WRITING FIDDLER HOWARD JOINES

pictures from the game-cam

A couple of mornings ago I rose around 4am. Unable to return to sleep, I decided to get at the day's writing. In just a few minutes I was engaged. That almost is never possible. Along about 8am I'd finished the writing and it was time to add some pictures. The sunlight came through the window and lit some rows of cds on shelves against the wall opposite the desk. The titles had spotlights on them. From about 8 feet away I could read them easily. My eyes stopped at GARBAGE, Bleed Like Me. I'd been aiming to listen to Garbage for several days. That was the album I wanted to hear. A very satisfying band to my ears. I put it on and cranked it up, had a rock n roll party first thing in the morning, selecting pictures to go with what I'd just written. It took about as much time as the collection of songs playing out, considering I stopped to listen for long stretches from time to time. It was good to hear them again. Extra good musicians and Shirley Manson's vocals. By the time it was done, I was wide awake and wide open. Music over and the day's entry posted, I went outside to feed the donkeys and calves their morning hay, came back in and called my friend Carole for our morning visit. I must have sounded wired on coke, talking as fast as I could go, wound up. I laughed at myself when I heard me talking like I'd ingested a handful of diet pills. After talking about an hour with Carole, I'd simmered down a good bit, gradually returned to home base.

 

A few weeks ago, Sarah Bryan, editor at Old Time Herald, had sent me a box of several copies of the new issue. I'd asked that I be paid for the article in it with copies instead of money. I wanted to give copies to people whose relatives were in the article, friends, pass them around to people concerned, like Kermit at the barber shop who let me use a photograph hanging on the wall in the barbershop to include with the article. I opened the end of the box and left the magazines in the box, a good place to keep them while I took out one, two or three at a time. Today the stack was down to three yet to be delivered. I took them out of the box to throw the box away. Under the bottom magazine I found a notecard in envelope from Sarah, the editor. If I'd opened the box another way the note would have been on top. Before I say more, I need to interject that my assessment of Sarah Bryan as an editor is way up high. The two pieces of mine she has worked with, she smoothed the rough parts, rearranged some of the information such that it makes better sense in the reading. She is a subtle editor. She pays close attention with a well-trained, quick mind. I had given my friend Lucas Carpenter a copy of the magazine. He read the whole magazine, looked at all the ads and said, "Really good magazine! Good editor!" He went on to praise the lay-out, Steve Terrill's work. Steve is a master at his part of it like Sarah is a master at hers. Lucas has recently had his third book of poetry published. He has worked with several different editors from writing stories and articles as well as his poetry. He appreciates a good editor. I was glad he was able to see it in the product without me saying "Sarah is a great editor." That kind of intro kills what follows. But she is.

 

 

 

In her card she wrote that she "really, really liked" the article and believes OTH readers will too. I, who suffer from the mental illness ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and suffer as well from LSE, Low Self Esteem. An editor I respect as an editor and as a human being saying such as that about something I wrote, makes somebody with LSE double-take and say, "Really?" By this time in the life, I've learned to accept it when somebody says something like that, receive it with gratitude, be encouraged by it, instead of saying to self, she was just being nice--that's her job. It was one of the great joys of my life to write this account of Howard Joines, local fiddler, from other people's memories. I believed writing by "first hand" sources, information from witnesses memories, was the most reliable. Lord have mercy. A few times I had to leave out some information because of contradictory memories. Like some said Howard always played bluegrass, never played old-time. There was no bluegrass before he was 40. A bluegrass banjo player told me he didn't make music with Howard because Howard played old-time. The banjo player I knew in Howard's band played old-time. Another banjo player was in his bluegrass band. Howard had two bands, one old-time and one bluegrass. I had people telling me he only played one or the other. A woman I know said, "I aint never heard Howard Joines play nothin but bluegrass." She was born about the same year Bill Monroe first played on Grand Ole Opry. I attempted to add, but there wasn't any bluegrass before 1939. "I don't care--he aint never played nothin but bluegrass."

