ELKVILLE STRING BAND LIVE IN CONCERT

the elkville string band

trevor mckenzie, bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd 

 

elkville string band

 

elkville string band

 

Friday night in Woodlawn, Virginia, the Elkville String Band made music at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop, The Front Porch. They came together as a band around Minton's Pawn shop in North Wilkesboro for the weekly live AM radio show early one morning, I think it's Friday, over a period of several years. Originally Jeff Michael played clawhammer banjo with the band and Drake Walsh played fiddle. Eventually, Drake Walsh died and Trevor McKenzie took his place, and then Jeff Michael left the band. Jeff was playing tonight at Rhonda NC with Carolina Grass at Debbie's Country Kitchen. Kilby Spencer's band, The Crooked Road Ramblers, played at the Jubilee in Sparta tonight. I wanted to see them all, but wanted most to go to Woodlawn. I'd not been there in two or three months. Went there not knowing who was playing. The music is always worth a two hour round trip. I feel at home at the Front Porch. It's my musical home base. Artist and poet friend Bill Nixon has been staying this week in neighbor's cabin across the road and into the trees, friends of his in Atlanta. Bill and I have several friends in the Atlanta area associated with Emory and Oxford College. Bill was a Marine in Vietnam, and recently published a long poem composed of several shorter poems of living and dying in Vietnam, BRAZEN THROATS. Bill has a John Burroughs face with Walt Whitman hair and beard. He soars as a poet and soars just as gracefully in his visual art, which includes about every visual expression. I've been reading in Brazen Throats enchanted by the flow of his lines, sentences, scenes, a visual writer. He's just right to talk with about art. He has a poet's way of talking about art, whatever the given subject. It's childhood playground fun having someone near at hand to talk with about the only subject that has ever interested me. He recognizes art in music and got an earful of the art of music by the Elkville String band. I love introducing the music to people I know who are open to the Art of mountain music. We got it in abundance earlier tonight.

 

bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 

bill williams, herb key, jim lloyd

 

jim lloyd

 

Last time Bill came to neighbor's cabin for a week's retreat in solitude to work on a series of drawings, I took him to Woodlawn to hear Gerald Anderson, Scott Freeman, Willard Gayheart, Spencer Strickland and Butch Barker jam for a couple hours. Every one of these guys is a master of his instrument and the music. They don't show off their command of technique, rather they make music and the quality of their musicianship gives the music the art that brings it to life. They were Bill's introduction to mountain music.  Every one of them is an artist in his musicianship. After parking the car tonight we were walking toward the door and saw on the chalkboard, Willard's humble marquee, Elkville String Band. I said, Good! I had to miss them the last time they played at the Front Porch, and automatically knew Bill would appreciate their music. We talked too much at the restaurant. He looked at his watch outside the door and it was 7. The show started at 7. We had a 45 minute drive ahead. He said, Let's go anyway. It left us an hour and ten minutes to hear the music. The band had been playing awhile when we walked in, warmed up and flowing good. They had a good motion flowing in the music. The banjo, guitar, fiddle and bass play together as a unit. Herb Key was the lead vocal. Herb has a vast catalogue of songs in his head. He lets the song tell its own feeling, articulately, with understanding of the story in his voice, telling his understanding in the delivery. Sometimes he seemed to me an ancient story teller who sang his stories, Homeric in nature, a good story well told in verse that is sung. His voice has no flourishes. He sings with the voice of a storyteller, a musical version of talking, telling a story that carries its own feeling, and follows the story with a good driving rhythm leading the way. Jim Lloyd's banjo keeps a rolling rhythm going with Herb Key's guitar and Bill Williams' bass. Lloyd was relaxed and flowing freely tonight, skipping and dancing through the songs with his fingers. He sings a good song too.  Herb Key plays a rhythm guitar something like Willard Gayheart plays rhythm, in that they don't strum. They pick one string at a time, two of them individually on the down stroke, pickin hand flying like a bird's wing keeping the rhythm going, picking on automatic pilot and singing songs from their heads, one after another. The times I've seen/heard Herb perform, it was impressive to hear and see his command of so many songs. He sings every song in his own style that is Herb Key and nobody else. He rides the flow of the music with his singing the same as with his guitar, simultaneously.

 

bill williams and herb key

 



trevor mckenzie and herb key

 

trevor mckenzie

Trevor McKenzie, the fiddler, sang several songs, too. Trevor could make his fiddle sing. He's a strong fiddler with the bold sound of a firm bow. The whole band has a similarly bold sound. They have a full sound. That's what it is, they have a full sound with fiddle, banjo and vocals dancing in lightness supported by solid rhythms that flow. I noted over and over the flow in their music. I've wondered what it was about their sound that made it unique to themselves. That fullness in flow has something to do with it. It's a feeling the band is a unit. I'm recalling Drake Walsh's fiddle had a strong bow and absence of flourishes. I'm thinking they made music in the style of Wilkes County. Every county in the mountains has its own musical personality. Trevor, a relatively young fiddler, stepped into Drake Walsh's role, a legendary fiddler of his time, and approaches his fiddle with the self-assurance of a seasoned musician. He's an excellent singer too. I was noticing how refreshing they were as a band in that they were having fun, it was play time, play music. Bill asked on the drive home what I'd call the kind of music they played. I heard old-time, bluegrass, country, folk, all of them mixed together such that it was hard to pick one and say that's it. The best I could do in a few words was to say I'd maybe call it old-time folk. The singing is in the folk style of Doc Watson, though not like Doc Watson. Like Doc had his own style of singing, these guys each had his own style of singing the traditional songs. This is why I call it folk. The energy generated by their music I call old-time. Bluegrass is in there too, though it sounds to my ear the old-time sound is dominant, seasoned by bluegrass. It was a difficult question to answer, esp from someone who was not asking the question idly. A bluegrass banjo and a fiddler who leans into bluegrass playing old-time songs true to the integrity of the songs themselves, delivered in Elkville String Band's unique sound. They played Mountain Dew, Otto Wood, train wreck songs, murder songs, living your life as a human being songs. Trevor, the fiddler, sang Just Because, a bluegrass song and an Elvis on the Sun label song it takes a lot of nerve to cover. He did it. He made the listener forget it was anybody's song but his. I like that about the band, to categorize their music goes nowhere. It sounds stupid to call them a fusion band, so I'll call them music, like it was in the old days when it was not called old-time, but music. Whatever category of music the Carter Family fits under, Elkville String Band is there with them.

