On the road with the Avetts

Thursday, October 6, 2011 (updated , 2011 7:25 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

GREENSBORO — Pete Schroth takes a break from cleaning the gutters on his Greensboro home to munch on rosemary french fries at one of his favorite local restaurants, Sticks and Stones.

Between bites, Schroth recounts his journey from his days of booking the Avett Brothers to traveling the world the past two years as the now internationally known band’s stage manager and lighting designer.

The journey began in 2004 at Schroth’s former coffee shop, the Green Bean, in Greensboro.

A few regular customers persuaded him to book the Avett Brothers. (Now, the band includes brothers Scott and Seth Avett, Bob Crawford on bass and Joe Kwon on cello.)

Schroth was hesitant to feature a band he had never before heard, but he took a chance and, for the first time in Green Bean history, sold tickets to the show.

The cost? Two dollars. Now, a ticket to an Avett Brothers’ concert can cost $25 to $38.

That night, the band played to a sell-out crowd of 99.

“The night of the show a gentleman walked up to me and said, 'Is this your place?’ ” Schroth recalls. “I said, 'Yes sir,’ to which he answered, 'Well, my boys are about to blow the doors off of it.’ “

That was Schroth’s first chat with Jim Avett, Scott and Seth’s father. Years later, it was Jim Avett who took Schroth to the airport to meet the band in Phoenix for his first gig as its stage manager.

“I was pretty excited to see what was about to happen,” Schroth recalls. “It was a crazy, insane, high-energy gig, but I missed most of it, working behind the counter serving up coffees and PBRs. It was a great night and most absolutely one of my favorite shows I have never seen.”

Decide what to be and go be it

Schroth went on to book the Avett Brothers in 2006 at his former music venue, the Flying Anvil in Greensboro, as well as twice at Greensboro’s War Memorial Auditorium in 2007 and 2008. Along the way, seeds of a desire to work for the Avett Brothers were planted in him, although he never really expected anything to come his way.

His business venture with the Flying Anvil lasted only eight or nine months before it closed. Schroth says it was a terrible blow to his confidence. He retreated to the country with his wife, Anne, and their children. He bought some goats and tried to sort things out. He worked briefly at a veterinarian’s office and as a handyman at Greensboro Montessori School.

Then one day, a phone call from Scott Avett changed the course of Schroth’s life. Avett wanted to offer him a job.

“I was caught off guard,” Schroth says. “I had a lot of questions, but Scott was incredibly gracious and patient. I couldn’t just blindly pack my bags and hop on a bus, leaving my family behind. My family is my life, and I had to be sure it was the right thing to do.”

As Schroth contemplated accepting the job, he visualized an image of a wagon belonging to him and his family and hooking it up to an Avett wagon train. With the Green Bean sold and the Flying Anvil closed, Schroth visualized his family sitting high on a hill in an old, weathered covered wagon.

“I imagined we suddenly could see a wagon train down in the valley below, and there’s lots of music and good times and a chance for a better future. I’d be a damn fool not to head down there and join up.

“So, I took my covered wagon, full of my family and my things, and headed down into that valley. That was that. Our wagons are still hitched.”

Road full of promise

A typical day before an Avett Brothers’ concert starts about 11 a.m., unloading the trailer and setting up the stage. Schroth’s wife, Anne, prints and sews the stage backdrops through her company, Red Canary.

By 3 p.m., the band does a sound check for 30 minutes or two hours, depending on the venue. Doors usually open about 7 p.m., and the band and crew gather for a quick huddle before Schroth runs to his task as lighting designer.

The show ends usually about 11 p.m. or midnight. Then another two hours are needed to break down the gear before they are back on the bus, physically exhausted but mentally exhilarated and ready for their next destination.

Schroth compares the tour bus to a submarine with a hall of beds that is dark and quiet. There are 12 bunk beds stacked three high. There’s also a front room, kitchen, dining room and bathroom. Although privacy is almost nonexistent, people may use a smaller room toward the back of the bus to get away and maybe read a book or send a few emails.

