Help Support an Old-Time Music Documentary

Hello Everyone:
I've been on hiatus for quite some time, but I'm happy to make a triumphant return by spreading the word about an upcoming documentary about old-time music. It's by Heather Haynes, who is completing a Master's degree in photojournalism.

As a recent graduate school survivor myself, I know how hard it is to get support for these projects. She has cleverly put together a website to raise money for her upcoming trips to Galax and Clifftop, to big-time festivals I'm sure you've all heard of or been to.

So check it out (here), and take a look at this short clip she's posted:



If you're too lazy to click on over, here's a description of the project. You know you wish you'd thought of it:

I aim to explore the modern world of folk tunes in Appalachia both as a fiddle player and as a visual and oral recorder of a shifting yet thriving tradition. In our rapidly changing world, a candid documentary of old-time fiddle tradition is overdue. While documentaries continue to appear on Appalachian culture, modern media has not preserved a project specifically focused on old-time fiddle heritage. A documentary on this subject will be a valuable addition to current visual and folk literature.

In addition to my own journey, I will follow several other fiddlers whose experience varies from fledgling musicians to masters of their trade. Through observing their various lifestyles, I can accurately frame the context and impact of my exploration.

Based on still photographs, my final piece will include audio recordings of Appalachian folk melodies and interviews with fiddlers. I also intend to include video of traditional, informal jam sessions and both formal and informal fiddle lessons. With this multimedia project, I expect to successfully explore the passage of old-time fiddling knowledge in contemporary Appalachia.

Robert Byrd the Musician

No matter your feelings about his politics, Robert Byrd was a towering figure whose influence shaped the state of West Virginia for over 50 years.

He was also a really good fiddler. Here he is in 1978:

Twin Sisters Melvin Wine

Chance McCoy recently put the tune "Twin Sisters" on his wonderful new album. He no doubt got it from so many other great fiddlers like Melvin Wine, playing here in 1992.

Elk Creek Picnic

I'll get back to posting an alphabetical list of my fiddle book, but I ran across this and like it better for now, plus I don't have my book with me right so I don't know what comes next.



Lots of good videos in this collection, all available here.

Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss

What a tune...


YouTube/wlkerns

Jimmy Johnson by Ralph Roberts

Frank George Gathering 2010

I wasn't really expecting to have consecutive posts about Frank George but you know... he's good. And here he's playing with, among others, Bobby Taylor. I guess Bobby's not old enough to be called a living legend yet but he's certainly one of the finest players in the state, if not the US.



YouTube/YewPiney

New Frank George Videos

I've posted a few things about Frank George on here before. Suffice it to say he's a living legend from West Virginia. Great thing about the modern age is that we can easily document these living legends. So here's Frank playing a few tunes recently.

Arkansas Traveler


Petronella


and Mississippi Sawyer


YouTube/chrisvia1

Live from the Blue Plate Special

I am usually unable to go to the Blue Plate Special in Knoxville because it's in the middle of day during the week. I went on a fluke yesterday and much to my surprise, Chance McCoy was there playing with Old Sledge. They're really great, play a variety of styles from western swing, to Mississippi riverboat-type of music, and of course Appalachian old-time music.

The second band was one I had never heard of, the Defibulators, but they are interesting to say the least. They are high-energy, have like 8 people on stage at a time, and have a good stage presence.

the Defibulators - "Winchester" from BoB Coon on Vimeo.

What struck me with both of these bands (Chance McCoy himself excluded) was the confirmation of what I have commented on here often. The people in the bands are from Vermont, Brooklyn, and California; places that are well outside the traditional hub of old-time music, especially the style they play. Not a criticism, just an observation.

That's the direction old-time music in America is moving. It's increasingly played by young people who come from urban areas out West or in the northeast. They're good, and give the music a new kind of sound that is distinct from what came before it. In the same way, the people playing in the 1930s sounded distinct from those that came before them. It's really interesting to see how the music is evolving, both demographically and geographically.

If you're looking for some modern twists to traditional styles of music, I recommend looking up both of these bands.

Petronella

Frank George is a living legend in West Virginia. Here he is playing a tune I like but don't get to hear too much. I believe it's more popular in New England, and it's called Petronella.



YouTube/chrisvia1

Liza Jane

If you're familiar with old-time music in West Virginia, you've probably come across the Samples Brothers. They bring down the house every time with their signature tune, Liza Jane.

I've never really met anyone else who plays it quite like they do, even though lots of people play a tune called Liza Jane or some derivative thereof. But then again, I haven't lived in West Virginia since the 80s and that version may just be a West Virginia rendition.

I don't really know, but here is a West Virginian, Elmer Rich, playing the same version of that tune. Here he's playing about one quarter of the tempo the Samples Brothers usually go, but it's a nice tune nonetheless.