 

 

jim lloyd

 

trevor mckenzie

 

herb key

 

Bill bought my dinner on the way to the show and I bought him the band's new CD after the show. I wanted him to have a record of the music he heard, music he can play for Susan, his wife, to give her a feel for what he experienced in the hills of old Virginny, and for the good music to refresh his memory of a dynamite show. It brought to mind taking Lucas and Judy, whose cabin Bill is staying in, to a Ralph Stanley show at the Fairview Ruritan. They had only heard of Ralph Stanley and that only through me talking about him. His music was as far outside their musical experience as it was in mine before my hillbilly adventure. Like Bill, they recognize art in whatever form they see or hear it. It is the art in hillbilly music that pulled me to it and holds me with it. When I listen to the banjo and the fiddle of Gaither Carlton, Esker Hutchins, Fred Cockerham, Tommy Jarrell, to name a few of many, I am in touch with art the same as walking through the Museum of Modern Art in New York or listening to the Kronos Quartet or Pink Floyd. It is the art I hear in music I love. It is the art in the music that makes the Fiddle and Plow series at Willard's frame shop, the Front Porch, such that I need to be there every Friday night I can make it. I've missed it so many times in a row the return was sweet. Good to see Willard, shake his hand again, see Scott, shake his hand again, talk briefly with them during intermission. And to walk in on the Elkville String Band. They made a spirited welcome on return to the Front Porch. Whatever band might have been playing would have made a happy return, that it was Elkville String Band rang my bell. I regretted I had to miss them last time they played there, so this show brought me up to date with the songs they're singing now upon the release of their new CD. I gave it to Bill before even noticing the title or the label, only remember the photo on the cover, a red woodshed with stacked wood, beautiful. Can't find it online anyplace. Evidently it is too new to be up on the band's or label's website yet. I suspect the label is Mountain Roads, the label of their other CD. I took it so for granted it was Mountain Roads, I didn't think to look. Given my pick from a checklist of bands I'd like to see first time back at the Front Porch after too long an absence, I'd have picked the Elkville String Band.

 

elkville string band

 

 

*

 

 

 

THE GRASSY HOLLOW BOYS LIGHT UP THE FRONT PORCH

scott freeman, willard gayheart, mike gayheart

 

Another night of good music from home, acoustic mountain music by Willard Gayheart, guitar, and Scott Freeman, mandolin and fiddle, with Mike Gayheart playing bass. They are calling themselves the Grassy Hollow Boys, Scott and Willard with whoever they can find available for banjo and bass for a given show. They said Jimmy Zeh plays banjo with them, but couldn't make it for this show. They found a banjo player who might make it, but didn't. No problem. Scott and Willard together make the most satisfying shows I've seen and heard there at the Fiddle and Plow Show at Woodlawn, Virginia, in Willard's frame shop and gallery for his extensive collection of pencil drawings of regional people and musicians of the past and present. A second book of Willard's drawings has recently been published. It's his pictures hanging on the walls. Willard and Scott play together at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Parkway once a week, I think Thursdays, during the summer months. Scott is married to Willard's daughter, Jill. He and Willard have made music together at least twenty-five years. They have had bands together, Alternate Roots, a stellar, first-rate bluegrass band of Scott and Willard's own style of bluegrass. And Skeeter and the Skidmarks, disbanded for several years because the banjo player had to leave the area, and when he returned years later, the band is back together. They have been called a "progressive old-time band," and I can't improve that. It's what they do.

 

willard gayheart

 

 

Willard and Scott have been giving concerts at the frame shop, The Front Porch, where they bring out about forty folding chairs for the show. Excellent sound system Scott keeps at a level where it sounds like there is no sound system, but it's easy to hear everything clearly. Tonight's sound was about the best ever. I think Scott has been working with the sound system, fine tuning it. The audience is often less than twenty, and often full. Last time Skeeter played, they had to bring up chairs from downstairs and still there were people standing against the back wall. Wayne Henderson fills the place up too. Full is about fifty. Everybody is comfortable. The people who go every week to almost every week, of which I'm one, all know each other after something like four years of hearing some of the finest music from the Central Blue Ridge every week. We're spoiled. There is no place any of us want to go to hear better music. There isn't any better music. Some more popular, some more dynamic, some more showy, but to my ear, even Willie Nelson's band doesn't compare to Scott and Willard's bands. Back in May I saw Willie Nelson and was struck by what a good band he had, and struck even more that the band was no better than what we hear at Woodlawn on Friday nights. Not less, but not better either. My respect for Scott's and Willard's music is the fullest of any music I have ever loved. They bring in different musicians of the Central Blue Ridge who play for $5 a seat.