The Avett Brothers average about 90 to 100 shows per year. Schroth is on the road five to 10 days at a time, although the recent Europe and Australia tour lasted the longest at six weeks.

On Saturday, Schroth will be back on his home turf when the Avett Brothers perform to a sell-out crowd at the White Oak Amphitheatre in Greensboro.

Being on the road can take its toll. There is homesickness, long hours and tight quarters. But there’s also good music, great people and priceless moments.

The following are email excerpts Schroth sent from the road during that recent tour.

June 23

So, here we are in London, and I have thought of another oddity of being on the road. We travel in a pack of nine guys, sometimes 10. We are always together and almost always in tight spaces. On the bus, dressing rooms, hotel rooms. Our world becomes very surreal. Then suddenly we are surrounded by a big crowd of people for a few hours and then poof … we are back on the bus to the next city. We go from small and solitary to largely public very quickly.

Aug. 17

I have always been a visual artist. I cannot play a single instrument. I can whistle pretty good, but music eludes me. I watch these guys as they stand face to face and work out a brand-new song, a chord progression or even a good old-time number. The silent communication between the whole band is what leaves me dumbfounded time and time again. Then, suddenly, they are up on stage in front of hundreds of people playing a Bruce Springsteen cover, and the crowd is going crazy.

Last night in Munich, Germany, was one of those shows that made the hair on my arms stand up. Every now and again, the band and their audience become one big mass of energy. There is no separation. Each group feeds off of the other, and each group feeds the other. There is an equal exchange of energy, and something truly magical happens, something spiritual.

Cave men made music. It is one of our oldest traditions. It draws up together and makes us one. Take it all away and we can still whistle a tune.

Aug. 23

So, here I sit in a hotel room in Amsterdam. My oldest boy back home just went to karate practice, wifey is gearing up for the boys to return to school, and the young one has lost both his front teeth. It is hard to be away from home. The adrenaline of a show, the smiling faces, the crowd … it is all a trade-off. We depend oh so very much on the crowd to lift us up. We arrive exhausted, but once show time rolls around, the juices start flowing, then it’s on. The energy sparks. Tomorrow night we will all be refreshed and ready to rock out.

August 29

Looking back on all the experiences of the last three weeks touring through Europe. Truly incredible. Great energy. I think the best show for me may have been to a small Danish crowd of retirees that were somewhat trapped in a tent due to a major rain storm. I don’t know if any of them had ever heard a single Avett song, but they had a blast, and so did we. Good times.

I’m coming home ...

Back in Greensboro, Schroth never unpacks his toiletry bag but completely shifts gears into family life. Mundane tasks such as cleaning gutters or giving the cat medicine are welcome rituals. He says thoughts of his wife, kids and friends are what keeps him moving on the road.

“Throwing a baseball with the kids, having a glass of wine on the front porch with friends while the cicadas hum, all these things are mine,” Schroth says. “If all of this falls apart tomorrow, I know for certain that my wife and my kids and my friends will be there for me. I want to keep that whole.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

Words matter most to songwriter

Thursday, June 23, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:00 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

If you get the pleasure of seeing Jonathan Byrd perform, don’t make the mistake of complimenting his music.

With careful politeness, the tall, lean cowboy and poet will let you know he is first and foremost a songwriter over a musician or performer.

It’s the reason why The Chicago Tribune named Byrd one of the top 50 songwriters of the last 50 years alongside Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and John Prine to name a few.
His new CD, “Cackalack,” premiered at No. 1 on Roots Music Report’s folk radio chart within weeks of its release earlier this year.

Byrd is weaving his way back from a four-month tour to promote “Cackalack,” which he calls his “homeland manifesto.”

“These songs are memoirs, photos from my family album,” Byrd says. “They are songs about real, everyday places. The Outer Banks, where wild ponies still run; Rockwell, where I sang 'Amazing Grace’ to my father’s ashes; Cape Fear, the namesake of the hospital where I was born; and 95 South, a great river of humanity that brings me rolling back from a hard tour.”

The Carrboro native was surrounded by music all his life, singing Southern gospel songs in the church where his father preached and his mother played piano.
“We had a piano in the house, and Mom gave me some lessons. I did really well, but I got bored with the workbook/lesson plan style,” Byrd says. “My brother had a guitar, and that was cooler.”

