long enough to know donkeys.

 

 

 

found art

 

 

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SKEETER & THE SKIDMARKS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT SKY

skeeter and the skidmarks

scott freeman, edwin lacy, sandy mason, willard gayheart

 

skeeter and the skidmarks

 

Friday night, Skeeter & the Skidmarks lit up the sky over Woodlawn VA with traditional music Skeeterized. Their music holds the audience's attention and doesn't let go. Sometimes I closed my eyes to hear better and the difference was radical. It's the best example I know for how sight limits hearing. I watch these four people whose music I've listened to long enough that I know all the words, hearing them make music, watching them pick and sing, wowed by every moment, happy to be in the presence of this music as good for the soul as laughing. I close my eyes and the quality of the sound I'm hearing increases what seems like immeasurably. I understand why Doc Watson had such a good ear for playing his guitar and banjo, why blind musicians seem to hear the music they are making more clearly than ones distracted by sight. I get into a grove with my eyes closed, sit flowing with the music, open my eyes and the music changes. Eyes closed, it is more like listening to a cd at home, relaxed, grooving to the sound. Eyes open, it's a bunch of people picking their instruments, it's even social in that I see I am among about forty people and know a lot of them. I might be looking at what Willard is doing with his guitar strings while Scott is tearing up his mandolin. I'll miss much of what Scott is doing because my focus is on Willard's strings. I pay attention to what Scott is doing and I lose what Edwin is doing. Sometimes I focus my attention on Sandy, because that's when I best hear what she's doing with the bass. Eyes closed, everybody's individual sound flows with the other sounds as a unit. I like the concert experience of eyes open awhile, closed awhile. To my ear, it is two different musical experiences in one. A quarter century ago at a Frank Sinatra concert, I was so drunk that I saw two of him through the entire show. I think of it as seeing Frank Sinatra twice.

 

scott and edwin

 

scott freeman

 

I think of Skeeter as the house band at the Fiddle and Plow series. This may be their seventh show there. Not complaining. For my satisfaction, they don't play enough. Several weeks ago, I had to miss a show that was Scott and Willard. Those are the best ones for my ear. I love to hear Scott and Willard pick and sing together. They've made music together for so many years, they move together as one. If I had a big wad of money, I'd want to produce a project by Scott and Willard, Live At The Front Porch, because it needs doing and nobody has done it yet. Like Skeeter, Scott and Willard's sound is their own. To them, it's like nothing because they're so used to it. To my listening ear it is dynamite. Soft dynamite. The kind that blows your mind and makes you happy. Skeeter started the show Friday night with Willard singing Silver Dew On The Bluegrass. It's a beautiful song and Willard brings it to life. Willard likes to take old songs from the 1920s and before, and make them his own. Drifting And Dreaming, I Love You Nelly, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, a Bob Wills song. Unfortunately, the audience takes Little Red Wagon for a children's song and discourage Willard from singing it. They laugh at me when I request it, and I think in turn the unspeakable. Scott sings some good Bob Wills songs too. Another of Willard's old songs I like to hear him sing is Nighttime In Nevada. Then there is The Yellow Rose of Texas, a song Skeeter and the Skidmarks made their own, Willard singing it.  

 

sandy and willard

 

dori freeman

  

Dori Freeman and David Long opened the show with some of the songs she is singing now. David played mandolin accompaniment to her singing that flowed well with her sound. I was struck again by Dori's new degree of control with her voice. Her singing has become more conscious after some years now of performance and practice. I've seen Dori's singing grow and it brings to mind watching my baby friend, Vada, grow. Both are doing something new each time I see them. This time, Dori's singing was on a whole new level. It is still her, still her voice. She's fine tuning it. She's paying very close attention to it the way a musician pays close attention to an instrument, finding the subtle nuances, listening. I was thinking of Carter Stanley, not that she sings like him; his voice played with its own sound like Dori is doing. This is the first time I've heard her sing since she has become a mother. Her music has improved immeasurably since she has been with David. She was good before, and gets better. By now, her singing commands the hearing of the audience. It always has, but now it's in awe. David playing a mandolin is in the zone we think of as "professional," meaning extra good, and Dori's singing has entered that zone. Together, they are working very well musically. It feels like their life together is making music. Dori has a baby, she has the man of her life. She is in double love now and soaring with her music. It is a good time in Dori's life. I'm happy for her. I was hoping she would bring the baby, but it's not a good idea to be hauling so new a baby around in the cold night air. Mothers know it better than I do.