YouTube/YewPiney

More Chance McCoy

Still haven't moved on from a strong Chance McCoy phase, so here is some more goodness from him. This is Jimmy Johnson, and he also plays it on his album which you can easily find on iTunes.

Chance McCoy and the Appalachian String Band

Some of the people I play music with have been raving about Chance McCoy for a while now. For whatever reason, I did not look into it sufficiently until now. I could struggle to write a review myself, but it wouldn't say anything different from what you can already see on his MySpace page.

Here are the essentials:
He's from eastern West Virginia, a major plus as far as I'm concerned, and has learned from many of the state's greats, including Dave Bing.

A recently recorded album with The Appalachian String Band includes Adam Hurt on the banjo, who I think is one of the best young banjo players around. I had bought Adam Hurt's solo album (Insight) a while ago and really enjoy that one as well.

If you've played much in West Virginia, the repertoire on the album will be familiar, including tunes like "Shelvin Rock," "Yew Piney Mountain," and "Jimmy Johnson."

In short, I highly recommend this, I think it's one of the best newer acts to come along in a while.

Here are some videos from what I believe is Chance McCoy's personal YouTube profile:



Dance All Night With A Bottle In Your Hand MP3

And Wild Horse of Stony Point, or just "Stony Point" as I've often heard it called:

Gray Eagle: Night Vision Style

I find this tune really interesting because it has like 10,000 versions. I mean really, nobody plays this the same way. Soldier's Joy, one of the most common tunes, has many styles as well, but each time you could recognize and say, yeah, that's Soldier's Joy. Not so with Gray Eagle.

Here's yet another version by the wonderful Larry Dent, playing in my home state, old KY, and close to my hometown no less:



YouTube/wvldent

Clifftop 2009

Unfortunately I haven't been able to post much lately because school is back in, which cruelly takes away my time. I did want to make one quick post though because I like this video so much.

It's from Clifftop 2009, taken during a rainy day. I just like the way they play; so calm, controlled, and simple. This video makes playing the violin look easy.



YouTube/WACarder

YPM Edition 5D: West Virginia Festivals

Notes from Yew Piney Mountain Edition 5D: West Virginia Festivals


The final entry in my series on WV festivals is on the West Virginia State Folk Festival in Glenville, WV. Everyone I've heard refer to it just calls it the Glenville Folk Festival.

Anyway, this is one of the smaller festivals as well, but there are lots of great players that have played there, including Dave Bing, Joe Dobbs, Lester McCumbers, Buddy Griffin, and Dave O'Dell. I really like these smaller festivals that feature mostly people from the area. You get a real sense of the unique repertoire of central West Virginia and of how people play the tunes. Everywhere does it a little differently.

Like the Jackson's Mill Festival, it has struggled in recent years with attendance, especially when compared to Clifftop. For the sake of the towns that support these smaller festivals and for the music they preserve, I hope they recover.

Anyhow, here are a few clips from Glenville. First up is Lester McCumbers, a relatively well-known old-time player from West Virgina.



Next, the video quality is poor, but the sound is worth it. Here's Gerry Milnes playing "Give the Fiddler a Dram."



Credits: Videos from YouTubers YewPiney and 1angolier

YPM Edition 5C: West Virginia Festivals

Notes from Yew Piney Mountain Edition 5C: West Virginia Festivals
Continuing with the theme for this week of West Virginia' s music festivals (or gatherings, in some cases), let's take a look/listen at Vandalia. This event takes place in Charleston, right on the capitol grounds. There are lots of competitions for each instrument, and one thing I think is unique about it is you have to be a West Virginia resident to participate. Cuts out that riff-raff.

There is also a lie telling contest, which you can listen to here.

Goes without saying there is also lots of good music. Here's a few recent clips from the festival. I don't know the names of the tunes in this first video. I do know based on an unfortunate weekend that involved boredom, TBS, and Titanic, that when Leo takes Kate below deck to go to a real party with the Irish, they're playing this tune, just faster. Don't tell anyone about the Titanic reference.



The next video here features mountain dancing. The description of the video says, "People can say what they want about WV - this was a good time!"



Credits:
Videos from YouTubers dantompkins and wrandyrice
Photo from Vandalia homepage

YPM Edition 5A: West Virginia Festivals

Notes from Yew Piney Mountain Edition 5A: West Virginia Festivals

I was out all last week so I wasn't able to move forward with new content. I'm all back to normal now.

My theme this week is kind of a follow up of my extensive post on the Jackson's Mill Jubilee in Weston, WV.

Since the news came out that the Jubilee might not happen in 2009, lots of people have mobilized to try to keep it alive. It looks like something will happen this year... it will probably just look very different.