 

 

I'd wanted to write about Howard Joines three years ago. Talked with his son Richard on the phone for quite a while and he told me Howard's life and I made notes as he talked. I kept those notes in my desk drawer and looked at them from time to time. I had some memories from other people about Howard. I couldn't find how I wanted to approach writing about him. I wanted to write about him as a fiddler, but had pages and pages of biographical information. The biographical information made a kind of hurdle for me, one to climb over. I felt like the biographical information was important and wanted to tell it too, but then it became the purpose and I couldn't even get started. I continued to look at the notes from time to time, memorizing them, incorporating into my mind every little bit of information I could find about Howard Joines. Lucas Pasley had given me a couple of cds of Howard playing fiddle from some tapes Clifton Evans made. After three years of memorizing the notes of Howard's life, and having a couple hours of his music in the house, I felt like it was time to start. I searched and searched for a way to approach him besides biography. Couldn't find it. I decided to start and see if the writing might take its own course, see what happens. I was visiting with Richard Andrews, who grew up a neighbor to Howard Joines, and asked him to tell me something about Howard. I didn't have anything in mind I was asking for, just wanted to hear what he would say. It would be something memorable. He said, "When both his feet get to going, you're going to hear some music." That one sentence pulled the trigger.

 

 

 

I started the writing as soon as I woke up next morning, wrote all day until after 2am. Slept awhile, up again writing until 2am. Did that three days in a row and the same amount of time the fourth day rewriting, filling in blanks, and grammar editing. Then I took a rest. Didn't even want to look at it for awhile. Needed some distance only time could provide. Soon after introducing him, I started looking at Howard Joines in family context, part of it, but not the way I was looking for. I kept on writing and came to realize I've known several musicians from his generation, people he made music with over a lifetime. There it was. I was looking for the context of his life and it was the music world of this region of the mountains from Roaring River below the mountain to the south, to Galax to the north, Wilkes to the southwest and Mt Airy to the east. That was his music world. And more immediately the musicians of the county. I had been told about that period of time by other musicians I'd know from his time. I started writing about the musicians around him and found his context as a musician among musicians and went with that. It happened. And I saw that during his time as a fiddler everything was changing around him, from the Carter Family on the radio to the Beatles on tv. Everything was changing then. Electricity and plumbing were new to the mountains. Paved highways were new, and really fast cars. The music changed in that time. Howard was one of the musicians that went with the New, which was bluegrass. I surrounded him with the other musicians of his time he knew and made music with, and found the Howard I was looking for. I love it when a writing project takes its own direction and somehow guides the writing, or guides the flow in my head that is transferred to the monitor by fingers that follow thought. Thank you, Sarah, Thank you, Thank you.

The quick way to the OTH website:

www.oldtimeherald.org  

 

 

 

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APPALACHIAN FOLKLORIST RAMBLE

the house tom pruitt lived in all his life

By way of some email correspondence with Sarah Bryan, editor of Old Time Herald, I began to see that we see an awful lot alike. She's a folklorist interested in traditional music and culture from the varieties of early American cultures unto today when it's homogenized by television and radio. Though I'd venture that if the corporate influence of pop culture were to wane, the traditional music would come forward again. It's not that traditional music is gone just because it's rarely on tv except for the RFD channel. I discovered by insight from correspondence with Sarah that I have been a folklorist the entire time I've lived in the mountains. I've not been going by folklore standards with tape recorders and making notes, reading books. I've got my knowledge of the old-time ways from people I have known, people I've listened to for hours telling me their lives. This recent article I wrote for Old Time Herald on bluegrass coming to the mountains, specifically Alleghany County and fiddler Howard Joines, is all from what is called first-hand information, from the people involved. First-hand is evidently the best source, though I wasn't so sure while trying to put things together from different people's memories of their experience. In the writing, I discovered a few times that I'd got conflicting information from different sources that actually cancelled each other. I left those kinds of ambiguities out of it.

It's like a time recently two different men I know were at odds with each other, both telling me the same story, each saying the other was lying. I was to make a decision as a result of what they'd told me. They cancelled each other out and I was left with nothing to go by for decision making. I just told myself, it's their problem, not mine. In the writing, I did not want to put in any inaccuracies. I'm sure there are some, because, like I said, it's first-hand information, subject to imperfect memory, and a culture that didn't think in left-brain ways of details and facts. In a picture I found of Junior Maxwell with his first bluegrass band, The Little River Boys, I could guess the date of the photo better by the clothes, ties, haircuts and the squeegee lines on a Fifties b&w polaroid print, than Junior could guess from memory. He remembered where it was taken, Johnson City, Tennessee, backstage at a bluegrass show, but he had no recollection of when. In the past. For Junior the past was nothing. Only the present mattered to him and the future; the future is where the present is going. He gave no importance to anything in the past. In that way he was not a good source for information about dates. He could remember plenty about making music with other musicians, how they played in their particular styles. It was from Junior I learned the principles mountain musicians live by.

