http://issuu.com/ohenrymag/docs/pinestraw_december_2012
Page 12 of December 2012 O.Henry Magazine
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
A Bittersweet Year for The Avett Brothers
GREENSBORO —
Scott Avett sits with his cat on the back porch of his home in Concord
surrounded by the calm of the woods and a cow pasture. On this dank,
winter morning, this poet, artist, musician and songwriter describes the
weather as “sitting still.” It’s the perfect setting for Scott to
reflect on the past year and ponder the year to come.
Scott is the elder brother to Seth
Avett, who bonded together in 2000 with bassist Bob Crawford to form the
now famous band, The Avett Brothers.
With a Grammy nomination for Best
Americana Album for their latest release, “The Carpenter,” a modeling
stint with The Gap, numerous television appearances and articles in
magazines, such as “Rolling Stone,” it would appear that 2011 has been
more than kind to The Avett Brothers.
But the year has also been bittersweet
as the band has huddled together to support Crawford’s daughter,
Hallie, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011.
As a closely-knit band, Scott says one
of greatest challenges they dealt with last year was not having
Crawford on tour when he took time off to be with his family.
“Overcoming that was something we really
just had to have all hands on deck, although we had Paul Defiglia come
along and help as we tried to stick together as a band. But, you know,
one of the challenges artistically and as a group was to try to remind
ourselves what this is all about and how enjoyable it can be if you let
it.”
Despite public accolades for their
accomplishments as a band, Scott says the favorite moments of the year
were memories made with close friends and family.
“A lot of publicity is nice, and it’s
icing on the cake, and boy, we sure are honored because everybody wants
to feel loved and wanted, but the best moments have been with friends
and family and times like yesterday, which was a recovering day for
Hallie.”
When asked if Scott could sum up the
year with just one word, his first response was “educational,” in terms
of the challenges that forced the band to grow.
Then Scott added the word,
“gratitude,” for the ability to perform on stage. And finally, he
settled on the word to best describe 2011.
“The thankfulness word,” he says. “How
do we say we are thankful? We were taught so much last year, how lucky
we are to be on stage and how humbled we are. The word has to be “gift.”
Last year the lessons we learned were a gift.”
The band has been on a break from the
road just long enough to crave the stage and to re-evaluate how they
will approach their dynamics and music in the year to come. They’ve
parted ways with drummer Jacob Edwards whom Scott refers to as “an
amazing drummer, musician, and terrific fellow to be on stage with,” and
have spent more time rehearsing than they usually do when on the road.
Their main focus for 2013 is to “put everything aside in terms of what
we are releasing and the events that are happening. We think about how
we live and how we express ourselves through our performance and how is
that going to change,” Scott says, adding that the band intends to
release some music in 2013 as well as do some recording. He reminisces
about the band’s humble beginnings, playing at Greensboro’s The Green
Bean in 2004, and says he’s looking forward to playing at The Greensboro
Coliseum New Year’s Eve.
“Greensboro has been so supportive
from the beginning,” Scott says. “We’ve played lots of shows in
Greensboro, and I haven’t forgotten a one. They’ve all been pretty
special, and I expect the New Year’s show to be just the same, only
better.”
Contact Carole Perkins at cpguilford@aol.com
****
Scott Avett in his own words
On songwriting:
I certainly compose in my mind in a
visual, compositional way. I sort of look at a song as a room. … There’s
this one little room where I live for the moment in this teeny, tiny
room and that’s kind of how I see it, and in between it mentally I’ve
developed an endless source of metaphors or a way that I can play on
that, and I think I do that a lot. I guess it’s pretty organic. I just
hope it’s different every time. I’ve got a stack I’m embarrassed to say,
I mean literally there are thousands of words of unfinished lines,
songs verses and choruses that I really can’t finish all of them, and
then one day they just move. Like a lot of things, I’m just trying to
answer a question I have no answer for.
On success:
I always thought we worked hard from
the beginning to keep our mindset where we define success and it’s that
success that carried us. So, I guess what I’m saying is to get a
magazine or a nomination or our picture in this or that it’s great, but
if we don’t get it, it absolutely means nothing, and it never did mean
anything, and you have to remember that. It’s only good if you get it;
if you don’t get it, it’s doubly fine as well.
On Greensboro:
People cared so much for us and for
music and art in general. … It is like a homecoming. Also, my folks met
at UNCG while they were there together, so there’s a lot of history in
Greensboro for us. Playing any coliseum for us is spectacular and
amazing watching the growth over time.
On balancing music and family:
I think that work is the most
important regulator in terms of keeping us in touch with our spirits and
with God and with the world. I think that I can have a lot of anxiety,
and putting myself in a task - be it splitting wood, cleaning a room,
working on artwork, or building a chicken house - then I find my anxiety
truly just goes to the side. I’m not putting family aside, but I think
being busy is crucial to your well-being and health, so there’s no end
to what can be done when you connect yourself with that, and involving
the family only tightens the bond between my children and me. If my
daughter wakes up and I’m going to the studio to draw or to paint or
print, if I can have her watching that, she can be taught just by
watching what the discipline is. For me, incorporating the family as
much as possible is crucial and I hope to incorporate that more in the
future with music as well as traveling with them.
The dangerous thing for us that we’ve
really had to work on in terms of the work ethic and productivity is
that when it goes into the realm of ambition and success there’s such a
fine line between when it turns into something very disgusting. It’s
very dangerous to the people around you because it can become all
self-consuming. That is a line I try very hard to stay away from and
that I used to indulge in.
-- As told to Carole Perkins
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Uncommon Folk, Our State Magazine
October 2010
By: Carole Perkins
Songs of Water combines multicultural sounds and anchors them in North Carolina’s rich musical traditions.
Stephen Roach pulls bells, whistles, and noisemakers from a green suitcase propped atop a chair on a small stage at The Green Bean, a coffee house in downtown Greensboro. Grabbing his djembe, he pounds his hands in a primitive rhythm. Drummer Michael Pritchard answers with a polyrhythmic beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. The audience grows restless with anticipation.
I scrape my chair back for the third time to make room for the burgeoning crowd until I’m almost sitting in the lap of Laura Galloway, a self-professed groupie who travels all over North Carolina to hear Roach’s band, Songs of Water.
“I think I’m addicted to their new CD,” I tell Galloway. “I have to listen to it every day.”
“I know; me, too,” she says, relieved to know another woman of a seasoned age shares her obsession.
Finally, classically trained violinist Marta Richardson adds her elegant strings to the pounding beat as Roach teases the hungry crowd.
“Are you ready to take off?” Roach asks. “All right, let’s see what happens.”
The band and the audience share a tangible bond. The musicians prefer playing to hometown crowds, basking in the love and support of family and friends. It feels right to give back to a community that offered support for so many years, Richardson says. “It’s a mutual understanding that we belong together, that we come from the same place and are on a journey together.”
Musical experiment
Songs of Water began about eight years ago as Roach’s vision to take traditional, multicultural sounds and combine them in an American, experimental fashion. He took his idea to friend and co-writer Jason Windsor. The two began collaborating and then invited Richardson to come on board. Richardson and Charlotte cellist Sarah Stephen bring sophistication to the folksy sound with their talent on the strings. Pritchard’s rhythm strikes a middle ground between tradition and innovation, while bass and guitar player Greg Willette echoes the distinctive Piedmont style, similar to Doc Watson and Etta Baker.
While on tour in California, the band’s serendipitous meeting with Luke and Molly Skaggs, son and daughter of bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs, added even more variety to the band’s sound. Luke contributes with the Irish bouzouki, violin, and vocals, and Molly plays the accordion and banjo, reflecting her studies of Appalachian mountain music.
“We didn’t originally think, ‘Let’s start a band with electric folk instruments and pursue this as a vocation,’ ” Roach says. “We soon realized that we had stumbled upon a very unique sound that needed to be heard by a larger audience.”
For two years, the band worked on its recently released CD, The Sea Has Spoken, which includes guests Ricky Skaggs and tuba player Mark Daumin, of the Chapel Hill band Lost in the Trees. While Skaggs provided Skaggs Place Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, for recording, North Carolina’s tight-knit music community buoyed the effort. Wake Forest University opened its doors for additional recording sessions and the use of percussion instruments. Joel Khouri, from Charlotte’s Bright City Studios, co-produced the album with the band. He made the long trips to Nashville and, in the end, pulled everything together from the various recording sessions.
Although listeners will hear more than 30 instruments on the new album — from dun duns to doumbeks — the songs still ring familiar. Traditional sounds from the hammered dulcimer, banjo, and acoustic guitar reflect North Carolina’s musical roots. All the musicians credit their North Carolina heritage for influencing their music.
“From Appalachia to Albemarle, from bluegrass to beach music, North Carolina’s rich musical history found its way into my heart and my fingertips,” Windsor says. “I’m continually grateful to have grown up in a state so passionate about art and music.”
On that small stage at The Green Bean, the band plays the last song of the set. Some of the band members close their eyes and lift their faces toward heaven, seeming to hear something meant for their ears only. But the crowd appreciates the privilege to listen in.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer in Greensboro.
By: Carole Perkins
Songs of Water combines multicultural sounds and anchors them in North Carolina’s rich musical traditions.
Stephen Roach pulls bells, whistles, and noisemakers from a green suitcase propped atop a chair on a small stage at The Green Bean, a coffee house in downtown Greensboro. Grabbing his djembe, he pounds his hands in a primitive rhythm. Drummer Michael Pritchard answers with a polyrhythmic beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. Pound, beat. The audience grows restless with anticipation.
I scrape my chair back for the third time to make room for the burgeoning crowd until I’m almost sitting in the lap of Laura Galloway, a self-professed groupie who travels all over North Carolina to hear Roach’s band, Songs of Water.
“I think I’m addicted to their new CD,” I tell Galloway. “I have to listen to it every day.”
“I know; me, too,” she says, relieved to know another woman of a seasoned age shares her obsession.
Finally, classically trained violinist Marta Richardson adds her elegant strings to the pounding beat as Roach teases the hungry crowd.
“Are you ready to take off?” Roach asks. “All right, let’s see what happens.”
The band and the audience share a tangible bond. The musicians prefer playing to hometown crowds, basking in the love and support of family and friends. It feels right to give back to a community that offered support for so many years, Richardson says. “It’s a mutual understanding that we belong together, that we come from the same place and are on a journey together.”
Musical experiment
Songs of Water began about eight years ago as Roach’s vision to take traditional, multicultural sounds and combine them in an American, experimental fashion. He took his idea to friend and co-writer Jason Windsor. The two began collaborating and then invited Richardson to come on board. Richardson and Charlotte cellist Sarah Stephen bring sophistication to the folksy sound with their talent on the strings. Pritchard’s rhythm strikes a middle ground between tradition and innovation, while bass and guitar player Greg Willette echoes the distinctive Piedmont style, similar to Doc Watson and Etta Baker.
While on tour in California, the band’s serendipitous meeting with Luke and Molly Skaggs, son and daughter of bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs, added even more variety to the band’s sound. Luke contributes with the Irish bouzouki, violin, and vocals, and Molly plays the accordion and banjo, reflecting her studies of Appalachian mountain music.