 

scott freeman

 

Jeanette Williams has played there I think three times. She won bluegrass music award for best traditional vocalist twice. Her band, Jeanette Williams band, has made about ten albums. She's Nashville bluegrass and says every time she's plays at the Front Porch with maybe fifteen people in the audience that it's her favorite place to play. She gets no more than gas money when she plays there. Her husband, Johnny, is with her and he's fine bluegrass musician and singer on his own. He's recently played with Big Country Bluegrass, one of many he's made music with. It's some high-powered straight-ahead bluegrass when they play. The VW Boys, from Bristol, have played three times, as well. Another auditorium bluegrass band that likes to play at Willard's place for gas money because everyone in the audience listens. No coughing, no getting up and going to the bathroom. It happens, but rarely. Everyone is there for the music, because they love the music, go when they don't know who is playing. We all know that whoever is playing is music we want to hear. This Fiddle and Plow Show can come under the heading, Best Kept Secrets. They don't advertise. People hear about it in their own ways. Scott and Willard open every show with two songs. Going by my own musical taste, I'd rather hear Scott and Willard than any of the people who play there. It wouldn't do to have Scott and Willard every week. But it's great to have them give a show after ten or so by other musicians. It's always refreshing for me when they give a show. Neither Scott nor Willard take any money from it. All the money goes to the guest musicians. Scott and Willard won't have it. It's not what they're about.

 

willard's henderson guitar

 

I've not been able to go for several weeks due to one circumstance and another, and lately because city night driving through Galax blinds me with the bright car lights. This is a new condition of my eyes. Night driving with other cars on the highway gives me a fit anymore visually. It makes me uneasy and I do it less and less. I missed some really good music. And I was glad the show was Willard and Scott. Scott's mandolin is out of this world. The sound system carried Willard's guitar the best I've heard it. Willard sang the songs he loves that I have learned to love hearing him sing them. When It's Nighttime in Nevada, one of my favorites, the Bob Wills Texas Swing song, Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon. This show was the best Willard has done that song, one of his I love the most. A lot of the people take it for a children's song, but it's not. It's a beautiful love song. They had a good rhythm going, a kind of Forties big band rhythm Bill Monroe used in his bluegrass that has gone out of bluegrass over the years. Willard and Mike kept the rhythm going at a pace that makes you tap your foot double-time. They played another of my Willard favorites, I Get The Blues When It Rains. It rained when I found you. It rained when I lost you. That's why I get the blues when it rains. Beautiful song, a pop song from the 1920s. He sang several songs of his own composition, Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog, one we love every time we hear it. He sang Hank Williams' song, Mama Tried. To my ear, Willard has made that song his own.  And one of his more recent songs, My Henderson Guitar.

 

mike and willard reflected in the window and mirror

 

Scott played several songs of his composition and sang a Bob Wills song, Roly Poly, a good Western Swing song that Scott performs so well he has made it his own. By made it his own, I mean the way Jimi Hendrix made Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower his own. He played an instrumental on the mandolin of Sweet Georgia Brown that was killer. I don't usually use that word, like awesome, but it fits here. It's the only word. My old banjo pickin friend, Junior Maxwell, would say of Scott that he has found every note there is in a mandolin. He has only said that of Earl Scruggs where the banjo is concerned. I believe if he'd heard Scott picking on every song he played he would have come away from it saying Scott has found them all. Scott would not say that. And maybe Junior would not say it. But I do. I've heard Scott smoke his mandolin such that the others in the band looked at him in awe like, What got into you? That was in an Alternate Roots show at the Blue Ridge Music Center scheduled right after Scott won the mandolin competition at the Wayne Henderson Festival. He was playing the new mandolin he'd won made by Wayne Henderson. He tore it up. Steve Lewis standing beside him playing banjo looked at him like he'd found a hole in the stratosphere and went through it. In the mountain tradition, Scott is not a show-off musician. He just plays music so beautifully he doesn't need to pretty it up with flourishes to draw attention to himself. His musicianship is about addressing the song itself as beautifully as he can make it. Scott and Willard satisfy my ear to the same degree Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys give me musical satisfaction. I feel privileged in a very real way to be one of the people who knows the Fiddle and Plow Show is happening. They are my primary source of music in this time of the life. I feel like I have grown into them over years of listening to every kind of music, educating my ear to the place I can appreciate the music Willard and Scott make.

 

 

willard

 

 

*

 

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

 

 

 

*

 

WILLARD GAYHEART AND BOBBY PATTERSON AGAIN

willard gayheart

Friday night Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson picked guitars and sang traditional songs. Sometimes Bobby played old-time banjo and sometimes a bluegrass banjo. Both sing very well. I was telling my friend Justin earlier that I would rather hear them than Doc Watson. Not to throw off on Watson, he draws a huge crowd and it's a good show, but he's so big and famous, that fans cried and waxed emotional when he died. I was asked by somebody same day how I felt about Doc Watson dying. I said, Nothing. Why nothing? I said, I didn't know him. I only know his singing; he has over thirty albums I can listen to any time whether he's living or dead. I saw him in concert once and felt very cool about seeing DOC WATSON in person, live, on stage. Yet it was no different from hearing Bobby and Willard picking and singing when it comes to good music and enjoying what I'm hearing. I enjoy Bobby and Willard more because I know them, which is far from the only reason. I've heard them half a dozen times in concert and declare them Doc's equal when it comes to performing good old songs. Bobby picks a good lead guitar and Willard picks good rhythm guitar.  Together they made some music that makes me happy I'm nowhere else.