I didn't know anybody in my first months in the mountains. I'd go to town to the laundromat, gas station, bank and grocery store, a stranger in a culture where people don't see anybody they don't know. In the laundromat people stared at me like I was a television. If I spoke to one, they continued to stare at me. It's perfectly natural to them; televisions speak, but you don't speak back. I wanted to know other people like me who came to the mountains from an urban environment, but there weren't many in the late 1970s, and the ones that were here from other places didn't want to know anybody from a city. They were like Americans in Europe; they only want to see natives, not Americans. So in London I meet an American and I'm regarded in the way, spoiling the view. My neighbor Tom Pruitt I visited regularly. He told me the story of his life over fourteen years. I first knew him when he was 72 and he died when he was 86. The odd part about Tom dying is that it seemed like Tom was immortal, would always be the same age and would never die. Then he did. His brother Millard, the Regular Baptist preacher, I knew also for 14 years. I heard him preach often and listened to the story of his life. They were beautiful stories. Both of them went to school in my house.

Going to a Regular Baptist church for fourteen years as an active member taught me a great deal about mountain old-time religion and a very great deal about mountain culture. I wanted to learn as much as I could about mountain culture, because it was the home I had chosen for myself. There was a time in the late 1980s I had the money to move away from here and go someplace where I could make a better living, get paid better and consequently have more living expenses someplace else. Here, we don't make much, but it doesn't (didn't used to) cost so much to live here, either. Like when you cut your own firewood, that saves a lot on the winter's heating bill. All it costs in money is chainsaw gas and gas for the truck hauling the wood from where I cut it someplace nearby to the house. Negligible expense. Good heat all winter. It is physically demanding hauling firewood in from the woodpile maybe three times a day, sometimes four, in every weather; snow, wind, ice, bitter cold. That's part of it. I wanted to live elemental, with the elements, with the cold of winter, the heat of summer, the rain, the snow, the wind, the storms, the sunshine, the sky. I never wanted my house air-tight. I wanted to live in a way that respected the ways the old-time people lived. I don't want to be too warm in winter. I want to feel the winter. I wanted to acclimatize myself to the weather as it is in the mountains, to exist with the weather instead of against it. I wanted to share that with the people of the old ways. I was from a different world and aimed to learn mountain culture, how to get around in it, be comfortable in it, be at home in it.

I've studied the ways of these mountains so long that it's become part of who I am. The culture of these mountains is my ongoing interest. I didn't want to read Appalachian studies books, though I know they'd be interesting, I wanted to get my knowledge from people who live in the culture so intimately they don't know it's a culture. Over 36 years in the mountains I have known several people to listen to at length learning the story of their lives and their philosophies of living in this world. I never made notes, never used a recording device, never wrote anything down of the hundreds of stories I have forgotten. I wanted to incorporate into myself what I learned from the people I knew. I wanted what I learned from them to seep into who I am and educate who I am to the beauty of mountain culture. I felt like making notes and writing about the people around me dampened what I learned from the different ones I knew, devalued it. It was only real when what was spoken to me was mine only. I didn't need to be writing about a culture I knew nothing about. It didn't feel right recording anybody talking or a preacher preaching. Plenty of people did put cassette recorders at the pulpit to record the sermons. For me, that took the spirit out of the encounter. I asked Junior Maxwell once if I could get him to answer questions on tape about fiddler Art Wooten. Nope. Don't even think about it.

I've lived my life in these mountains as a folklorist all the way along. I've been at it so long that folklorist has become my way of thinking. I never lose interest in anything to do with mountain culture. Still, I have not read books. My friend Cynthia is teaching an Appalachian Studies course and has several books that look really good, but they don't appeal to me. I want mine from the people themselves. I want to know the mountain people as my friends, as people I have heart connections with in real, honest ways. In vivo, not in vitro. Subjective, not objective. I came to the mountains on my spiritual path and have walked my path the entire time in these mountains among mountain people. I have learned the value of being who you are under all circumstances. I understand the value of not ratting on anyone for any reason. I understand the value of helping neighbors who need help. I understand the music well enough to write about it with some comprehension, able to pass my understanding to others new to the music. I've learned quite a lot from the people I've known over the last half of my life. It is in these mountains, the latter half of my life, that I have found love in my heart. All my associations with these mountains, the culture, the people, the music, are in a loving vein. It is in these mountains where God opened my heart and brought me to life. I'm grateful to all the mountain people I know for allowing me into their lives.