“We didn’t originally think, ‘Let’s start a band with electric folk instruments and pursue this as a vocation,’ ” Roach says. “We soon realized that we had stumbled upon a very unique sound that needed to be heard by a larger audience.”
For two years, the band worked on its recently released CD, The Sea Has Spoken, which includes guests Ricky Skaggs and tuba player Mark Daumin, of the Chapel Hill band Lost in the Trees. While Skaggs provided Skaggs Place Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, for recording, North Carolina’s tight-knit music community buoyed the effort. Wake Forest University opened its doors for additional recording sessions and the use of percussion instruments. Joel Khouri, from Charlotte’s Bright City Studios, co-produced the album with the band. He made the long trips to Nashville and, in the end, pulled everything together from the various recording sessions.
Although listeners will hear more than 30 instruments on the new album — from dun duns to doumbeks — the songs still ring familiar. Traditional sounds from the hammered dulcimer, banjo, and acoustic guitar reflect North Carolina’s musical roots. All the musicians credit their North Carolina heritage for influencing their music.
“From Appalachia to Albemarle, from bluegrass to beach music, North Carolina’s rich musical history found its way into my heart and my fingertips,” Windsor says. “I’m continually grateful to have grown up in a state so passionate about art and music.”
On that small stage at The Green Bean, the band plays the last song of the set. Some of the band members close their eyes and lift their faces toward heaven, seeming to hear something meant for their ears only. But the crowd appreciates the privilege to listen in.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer in Greensboro.
Show me your guitar
Thursday, February 17 (updated 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Throughout history, musicians have revered their guitars, at times giving them names or assigning them human characteristics. Keith Richards slept with his guitar, and George Harrison’s gently wept.
We asked Triad musicians to share their stories about their own pride and joy.
For these eight musicians, their guitars have become old friends or fond memories of loved ones. They’ve survived brawls and rainstorms and have provided inspiration and companionship.
Every musician has his own story to tell, but they have one thing in common: They love their guitars.
Here are their stories:
Herb Stephens, 54, Winston-Salem
Guitar: 1979 Mighty Mite Stratocaster electric guitar
“I became interested in the guitar at the age of 14. In 1974, I met a drummer and bass player Herbie and 'AppleJack’ Robert Walters on bass.
“They asked me if I wanted to start up a band. We formed the band Human Blood, 'HB Productions.’ One very busy day, I accidentally backed over my guitar. It was like running over a child. I got it fixed eight months later and use it on 70 percent of my gigs.
“It’s a great guitar. I just love it. Sometimes I’m so mentally drained after work. But when I walk in and see my guitar, I feel this calmness come over me. I pick it up and play it for a while. I forget about my troubles and my 9-to-5 and just sail on.”
Dr. Kami Rowan, 46, Greensboro
Rowan's website
Guitar: 2003 Concert Classical De Jonge (handmade by Sergie de Jonge)
“My Garcia was my gateway guitar into the classical world. I played an Oribe for 25 years; we had a commitment. My father used some of my grandfather’s black lung check (he was a coal miner) to pay for the instrument. Along the way I stumbled upon my Takamine. Damaged in the factory and originally intended to be sold in Europe, I got the deal of the century. Finally, five years ago, I found my De Jonge. A small, chocolate-sounding guitar, it fits me like a glove. The hours spent playing my guitars have been the most rewarding journey of discovery, expression and growth. My guitars are my friends and my tools for spiritual and emotional grounding. They have enabled and allowed me to always be who I am.”
Patrick Lui, 45, Winston-Salem
patrickluiguitar.com
Guitar: 2007 Thucea classical guitar (handmade by Andrea Tacchi)
“When I was 15 years old, my father decided to get me a summer job working in a bra factory. I spent the money I made there on my first guitar. It was clear from my first lessons that music would be my career. I bought my first classical guitar with the money left to me by my grandmother (Lilly), who I was very close to.
“Maintaining a balance between teaching and performing is a real challenge. I still maintain a concert career performing from small colleges to large concert halls. I play a very unusual instrument made by Andrea Tacchi from Italy. The instrument is lyrical, colorful and sings with absolute clarity. It has a voice all of its own and yet is completely ready to compromise with you. It has become an old friend that I know will never fail me.”
Benjy Johnson, 43, Greensboro
benjyjohnsonmusic.com
Guitar: 1986 Charvel Model 2 electric guitar
“My 1986 Charvel Model 2 was purchased with money earned from working construction with my father the whole summer of 1985. We worked in sweltering heat six and sometimes seven days a week that summer, but all the while I had that new Charvel in my sights. Over the years, he was always proud of the fact that I used that money to buy my first real guitar, and he loved to hear me play. My father recently passed away in July, and although I hadn’t played that guitar much lately, something made me get it out and string it up to complete my new instrumental CD. It sounded perfect for the last three tracks. Now, every time I get that guitar and hear those tracks, it reminds me of my dad, how cool he was and all the hard work we did that summer.”
Jeffrey Dean Foster, 50, Winston-Salem
jeffreydeanfoster.com
Guitar: 1966 Fender Telecaster electric guitar
“My first guitar was a Telecaster I found for sale in the paper. It was road-worn and a real player. The fellow who sold it to me said he had played for Billy 'Crash’ Craddock for years. That guitar has been all over the country with me and has survived club brawls, gun play and rainstorms.
“Once while recording in Memphis, Tenn., I noticed a man playing my Telecaster. After he left, I asked who he was. They said it was Paul Burlison of The Paul Burlison Rock and Roll Trio. Once, while we were in New York City, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones came by the studio and picked my guitar up and played a few licks on it. He then left the studio with a Zero candy bar of mine. No lie!
“That guitar is still my main guitar. I’ve accumulated a lot of them over the years, but my original dream guitar is still with me.”
Molly Miller, 23, Greensboro
ameliasmechanics.com
Guitar: 2010 Thinline Telecaster electric guitar
“My relationship with guitars began at a young age. I preferred spending my designated practice time making 'instruments’ out of old Tropicana boxes, rubber bands and bits of gravel for tone. My first guitar, a Gibson J-160e, was a beautiful, kind and euphonious speaker and was so light to pick up that he was never a strain on my shoulders. Had my guitar been born a human, he would have been Gandhi. But as the fate of many greats, my first Gibson met an untimely death on a cement floor in Jamestown . I now refer to that evening as 'The night my light went out in Jamestown.’ But as horrible as I felt driving home with my shattered Gibson in his case-turned-coffin, my relationship with music was able to evolve because of the accident. I went out a few months later, bought a Thinline Telecaster and haven’t looked back. Guitars are still my favorite, but like any relationship, sometimes you need a change.
Lorenzo “Logie” Meachum, 58, Greensboro
logieworks.com
Guitar: Circa 1931 nickel- plated Johnson acoustic guitar
“Children in schools call it a hubcap guitar because it looks like it could be an automobile accessory. It’s a silver, shining, Dobro-style guitar made by Johnson. It is very special to me because of the way people are attracted to it whenever I pull it out of the case and start tuning it. I’ve played it in the streets of several cites, a few yard parties and several events at the Greensboro library, and it’s always a star. I often believe my playing skills don’t do it justice, but every now and then, the two of us make musical moments that give great pleasure. “As a gentleman once told me, 'Man, that song gave me chicken skin!’
“Whenever I feel like playing some real blues, I pick it up, tune it and find a glass slide. If I’m lucky, I find that sweet spot on the strings that just transports your ears and your mind to somewhere way down Highway 61.”
Ted Lyons, 58, Winston-Salem
Guitar: 2005 National Reso-phonic Radio Tone “Like most professional guitar players, I have several instruments I use and treasure. However, my main road guitar is a 2005 National Reso-phonic Radio Tone fitted with a Lollar Telecaster-style pickup. Although not an expensive instrument, the Radio Tone is a rare guitar. My style of playing is highly percussive and often somewhat unorthodox. I like to pop and smack the body of the instrument to drive the rhythm. I often scratch my fingernails along the fret board and pound the strings with my hand in an effort to achieve bell-like chords, echo, hum and other interesting and unpredictable aural contrasts. The Radio Tone’s unique internal resonator system and allied electronic pick-up chime and reverberate and allow me, if I’m lucky, to coax from the guitar mysterious, ancient tones and send them out into the air all around.”
Bruce Piephoff, 61, Greensboro
reverbnation.com/brucepiephoff
Guitar: 1968 Martin D-35
“I started playing the guitar around 1968 while a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. I have a 1968 Martin D-35 that belonged to my father. After some wild and reckless years in my youth, I decided to go back to school and get my Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at UNCG where I studied with Fred Chappell and Bob Watson. When I got the MFA in 1984, my dad was living near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, drove his pickup truck from there to Greensboro and presented me with his guitar as a graduation gift. It was gratifying and quite a pleasure to make him proud of me by getting my MFA. Kind of like when Johnny Cash gave Bob Dylan his guitar. (Those were two of my dad’s favorite artists.) He was accepting that I’d chosen to be a writer and a musician.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
Throughout history, musicians have revered their guitars, at times giving them names or assigning them human characteristics. Keith Richards slept with his guitar, and George Harrison’s gently wept.
We asked Triad musicians to share their stories about their own pride and joy.
For these eight musicians, their guitars have become old friends or fond memories of loved ones. They’ve survived brawls and rainstorms and have provided inspiration and companionship.
Every musician has his own story to tell, but they have one thing in common: They love their guitars.
Here are their stories:
Herb Stephens, 54, Winston-Salem
Guitar: 1979 Mighty Mite Stratocaster electric guitar
“I became interested in the guitar at the age of 14. In 1974, I met a drummer and bass player Herbie and 'AppleJack’ Robert Walters on bass.
“They asked me if I wanted to start up a band. We formed the band Human Blood, 'HB Productions.’ One very busy day, I accidentally backed over my guitar. It was like running over a child. I got it fixed eight months later and use it on 70 percent of my gigs.
“It’s a great guitar. I just love it. Sometimes I’m so mentally drained after work. But when I walk in and see my guitar, I feel this calmness come over me. I pick it up and play it for a while. I forget about my troubles and my 9-to-5 and just sail on.”
Dr. Kami Rowan, 46, Greensboro
Rowan's website
Guitar: 2003 Concert Classical De Jonge (handmade by Sergie de Jonge)
“My Garcia was my gateway guitar into the classical world. I played an Oribe for 25 years; we had a commitment. My father used some of my grandfather’s black lung check (he was a coal miner) to pay for the instrument. Along the way I stumbled upon my Takamine. Damaged in the factory and originally intended to be sold in Europe, I got the deal of the century. Finally, five years ago, I found my De Jonge. A small, chocolate-sounding guitar, it fits me like a glove. The hours spent playing my guitars have been the most rewarding journey of discovery, expression and growth. My guitars are my friends and my tools for spiritual and emotional grounding. They have enabled and allowed me to always be who I am.”
Patrick Lui, 45, Winston-Salem
patrickluiguitar.com
Guitar: 2007 Thucea classical guitar (handmade by Andrea Tacchi)
“When I was 15 years old, my father decided to get me a summer job working in a bra factory. I spent the money I made there on my first guitar. It was clear from my first lessons that music would be my career. I bought my first classical guitar with the money left to me by my grandmother (Lilly), who I was very close to.