Bobby and Willard have made music together in their bluegrass band THE HIGHLANDERS for 40+ years, they make music together at the Blue Ridge Music Center through the summer months once a week. Bobby has made some cds of them that sell pretty well to people passing through wanting a mountain memory to take home. Bobby plays mandolin in the band, and other places plays banjo and bass, too. Willard came to Galax from Kentucky about ten miles outside Hazard. He managed a five and dime store in Galax awhile, his pencil drawing took off and he opened a frame shop \ gallery, The Front Porch in Woodlawn where the music happens Friday nights. Minnie, the twenty year old white Maine Coon, was with us as always, it being her home. At first she didn't like all the people filling up her space and making such a racket on Friday nights. Eventually, she settled into the routine and by now seems to enjoy having all the people around. I always pet her and talk to her telling her she's a beautiful cat. Being a Maine Coon, she doesn't like much physical attention. She'd actually prefer not to be touched, so I limit my petting to a finger on the top of her head between the ears. She likes that, but only so much. I know not to push her too far, so I stop after a short time. There is a time she likes it, then a time she does not. Keep it up and she'll bite. Not hard, just enough to say, Cut it out! My friend Caterpillar is a Maine Coon, so I have good training.

These two seasoned musicians, Bobby 70, Willard 80, have a relaxed maturity in their music making that lets the music breathe. They know so well what they're doing with the strings that the music flows free of thought about what they're doing. I watched their fingers move with amazement at how freely their fingers of their left hands danced about noting the strings, too fast for thought from chord to chord, never missing a lick with their right hands picking individual strings. To hear Willard tell it, he can't do any better than basic picking. To hear Willard's guitar and see his fingers in motion tells me Willard is quite an advanced guitar picker. After thirty to forty years of his pencil drawing, he has become a subtle artist. Bobby Patterson has a music store in the next building where he sells mountain music cds and he has a recording label, Heritage Records, where he has recorded old-time and bluegrass music of SW Virginia for the same period of time. Alice Gerrard started the magazine Old-Time Herald in the basement of Bobby's shop among all his recording equipment.

Bobby's singing is a good example of good mountain singing that draws no attention to the singer, puts all attention on the song. Where other singers might raise their voices, Bobby goes lower instead of higher. First time I heard him sing, I thought it a little odd, but only because I'd never heard anybody do that before. By now, after hearing him as much as I have, I call it excellent singing. Willard's singing is different from Bobby's and they fit like hand and glove. Willard even seems to get emotional in his singing compared to Bobby. Bobby is straight old Primitive Baptist delivery, where Willard sometimes gets to shaking his head, bending his knees, moves with the music, which is a bit out of the ordinary for his generation of musicians. Such motions used to be frowned upon by musicians and audiences. By now, the younger old-time bands are jumping about like rock stars. How music has changed from Bobby and Willard's generation to present. The young musicians have rock in their growing up and they bring into old-time a new freedom to move with the music. Willard I suppose got it from being lead singer with the Highlanders on stage for so many years. Then with Skeeter & the Skidmarks through the 90s and Alternate Roots in the 00s.

I see in Willard's stage presence an intimacy with the audience like Doc Watson had, though each in his own way. I felt in a Doc Watson concert like he was sending love to everyone in the audience and everyone sent their love to him. It became a big flowing circle of love that I found awe inspiring. Willard addresses his audience with the same loving familiarity as Watson. No matter how many times Willard sings his own songs, they're the ones the audience wants to hear most, especially Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog. Hank Williams' song Mama Tried is one of Willard's songs that to my ear he took away from Williams and made it his own. Willard sings it like he wrote it. Bobby is best known in my mind playing guitar with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed on the classic old-time album, June Apple. To my ear that is one of the great old-time albums with Bell Spur String Band and Whitetop Mountain Band's album Bull Plus 10%. Can't leave out the Laurel Fork Travelers. Hearing Bobby and Willard make music is more than just hearing music. They're the present manifestations of mountain music carrying the flame to the next generation.

*

PRIVILEGED LIVING

     air bellows gap road



I was just now reading what I'd written yesterday on fundamentalism. It carried me through those early phases of the life in my mind, the sentences triggering memories. It concluded with hearing the birds all day and the katydids and tree frogs after dark. Finishing that sentence, I felt overwhelmed by privilege. I've lived my life in poverty, my greatest ambition being to stay out of prison. That's something to pay attention to in America. The legal system gets a sadistic kick out of putting people in prison with long sentences. I don't think it's right, but I can't change it, so I walk the line. The legal system also knows what American prison is like. It's like throwing people to the gladiators. That's the dark side. So I do my best to keep on the sunny side of life, even though it's not always daylight. The sunny side doesn't mean I can't be saddened that American boys like me just out of high school, dumb as a rock, can't find a job, got no experience, and military is the American male right of passage. Go to Afghanistan, WoW, gonna kick some ass. Boom. Your legs are blown off. VA hospital. Home with mom and dad taking care of you the rest of their lives, them keeping themselves in poverty paying for an expensive insurance policy to keep you when they're gone. Then, of course, you have to take the insurance corporation to court because they refuse to pay unless you sue for it. That kind of intimidation is part of the plan.

Back to the privilege of hearing birds and insects. I feel privileged because none of the above has happened to me. I feel privileged that I live outside the maelstrom that civilization has become. In the words of an Alternate Roots song that Willard sang Friday night, A Million Miles From The City. Even though the interstate runs nearby and and it's a straight line to the city, a crooked line to another city, cities in all directions, it's the same as a million miles to the city, because I don't even like to cross the county line anymore. I love where I am so much and don't have a great deal of time left, I'm jealous of time here on this spot on Waterfall Road. And Caterpillar is the last of my lifetime of pets. I want to be here with her all the time. Every day is precious. I'm privileged to have learned through the course of my adult life to communicate with the "dumb" animals, dumb only in that they can't speak verbally. It is a privilege to be able to know an individual cat or dog as the "person" within, not just something you feed and clean up after. I like their uncluttered minds. I feel privileged for my experience in the community of the mountain people, privileged to be received as a naturalized citizen.