His brother, Gray, gave him his first guitar lesson at age 8, and he later learned music theory in his high school jazz class. But when he got his own guitar, Byrd was hooked.

“Once I got my own guitar, I found a place to put all my teen angst, but it didn’t help my schoolwork at all,” he says. “I probably set records for non-attendance and spent a lot of time running around in the deep woods of western Orange County.”

After a four-year stint in the Navy, Byrd spent time in Virginia Beach playing in a rock band, and then moved back to Carrboro where some friends told him about Rockbridge Festival, an old-time fiddler’s convention in Buena Vista, Va. That trip became a life-changing experience.

“It changed my life, and it changed my music, just banging away on an A chord for hours at a time and sipping corn liquor,” Byrd says. “I didn’t know the songs, and I didn’t care.

“Whatever these people had a hold of, I wanted some of it. It shot straight down into my veins like lightning and made my hair stand up on end. The music was intense, lyrically cut down to the bone.”

With a determination to write songs that “sounded old not because they were old but because they were written in an old style,” Byrd wrote tunes such as “Velma,” the story of the woman who killed his grandfather . Velma was a friend of the family when Byrd’s grandmother died in 1969.

“Six months later, my grandfather, Jennings Paul Barfield, married Velma,” Byrd says. “Two years into their marriage, Velma killed with arsenic poisoning. About six years went by, and Velma poisoned her boyfriend. She eventually confessed to killing her own mother and a few more people. She was executed in 1984.”

Byrd started touring in 2000 as a solo performer, winning the North Carolina Songwriters CoOp Song Contest in Carrboro that year and the coveted New Folk Competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas in 2003.

As Byrd makes his way across the country, from camping out in the Texas hill country to meeting with publishers and managers in Nashville, Tenn., he’s looking forward to coming home. He is excited to do the simple things in his life, much like the subject matter of his songs: mowing the grass and playing with his little boy.

“It feels really great to be going home, although it doesn’t feel any closer yet,” Byrd says from the road. “I think nothing but my driveway will do.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

With a little help from her friends

Thursday, April 14, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:00 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

Singer and songwriter Martha Bassett has long been a respected icon of the Triad music scene with her classically trained voice, which has been described as “angelic” and “crystalline.”

This month, with the release of her fourth album, “The Goodbye Party,” Bassett gives listeners a glimpse of her personal diary with a versatile palette of songs that either send shivers down your spine or make your toes tap.

But Bassett didn’t write this diary of love and loss alone. About half of the 12 songs were written by Bassett, the rest by personal friends and band members: Sam Frazier (guitar and piano), Pat Lawrence (bass), Eddie Walker (drums) and Ben Singer (keyboards and banjo). Together, they lead a journey through the pathos of loneliness and weariness but always with the hope and comfort of coming home.

The opening track, “The Goodbye Party,” a melancholy song co-written by Bassett and Singer, sets the tone and pace for the rest of the album.

“We actually had the title to this song before we wrote it,” Bassett says. “I think of the song itself as a vignette of the idea of separation and loss. I like the chorale at the end because it creates intensity and sets up the central theme of the record.”

Bassett cranks up the mood with “Leave Me Behind,” a song loosely based on the old-time tune “Pretty Polly.” Bassett belts out the lyrics, “Show me you want me and mean it this time or pick up your heart, boy, and leave me behind.”

“It’s funny that a song with such sad lyrics always makes people tap their feet and smile,” Bassett says.

One of Bassett’s favorite songs on the album is “Whisper,” written for Bassett by her longtime collaborator Sam Frazier and arranged by Josh Weesner. A song about heartbreak and the end of a long-term relationship, Bassett found this one difficult to sing in the beginning.

“ 'Whisper’ was hard to sing at first because it was so personal, but now it’s one of my favorites,” Bassett says. “Compositionally speaking, Sam did a great job creating an arc that really lends itself to strings and brass.”