“Maintaining a balance between teaching and performing is a real challenge. I still maintain a concert career performing from small colleges to large concert halls. I play a very unusual instrument made by Andrea Tacchi from Italy. The instrument is lyrical, colorful and sings with absolute clarity. It has a voice all of its own and yet is completely ready to compromise with you. It has become an old friend that I know will never fail me.”
Benjy Johnson, 43, Greensboro
benjyjohnsonmusic.com
Guitar: 1986 Charvel Model 2 electric guitar
“My 1986 Charvel Model 2 was purchased with money earned from working construction with my father the whole summer of 1985. We worked in sweltering heat six and sometimes seven days a week that summer, but all the while I had that new Charvel in my sights. Over the years, he was always proud of the fact that I used that money to buy my first real guitar, and he loved to hear me play. My father recently passed away in July, and although I hadn’t played that guitar much lately, something made me get it out and string it up to complete my new instrumental CD. It sounded perfect for the last three tracks. Now, every time I get that guitar and hear those tracks, it reminds me of my dad, how cool he was and all the hard work we did that summer.”
Jeffrey Dean Foster, 50, Winston-Salem
jeffreydeanfoster.com
Guitar: 1966 Fender Telecaster electric guitar
“My first guitar was a Telecaster I found for sale in the paper. It was road-worn and a real player. The fellow who sold it to me said he had played for Billy 'Crash’ Craddock for years. That guitar has been all over the country with me and has survived club brawls, gun play and rainstorms.
“Once while recording in Memphis, Tenn., I noticed a man playing my Telecaster. After he left, I asked who he was. They said it was Paul Burlison of The Paul Burlison Rock and Roll Trio. Once, while we were in New York City, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones came by the studio and picked my guitar up and played a few licks on it. He then left the studio with a Zero candy bar of mine. No lie!
“That guitar is still my main guitar. I’ve accumulated a lot of them over the years, but my original dream guitar is still with me.”
Molly Miller, 23, Greensboro
ameliasmechanics.com
Guitar: 2010 Thinline Telecaster electric guitar
“My relationship with guitars began at a young age. I preferred spending my designated practice time making 'instruments’ out of old Tropicana boxes, rubber bands and bits of gravel for tone. My first guitar, a Gibson J-160e, was a beautiful, kind and euphonious speaker and was so light to pick up that he was never a strain on my shoulders. Had my guitar been born a human, he would have been Gandhi. But as the fate of many greats, my first Gibson met an untimely death on a cement floor in Jamestown . I now refer to that evening as 'The night my light went out in Jamestown.’ But as horrible as I felt driving home with my shattered Gibson in his case-turned-coffin, my relationship with music was able to evolve because of the accident. I went out a few months later, bought a Thinline Telecaster and haven’t looked back. Guitars are still my favorite, but like any relationship, sometimes you need a change.
Lorenzo “Logie” Meachum, 58, Greensboro
logieworks.com
Guitar: Circa 1931 nickel- plated Johnson acoustic guitar
“Children in schools call it a hubcap guitar because it looks like it could be an automobile accessory. It’s a silver, shining, Dobro-style guitar made by Johnson. It is very special to me because of the way people are attracted to it whenever I pull it out of the case and start tuning it. I’ve played it in the streets of several cites, a few yard parties and several events at the Greensboro library, and it’s always a star. I often believe my playing skills don’t do it justice, but every now and then, the two of us make musical moments that give great pleasure. “As a gentleman once told me, 'Man, that song gave me chicken skin!’
“Whenever I feel like playing some real blues, I pick it up, tune it and find a glass slide. If I’m lucky, I find that sweet spot on the strings that just transports your ears and your mind to somewhere way down Highway 61.”
Ted Lyons, 58, Winston-Salem
Guitar: 2005 National Reso-phonic Radio Tone “Like most professional guitar players, I have several instruments I use and treasure. However, my main road guitar is a 2005 National Reso-phonic Radio Tone fitted with a Lollar Telecaster-style pickup. Although not an expensive instrument, the Radio Tone is a rare guitar. My style of playing is highly percussive and often somewhat unorthodox. I like to pop and smack the body of the instrument to drive the rhythm. I often scratch my fingernails along the fret board and pound the strings with my hand in an effort to achieve bell-like chords, echo, hum and other interesting and unpredictable aural contrasts. The Radio Tone’s unique internal resonator system and allied electronic pick-up chime and reverberate and allow me, if I’m lucky, to coax from the guitar mysterious, ancient tones and send them out into the air all around.”
Bruce Piephoff, 61, Greensboro
reverbnation.com/brucepiephoff
Guitar: 1968 Martin D-35
“I started playing the guitar around 1968 while a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. I have a 1968 Martin D-35 that belonged to my father. After some wild and reckless years in my youth, I decided to go back to school and get my Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at UNCG where I studied with Fred Chappell and Bob Watson. When I got the MFA in 1984, my dad was living near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, drove his pickup truck from there to Greensboro and presented me with his guitar as a graduation gift. It was gratifying and quite a pleasure to make him proud of me by getting my MFA. Kind of like when Johnny Cash gave Bob Dylan his guitar. (Those were two of my dad’s favorite artists.) He was accepting that I’d chosen to be a writer and a musician.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Creators of children's book click over music
Thursday, February 10 (updated 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
There is something special about Stephen Roach, co-founder of the band Songs of Water and author of his first children’s book, “Satchel Willoughby and the Realm of Lost Things.”
His friends describe him as “saintly” and “full of grace,” but Roach would probably scoff at such terms, preferring instead to be described as having “Wink Zangley Doo.” It’s a term Roach created for the main character of his book. It means something that shines from within.
The idea for the story, Roach says, came from his father, a pack rat whose possessions accumulated in piles scattered across his backyard.
“If you asked him if he had a particular item, he would say he had 12 of them ... somewhere, if only he could find where he had put them,” Roach says.
Over the span of eight years, Roach mulled over the idea of where lost things could go, daydreaming and jotting down notes in the notebook he keeps in his back pocket.
“I began considering all the things a person could lose, from trivial items like car keys to more serious personal losses. I realized I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of a concept,” he says.
The idea “snowballed” into a story he says he knew he had to tell.
As serendipity would have it, Roach met a kindred spirit, Vesper Stamper, who illustrated the self-published book. Stamper and her husband, Ben, (who together form the duo Ben + Vesper) were on tour when they met Roach at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill. When Roach discovered Stamper was an illustrator, he sent her the story and a connection sparked between them.
“Vesper sent me some samples of her interpretations of the characters. When I saw her work, I knew she had captured the heart of the story,” Roach says.
Stamper, a graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York City, comes from a family of artists and taught herself to draw as a child by copying the pictures found in her favorite books. Stamper says that meeting Roach through music gave them an instant common ground.
“Working with Stephen was a fantastic experience because he completely trusted me with his vision,” says Stamper, who lives in New Jersey. “It just clicked. His story was so descriptive in itself it made my job easy.
“Music informs art and poetry and everything else. Things like pace, cadence, dark versus light, these are musical concepts as well as visual/literary ones.”
In “Satchel Willoughby and the Realm of Lost Things,” Roach’s writing and Stamper’s illustrations weave together a story with spiritual themes that underlie the quest of young red-headed Satchel (whom Sampler modeled after a young Roach) as he searches for his Wink Zangley Doo.
In what appears to be their time to shine, Roach and Stamper will combine their creative talents with book signings and concerts featuring Songs of Water and Ben + Vesper. They’ll perform Sunday at a house concert in Greensboro. Roach will also read selections from the book.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
There is something special about Stephen Roach, co-founder of the band Songs of Water and author of his first children’s book, “Satchel Willoughby and the Realm of Lost Things.”
His friends describe him as “saintly” and “full of grace,” but Roach would probably scoff at such terms, preferring instead to be described as having “Wink Zangley Doo.” It’s a term Roach created for the main character of his book. It means something that shines from within.
The idea for the story, Roach says, came from his father, a pack rat whose possessions accumulated in piles scattered across his backyard.
“If you asked him if he had a particular item, he would say he had 12 of them ... somewhere, if only he could find where he had put them,” Roach says.
Over the span of eight years, Roach mulled over the idea of where lost things could go, daydreaming and jotting down notes in the notebook he keeps in his back pocket.
“I began considering all the things a person could lose, from trivial items like car keys to more serious personal losses. I realized I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of a concept,” he says.
The idea “snowballed” into a story he says he knew he had to tell.
As serendipity would have it, Roach met a kindred spirit, Vesper Stamper, who illustrated the self-published book. Stamper and her husband, Ben, (who together form the duo Ben + Vesper) were on tour when they met Roach at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill. When Roach discovered Stamper was an illustrator, he sent her the story and a connection sparked between them.
“Vesper sent me some samples of her interpretations of the characters. When I saw her work, I knew she had captured the heart of the story,” Roach says.
Stamper, a graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York City, comes from a family of artists and taught herself to draw as a child by copying the pictures found in her favorite books. Stamper says that meeting Roach through music gave them an instant common ground.
“Working with Stephen was a fantastic experience because he completely trusted me with his vision,” says Stamper, who lives in New Jersey. “It just clicked. His story was so descriptive in itself it made my job easy.
“Music informs art and poetry and everything else. Things like pace, cadence, dark versus light, these are musical concepts as well as visual/literary ones.”
In “Satchel Willoughby and the Realm of Lost Things,” Roach’s writing and Stamper’s illustrations weave together a story with spiritual themes that underlie the quest of young red-headed Satchel (whom Sampler modeled after a young Roach) as he searches for his Wink Zangley Doo.
In what appears to be their time to shine, Roach and Stamper will combine their creative talents with book signings and concerts featuring Songs of Water and Ben + Vesper. They’ll perform Sunday at a house concert in Greensboro. Roach will also read selections from the book.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Nu-Blu's sound innovative, yet comforting
Date: January 27, 2011
Source: CAROLE PERKINS
When I was a teenager, the band at my high school dance broke into a rendition of the classic bluegrass song, "Tennessee Stud." Unexpectedly, the cutest guy in school hooked his arm with mine and swung me around in a dos-a-dos. I mentally clicked my heels up in the air like a lucky leprechaun, savoring every moment. I felt the same sense of elation listening to the CD "Nights," the first release from the husband/wife band, Nu-Blu. With Carolyn Routh on bass and vocals, Daniel Routh on guitar and vocals, Levi Austin on banjo and vocals, and Kendall Gales on mandolin, Nu-Blu of Siler City creates a unique sound that is at once comfortably traditional but at the same time freshly innovative.
Radio and media have embraced the 2010 release of "Nights" as evidenced by its debut on the Euro Americana Chart at No. 10, spending more than five weeks on the Americana Music Association's Top 40 chart and staying on the Roots Music Bluegrass Report's top 50 songs for more than 5 months. And in 2010, Pinecastle Record artist Nu-Blu won the coveted Carolina Music Award for Country Band of the Year, and their single, "Christmas in Dixie," an Alabama cover song, hit No. 1 on the Airplay Direct Top Bluegrass Album Chart.