There are lots of opinions and strong emotions about the Jubilee and its survival (for one account of recent actions, read this letter to the editor written by Dave Miller of the WVU Extension Service). To give an extremely cursory view, there is disagreement about how (and whether) the Jubilee should change to attract new people and new ideas.

Despite all the differing opinions, one thing is for certain: the Jubilee needs people to attend if it is going to survive. The wife (and by extension me, but really it's her) are in the process of trying to figure out what we can do to help. One thing I think we can do is beef up the Jubilee's web presence. Right now the primary website has the information you need on it, but you don't get a great sense of exactly what you're in for if you wanted to get out to the Jubilee.

The Jubilee is a celebration of the rich heritage of Appalachia through historic and contemporary events. Over 200 musicians play "old time" music throughout the four day Labor Day event. Over 200 heritage craftsman display and demonstrate their wares in the barn area of the Mill, boyhood home of Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. There are historic reenactments and an encampment provided by the Appalachian Rangers Muzzleloading Club allow Jubilee visitors to catch a glimpse of central West Virginia life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are glassblowing, woodchopping, and turkey calling demonstrations. West Virginians' contemporary heritage is celebrated through both the Fine Arts Exhibition and Photo Show. Central West Virginia's finest artists and photographers exhibit their works for Jubilee visitors. More traditional shows include the ever-popular Quilt Show and Needlearts Show. The Jubilee hosts the West Virginia Pie Baking Contest, heritage dancing, children's heritage games and more.

All of these activities are indeed there, and quite worth it I might add. But there isn't any media you can consume, no discussion board, not even any photos on the website. There are a lot of things that we could do to bring in more people to the Jubilee, and increasing its web presence is one of the most important, I think. Contrast the Jubilee's webpage with that of the much more popular Clifftop Festival. There are photo galleries, CDs to purchase (and, importantly, sample online) and an invitation to join their Facebook group. That's not why one festival is attended better than the other, but it sure doesn't hurt.

The sad thing is, I had recently purchased some recording equipment and a video camera to add to the Jubilee's media cache... but you know, now this happened. Not to worry, if the Jubilee happens this year, I'll be there, and do my best to document it myself.

So, the music. I mentioned that you can see some of the best musicians in North America play at the Jubilee. One of those is fiddler Bobby Taylor. At the last Jubilee, right before he played, I remember he said, "Well, it's Jubilee time again... thank God!" To me that kind of emphasized how much the festival means to those who attend. Bobby plays with multiple ensembles throughout the day, and is usually outside playing as well.

Unfortunately, there aren't too many videos of him playing that I can find. Here a few resources that I can find.

You can purchase and/or stream free samples of his tunes here.
You can here a sample of another tune, I believe it is a live recording, here.
You can see his discography and tour info at his website here.

That's the best I can do right now. Here is kind of an old video, before the days of YouTube if you can believe it, of him standing outside the barn, playing 'Billy in the Lowground' at the 1997 Jubilee. I can't identify everyone in the video, but the banjo player is Dave O'Dell, who has quite an impressive repertoire of old-time music as well.

Credits: Video from YouTuber cartoonhepcat

YPM Special Edition

Hey everybody. I just got news that my favorite West Virginia music festival, the Stonewall Jackson Jubilee, will be canceled for 2009. It's an understatement to say that I'm extremely disappointed/depressed about this.

On my other blog, I wrote a lengthy piece about the festival and thought it would be appropriate here.

Here's my post copied in full:

If you know me, or if you've clicked around on my profile, you know that beyond geography and education, my real passion in life is old-time music.

I come from Appalachia where music is always nearby, and my in-laws (The Samples Brothers) are pretty well-known in West Virginia.

Old-time music is a great communal experience. The tunes are public domain, the community is always eager to teach, it's social... it's just fun.

Pretty much every state has one or more old-time festivals where people get together in the early summer or fall. West Virginia is particularly good about preserving its cultural heritage through traditional music and crafts festivals. Some of the more well-known festivals are Clifftop, Vandalia, and Augusta Heritage.

One of the lesser known festivals in the state is the Jackson's Mill Jubilee (officially the Stonewall Jackson Heritage Arts and Crafts Jubilee). The connection to Stonewall is that the site is his boyhood home, back when the state was still part of Virginia. The mill and some of the structures are still there, and today it's the site of a 4-H camp.

Since 1974, my in-laws and many of West Virginia's (and North America's, quite frankly) finest traditional musicians have spent Labor Day weekend playing music and buying and selling crafts at the Jubilee. It has always been smaller than some of the other festivals, but that was part of its charm. For many families that have been with the festival since the beginning, it's kind of like Christmas in September.