Another problem I had with Kansas was its scant and boring history. Cowtowns, Jesse James and killing Indians. A Kansas historian would go apeshit reading that summation and call me retarded. He'd be right. They didn't teach Kansas history in any school I went to. I don't think there are many states that teach the state's history in the public school. It's one of those subjects that is automatically dismissed like art history. So we memorize names of generals and dates of wars to pass the history test. I liked about South Carolina and North Carolina that they had histories. They were Southern states, the Confederacy where my heart pulled me ever since third grade when I read a child's biography of Robert E Lee. It woke up something in me that must have been sleeping inside. The South had a mystique for me that grew with time until it was time to bale out of Kansas. Where to? The South. It was like coming home living in South Carolina. In high school I liked Duane Eddy's song, Mason Dixon Lion. The South I fell in love with was not the South as it is, but an idea, a fantasy, a place where I felt one with its history that I knew nothing about except losing the Civil War.

I feel privileged to have lived in and to be living in the world of mountain music. WPAQ AM radio that Ralph Epperson started in 1948, the radio station in the next county, Surry, that only plays mountain music is as important to my way of understanding mountain music as the Bristol Sessions. I understand WPAQ is online now. My mechanic keeps the radio playing in his shop all day with WPAQ playing. His AM reception was not very good; he had to keep the radio in the window for listenable reception. He plays the station online now with excellent reception. It is only on the air during the daylight hours. Sometimes it is playing gospel, sometimes preaching, sometimes people talking, and mountain music from mostly the Central Blue Ridge. They still play the Carter Family, Emory Arthur, the Blue Sky Boys, Roy Acuff and current mountain music like the Slate Mountain Ramblers, Whitetop Mountain Band, Alternate Roots, Crooked Road Ramblers, Rock Mountain Ramblers, Ralph Stanley and all the rest of them. When a band self-produces a cd, they send one to the station. WPAQ's library of mountain music is extensive. Ralph Epperson used to tape live shows on Saturday mornings at the theater in MtAiry and gave all his tapes to the NC folklife center. What a treasure those tapes are for the future of Appalachian folklife studies.

I don't listen to the station much because I get no reception at the house and occasional reception in the eastern half of the county by car. And always forget it's online. When I want to hear mountain music, I put on a cd. Whatever I put on of mountain music takes over my focus. Earlier I put on some music by Kevin Fore (banjo) and Kirk Sutphin (fiddle). From the first notes I was fixed, couldn't do anything but listen. In the time of the AM stations in the mountains, each one played to its own county, the county lines about as far as reception goes, except for odd things like I've heard Sparta's AM station could be picked up in N Wilkesboro. I'm privileged that I was able to dj a weekly radio show on WCOK AM, Sparta, Saturday mornings, The Backwoods Beat Music Hour for seven years. Theme song was a solo bluegrass banjo playing Billy In The Lowground with a background fiddle drone. I feel tremendous privilege that I had the opportunity to play mountain music to mountain people in my home county, the county next to WPAQ. I love that. I don't know how many listeners I had, maybe a few hundred, maybe less, maybe more. I never talked up the radio show, because it was for people who love mountain music, not for people who say it all sounds like the same song over and over. I figured the people who wanted to hear it would find it. It didn't matter how many. I'd have been as happy with 3 as with 300. It was for people who love the music, not for numbers.

One of the greatest privileges of all, the one where I started noticing the feeling of privilege, and feel privilege every week that I simply know about the Friday night music at Willard Gayheart's gallery and frame shop, the Front Porch. For a couple years seldom more than 20 people in the audience, usually between 12 and 15. We were the ones who went every week we could make it. By now we all know each other. Now that it is a Crooked Road Venue attendance has doubled and tripled ever since. It's between 40 and 60 now. Minnie the cat can't give up her seat if she wants it back. Before, she could jump to the floor and walk around during the music looking at the people, sizing up the crowd, this her home, walking among the legs, then find a new place to curl up. It's not like that any more. When she gets up, somebody sits down. The first privilege is just knowing about it. Then many rings of privilege out from that; knowing the people I've come to know there, having Scott, Willard, Edwin, Dori, Jill, Steve for my friends, people I have heart feeling with, people I respect way high up, every one of them. Basically, it's looking like my entire life in the mountains has been one of feeling privilege, the privilege of living in a really beautiful culture almost nobody outside it knows about. Living among the mountain people as my own is the privilege I value perhaps most.


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WHILE THE BAND IS PLAYING DIXIE

harrol blevins

willard gayheart

Harrol Blevins and Willard Gayheart played at the Front Porch Friday night. Donna Correll, bass player with the Wolfe Brothers old-time band, wife of the band's fiddler, Jerry Correll, played bass. I've come to think of the times Willard picks and sings with whoever he's with, most often Scott Freeman, tonight Harrol Blevins, as the best music that happens at the Front Porch. Harrol and Willard play very well together. Harrol plays lead guitar with Willard, who plays rhythm. Both sing very well and do good harmonies. Donna kept the bass going good, harmonized some on choruses. I watched with eyes open most of the time, though sometimes I watched with eyes closed, listening with the same intensity I watched with eyes open. It's good with eyes open, but closed, the sound comes through without the visual distraction. Their two guitars sound much better in the dark. It's actually mildly shocking how much the sound is different with eyes open or closed.