The road to these successes wasn't exactly an easy one.
A few years ago, Carolyn suffered two strokes. Her right side was paralyzed, and she was unable to speak.
It began with the headaches.
Carolyn didn't think too much about them, but as they worsened, she ended up in the hospital taking blood thinners to control what the doctors thought were migraines. On Thanksgiving morning 2001, Carolyn's neurologist was standing by her bed as she first lost her ability to speak, then suffered the first of the strokes due to a blockage in her brain. Quick medical care insured no permanent damage, but with the inability to speak and under a fog of medication, Carolyn didn't know that. In her nightmare of silence, Carolyn thought she caused the stoke by neglecting her diabetes.
"My doctor had warned me over and over to take better care of myself because I could cause permanent damage. I thought it was my blood sugar and that I had done this to myself," Carolyn says.
Carolyn regained her speech within days of the strokes but needed physical therapy to learn how to use her right side again. Carolyn's best friend, Daniel, was with her through it all.
The two met in 2001 when Carolyn needed a bass player for her contemporary Christian band, Faithful Journey, and Daniel stopped by to eat lunch at her family's restaurant, Johnsons, Siler City. Carolyn mentioned she needed a bass player for an already existing band, and although Daniel didn't know how to play bass, he said he could learn. Thus began the beginning of a life-long commitment to each other and to a dream becoming a reality.
Their friendship grew as they tried various genres of music, with a stab at a Christian rock band, then classic rock and finally bluegrass with Nu-Blu.
In the early part of 2006, Daniel started teaching Carolyn how to play bass, a skill that she learned quickly with the same determination she used to regain the use of her right side.
"From the time she put her hands on a bass she played five weeks later in a show," Daniel says, in admiration.
Perched on a stool in their recording studio, Red Squared Studio, in Siler City, Daniel reflects on the years since Carolyn's strokes and recovery and says he believes everything happened for a reason. Creating the band allowed them to reach out to people through their music, especially through some of their Gospel songs. He shares how determined Carolyn was to regain use of her right hand and how she was released from physical therapy early because she was doing so well.
"Even before she was released from the hospital everything she was told she wouldn't be able to do she was already pushing herself to do," Daniel says.
Back at home, Daniel helped Carolyn with her physical needs, bringing her food and medication when her head hurt too much to sit up or even watch TV. Daniel slept in a recliner and set his alarm for every two hours to make sure Carolyn's blood sugar didn't drop too low. He got up early every morning to go to work and called Carolyn every chance he got.
"I really don't know what I would have done without Daniel," Carolyn says. "He was my nurse, cheerleader and drill sergeant who pushed me hard to reach the next level, but was also there when I needed a shoulder to cry on."
But most importantly, Daniel was the person who pushed her to succeed with the goals she had set for herself.
An eternal optimist, Carolyn said she kept striving to take the next step to recovery because she really wanted to do everything she had been able to do before, especially with their music and Nu-Blu.
Within several months, Carolyn regained the use of her right hand and made a full recovery.
"The only side effect is her memory loss," Daniel says, as Carolyn pretends to knock him off of his stool. (Carolyn never actually suffered memory loss.)
In 2006, Carolyn and Daniel married in a no-frills ceremony: no rings or proposal, just a trip to the magistrate one morning and the newlyweds attending a show at a biker bar on their honeymoon night so Daniel could run sound for the band.
"It didn't really hit me that we were getting married until Daniel introduced me at work as his fiancée," Carolyn says. "It just started with the music, and we became best friends."
While Carolyn, Daniel and Austin are all songwriters, the majority of the tunes on "Nights" were written by national songwriters they connected with at bluegrass festivals.
The Rouths say they like to pick the best songs available that fit their style but also fit with the flow and direction of the project.
Part of the magic of Nu-Blu's sound is the exemplary style of Austin's banjo playing. Influenced by bluegrass greats such as Earl Scruggs and Sammy Shelor, Austin has won numerous banjo and guitar awards, including The Galax Fiddler's Convention Award in 2007, the nation's longest-running fiddler's convention. During that trip to Galax, Va., Austin got a call from Carolyn saying she had a dream he played a certain song and that he'd won. Austin chose to play the song in Carolyn's dream, the instrumental bluegrass classic, "Sled Ride," earning him the award.
Together with Gales' mandolin playing, the group creates a different sound that turns former nonbluegrass lovers into fans.
"The No. 1 compliment that we get is when someone says they really don't like bluegrass, but they really like us," Daniel says. "We work hard and play together a lot."
Austin says that being close-knit helps because they can be critical of each other's work without hurting feelings.
As they currently work on a new CD to follow "Nights," the trust they share is evident. Carolyn is laying down a vocal track while Daniel and Austin engineer. Then, they all switch places and offer helpful criticism.
"When I'm in the booth playing my guitar, I listen back to what I play, but it's more about what Levi and Carolyn say," Daniel says.
The success of Nu-Blu comes not only from their music but from hard work and smart marketing strategies. In the bluegrass world, Nu-Blu is known as the band that introduces new techniques such as online marketing and social networking , which directly connects Nu-Blu with their fans.
Carolyn and Daniel have hopes for a European tour in 2011, but in the meantime, they are excited about a planned 2011 tour starting in North Carolina and ending in Canada.
As best friends and constant companions with a lucrative music career before them, they are savoring every moment, and no doubt kicking up their heels like lucky leprechauns.
"There's nothing sweeter than taking the stage with your best friend and love standing right beside you," Carolyn says. "I'm having the time of my life!"
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com Want to go?
Source: CAROLE PERKINS
When I was a teenager, the band at my high school dance broke into a rendition of the classic bluegrass song, "Tennessee Stud." Unexpectedly, the cutest guy in school hooked his arm with mine and swung me around in a dos-a-dos. I mentally clicked my heels up in the air like a lucky leprechaun, savoring every moment. I felt the same sense of elation listening to the CD "Nights," the first release from the husband/wife band, Nu-Blu. With Carolyn Routh on bass and vocals, Daniel Routh on guitar and vocals, Levi Austin on banjo and vocals, and Kendall Gales on mandolin, Nu-Blu of Siler City creates a unique sound that is at once comfortably traditional but at the same time freshly innovative.
Radio and media have embraced the 2010 release of "Nights" as evidenced by its debut on the Euro Americana Chart at No. 10, spending more than five weeks on the Americana Music Association's Top 40 chart and staying on the Roots Music Bluegrass Report's top 50 songs for more than 5 months. And in 2010, Pinecastle Record artist Nu-Blu won the coveted Carolina Music Award for Country Band of the Year, and their single, "Christmas in Dixie," an Alabama cover song, hit No. 1 on the Airplay Direct Top Bluegrass Album Chart.
The road to these successes wasn't exactly an easy one.
A few years ago, Carolyn suffered two strokes. Her right side was paralyzed, and she was unable to speak.
It began with the headaches.
Carolyn didn't think too much about them, but as they worsened, she ended up in the hospital taking blood thinners to control what the doctors thought were migraines. On Thanksgiving morning 2001, Carolyn's neurologist was standing by her bed as she first lost her ability to speak, then suffered the first of the strokes due to a blockage in her brain. Quick medical care insured no permanent damage, but with the inability to speak and under a fog of medication, Carolyn didn't know that. In her nightmare of silence, Carolyn thought she caused the stoke by neglecting her diabetes.
"My doctor had warned me over and over to take better care of myself because I could cause permanent damage. I thought it was my blood sugar and that I had done this to myself," Carolyn says.
Carolyn regained her speech within days of the strokes but needed physical therapy to learn how to use her right side again. Carolyn's best friend, Daniel, was with her through it all.
The two met in 2001 when Carolyn needed a bass player for her contemporary Christian band, Faithful Journey, and Daniel stopped by to eat lunch at her family's restaurant, Johnsons, Siler City. Carolyn mentioned she needed a bass player for an already existing band, and although Daniel didn't know how to play bass, he said he could learn. Thus began the beginning of a life-long commitment to each other and to a dream becoming a reality.
Their friendship grew as they tried various genres of music, with a stab at a Christian rock band, then classic rock and finally bluegrass with Nu-Blu.
In the early part of 2006, Daniel started teaching Carolyn how to play bass, a skill that she learned quickly with the same determination she used to regain the use of her right side.
"From the time she put her hands on a bass she played five weeks later in a show," Daniel says, in admiration.
Perched on a stool in their recording studio, Red Squared Studio, in Siler City, Daniel reflects on the years since Carolyn's strokes and recovery and says he believes everything happened for a reason. Creating the band allowed them to reach out to people through their music, especially through some of their Gospel songs. He shares how determined Carolyn was to regain use of her right hand and how she was released from physical therapy early because she was doing so well.
"Even before she was released from the hospital everything she was told she wouldn't be able to do she was already pushing herself to do," Daniel says.
Back at home, Daniel helped Carolyn with her physical needs, bringing her food and medication when her head hurt too much to sit up or even watch TV. Daniel slept in a recliner and set his alarm for every two hours to make sure Carolyn's blood sugar didn't drop too low. He got up early every morning to go to work and called Carolyn every chance he got.
"I really don't know what I would have done without Daniel," Carolyn says. "He was my nurse, cheerleader and drill sergeant who pushed me hard to reach the next level, but was also there when I needed a shoulder to cry on."
But most importantly, Daniel was the person who pushed her to succeed with the goals she had set for herself.
An eternal optimist, Carolyn said she kept striving to take the next step to recovery because she really wanted to do everything she had been able to do before, especially with their music and Nu-Blu.
Within several months, Carolyn regained the use of her right hand and made a full recovery.
"The only side effect is her memory loss," Daniel says, as Carolyn pretends to knock him off of his stool. (Carolyn never actually suffered memory loss.)
In 2006, Carolyn and Daniel married in a no-frills ceremony: no rings or proposal, just a trip to the magistrate one morning and the newlyweds attending a show at a biker bar on their honeymoon night so Daniel could run sound for the band.
"It didn't really hit me that we were getting married until Daniel introduced me at work as his fiancée," Carolyn says. "It just started with the music, and we became best friends."
While Carolyn, Daniel and Austin are all songwriters, the majority of the tunes on "Nights" were written by national songwriters they connected with at bluegrass festivals.
The Rouths say they like to pick the best songs available that fit their style but also fit with the flow and direction of the project.
Part of the magic of Nu-Blu's sound is the exemplary style of Austin's banjo playing. Influenced by bluegrass greats such as Earl Scruggs and Sammy Shelor, Austin has won numerous banjo and guitar awards, including The Galax Fiddler's Convention Award in 2007, the nation's longest-running fiddler's convention. During that trip to Galax, Va., Austin got a call from Carolyn saying she had a dream he played a certain song and that he'd won. Austin chose to play the song in Carolyn's dream, the instrumental bluegrass classic, "Sled Ride," earning him the award.
Together with Gales' mandolin playing, the group creates a different sound that turns former nonbluegrass lovers into fans.
"The No. 1 compliment that we get is when someone says they really don't like bluegrass, but they really like us," Daniel says. "We work hard and play together a lot."