The bridge between us is respect. My respect for mountain people is automatic. I know the people and the culture well enough by now that I can't help but respect everyone I know and everybody new I meet. My respect allows me entrance to a world of people I find endlessly fascinating. I take the dark side with the light side and see them as one interwoven whole. I don't find somebody who has been in prison fifteen years any less valid a human being than somebody who goes to church regularly. We're all different kinds of people. In the mountains, people know that and receive everyone as who they are, not in relation to a standard of conformity that everybody is "supposed to" adhere to in order to be acceptable, except in some circles. In the mountains, that you exist is acceptable. If you are straight-on who you are, that is all the more acceptable. I was thinking earlier today how wonderful it is that the sweetness of the South is something nobody outside the South ever gets. In like manner, the sweetness of mountain culture is only known from the inside, cannot be seen from the outside. I'm grateful to God from the core of my heart for landing my parachute in Alleghany County. I know the sweetness of mountain culture well enough by now that I can't live without it. I have incorporated it into my soul, the place where I'm most happy I found mountain culture. I can't say my time here has been smooth and straight-ahead as Bonneville Salt Flats. I would never have wanted it to be. I love the hills. I love the winding curves in all the roads. Driving in the mountains has a good flow about it when you find the flow. It doesn't take long in years.


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OLD-TIME HERALD ARTICLE

the crooked road ramblers at albert hash memorial fest 2011



In today's mail was the new issue of Old-Time Herald, a glossy magazine for old-time music all over the country, from Maine to California. It's published in Durham, North Carolina, edited by the very able editor, Sarah Bryan, the layout done by Steve Terrill, an artist of the visual who picks banjo with the Durham old-time band, The Hush Puppies. Steve always makes a beautiful magazine cover. This month the cover is a black and white portrait of a Missouri fiddler, RP Christeson. I've been taking pictures of musicians regularly for the last three years, so my eye automatically notes a portrait of a musician, in this case a fiddler. He's not playing the fiddle, but holding it by the neck vertically with the bow between two fingers. Only the upper half of the fiddle and only half the bow in the frame. RP has his head turned to his right in just enough profile to show the roundness in the face. It is a beautifully conceived photograph. On the left side is the blur of a figure too close for the camera's focus, just the upper arm and hair above. It says inside that the photograph was made by Howard Marshall in 1987. He wrote the article that accompanies the photograph. To Howard Marshall, I say, Congratulations, a wonderfully unique portrait of a fiddler.


And congratulations to Steve Terrill for seeing the art in the photograph. I met Steve one time at the Sparta Fiddler's Convention for a few moments. He was there with his band, the Hushpuppies. Molly, one of the band's two fiddlers was with him when we talked. My friend Jean was living then. When I'm in the presence of musicians I respect as much as I do them, I feel a fullness of respect, because I appreciate their musicianship and the artists they are. It's the artist I think I appreciate in them first. The kind of respect I feel when I see a painting or sculpture by Will Hernandez, new to the county from Key West, who has such an imaginative eye that everything I've seen by him I've beheld in awe for the art in it. Will is truly an artist. Steve Terrill is truly an artist. He has several expressions for his art sensibilities; doing layout for Old-Time Herald www.oldtimeherald.org, which he does beautifully, picking banjo with the Hush Puppies, beautifully, has a label for old-time music by bands, www.old97wrecords.com, designs the album covers and all that goes with it.


Sarah Bryan, the editor, has shown herself to me to be a first class editor, the kind of editor a writer can work with happily. We've become acquainted by email over the last few years, turns out we know quite a lot of people in common, I knew some of the teachers where she went to school growing up in Myrtle Beach. She told me her dad made the big sculptures of dinosaurs, the golden Buddha, all kinds of animals at the miniature golf courses. I have loved those things for a lot of years. Even wondered who made them. They're almost inconceivably outrageous. They are unmistakably Myrtle Beach. Sarah told me that while he was working on a new miniature golf course, he ended up with one creature too many. It was a rhinoceros. He kept it standing in the driveway at home for a year. Sarah said her mother was fine with it. I've wanted to meet them both ever since. If one of my neighbors were to do such a thing, I'd take them a couple bottles of wine to celebrate. The Sarah I've come to know by every-once-in-a-while email correspondence and facebook is sure enough their daughter. Sarah has a spirit of allowing about her. She doesn't seem to me a controller.