 I didn't make any video tonight because the computer is full and I haven't yet figured out what to do about it. What I've found thus far to do costs more than I have at the moment. I'll just have to be on hold in the video department until I figure this thing out. Different people give me different information. I've become indifferent. Maybe I will get it done someday, and maybe I won't. I know what I'll do! I'll talk to Tim (the Techman) Sizemore next time I see him at the coffee shop. He will give me the straight scoop. In the past, other people have told me to do this and that for a given computer problem. I talk to Tim, and he has the answer that is not anything like what I'd been told by the ones quick to know the answer. One time, listening to friends who "know," I spent 3-4 hundred dollars for nothing. Tim's answer: buy a laptop.

The pictures above were taken in May when Harrol and Willard put on a show together. I got some stills, but the computer won't accept them. Ten new people in the audience tonight. Recently, the show has been included into the Crooked Road tourism deal on Hwy 58 in largely SW Virginia. 58 goes all the way to Richmond (I think) and maybe has music venues along the eastern part too. Anyway, the western part is the only part of interest here. It includes the Carter Fold at Hilton's, Virginia, across the state line from Kingsport, Tenn, a ways beyond Bristol. It's close to where Jimmy Martin came from and Earl Taylor, too. Seeing the words Carter Fold bring up nostalgic memories of the time I went there with Jean when Alternate Roots was playing their last concert. That was the night I bought my Carter Family tshirt. It's my anti-cool tshirt. Next time I go to a rock concert, I think I'll wear it. Not that anyone but me would know what Carter Family means. Surely there would be half a dozen others in a crowd of a thousand. I'd never heard of the Carter Family at age 21.

Harrol Blevins sang While The Band Is Playing Dixie, a Carter Family song. At the Albert Hash fest last year at Whitetop, Dale Jett, grandson of AP and Sara Carter, sang the song. I'd heard it before, but heard it the first time when he sang it there. He sang it so right, too. Jett doesn't sing "like" the Carter Family. He sings with a reverence for the song, itself, like he believes it is such a good-worded song he wants to share it with us. While the band Is playing Dixie, I'm humming Home Sweet Home. Willard and Harrol sang it nicely. It's such a good song that just playing it is all it takes to show its beauty. It doesn't matter whether it's done well or not so well. The song is so beautiful, it takes care of itself. Like Leonard Bernstein's Maria. That song cannot be sung poorly. Everyone who sings it, sings it beautifully, because it's a beautiful song that can't be ruined. It's the same with the Band Playing Dixie; It has a feel similar to The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down. Deep, strong Southern feeling, down there in the heart where the South resides in Southerners, where Southerners are kin, where the live oaks are still draped with Spanish moss.  

I just now went to YouTube and found Maybelle Carter and Sara Carter singing While The Band Is Playing Dixie. I wanted a refreshing on the words. Evidently on the other side of the ocean, the songwriter heard a band playing Dixie and caught himself humming Home Sweet Home. It's like some of the old songs of missing the South, or one's home state in the South; Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia. The yellow Rose of Texas beat the belles of Tennessee. Missing home, sweet home. Whatever that home might be, My Old Kentucky Home. Sara sang, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." My home is this house on Air Bellows mountain, where the Part 2 half of my life played out. Taking liberties with the song East Virginia Blues, I was born in California, to North Carolina I did roam. There was never a time in the first half of my life that I ever imagined living in North Carolina. In college time, I had an unrealistic desire to go to Chapel Hill. Upon arrival in the mountains, I learned Chapel Hill is where the communists were located. Also learned there were 57 communists in High Point.

As usual at the Fiddle and Plow shows, Willard's picking and singing characterize the sound of the place. Willard's persona, his presence, who Willard is, is central to the atmosphere of the place, which by day is Willard's frame shop where he has his drawing shop in the basement, or the ground floor, since the frame shop is actually the second floor, though it seems like first. Like in the Carolina Lowcountry, the basement is above ground. It is a different band or individual guest every week, and Willard is the constant. He's there to introduce the guest and often accompany. He's so personable and at home that it doesn't even figure that he is, in my way of seeing, one of the more important men in the world of SW Virginia traditional music, there with Bobby Patterson, a singing partner. I'm floored every time I hear a long list of Willard's contributions to music in SW Virginia and Galax. It's my buddy Willard, not a bust on a pedestal.  Like I feel privileged going to the Fiddle and Plow shows, I feel privileged knowing Willard, somebody I look up to as a musician and a human being.

mark uzmann, winter oak

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THE HIGHLANDERS BLUEGRASS THE FRONT PORCH

     bobby patterson, scott freeman, jimmy zeh, marvin cockerham,           willard gayheart

     bobby patterson, scott freeman

     bobby patterson, scott freeman, jimmy zeh

     jimmy zeh, marvin cockerham, willard gayheart

The show at the Front Porch last night was the Highlanders, a Galax bluegrass band that started around 1970 and grew into a spot onstage at the 1982 World Fair in Knoxville. It was something of a CD release concert as Bobby Patterson, mandolin player in the band, has a label where he publishes old-time and bluegrass bands of SW Virginia. His catalog has some of the finest music of this region that can be found; Whit Sizemore's band The Shady Mountain Ramblers, The Rock Mountain Ramblers, early Whitetop Mountain Band with Albert Hash on fiddle, Otis Burris, Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, The Bell Spur String Band. When Bobby was much younger, he played rhythm guitar on the album JUNE APPLE with Tommy Jarrell playing fiddle, Kyle Creed banjo, Audine Lineberry bass. It's about the finest old-time album I've heard. In the time of my store selling regional music, somebody would come in and ask for "the best" of the old-time, somebody new to the area. I handed them June Apple and they always returned wanting more "like that." I'd have to say, "There isn't any more like that. That's it. There are plenty of close seconds." Bobby will forever be a star in my eyes for being a part of that album.