Austin says that being close-knit helps because they can be critical of each other's work without hurting feelings.
As they currently work on a new CD to follow "Nights," the trust they share is evident. Carolyn is laying down a vocal track while Daniel and Austin engineer. Then, they all switch places and offer helpful criticism.
"When I'm in the booth playing my guitar, I listen back to what I play, but it's more about what Levi and Carolyn say," Daniel says.
The success of Nu-Blu comes not only from their music but from hard work and smart marketing strategies. In the bluegrass world, Nu-Blu is known as the band that introduces new techniques such as online marketing and social networking , which directly connects Nu-Blu with their fans.
Carolyn and Daniel have hopes for a European tour in 2011, but in the meantime, they are excited about a planned 2011 tour starting in North Carolina and ending in Canada.
As best friends and constant companions with a lucrative music career before them, they are savoring every moment, and no doubt kicking up their heels like lucky leprechauns.
"There's nothing sweeter than taking the stage with your best friend and love standing right beside you," Carolyn says. "I'm having the time of my life!"
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com Want to go?
Friends join hands against depression
Date: January 16, 2011
Edition(s): News & Record
Page: D2
Section: Life Column: Personal Adds
Source:CAROLE PERKINS
Recently, I dreamed I was riding on a go-cart with my friends of many years, Joy and Jill. We laughed and whooped as the sweetest smelling wind possible blew back our hair against the backdrop of a robin's egg-colored sky, anchored by a carpet of purple and yellow flowers. We rounded a corner and the go-cart tilted, catapulting us into a pit with slippery red clay walls sinking into inches of brackish water. The smell was the overpowering stench of dead water moccasins on hot asphalt. I clung to a ledge and drew my feet up in horror as a snake slithered underneath. Joy and Jill seemed nonplussed, having landing feet first in the pit, but they jumped to action when they saw my distress by making a human ladder with one on top of the other's shoulders. I climbed on top and pulled myself out of that pit as fast as I could.
Now, it doesn't take a Freudian dream analyst to decipher this dream of a beautiful day in heaven flipped to a nightmare in hell. I'm no expert in matters of depression, but I do know the serious grip of that python who tries to strangle its victims, sometimes successfully.
A while back, I found myself sitting in the pit in the dark with my legs drawn up to my chest. I knew I wasn't alone. Heck, even Johnny Cash once fell into a burning ring of fire and Kevin Gordon sang that he ain't going down to the well no more 'cause he'd has his fill, as Lucinda Williams chimes in about the time "he broke down to the core and threw his black Stratocaster through the plate glass door."
Whew! That's really hitting rock bottom when you start throwing Stratocasters around, and it was of great comfort to me to know I had my girlfriends who meet on Wednesday mornings to talk, pray, laugh and sometimes cry.
A few years ago, one of my friends in the group, Karen, was also doing time in the pit. Somehow, I reached my hand out in the blackness to try to get my bearings and my hand brushed against hers. We held on tightly for dear life in that dark time.
Then, one day I wiped the muck out of my eyes and spit great clods of red clay from my mouth and marveled to hear birds chirping in the morning. Karen wasn't too far behind.
A few years passed and our group continued to meet on Wednesday mornings. Then Karen, who is no stranger to tragedy, having lost her young son in a car accident, got slapped with an ALS diagnosis. We all watch, as if stuck in a dream where you run in slow motion away from harm, as Karen's tell-tale limp requires a hot pink cane and sometimes the luxury of a wheelchair for transportation.
I haven't tiptoed down to the pit to see if she's hanging out down there. Like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller "Vertigo," I'm afraid if I stand too close to the edge, I might get dizzy and fall in.
But Karen is an amazing woman of great faith who always finds something to laugh about. And if she starts slipping down that hill, I hope she finds a ledge to cling onto, a place to draw up her feet in case a serpent sneaks by, in which case her strong group of friends will build the tallest human ladder possible to lift her up.
And if she holds out her hand in the darkness grasping for bearing, I'll find it. And I'll never let it go.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer in Greensboro. Contact her at CPGuilford@aol.com.
Edition(s): News & Record
Page: D2
Section: Life Column: Personal Adds
Source:CAROLE PERKINS
Recently, I dreamed I was riding on a go-cart with my friends of many years, Joy and Jill. We laughed and whooped as the sweetest smelling wind possible blew back our hair against the backdrop of a robin's egg-colored sky, anchored by a carpet of purple and yellow flowers. We rounded a corner and the go-cart tilted, catapulting us into a pit with slippery red clay walls sinking into inches of brackish water. The smell was the overpowering stench of dead water moccasins on hot asphalt. I clung to a ledge and drew my feet up in horror as a snake slithered underneath. Joy and Jill seemed nonplussed, having landing feet first in the pit, but they jumped to action when they saw my distress by making a human ladder with one on top of the other's shoulders. I climbed on top and pulled myself out of that pit as fast as I could.
Now, it doesn't take a Freudian dream analyst to decipher this dream of a beautiful day in heaven flipped to a nightmare in hell. I'm no expert in matters of depression, but I do know the serious grip of that python who tries to strangle its victims, sometimes successfully.
A while back, I found myself sitting in the pit in the dark with my legs drawn up to my chest. I knew I wasn't alone. Heck, even Johnny Cash once fell into a burning ring of fire and Kevin Gordon sang that he ain't going down to the well no more 'cause he'd has his fill, as Lucinda Williams chimes in about the time "he broke down to the core and threw his black Stratocaster through the plate glass door."
Whew! That's really hitting rock bottom when you start throwing Stratocasters around, and it was of great comfort to me to know I had my girlfriends who meet on Wednesday mornings to talk, pray, laugh and sometimes cry.
A few years ago, one of my friends in the group, Karen, was also doing time in the pit. Somehow, I reached my hand out in the blackness to try to get my bearings and my hand brushed against hers. We held on tightly for dear life in that dark time.
Then, one day I wiped the muck out of my eyes and spit great clods of red clay from my mouth and marveled to hear birds chirping in the morning. Karen wasn't too far behind.
A few years passed and our group continued to meet on Wednesday mornings. Then Karen, who is no stranger to tragedy, having lost her young son in a car accident, got slapped with an ALS diagnosis. We all watch, as if stuck in a dream where you run in slow motion away from harm, as Karen's tell-tale limp requires a hot pink cane and sometimes the luxury of a wheelchair for transportation.
I haven't tiptoed down to the pit to see if she's hanging out down there. Like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller "Vertigo," I'm afraid if I stand too close to the edge, I might get dizzy and fall in.
But Karen is an amazing woman of great faith who always finds something to laugh about. And if she starts slipping down that hill, I hope she finds a ledge to cling onto, a place to draw up her feet in case a serpent sneaks by, in which case her strong group of friends will build the tallest human ladder possible to lift her up.
And if she holds out her hand in the darkness grasping for bearing, I'll find it. And I'll never let it go.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer in Greensboro. Contact her at CPGuilford@aol.com.
Sam Quinn learns to laugh at life's little problems
Thursday, December 9, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:00 am)
By CAROLE PERKINS
I first met Sam Quinn, the crooning storyteller for the now-defunct band, the everybodyfields, in 2007. Dressed in his signature brown pants and sporting neatly trimmed mutton chops, he and his former girlfriend and band mate Jill Andrews cuddled in a booth across the table. My hands shook as I took notes during their interview. I felt I was in the presence of musical geniuses whose whimsical songs from their three albums enamored me from the first notes.
Within the year, Quinn and Andrews parted ways.
Andrews embarked on a solo career, and Quinn stayed with Ramseur Records and started his own band: Sam Quinn and Japan Ten. In May 2010 the band released a CD, "The Fake That Sank a Thousand Ships" whose jacket Quinn illustrated with pastel rainbows and smiling dolphins. Quinn, who is an artist as well as accomplished musician, chose an interesting contrast to his morose but brilliant compilation of songs whose music and lyrics cling to your heart like barnacles slapped by life's salty waves.
The Tennessee native takes a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the album, recognizing the heavy weight of the songs needs to be put in a lighter perspective. He says it amuses him that it's so over the top.
"You have to laugh at yourself and all the little problems that you have when someone hurts your little heart," he says.
Raised by a largely female clan of sisters, mothers and grandmothers, Quinn started playing music as a young man as a place to escape the fate of working at Duracell or the local chair factory. He attended the East Tennessee State University, majored in English and met Andrews working as a camp counselor at a local Christian camp.
With the everybodyfields, Quinn's musical career took off playing in venues like The Kennedy Center, and in 2004, his song, "T.V.A.," won best in the bluegrass category at MerleFest.
As a solo artist, he starred in a YouTube video for a media push for the Avett Brothers' latest CD. (Quinn says that video is by far the most watched internet clip that he has ever been a part of, "which is cool because I was only doing what any other mildly trained chimpanzee could pull off shortly after waking up from a long winter.")
And now with Japan Ten, he recorded a live DVD in 2009, and their debut album won accolades from celebrity Lance Armstrong, who tweeted about the CD.
But Quinn says a while back he hit a juncture in his life and had nothing to lose by just seeing what happened when he let something go completely. (He does not elaborate.) He let his hair grow long and his beard grow bushy, looking something like a wooly booger, a Southern term for a hairy, scraggly creature. He found solace in being hidden and less approachable. (See photo inside the new CD.)
"I asked a girl to marry me, and she said, 'Yes,'" Quinn says. "I made her a ring from beating a silver dollar for days and damn near breaking two fingers and a thumb in the process.
"Now I can't get her to answer the telephone. That's real life. Who wants to live there?"
Recently, Quinn appeared in a music video with Andrews singing "Something Happens When We Talk," a Lucinda Williams tune. In what could be perceived as a symbolic return from a difficult time, Quinn's hair is neat and his mutton chops trimmed back to respectability.
Earlier this year, Quinn hit the road gigging after an extended stay at home in Knoxville, Tenn. That trip became meaningful in several ways.
"I hadn't been out like that in a long time," he says. "It was an immense brain-scrubbing session and an all-together conscience--shifting experience. I was weathered and blown free like a banner of equal parts hope and desperation."
With the last of his money from his trip, Quinn bought a pair of moccasins, drove through Wisconsin, sang doo-wop from a roof in Indiana, went to his niece's first birthday party and told his best friend Ryan that he loved him. He says he had a day so great he couldn't bring himself to tell his guitar guy, Nick, the best news he had ever heard for fear that it would turn everything around to talking about himself.
Then his van blew up. And he didn't even really care that much.
Quinn hopes the upcoming year will bring winning lottery tickets, a 65-degree winter and no hernias.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com.
By CAROLE PERKINS
I first met Sam Quinn, the crooning storyteller for the now-defunct band, the everybodyfields, in 2007. Dressed in his signature brown pants and sporting neatly trimmed mutton chops, he and his former girlfriend and band mate Jill Andrews cuddled in a booth across the table. My hands shook as I took notes during their interview. I felt I was in the presence of musical geniuses whose whimsical songs from their three albums enamored me from the first notes.
Within the year, Quinn and Andrews parted ways.