 

david long and dori freeman

 

edwin lacy

 

Edwin Lacy, the banjo in Skeeter, has begun a new phase of his life, recently married to a woman named Roye. Edwin's demeanor has brightened up considerably. I don't mean he was hang-dog before, but I see in him a new light that tells me he is doing all right. I'm happy for Edwin, too. Edwin has a good woman and Roye has a good man. He was wearing a ball cap with a logo that said Wild Goose. It's the name of a new church idea he has arrived at on Tuesday evenings, rocking chairs instead of pews. People bring instruments and they make music. It's the other side of Hillsville, an hour and a half from home. I want to make the trip every week, but every Tuesday I don't want to drive for three hours at the end of the day. I'm even a little shy of driving two hours on a Friday night. This Friday night was one of those black nights that was opaque but for where headlights fell. I was not comfortable driving either way, going or coming home. Plus, I'm so paranoid about highway patrol now, I drive 45 in a 55 and use a turn signal even if there's not a car in sight. I don't like to drive anymore because of the paranoid feeling, esp in opaque darkness. This is new and I don't like it, but there it is. I had not seen Edwin in several months. I was glad to have a few minutes to talk with him before the show. Sandy too. Had a good visit with her before the show. Dori and David were asked to join the band opening the second half. Driving home, I did not play any music in the car, let my mind flow with a mix in my head of Lucinda Williams singing Ventura, and Dori singing Prairie Song. They flowed in and out of each other all the way home.  

 

dori freeman

 

dori and david with skeeter and the skidmarks

 

 

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SKEETER AND THE SKIDMARKS STRIKE AGAIN

scott freeman, edwin lacy, sandy mason, willard gayheart

Friday night Skeeter and the Skidmarks lit up the sky over Woodlawn, Virginia, playing the music that is particularly their own. Scott Freeman, Edwin Lacy, Sandy Mason, Willard Gayheart played another show at the Fiddle and Plow show at Willard's gallery, The Front Porch. I've heard them play live maybe seven times now. I never tire of them. Though I hear Scott and Willard make music almost every week, I love the music more per hearing rather than less. The band started off with Hang Me, Hang me, oh hang me, I'll be dead and gone. It's not the hangin that I mind, but waitin in the jail so long. Lord I've been all around this world. During their first several songs, I realized that their music has become one with my soul. Listening to them play, I danced inside, sang along, sometimes closed my eyes and listened to every note. I keep cassettes of their music in the car and every time I put one in I feel refreshed the moment it starts. Skeeter's sound is specific to these four individuals. Any change of personnel would change the nature of their sound so much it would not be Skeeter any more.

Stephen Foster I have learned from listening to old-time music was a great composer of old-time fiddle tunes. I recall in school about Stephen Foster like he was some boring old dead man who wrote songs I couldn't stand. Then I learned from Scott Freeman that Stephen Foster wrote the great fiddle tune, Angelina Baker. They played it maybe the second song of the first set, and, like usual, I sat and listened in awe that it was Stephen Foster who wrote it. It brought Shortnin Bread to mind. A little kid in school, we had to learn, "Mammy's little baby loved sho'tnin, sho'tnin, Mammy's little baby loved sho'tnin bread." I thought it was the dumbest song I'd ever heard OF, down there with O Sole Mio. It had something of an Aunt Jemima visual about it and the Al Jolsen association with mammy. I come to the mountains in the last half of my life and learn Shortnin Bread is a great fiddle tune. If I'd heard the fiddle tune in 3rd grade, I'd have loved it. All we got were the meaningless words and the basic tune. My surprise first time I heard it a fiddle tune made me laugh. That corny old song! It's another great fiddle tune like John Brown's Dream and Train 45. And then there was "She'll be comin round the mountain when she comes. She'll be driving six white horses when she comes." The Wreck Of Old 97. Back in 3rd grade I thought it another dumb old song that made old-fashioned truly objectionable.

I learn from hearing Willard pick and sing so often that Bob Wills was quite a lot more interesting a musician, singer and songwriter than I had given him credit for. Another one I thought a dumb old-fashioned song I never wanted to hear a second time, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, turns out to be a Bob Wills song, and Willard makes it his own. He apologizes for it when he plays it because of a general attitude in the audience that it's a silly children's song. Willard singing it brings out the very real feeling in the song, "All of the guys will be jealous when they see my playmate so sweet." Of course, it's about riding a babe around in a boy's first car, cruising as it's called now, showing his date off to the other guys. To my ear, it is no less cool a song than Hotrod Lincoln, one audiences love. Willard has taught me such appreciation for Little Red Wagon that I go to youTube to hear Bob Wills play it. I like his rendering of it as much as I like Willard's, to the point I have developed an appreciation for the song itself. The last time I requested Willard sing it one night at Woodlawn, a couple of men in the audience made smart-mouth jabs at me for liking a stupid children's song. I appreciate the song so genuinely for itself they didn't intimidate me one little bit. It only told me they don't hear it. I don't care. Next time Willard is giving a show I'll request it again. Anybody that doesn't get it is welcome not to.