Knowing a little bit about the music of SW Virginia, the list of musicians he's recorded is impressive. In several cases their only recordings are with Heritage. Bobby tapes the Galax Fiddlers Convention every year, makes a compilation CD of selections from what happened on stage. He has recently given all his fiddlers convention tapes to Ferrum College at Martinsville VA for their Appalachian music department. If you've been to the Galax Fiddler's Convention, you might remember Bobby as the man who tells about the banjo to be given away to the lucky one chosen from tickets sold for a dollar apiece for some benefit. He gives a demonstration picking that knocks my sox off every time I hear him. He doesn't set out to be impressive; it's just that the man makes music with whatever instrument he plays. Bobby is presently with a gospel group, Sugar Creek. The Highlanders recordings were all in the time of LPs. Bobby has now put a selection of 20 songs from their albums onto a CD called BIG SHOW TONIGHT FEATURING THE HIGHLANDERS. Of course I bought one. I've wanted it quite awhile. I jumped when he said he'd brought copies like a firecracker went off in my seat. The feeling inside was like in the late Sixties waiting for the new Bob Dylan album.

Bobby's website: http://www.heritageshoppe.net

The bluegrass the Highlanders play is Galax style with musicians of the region with no inhibitions about making music. Bobby gave out a sheet of paper with the CDs with a list of the names of the original Highlanders, and a long list of names of SW Virginia musicians who have played with the band in one capacity or another, from a guest at a show to played in the band a number of years. I've listened to the first half before I started writing. It wasn't long after putting it on that I had to crank up the laptop and satisfy the craving to write you about last night at Woodlawn. Several of the songs they played were written by Willard. These songs are on the CD. Willard has recorded them with his band Alternate Roots as well. He and Scott sing them at the Front Porch to entertain his fan club of about 20 who return every week for some of the finest music in SW Virginia and NW North Carolina. Ern and Zory's Sneakin Bitin Dog is one of Willard's compositions we all love to hear him sing. Robin D is another, possibly my favorite of Willard's songs, the story of a man in West Virginia who built a river boat to go up the New River to the Ohio to the Mississippi "to the sea." In my head, the tune is wed to Randy Pasley's Dobro in the Alternate Roots recording.

The songs Willard wrote I know "by heart" after hearing Alternate Roots in concert 15 times, Willard and Scott opening shows with them, listening to Alternate Roots CDs like I used to listen to Rolling Stones LPs. I don't hear as big a difference as many who would compare AR and the Stones might. A great difference in instruments and volume. Both are ass-kicking bands with musicianship as good as it gets, people in the band playing as one. After listening to Alternate Roots, I could easily put on something by the Clash or Jane's Addiction and feel no shock from one to the next. In my ears, both rose out of old-time. It's old-time electric, new songs instead of traditional, new ways of playing instead of traditional. Same energy. Bluegrass same energy. I'm inclined to see the Highlanders historically, like from a hundred years from now, when the people in folklore studies say WoW when they hear it, or a thousand years from now, no matter what the music is like then. Anybody with ears hears truly superb music with the Highlanders. I love the way they did on the album with Willard's song Ballad of a Minstrel. Willard sings it beautifully as I've heard him sing it at least a hundred times. The instrumental accompaniment was light and percussive, sounding very much like dance music out of central Africa. It was incredibly beautiful. I'd never heard any bluegrass band approach a song so lightly, almost like making the notes with wind chimes, though only by suggestion.

Willard doesn't believe he is much of a song writer. Guess what. I beg to differ. I just look at the titles and see song after song I know the words to: The Shootin, The Salad Song, The Working, Sweet Virginia, Kentucky Memories, plus the ones mentioned above, Ern and Zory's Sneakin Bitin Dog and Robin D. Every one of them is a beautifully worded song. Willard sang them as well back in the time they were recorded as he sings them now. Automatically I feel inclined to mention Robin D may be my favorite. Then, I have to say, No. The Sneakin Bitin Dog. No. Kentucky Memories. No. The Workin. No. All of them. Yes. I feel blessed that I've had the opportunity to put all these songs on YouTube with Willard singing them. Some of them are on there several times because he sings them differently according to circumstances. Sit-down with guitar on knee, he sings in a folk manner. With Skeeter and the Skidmarks stand-up he sings another way, the same though with different energy. I like the different subtle ways he presents a given song per manner of delivery. Some may think it overkill that I upload so much of Willard and Scott on YouTube, but I am entering into the archive Willard's different deliveries of The Yellow Rose of Texas, a song that Willard made his own simply by revealing it's inner beauty.

To find Willard at YouTube, write his name in the Search box. There is a lot to pick from, as I believe it necessary to archive Willard and Scott and all the rest that play in the Fiddle and Plow series at the Front Porch Gallery. It's easy, it's free, I believe it's important; therefore, it's mine to do.

To give you an idea of the energy of the music last night, at the end when they realized it was time for the last tune. Somebody said Orange Blossom Special. In a yelp of desperation, Willard said, "No!" Remembering Willard's 80th birthday is this coming Tuesday. He had just played guitar with gusto and sang for two hours. He was worn out. Different ones talked about it awhile, then the band started playing Orange Blossom Special. Scott ripped it to shreds with his fiddle. Willard was right in there with them on the rhythm guitar keeping that train in motion. He gave it everything up to the finish line. Scott was all over the fiddle from first note to last. Mostly he plays a fiddle in his most excellent manner, not showing off, just playing fine fiddle. On a couple of the tunes he let loose and wrung every note out of the fiddle it had in it. Again, the word privileged comes to mind in relation to hearing this music every week. Privileged that I live in these mountains. Privileged to have found the music world in these mountains. Privileged to hear Scott and Willard make music almost every week. These are the musicians of the region I want to hear anyway. They play every week. I'm there. Privileged is the only word that feels right when I'm there. Hit don' git no bettern'at.