Andrews embarked on a solo career, and Quinn stayed with Ramseur Records and started his own band: Sam Quinn and Japan Ten. In May 2010 the band released a CD, "The Fake That Sank a Thousand Ships" whose jacket Quinn illustrated with pastel rainbows and smiling dolphins. Quinn, who is an artist as well as accomplished musician, chose an interesting contrast to his morose but brilliant compilation of songs whose music and lyrics cling to your heart like barnacles slapped by life's salty waves.
The Tennessee native takes a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the album, recognizing the heavy weight of the songs needs to be put in a lighter perspective. He says it amuses him that it's so over the top.
"You have to laugh at yourself and all the little problems that you have when someone hurts your little heart," he says.
Raised by a largely female clan of sisters, mothers and grandmothers, Quinn started playing music as a young man as a place to escape the fate of working at Duracell or the local chair factory. He attended the East Tennessee State University, majored in English and met Andrews working as a camp counselor at a local Christian camp.
With the everybodyfields, Quinn's musical career took off playing in venues like The Kennedy Center, and in 2004, his song, "T.V.A.," won best in the bluegrass category at MerleFest.
As a solo artist, he starred in a YouTube video for a media push for the Avett Brothers' latest CD. (Quinn says that video is by far the most watched internet clip that he has ever been a part of, "which is cool because I was only doing what any other mildly trained chimpanzee could pull off shortly after waking up from a long winter.")
And now with Japan Ten, he recorded a live DVD in 2009, and their debut album won accolades from celebrity Lance Armstrong, who tweeted about the CD.
But Quinn says a while back he hit a juncture in his life and had nothing to lose by just seeing what happened when he let something go completely. (He does not elaborate.) He let his hair grow long and his beard grow bushy, looking something like a wooly booger, a Southern term for a hairy, scraggly creature. He found solace in being hidden and less approachable. (See photo inside the new CD.)
"I asked a girl to marry me, and she said, 'Yes,'" Quinn says. "I made her a ring from beating a silver dollar for days and damn near breaking two fingers and a thumb in the process.
"Now I can't get her to answer the telephone. That's real life. Who wants to live there?"
Recently, Quinn appeared in a music video with Andrews singing "Something Happens When We Talk," a Lucinda Williams tune. In what could be perceived as a symbolic return from a difficult time, Quinn's hair is neat and his mutton chops trimmed back to respectability.
Earlier this year, Quinn hit the road gigging after an extended stay at home in Knoxville, Tenn. That trip became meaningful in several ways.
"I hadn't been out like that in a long time," he says. "It was an immense brain-scrubbing session and an all-together conscience--shifting experience. I was weathered and blown free like a banner of equal parts hope and desperation."
With the last of his money from his trip, Quinn bought a pair of moccasins, drove through Wisconsin, sang doo-wop from a roof in Indiana, went to his niece's first birthday party and told his best friend Ryan that he loved him. He says he had a day so great he couldn't bring himself to tell his guitar guy, Nick, the best news he had ever heard for fear that it would turn everything around to talking about himself.
Then his van blew up. And he didn't even really care that much.
Quinn hopes the upcoming year will bring winning lottery tickets, a 65-degree winter and no hernias.
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com.
Flatiron's Open Mike Matures
Thursday, November 11, 2010 (updated , 2010 7:38 am)
By Carole Perkins
GREENSBORO — Matty Sheets wears a lot of hats around town: musician, bartender, artist, soundtrack composer and songwriter.
But the hat that is most appreciated by local musicians, poets, beat-boxers, comedians and the occasional heavy metal guitarist is host and master of ceremonies to open-mike night at The Flatiron. It’s the place where nervous newbies and seasoned songwriters are welcome to perform.
Open-mike night is the brainchild of Sheets and friend Harvey Robinson, fellow bartenders who had a vision eight years ago to evolve The Flatiron into a music venue.
Beginning with a tiny PA system and borrowed gear, Sheets and his friends took turns introducing each other and playing music in an atmosphere of mutual support. In 2004, Sheets became full-time host to open-mike night, which averages 10 to 25 performers per week.
The venue has a full sound system now, and as the weekly event grows, so does the sense of community shared by local musicians, some of whom have gone from singing from scraps of paper to forming full-fledged bands. Local groups Eating the Invaders and Big Red Rooster cut their chops at open mike as did musician Emily Stewart and the Baby Teeth and Hanging Thread.
Stewart recalls her early days at open mike when she used to try a few tunes with the band she started, Our Horse Jethro. She had never performed in front of an audience and had only been playing for a few months. One night, as Matty was setting up the microphone, he noticed Stewart with a guitar.
“I remember Matty saying, 'I didn’t know you played guitar, Emily,’ ” Stewart recalled.
She replied, “I don’t.”
“Now, that might have been enough to discourage anyone else from allowing me onstage,” Stewart said, “but Matty has always had faith in those who can’t seem to find any faith in themselves.”
Local musician Stephen Corbett says open-mike night has always been the best place to try new tunes or to practice with new groups. His old band, The Radials, got its start there, and his new band, Hanging Thread, came together at an open mike with their first acoustic set.
“A good chunk of the audience is made up of musicians, so people actually listen,” Corbett says. “There isn’t background noise, so it makes it much easier to tell when you have a clunker and when you have something that works.”
On any given open-mike night, Sheets whips his notebook from his back pocket and peers through his round glasses to see who he needs to prompt to the microphone. He double-checks the sound system for each act and hops on stage to announce the next performer, all the while trying to keep morale high.
A self-proclaimed “performance addict,” Sheets rides a 1990s Schwinn bicycle (he sold his car to buy a guitar amp) to practice daily with his two bands, Matty Sheets and the Blockheads and Come Hell or High Water. His dedication to open mike and the outlet it provides local musicians to hone their craft is due in part to his desire to give back to a community that has supported him. A few years ago, Sheets had some legal trouble and put on a show to raise money for a lawyer. He was surprised by the results.
“I was shocked at the musicians who turned out to help me,” Sheets said. “Some of them I didn’t even know. It was very moving. That’s why I do what I do. It’s about them. It’s all about the bands.”
Stewart, who now also plays banjo in Matty Sheets and the Blockheads, says she is pleased to be a part of Greensboro’s incredibly supportive community through open mike.
“If you’re going to live in a town that is bursting at the seams with music, there has got to be someplace to catch it,” she said, “and The Flatiron’s open mike seems to be the place.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
GREENSBORO — Matty Sheets wears a lot of hats around town: musician, bartender, artist, soundtrack composer and songwriter.
But the hat that is most appreciated by local musicians, poets, beat-boxers, comedians and the occasional heavy metal guitarist is host and master of ceremonies to open-mike night at The Flatiron. It’s the place where nervous newbies and seasoned songwriters are welcome to perform.
Open-mike night is the brainchild of Sheets and friend Harvey Robinson, fellow bartenders who had a vision eight years ago to evolve The Flatiron into a music venue.
Beginning with a tiny PA system and borrowed gear, Sheets and his friends took turns introducing each other and playing music in an atmosphere of mutual support. In 2004, Sheets became full-time host to open-mike night, which averages 10 to 25 performers per week.
The venue has a full sound system now, and as the weekly event grows, so does the sense of community shared by local musicians, some of whom have gone from singing from scraps of paper to forming full-fledged bands. Local groups Eating the Invaders and Big Red Rooster cut their chops at open mike as did musician Emily Stewart and the Baby Teeth and Hanging Thread.
Stewart recalls her early days at open mike when she used to try a few tunes with the band she started, Our Horse Jethro. She had never performed in front of an audience and had only been playing for a few months. One night, as Matty was setting up the microphone, he noticed Stewart with a guitar.
“I remember Matty saying, 'I didn’t know you played guitar, Emily,’ ” Stewart recalled.
She replied, “I don’t.”
“Now, that might have been enough to discourage anyone else from allowing me onstage,” Stewart said, “but Matty has always had faith in those who can’t seem to find any faith in themselves.”
Local musician Stephen Corbett says open-mike night has always been the best place to try new tunes or to practice with new groups. His old band, The Radials, got its start there, and his new band, Hanging Thread, came together at an open mike with their first acoustic set.
“A good chunk of the audience is made up of musicians, so people actually listen,” Corbett says. “There isn’t background noise, so it makes it much easier to tell when you have a clunker and when you have something that works.”
On any given open-mike night, Sheets whips his notebook from his back pocket and peers through his round glasses to see who he needs to prompt to the microphone. He double-checks the sound system for each act and hops on stage to announce the next performer, all the while trying to keep morale high.
A self-proclaimed “performance addict,” Sheets rides a 1990s Schwinn bicycle (he sold his car to buy a guitar amp) to practice daily with his two bands, Matty Sheets and the Blockheads and Come Hell or High Water. His dedication to open mike and the outlet it provides local musicians to hone their craft is due in part to his desire to give back to a community that has supported him. A few years ago, Sheets had some legal trouble and put on a show to raise money for a lawyer. He was surprised by the results.
“I was shocked at the musicians who turned out to help me,” Sheets said. “Some of them I didn’t even know. It was very moving. That’s why I do what I do. It’s about them. It’s all about the bands.”
Stewart, who now also plays banjo in Matty Sheets and the Blockheads, says she is pleased to be a part of Greensboro’s incredibly supportive community through open mike.
“If you’re going to live in a town that is bursting at the seams with music, there has got to be someplace to catch it,” she said, “and The Flatiron’s open mike seems to be the place.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Filthybird Spreads Its Wings
Thursday, October 21, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:01 am)
By Carole Perkins
GRAHAM — While local music aficionados have dubbed Filthybird as the one Greensboro band to watch, they really aren’t a Greensboro band anymore.
That’s what vocalist Renee Mendoza explains over the strumming of an old Martin acoustic that her husband/guitarist Brian Haran is fixing in their recently acquired guitar repair shop, Fret Sounds, in downtown Graham.
With bass player Mike Duehring and guitarist Sanders Trippe in Greensboro and percussionist Jim Bob Aiken in Raleigh, Mendoza and Haran made a conscious decision to leave the Gate City and spread their wings in Graham.
Filthybird, whose name comes from a Robyn Hitchcock song, “A Happy Bird is a Filthy Bird,” has been a staple of the local music scene for a long time — for better or worse.
“It’s almost like being cursed to be a band out of Greensboro,” Mendoza explains. “There’s tons of talent there, but it’s like not having a rocket or propulsion to zoom out of there.”
Of late, the band is honing its sophomore release, “Songs for Other People,” an eclectic kaleidoscope of Mendoza’s songs, the psychedelic hues of Jefferson Airplane and cosmic vibe of Gram Parsons.
Haran’s resounding guitar seemingly has its own voice, as it intertwines with the warm, buttery timbre of Mendoza’s vocals. From the acoustic lullaby, “Pick Me Up,” to the somber “Feather Down,” each song paints a narrative portrait in which each character is artfully framed.
That’s quite a departure from their first effort, “Southern Skies,” an album Mendoza says was essentially “blatantly charged songs obviously about myself.”
Local singer/songwriter and belle of the Greensboro music scene, Molly McGinn, says Filthybird is the band that everybody’s watching, no matter where they live.