Sarah has a manner that is particular to her generation, a young woman with a fast and brilliant mind who followed her interest, worked with NC folklife center and came into the job at Old-Time Herald as editor. Not to say other women have not blazed their own trails. I'm thinking the post-women's liberation generation, the daughters of women's liberation. Girls raised with the convicted belief they can do what they want to do with their lives. Whoever made the decision to hire Sarah into the role of editor made the right decision. I don't have any idea what she's like at the office. I have only the finished product to go by, and every issue the magazine is a beautiful presentation of its content. The ads are even beautiful. She has a banjo picker doing the visual layout with as good an eye as he has an ear. I think Sarah plays fiddle. Together with their staff they make a good band. Looking at the magazine as the music they make putting it together, it works. The magazine is full of reverence for old-time music, though not corny. It's a reverence like the way Dale Jett sings Carter Family songs. It's not sappy. It's a tone of voice in deep respect. That says it pretty good for the magazine, too. It's full of respect, never corny. And it's full of good information.


This issue, v13/#3, has the account I wrote of the experience of last year's Albert Hash Festival at Whitetop, Virginia. I had been curious how Steve Terrill would work his magic with it, automatically figuring he'd change the photographs to black and white, which was fine with me in full confidence that what Steve does will make a very respectable presentation. As I once heard an old feller say, I was knocked off the log. First, that it was in rich, brilliant color. They were my photographs and it took my breath when I saw Whitetop Mountain Band all the way across the top half of both pages in color that was so nice Steve must have passed his hand over it. Below it Kilby and Amanda Spencer, an intended portrait I took of them during the show. I wanted something of them that made a good portrait of them making music. I was happy he chose the picture of Slate Mountain Ramblers with the heads of the people sitting in front of me in the foreground and other audience heads, then the dancers in the middle ground in full sunlight, and beyond the dancers the band with just enough blur to indicate distance. I was seeing if I could get a picture with three levels of depth, the audience, the dancers, the band. Not trying to get more three-dimensional than a 2-D image allows, but to include the whole into one picture, one above the other, like in a medieval painting.


I like that picture for context. It shows the nature of the tent the audience is sitting under, the nature of the chairs they're sitting in. It shows that it is country people in the audience, dancers between audience and band, the bandstand, and in the distance upstaging the heads in the foreground, the Slate Mountain Ramblers. I love taking pictures of bands at music events. I like to get the pictures from behind the audience, using the zoom lens. I like the tops of heads in the audience. It's how we see when we go to a concert. That day, I was taking pictures for myself to include a few in the blog. I wanted to get pictures from the audience perspective. I don't like to get up close and be obnoxious trying to get an arty cliche picture. I'm not in anybody's way in the back. No sticking my camera up in the face of whoever is sitting behind me.


I was as glad to see that context photo included as the two of Whitetop Mountain Band and Crooked Road Ramblers. Most of all, I was floored by the inclusion of the photo of Thornton Spencer I'd forgotten I'd sent to Steve some time ago. It's my favorite of all photos I've taken. The camera has a half second delay from the time I push the button to the time the camera clicks. It was difficult to control a picture of people in motion, until I caught on to letting the blur define motion. I pushed the button as Thornton sawed the last note. The camera went off as the bow bounced off the string and he lowered the fiddle simultaneously. At first, I thought: Oh no! Then I loved it.


I had not intended or even thought to write something for OTH at the event. Took some pictures toward the blog and made some videos for YouTube. The channel: hobblealong1. You can find them by searching hobblealong1 or names of the bands. If you want to. Judy Carpenter was here and she went with me. We had a great time. The music was supreme all the way through. The audience was all country people, the kind of audience I'm most comfortable in, like at Fairview, Ruritan. I was at home every minute there. Even walking up to the place to pay admission I knew I'd come home. I have a lot of good associations with Whitetop Mountain. Later, after I'd written the blog entry it came to me to write something about it. I imagined somebody had been sent to write an article about it and better pictures than mine would be taken there.


I thought I'd write something from the perspective of somebody in the audience. Maybe it could be a companion piece for the main article with the inside scoop on the bands and the background of the event. I don't know that I've ever seen an article anywhere as seen from the audience. That doesn't mean anything because I've seen a minuscule number of articles in my lifetime to what there are in the world. I don't think I've ever seen any. I'm not a folklorist, so I felt it best to approach the article as an audience member, one of the people that pays to get in. Sarah's minimal editing made it better than I wrote it. She didn't change much, but what she changed made it tremendously better to read. She's as masterful at what she does as Steve is at his job. I feel powerful gratitude to both Sarah and Steve for taking that little ole thing I wrote and making it look awfully good. Thanks from the heart to the entire staff. I have to say I'm honored to have an article in this fine magazine I hold in high respect.     

the slate mountain ramblers at albert hash memorial fest 2011

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