The Skeeter energy is front and center in every show they put on. Every time they play together as Skeeter, they play an entirely different show from any of the others. They are true to the songs the same, but the energy they approach the show with is different per show. Sometimes they approach the whole show as a kind of sound assault like from a big stage to a big audience. Sometimes it is like a relaxed jamming session. Last night's they played the notes articulately, each one, and there was a relaxed flow among them. They were not particularly animated. They just stood there and let the music flow. Scott's fingers were dancing on the mandolin strings like a spider on a hot-plate. Watching his fingers and hearing the music flow from the mandolin was the same for me as watching somebody perform magic tricks that are mind-boggling. It's the same with Edwin on his banjo. I see his hands working the strings and hear the music his hands are making and it's the sacred and profane. The sacred being the spirit that the music becomes, made by mortal hands. There are moments when the music has a certain almost aura about it. I listen and notice Sandy is using a bow on the bass. On Willard's song, The Salet Song, she uses the bow beautifully. The bow takes the song to a new level.

Edwin has taken Glen Campbell's hit song of years ago, Gentle On My Mind, and made it his own. I could not tolerate the Glen Campbell song in its time. He made me barf, and everything he sang made me barf. I'd never thought of the song with any but Glen Campbell's voice, so it had dreary associations with me. Edwin has learned that John Hartford wrote the song for himself as a clawhammer tune. Glen heard him picking it while Hartford was in his band and wanted to record it. Glen Campbell making a hit of it sort of took the song away from Hartford. Edwin has found it and he has worked it out on clawhammer. He plays it a clawhammer tune. He sings the words in his own way that has erased the Glen Campbell version of the song in my mind. Now I hear it as Edwin's song and my GlenCampbell associations are long gone. He took another song I couldn't tolerate, Theme From Dr Zhivago. I loathed that song and especially loathed the movie. The book was another story. Edwin has recreated the tune as a clawhammer tune. He plays it so beautifully I forget it is a song I don't like. I like it when he plays it. In fact, by now I hear it as Edwin's tune without any associations, just Edwin's rendering of it.


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BLUEGRASS EXPLOSION

sandy mason and willard gayheart

There must have been a glow in last night's sky over Woodlawn, Virginia, above Willard Gayheart's frame shop, The Front Porch. For two hours the god of music was present. Awesome is the most overused word since Wow in the Sixties, yet it's still a valid word with its own meaning, appropriate to this moment. Maybe better would be the old-time meaning of the word awful. Today it means terrible, of negative interest. In the old-time way it meant full of awe, something so awe-inspiring it's awful. It's still used in that meaning, like, "the music last night got to me something awful." We say, "an awful lot all the time." The word now has two opposite meanings according to use. I'll just say it was awful, but that sounds too much like offal, and it weren't none of that. Awesome is the word. It was the cd release party for Scott Freeman and Edwin Lacy's new album, 2 CHAIRS NO WAITING. It's a fiddle and banjo album like no other. You can hear some or all of the tunes at the label's website http://www.mountainroadsrecordings.com and cds can be ordered through the website. All the cds from Mountain Roads Recordings at Bristol, Tennessee, are present moment mountain music good as it gets.

I arrived a little bit early, and even early the parking area looked like a used car lot. Inside, Willard had to bring up more folding chairs. The place was packed with people anticipating some awesome music. A happy spirit was in the air running through everybody, a friendly atmosphere to step into. I knew about half the people. It's a place where you can speak to somebody you've never met and they don't look at you like you're trying to sell them a grave plot on the moon. Right away I saw Willard was not busy for a few seconds. I went straight to him wanting to show the picture in the digital camera of the new painting of Scott and Edwin. Willard and I are artist friends who share insights with each other. I crack up when I think of the time Willard told me he's not really an artist. Willard is one of the greatest artists I know, right there with his musical partner, Scott Freeman. My artist friends are almost all musicians. Willard makes a beautiful pencil drawing and he plays rhythm guitar with a reputation for keeping perfect rhythm such that the other musicians don't have to think about the rhythm themselves. As a bluegrass singer, Willard has a lifetime of stage experience. He can sing the same song folk style or bluegrass and they're equally beautiful. He writes a good song too. Willard is every bit as satisfying to my ear musically as Doc Watson, and I look way up to Doc Watson. I say Doc here to give you an idea of the measure of my respect for Willard's musical artistry.