“The punks steal lines and swagger from Duehring’s bass face. Guitar nerds watch Haran’s mad scientist take on tone and solos. And if Aiken didn’t hold the whole sound down percussion-wise, they’d all just levitate. Then Mendoza ... writes these lyrics and melodies that give emo kids something to feel good about.
“Altogether it’s a sound you’ve never heard before and wish to hell you’d created.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
GRAHAM — While local music aficionados have dubbed Filthybird as the one Greensboro band to watch, they really aren’t a Greensboro band anymore.
That’s what vocalist Renee Mendoza explains over the strumming of an old Martin acoustic that her husband/guitarist Brian Haran is fixing in their recently acquired guitar repair shop, Fret Sounds, in downtown Graham.
With bass player Mike Duehring and guitarist Sanders Trippe in Greensboro and percussionist Jim Bob Aiken in Raleigh, Mendoza and Haran made a conscious decision to leave the Gate City and spread their wings in Graham.
Filthybird, whose name comes from a Robyn Hitchcock song, “A Happy Bird is a Filthy Bird,” has been a staple of the local music scene for a long time — for better or worse.
“It’s almost like being cursed to be a band out of Greensboro,” Mendoza explains. “There’s tons of talent there, but it’s like not having a rocket or propulsion to zoom out of there.”
Of late, the band is honing its sophomore release, “Songs for Other People,” an eclectic kaleidoscope of Mendoza’s songs, the psychedelic hues of Jefferson Airplane and cosmic vibe of Gram Parsons.
Haran’s resounding guitar seemingly has its own voice, as it intertwines with the warm, buttery timbre of Mendoza’s vocals. From the acoustic lullaby, “Pick Me Up,” to the somber “Feather Down,” each song paints a narrative portrait in which each character is artfully framed.
That’s quite a departure from their first effort, “Southern Skies,” an album Mendoza says was essentially “blatantly charged songs obviously about myself.”
Local singer/songwriter and belle of the Greensboro music scene, Molly McGinn, says Filthybird is the band that everybody’s watching, no matter where they live.
“The punks steal lines and swagger from Duehring’s bass face. Guitar nerds watch Haran’s mad scientist take on tone and solos. And if Aiken didn’t hold the whole sound down percussion-wise, they’d all just levitate. Then Mendoza ... writes these lyrics and melodies that give emo kids something to feel good about.
“Altogether it’s a sound you’ve never heard before and wish to hell you’d created.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
A New Generation Guitarist
Thursday, October 14, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Bruce Piephoff pauses midway through the set he’s playing at the Tate Street Festival Sept. 25 in honor of his recently deceased musician friend, Dakota Joe. Lowering the microphone, Piephoff invites 11-year-old Ranford Almond to play a couple of songs while he repairs a broken string on his acoustic guitar.
The crowd surrounding the stage grows silent as Ranford strums the first chords of Townes Van Zandt’s classic song “Greensboro Woman.” Camera’s flick and videos roll as Ranford sings about “Texas lovin’ laying heavy on my mind.”
The audience grows by the time Ranford sings the Piephoff-penned “Rosalita.”
One encore later, Almond exits the stage to the roar of “One more song!”
UNCG student Lauren Plank, 22, points at the bumps on her arm.
“He’s good not because he’s so young but because he’s so GOOD!” she exclaims.
Although there is a 50-year age difference between Piephoff and Ranford, their love of music transcends generations. Music instructor Rex Griffin, who taught violin to Ranford for years, recognized his student’s interest in songwriting and nudged him to study with master songwriter Piephoff.
Piephoff, who has 20 CDs to his credit, knew Ranford had something special from the first song he played and invited him to appear onstage at some of his shows. Their relationship has grown from student/mentor to one of friendship.
Sitting on the front porch of their Browns Summit home, Danielle and Dave Almond reminisce about how much their son has always loved music. Dad calls his son an “old soul.” Mom believes he was like that even in the womb.
“Every time I played Jerry Garcia, he’d start moving all around in my belly,” says Danielle Almond, motioning with her hands above her stomach. “He sang his first song, 'Hand Me Down Your Walking Cane,’ when he was 4 years old riding in his car seat.”
Ranford sways on the porch swing, tapping his flip-flops to the rhythm of Piephoff’s song “Big Foot in the Door,” which he has just learned. Piephoff prompts him kindly when Ranford trips on a lyric.
“You’re sounding good kid,” Piephoff says. “Nice instrumental work there.”
Ranford moves to a stool while Piephoff takes the swing. They chuckle as they attempt to find a key that’s not too high for Piephoff or too low for Ranford.
Danielle Almond rushes to grab her video camera, pleading for them to wait until she returns.
Too late. Piephoff is already singing.
Ranford, strumming his own rhythm, sings the next verse.
Now that they’ve started, they don’t want to quit. They’re two old souls singing about prison, love and weariness. They’re happy to share a penchant for songs that evolved in the 1960s with poet/songwriters such as John Prine, Guy Clark and Kris Kristofferson.
As Piephoff packs his guitar away for the night, he caresses the supple leather on the strap. Billy Ransom Hobbs had given this to Dakota Joe before he died two years ago. Joe, in turn, passed it along to Piephoff before he died.
“The beauty of music is that you can always take it with you,” Piephoff says. “I feel like I have a wealth of experience I’d like to pass along, and Ranford has already experienced the gift of giving back to people through music.
“It’s a gift he can enjoy the rest of his life.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
Bruce Piephoff pauses midway through the set he’s playing at the Tate Street Festival Sept. 25 in honor of his recently deceased musician friend, Dakota Joe. Lowering the microphone, Piephoff invites 11-year-old Ranford Almond to play a couple of songs while he repairs a broken string on his acoustic guitar.
The crowd surrounding the stage grows silent as Ranford strums the first chords of Townes Van Zandt’s classic song “Greensboro Woman.” Camera’s flick and videos roll as Ranford sings about “Texas lovin’ laying heavy on my mind.”
The audience grows by the time Ranford sings the Piephoff-penned “Rosalita.”
One encore later, Almond exits the stage to the roar of “One more song!”
UNCG student Lauren Plank, 22, points at the bumps on her arm.
“He’s good not because he’s so young but because he’s so GOOD!” she exclaims.
Although there is a 50-year age difference between Piephoff and Ranford, their love of music transcends generations. Music instructor Rex Griffin, who taught violin to Ranford for years, recognized his student’s interest in songwriting and nudged him to study with master songwriter Piephoff.
Piephoff, who has 20 CDs to his credit, knew Ranford had something special from the first song he played and invited him to appear onstage at some of his shows. Their relationship has grown from student/mentor to one of friendship.
Sitting on the front porch of their Browns Summit home, Danielle and Dave Almond reminisce about how much their son has always loved music. Dad calls his son an “old soul.” Mom believes he was like that even in the womb.
“Every time I played Jerry Garcia, he’d start moving all around in my belly,” says Danielle Almond, motioning with her hands above her stomach. “He sang his first song, 'Hand Me Down Your Walking Cane,’ when he was 4 years old riding in his car seat.”
Ranford sways on the porch swing, tapping his flip-flops to the rhythm of Piephoff’s song “Big Foot in the Door,” which he has just learned. Piephoff prompts him kindly when Ranford trips on a lyric.
“You’re sounding good kid,” Piephoff says. “Nice instrumental work there.”
Ranford moves to a stool while Piephoff takes the swing. They chuckle as they attempt to find a key that’s not too high for Piephoff or too low for Ranford.
Danielle Almond rushes to grab her video camera, pleading for them to wait until she returns.
Too late. Piephoff is already singing.
Ranford, strumming his own rhythm, sings the next verse.
Now that they’ve started, they don’t want to quit. They’re two old souls singing about prison, love and weariness. They’re happy to share a penchant for songs that evolved in the 1960s with poet/songwriters such as John Prine, Guy Clark and Kris Kristofferson.
As Piephoff packs his guitar away for the night, he caresses the supple leather on the strap. Billy Ransom Hobbs had given this to Dakota Joe before he died two years ago. Joe, in turn, passed it along to Piephoff before he died.
“The beauty of music is that you can always take it with you,” Piephoff says. “I feel like I have a wealth of experience I’d like to pass along, and Ranford has already experienced the gift of giving back to people through music.
“It’s a gift he can enjoy the rest of his life.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Eternal Optimism Musician Brian McGee has it
Thursday, October 7, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Asheville rocker Brian McGee kicks the leaves that accumulated in his backyard while he was honeymooning in Italy and Spain. Tons of coffee mask his jet lag and fuel his energy to play at a popular music festival the next day.
McGee has plenty of time to travel and play gigs these days, having been laid off last spring from his job as a woodworker in a custom cabinet shop. But not even the stress of unemployment can dampen the spirit of his eternal optimism, a theme woven into every song on his new album, “The Taking or the Leaving,” due out Oct. 18.
Looking the part, McGee’s James Dean combed-back hair and long sideburns reflect his love of 1950s rock ’n’ roll as well as his what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude on his new album. In a hybrid ’50s style of rockabilly with a little bit of country and a whole lot of rock ’n’ roll, McGee revs the engine of his all-American Springsteen-style songs about everyday struggles conquered with hope.
With galloping rockabilly romps such as “Hold Sway,” with lyrics “Well if we hold and sway/ We’ll go round and round ’til we beat everyday/ If we hold and sway and hold,” and a voice-cracking ballad “Walking Back to Love,” McGee cuts to the quick, wearing his heart on his sleeve with songs about overcoming desperation, finding love and welcoming new celebrations.
“I like this album because most of the songs are short and concise and get straight to the point,” McGee says. “It’s like Tom Petty once said, 'Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.’ ”
McGee picked up his first guitar at age 12 and played in punk rock bands in the 1990s until he discovered the banjo and started leaning toward the music of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.
When asked about his evolution from punker to rocker, McGee says it doesn’t matter what you call it, he just plays what he likes.
“I like upbeat, downbeat, three-chord music, whether it’s Hank Williams, The Ramones, Wanda Jackson or Sam Quinn,” he says. “That’s what I like, so sometimes things get louder than others, but the soul is still intact.”
Produced by McGee and Pete James of The Honeycutters, McGee was joined in the studio at Echo Mountain Studios (The Avett Brothers, Band of Horses, Smashing Pumpkins) in Asheville with a star-studded cast of friends, including Sam Quinn, former front man of the everybodyfields, on backup vocals on McGee’s dream-inspired song, “Fire.”
Quinn says he was en route from Charlotte to Knoxville, Tenn., when McGee called, asking him to stop by the studio. Quinn says he was really sick but agreed because McGee is a friend.
“The first thing you should know about Brian is that he’s handsome,” Quinn says. “The other thing you should know is that he’s the salt of the earth, a very solid dude, and that’s why I like him.”
Also contributing to McGee’s sophomore album are Mary Ellen Bush from Ménage, Amanda Anne Platt of the Honeycutters and Pete James on lead guitar.
With a November tour planned from Nashville, Tenn., to his home city of Philadelphia, McGee is taking this time as an opportunity to sink his chops into his music full time. Putting a spin on a otherwise desolate situation, McGee is making the most of it.