Another personally painful song that Bassett sings is “Holly Golightly,” a song about the wedding of Kelly Jo Petersen Womble, an artist and gallery/shop owner in Winston-Salem and one of the primary people responsible for revitalizing its downtown.

“Kelly had been battling cancer and died shortly after her wedding, during the recording of this disc,” Bassett says. “Clare Fader had written the words for the wedding, and Sam helped set the music for the memorial service, which is where I first sang it. It’s still very difficult to perform this song live.”

In addition to originals, Bassett sings covers from two local luminaries Bruce Piephoff and Laurelyn Dossett, managing to channel their distinctive styles into her own.

“My goal is not to establish myself as a great singer/songwriter, although I’m very much learning the craft,” she says. “My goal is to sing great songs. Every song on (the album) that wasn’t written by me was written by a personal friend. That feels good.”

Bassett and Frazier agree the difference in this album compared to her previous releases was in the production. Both cite Pat Lawrence for his artistic efforts on the album, and Bassett also credits him with having strong ideas that she says created a denser and broader palette both instrumentally and vocally.

“I’m a lucky girl,” Bassett says. “These guys are my best friends, and we work so well together creatively. It’s an unusual and precious thing, and I don’t ever take it for granted.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com

 

Trinkets Create Links to Past

Thursday, March 10, 2011 (updated , 2011 3:01 am)

By Carole Perkins 

 

GREENSBORO — Janice Young carefully plucks trinkets, charms and odd earrings from a box of vintage jewelry hauled down from a dusty attic. With a well-trained eye, she groups the pieces into piles that she’ll later use to create bracelets, adorned with keepsakes and tokens from the past.

It’s her way of preserving memories because, as Young discovered, sometimes a memory is all you have left of a loved one.

In 2004, Young’s oldest son, Deebs, was killed in a car accident while on a roller hockey trip in Georgia. Deebs was a superb athlete, gifted with intelligence and multitudes of friends. He was 15.

That tragedy motivated Young to begin collecting mementos for her children.

“I started gathering things that were meaningful, like the jewelry Don (her husband) gave me when each child was born,” says Young of Greensboro. “I collected game pieces from the game Monopoly that we used to play as a family and jewelry from my parents and grandparents. I thought it was important for Sloan and Kemp (her children) to have tangible memories of people important to them.”

When Deebs died, Young wanted to honor the people who helped her family cope with their loss. So about two years ago, she started making necklaces and bracelets from her own collection of keepsakes, as well as trinkets or vintage jewelry pieces from her customers. The styles of bracelets range from chunky and elaborate to simple and elegant. Young puts a new spin on traditional charm bracelets by using watch chains or strands of chain belonging to the customer. Making them has been a positive outlet for her.

“The bending of the metal, sanding rough edges, finding the right balance of charms is very therapeutic to me,” she says. “I like knowing that people will enjoy wearing these bracelets that represent events and loved ones that have been meaningful in their lives.”

For her own bracelets, Young likes to group items in threes to symbolize her children, sometimes using old buttons and typewriter keys with letters to indicate the initials. She often wears a necklace she designed using old watch chains hooked together to make a lariat. She has a locket from her grandmother, engraved with the letter “S” for Sloan, a mother-of-pearl pin with the letter “K” from her grandfather Kemp, three small rings from Don’s grandmother and an angel symbolizing Deebs.

Young says it’s common for people to have collections of vintage jewelry that they never wear. But her bracelets give these pieces new purpose.

“It’s sad because people don’t wear their family jewelry because it sits in a box,” she says. “I can take an old clip–on earring and convert it into pierced (earring) or use it as a charm or drill a hole into a piece so it will hang.”

After Deebs’ death, Young continued to experience losses and challenges. Three months after Deebs died, she learned she had Stage 3 breast cancer. Six months after Deebs died, Young lost one of her closest friends. Nine months after that, Sloan lost her best friend to a brain tumor.

“There were so many losses and people who just seemed to slip away. It made me acutely aware of how important it is to make memories of people you love,” Young says. “The fact that Deebs died made it important for me to hold onto memories, but I think it’s important for everyone to keep their memories, too.”

Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com