Interest and attendance have slowly dwindled since peaking in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Every year there was talk of having to drop the festival all together. In 2008, with the economy completely in the gutter, attendance was down... way down. Immediately it became difficult to finance the operation through gate admissions.

Aside from gate admissions, a big source of revenue for the festival has been to rent a space to artists and crafters. In the past, festivals like the Jubilee were the best place to get those handmade traditional products. Now, with gas expensive and attendance at festivals down, it's more worth it for a crafter to stay home and sell on sites like Etsy or other web stores. For those same reasons, it's more worth it for consumers to stay at home and just order online.

As if those two financial difficulties were not enough, the traditional financier, WVU-Extension, has also had to make budget adjustments, and we all know how the arts tend to fare during budget discussions.

These three blows, all related to the recession in their own way, finally took the Jubilee down this year. As the Weston Democrat reports:

In an emergency session Monday night, the board of directors of the Stonewall Jackson Heritage Arts and Crafts Jubilee made a difficult decision. Following a lengthy and sad and sober discussion, they overwhelmingly voted to cancel this year’s Jubilee, an event which has been held over Labor Day weekend at WVU-Jackson’s Mill for the past 35 years. The decision came five days after Jubilee president Debra Walker received a letter from David Miller, Associate Provost, West Virginia University Extension, saying that they would be bowing out of the event. After contacting his office two more times, they found out that the $50,000-$75,000 financial sponsorship of the Jubilee as promised by him in a meeting in January would not be forthcoming.

Most of the recession stories I've read thus far have not pertained to me. I don't own property or a house. I don't have investments. I don't work in the financial industry. It's hard to put into words, but this one stings. This disrupts a significant cultural heritage event, it means family and friends won't be getting together, and it could speed up the decline of traditional culture in Appalachia.

On the one hand, my post here is a personal story about the recession... something that almost everybody has. On the other hand, I think there is something here that people beyond my personal sphere can appreciate.

While we celebrate how the web decentralizes and democratizes the arts, how it opens up shops to more customers for more crafters, we also need to be aware of what we're giving up. People getting together means something. Being able to do a custom search on Etsy is nice, but not if it comes at the expense of actual craft shows. Being able to download music and see videos online about old-time music is nice, but not if it means the death of festivals.

I realize that the closure of the Jubilee has more to do with the recession than with the internet. But the internet does play an undeniable role in the revenue generated from the crafters. Some people paid admission just for that. When then crafters stopped coming, rents went down, and so did admissions.

In reality, Etsy and actual craft shows will co-exist, they may even bolster each other. But the benefits will likely accrue in particular places. The Portlands of the world, the Bostons, the Albuquerques, they'll be fine. People live there already, they don't have to go out their way; in academic terms, they benefit from agglomeration effects. The Westons of the world, the places that are harder and more expensive to get to, the small towns... they will likely suffer. It's good for the customer, it's good for the seller, but it's not good for the community in those instances.

That's why geography will continue to matter in the digital age. Instead of the internet bringing about the "death of distance" like many people expected, the internet increases the relevance of place. Paradoxically, since some communication and economic activity can be diffused by using the web, some communities will be left out. Geographic differences will be more pronounced. When it comes to communal experiences, distance will matter even more.

We need to ask ourselves if a "flat world" is what we truly want. Part of the beauty of art is being able to interact with the artist. The joy of music is best appreciated live; this is especially true of old-time music, which is an experience that cannot be downloaded. As I've said many times on here, I love the internet, I'm not one to denounce change just because it's different. I do think, however, that the way we think about the digital age needs to be more grounded in reality. That reality should include places that are left out; god knows there are lots of them.

The music and arts in Weston will survive, no doubt, but they will take a severe blow this year. It's been hard news to take. Hopefully next year it will be back, and hopefully it will be able to pick up where it left off.

Here I can show you what you're missing, but it's just a crude facsimile. This is more of an experience than it is a audio/visual exercise. Nonetheless, here's a taste from the 2008 Jubilee. In what I hope was not their last performance there, here's my in-laws playing through their set.




Photo Credit: Creative Commons license "attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works" from Flickr user SpoiltCat

YPM Edition 4C: Old-Time in Canada

Notes from Yew Piney Mountain Edition 4C: Old-Time in Canada

Erynn Marshall, from Victoria BC, is one of the most highly regarded old-time fiddlers in North America.

You can hear more of her stuff on MySpace, here streaming MP3s and read press releases here, and hear samples of her with the Haints here.

She is also very involved in many West Virgina old-time music festivals has a tremendous wealth of knowledge of music from that area.

Here she is playing in a West Virginia festival (Clifftop) and playing a West Virginia tune (from French Carpenter).



Credits: Video from YouTuber YewPineyMountain