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HARROL BLEVINS AT THE FRONT PORCH

scott freeman, harrol blevins, willard gayheart

scott freeman

harrol blevins

scott freeman, edwin lacy, harrol blevins, marvin cockerham, willard gayheart

scott freeman, edwin lacy

willard gayheart

Friday night's guest at the Front Porch was Harrol Blevins. Harrol is quite a good guitar picker and an equally good singer. I knew he was a picker, but didn't know he sang so well. Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Blevins carried beautifully. He did most of the singing with Willard and Scott harmonizing on old, old songs, like Gene Autry's Silver Haired Daddy of Mine, Elvis's When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold, the Carter Family's While The Band Played Dixie. They played a good square dance rendering of Whiskey Before Breakfast. Think of these songs sung with two Henderson guitars and one Henderson mandolin. Harrol played lead and Willard played rhythm guitar. They had recently made some music together and found they like playing the same kinds of songs, both sang, they picked their guitars well together and sang well together. They practiced a couple times toward the show tonight, not enough to get a free-flowing command of the songs, but enough to get a feel for what they wanted to do.

Harrol is a bit like Willard in that just about only other musicians know they make music. Neither one makes a fuss over drawing attention to himself. They make music not as star wannabes, but as people who love the act of making music, doesn't matter if it's on a stage or off a stage. Scott has told me about some musicians we both know who are excellent musicians, but he doesn't like to jam with them because they're always on stage. The part that makes this funny is that Scott is never on stage even when he is on stage. Whatever clothes you see him wearing on a given day, if he's playing a show that night he'll be wearing the clothes he wore all day. Scott doesn't doll himself up in any way when he's on stage. He tells a good joke on stage. We had three musical purists playing music at the Front Porch. All play the music for the sake of making music only. It's the music they love, not their name in lights. When I learned Blevins was playing, I looked forward to the show. The fit of him and Willard musically I saw right away. They picked and grinned so well together after so little practice, they could make a good duo like Willard and Scott, Willard and Bobby Patterson. Willard and Harrol have a good resonance together musically as well as by temperament. Harrol plays a very respectable lead guitar and Willard's rhythm guitar is always right.

At one point, Willard was singing his composition, Ern And Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog. I love the song and know all the words. I was muttering a sing along, unconscious of it, and the guy sitting in front of me, a fiddler, turned to see who was making the racket. I realized then I was audible. I had to laugh inside at myself knowing the words to Willard's songs. The other songs I know are from the 50s, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and early Elvis songs. I could write out the words to all Little Richard's songs now if I felt like it. Long tall Sally, she's built for speed, she got everthing that Uncle John need. I quit paying attention to lyrics, except for Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Lucinda Williams, Patti Smith, but learned none of them except Mr Tamborine Man. I played it so much I couldn't help but learn it. What I'm getting at is I'm paying attention to lyrics again, really liking the songs Willard and Scott sing. As a result, I do my mental sing along muttering out loud. At home, I'm totally unaware that I mutter sing alongs to Skeeter songs and Alternate Roots songs. This tells not only how my musical aesthetic has changed, by which I mean grown, it also mirrors how my life has changed. I feel like my musical interests have advanced as I've grown older and have a backlog of songs heard in my lifetime way up in the hundreds of thousands. The music Willard and Scott make satisfies what I like in music right up there with the Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers. Doc Watson, too.  

I've not turned my back on any of the music I've listened to along the way. I can still put on the Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East and love it even better now than then. Patti Smith, the Clash, the Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division, Velvet Underground I appreciate tremendously more now than then, and then it was quite a lot. All the years of listening to mountain music, which is the apex of my music listening life, have trained my ears to exquisite musicianship played from the heart. Mountain music has enhanced the music I listened to before, given me a better understanding of musicianship, so when I hear Mick Jones of the the Clash wringing his guitar strings, I'm in awe. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. No more needs saying after Morello. It amuses me, too, that I can enjoy Willard Gayheart's music as much as Bob Dylan's. Doesn't mean I appreciate Dylan less. It means I appreciate Willard quite a lot. I won't say one more than the other, because they're in that high place where all are equal.

Again, I have to say I feel privileged sitting in the audience at a Fiddle and Plow show at the Front Porch. The musicianship every week is what we go to listen to. For we who go every week we can, Scott and Willard have become the reasons we go. Whoever else is making music with them is good too, but a show of Scott and Willard can't be beat. Harrol Blevins fit with Scott and Willard like Edwin Lacy fits with them. Edwin happened to be in the audience. Marvin Cockerham, bass player of the Highlanders, was in the audience with his wife. Willard asked them to join in for a few tunes. For a time, we had a full band going. A couple of fiddlers were in the audience, Erica Godfrey and Jerry Correll. The place filled up with Harrol's friends from the Independence courthouse jam group, and the JAM group in Sparta. It's not often we get that big an audience. Probably several other musicians there I didn't recognize. And Minnie the white cat was there. She picked her seat at the beginning of the show and stayed in it throughout. It always feels good to sit among a bunch of people listening to good music at the Front Porch. There again, the word privileged comes to mind, privileged every week. I feel privileged to sit among the people who go to hear the music, privileged to be one of them.

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