When the seven-piece bluegrass chamber orchestra indicated they were ready, everybody sat down in a hurry and all attention went to the band. It was the Siamese Cousins + 5 or Skeeter and the Skidmarks +3. Everybody who played a part on the project was in the band, minus Dori. I didn't get to talk with Scott but a minute when the show was over, and he was in that place musicians are still in for quite awhile after jamming all-out for two hours. I didn't ask about Dori. I'd heard something about she went to Nashville a week or so ago. I took her absence to affirm it, though still not knowing. She has a man in her life now who appears to be the one she's been waiting for without knowing who or if. She has two songs on the project that deserve mention, Gold Watch And Chain she sings just right, and a Gordon Lightfoot song, The Way I Feel. I've been hearing Dori develop her singing voice for the stage the last three years. My thinking is if she has her eye on making a shot for it in Nashville, now is the time. She has a charisma onstage something on the order of Sade's, subtle and smooth without being too smooth.

The band started off with an explosion. Lonesome Road Blues, the first song on the album, blew the roof off the place in the first ten seconds. And the roof never came back, the reason I suspected the sky lit up over Woodlawn. Butch Robins kicked it off, a really good punt, with his bluegrass banjo. Scott Freeman tore up his mandolin and left it in shreds. Steve Lewis came in with his guitar and did some unbelieveable pickin. Brandon Davis played lead guitar too, immediately commanding respect for the music he could get out of that wooden box. Edwin Lacy cut completely loose on his old-time banjo, left mind somewhere else and let the music guide his hands without any mental interference. Willard kept the rhythm going with Sandy Mason on the bass. Sandy sang Dixie Darlin, a song I love to hear her sing. They rocked our world from the first note to the last. They finished after two hours with a request for Orange Blossom Special. In bluegrass it is one of the tunes they call "war horses" in classical music, tunes audiences love to hear and bands get tired of playing. Rocky Top is another. And Duelling Banjos. They didn't pay that any mind. They got it going so hot that people jumped to their feet clapping. Scott played the train on the fiddle and Steve was right there with him doing all he could to destroy every string on his guitar. I love it when the two of them get together like that. It seems like there is no limit to how far they can go.

Scott is such a master mandolin picker that when I hear a mandolin in a Nashville bluegrass band, I hear it in relation to Scott's sound. I've heard several his equal, but none better. Over the last decade, Scott, Steve and Willard caught my ear when Alternate Roots was a band. I freely call Alternate Roots my favorite band for life. When they disbanded I grieved for six months the same as if a really close friend had died. Steve Lewis and Scott pick together such that you know they have the time of their lives doing things with the strings they can't do with anybody else or very few, intuitionally. It's dynamic every time they get together. Scott and Edwin too. Scott and Butch Robins too. Seven master musicians on the stage, people who play incredibly well together. I say the god of music was there last night, because every one of the musicians had a spirit about them, individually and together, everybody lit up in joy. The second song they played after clearing the roof out of the way was Hang Me, a Skeeter and the Skidmarks favorite. It cranked the music up to the next level. And they kept it there througout. Even the ballads had the joyous energy. After Hang Me was Billy In The Lowground, and it was on from there. Steve likes to call it Goat In The Swamp.

At intermission after the first hour when everyone in the audience stood up and turned around, I saw joy beaming out of everybody's face. I knew I was lit up the same. It was a joyous air in the place. Different ones I see there every week, we'd look at each other big-eyed and make a short statement about the music we were experiencing. The music at the Fiddle and Plow show is always worth driving an hour each way for. I could buy a cd with what it costs in gas, and it's better than buying a cd, because I'm hearing my favorite musicians playing twice as long as a cd. Live. In Concert. Last night was special. One Skeeter and the Skidmarks show a couple years ago reached into that place of a joyous musical experience for band and audience together. All the shows are extra good, but these two stand out in my memory for the joy energy in the music. They know how to let the music breathe and they know how to let it run wild. Everything I've said here sounds like overstatement, but it all is understatement. And for any of the ones in the band who might see this, I don't want to give them the big head. I can't reach with words the place their music took me to. On the way home, I stopped to see some friends. I tried to tell them something about it, but all I could do was emote: awesome, amazing, fabulous, unbelieveable, totally incredible, over the top. It degenerated into babble fast, because I was unable to do anything but blabber. So I shut up after hearing myself fumble for words I couldn't find, enough that I was boring myself. This morning I woke up singing Edwin Lacy's Little Black Pony, a song with a story as good-worded as Catfish John.

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