“Not having a job means playing music is my full-time job now,” he says. “It’s a gamble, but we’ll see how it settles in the end.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
Asheville rocker Brian McGee kicks the leaves that accumulated in his backyard while he was honeymooning in Italy and Spain. Tons of coffee mask his jet lag and fuel his energy to play at a popular music festival the next day.
McGee has plenty of time to travel and play gigs these days, having been laid off last spring from his job as a woodworker in a custom cabinet shop. But not even the stress of unemployment can dampen the spirit of his eternal optimism, a theme woven into every song on his new album, “The Taking or the Leaving,” due out Oct. 18.
Looking the part, McGee’s James Dean combed-back hair and long sideburns reflect his love of 1950s rock ’n’ roll as well as his what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude on his new album. In a hybrid ’50s style of rockabilly with a little bit of country and a whole lot of rock ’n’ roll, McGee revs the engine of his all-American Springsteen-style songs about everyday struggles conquered with hope.
With galloping rockabilly romps such as “Hold Sway,” with lyrics “Well if we hold and sway/ We’ll go round and round ’til we beat everyday/ If we hold and sway and hold,” and a voice-cracking ballad “Walking Back to Love,” McGee cuts to the quick, wearing his heart on his sleeve with songs about overcoming desperation, finding love and welcoming new celebrations.
“I like this album because most of the songs are short and concise and get straight to the point,” McGee says. “It’s like Tom Petty once said, 'Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.’ ”
McGee picked up his first guitar at age 12 and played in punk rock bands in the 1990s until he discovered the banjo and started leaning toward the music of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.
When asked about his evolution from punker to rocker, McGee says it doesn’t matter what you call it, he just plays what he likes.
“I like upbeat, downbeat, three-chord music, whether it’s Hank Williams, The Ramones, Wanda Jackson or Sam Quinn,” he says. “That’s what I like, so sometimes things get louder than others, but the soul is still intact.”
Produced by McGee and Pete James of The Honeycutters, McGee was joined in the studio at Echo Mountain Studios (The Avett Brothers, Band of Horses, Smashing Pumpkins) in Asheville with a star-studded cast of friends, including Sam Quinn, former front man of the everybodyfields, on backup vocals on McGee’s dream-inspired song, “Fire.”
Quinn says he was en route from Charlotte to Knoxville, Tenn., when McGee called, asking him to stop by the studio. Quinn says he was really sick but agreed because McGee is a friend.
“The first thing you should know about Brian is that he’s handsome,” Quinn says. “The other thing you should know is that he’s the salt of the earth, a very solid dude, and that’s why I like him.”
Also contributing to McGee’s sophomore album are Mary Ellen Bush from Ménage, Amanda Anne Platt of the Honeycutters and Pete James on lead guitar.
With a November tour planned from Nashville, Tenn., to his home city of Philadelphia, McGee is taking this time as an opportunity to sink his chops into his music full time. Putting a spin on a otherwise desolate situation, McGee is making the most of it.
“Not having a job means playing music is my full-time job now,” he says. “It’s a gamble, but we’ll see how it settles in the end.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
A Band of Brothers
Thursday, September 16, 2010 (updated , 2010 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Mark Dougherty reaches over the table to pet an 80-pound mutt as the three members of his band, The Lake Isle, sit politely waiting their turn to speak.
Dougherty, a Greensboro-based singer/songwriter has declined a one-on-one interview. He has performed alone too long, finally finding peace and unity in this band of brothers.
After years of playing Greensboro as a solo act, Dougherty yearned to be in a band.
Once his music label fell apart, Dougherty began playing with an acoustic group that saw early success.
So Dougherty moved on with a firmer resolve to take his music more seriously.
That eventually led to Dougherty reinventing himself.
“I gave myself a rebirth under the name The Lake Isle, after Yeats’ poem about a man searching for his inner peace in a world of chaos — the theme of all my music,” Dougherty says.
He had a band name. Now, all he needed was some members. And on a night last spring, he found the first one.
That’s when Dougherty met Shawn Smith, drummer for Filthybird, which was playing its last gig together.
One of the band members mentioned that Dougherty was looking for a group so Smith approached him, and they started playing.
Smith recorded Dougherty’s guitar and vocals and later added drums, bass and keyboards.
“I had no real direction in mind, just trying to let things float out of me, and we kind of created a sound,” Smith says. “We tried a few guitar players, but they weren’t willing to take that leap into that sonic realm.”
Hoping to make the songs more interesting, Smith decided to play guitar himself.
Andy Foster, formerly with the Raving Knaves and Manamid, came on board as a percussionist. Chris Micca, a longtime bass player and backup vocalist to bands such as Crystal Bright, completed the group.
During a recent rehearsal, Foster can’t constrain himself between songs, ripping his drums every chance he gets.
“Andy’s a loud drummer and we will have to base everything behind that,” Smith deadpans.
Foster’s sticks clack as Dougherty steps to the mike to sing the lyrics to the haunting “Steel Rails,” the first track on the band’s new album, “Wake Up.”
“I should know, oh I should
that it’s all about letting go
but these old ways, oh they burn
these lies that come over and over me.”
With Micca’s expansive harmonies and tight thumping bass, the band is creating the “warm, sonic pallet,” that fuels Dougherty.
Micca and Foster exchange smiles as the song ends.
“The songs get better and better all the time, especially the new ones,” Smith says. “It’s working, it’s really working.
“S’working,” Foster says, nodding.
Dougherty says the difference in being in a band like The Lake Isle versus playing solo is that there is no agenda other than to play the music.
“It’s about looking around at every person practicing music in this room and seeing a look in their eyes that says they love this music.
“I call it a brotherhood. It’s something really magical and great.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
Mark Dougherty reaches over the table to pet an 80-pound mutt as the three members of his band, The Lake Isle, sit politely waiting their turn to speak.
Dougherty, a Greensboro-based singer/songwriter has declined a one-on-one interview. He has performed alone too long, finally finding peace and unity in this band of brothers.
After years of playing Greensboro as a solo act, Dougherty yearned to be in a band.
Once his music label fell apart, Dougherty began playing with an acoustic group that saw early success.
So Dougherty moved on with a firmer resolve to take his music more seriously.
That eventually led to Dougherty reinventing himself.
“I gave myself a rebirth under the name The Lake Isle, after Yeats’ poem about a man searching for his inner peace in a world of chaos — the theme of all my music,” Dougherty says.
He had a band name. Now, all he needed was some members. And on a night last spring, he found the first one.
That’s when Dougherty met Shawn Smith, drummer for Filthybird, which was playing its last gig together.
One of the band members mentioned that Dougherty was looking for a group so Smith approached him, and they started playing.
Smith recorded Dougherty’s guitar and vocals and later added drums, bass and keyboards.
“I had no real direction in mind, just trying to let things float out of me, and we kind of created a sound,” Smith says. “We tried a few guitar players, but they weren’t willing to take that leap into that sonic realm.”
Hoping to make the songs more interesting, Smith decided to play guitar himself.
Andy Foster, formerly with the Raving Knaves and Manamid, came on board as a percussionist. Chris Micca, a longtime bass player and backup vocalist to bands such as Crystal Bright, completed the group.
During a recent rehearsal, Foster can’t constrain himself between songs, ripping his drums every chance he gets.
“Andy’s a loud drummer and we will have to base everything behind that,” Smith deadpans.
Foster’s sticks clack as Dougherty steps to the mike to sing the lyrics to the haunting “Steel Rails,” the first track on the band’s new album, “Wake Up.”
“I should know, oh I should
that it’s all about letting go
but these old ways, oh they burn
these lies that come over and over me.”
With Micca’s expansive harmonies and tight thumping bass, the band is creating the “warm, sonic pallet,” that fuels Dougherty.
Micca and Foster exchange smiles as the song ends.
“The songs get better and better all the time, especially the new ones,” Smith says. “It’s working, it’s really working.
“S’working,” Foster says, nodding.
Dougherty says the difference in being in a band like The Lake Isle versus playing solo is that there is no agenda other than to play the music.
“It’s about looking around at every person practicing music in this room and seeing a look in their eyes that says they love this music.
“I call it a brotherhood. It’s something really magical and great.”
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Departing for college: It's tough on moms
Sunday, September 5, 2010
(Updated Monday, September 6 - 6:18 am)
By Carole Perkins
Special to the News & Record
It’s Sunday morning on the day our oldest daughter, Caroline, is moving into her college dorm. My husband is behind the wheel of our red Suburban. I ride shotgun, and our middle daughter sits in the back. Caroline and her boyfriend drive her SUV, packed with the staples of college dorm life: a desk light, fan, office chair and clothes.
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We meet just outside Raleigh, where Caroline will be a freshman. She glances at me over the sub she is eating and says, “What’s wrong? You’re acting funny.”
Tears well in my eyes. I swallow hard, unable to speak lest the dam breaks, despite having taken a snippet of a “mother’s little helper” to get through this day.
“This is hard on your mom,” the boyfriend says, explaining the obvious.
Up and down we ride, packed like sardines in elevators filled with excited young faces. In the hallway, a mother brushes away tears like annoying gnats. I’ve planned my crying time in the car on the way home after months of staying so busy I wouldn’t think about Caroline leaving home.
To me, it symbolized an end of an era when the family was always together. A chapter of my life as a mother was ending. Tomorrow, I will set two places at the breakfast table with Nana’s rosebud china instead of three.
The boyfriend is taking this harder than anyone expected. Caroline pulls him over to a bench and pats his knee, whispering consoling words. Finally, we get into the car to go back to Greensboro. The boyfriend sits in the back and puts his head in his hands saying, “I can’t believe this day is finally here.”
I turn around in my seat to look at him. My voice shakes, and I plead, “Please don’t get me started.”
My plan to cry all the way home is thwarted. With the boyfriend so upset, I assume the role of the stoic parent. Besides, I have never mastered the fine art of weeping in a ladylike fashion. No, sir. If I am going to cry, I will sob, snort, and pound my chest. So, mentally, I stick my finger in the hole in my heart like the legendary Little Dutch Boy did to stop the dam from overflowing.
I travel to Raleigh the very next day under the pretext of taking our youngest daughter to visit. I go back on Wednesday to take Caroline to lunch. A week later, I return with her freshly washed and folded laundry. The following week I’m back with her boyfriend’s laundry that I shamelessly offer to wash.
And so the fall of freshman year passes. I learn the fine art of gentle weeping. I might be in Harris Teeter studying soup labels and the tears will roll down like a sprinkler on a timer. One day after wandering the town in such sadness, I run into a friend whose daughter has gone to college that fall.
“How are you?” I ask, touching her shoulder like a comrade in arms.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she chirps. “Lauren loves college, and she’s really happy.”
Cheated out of a bonding moment with another mom in misery, I drive away muttering to myself. How can she be so chipper, so positive about how happy her daughter is? Doesn’t she have a hole in her heart, too?
Christmas break for Caroline’s school is almost a month long. She fills the house with her friends and her big personality . One day toward the end of the break, I actually find myself for half a second relishing the thought of having our house just a little calmer. It is getting easier to let her go.
Two years later, our middle daughter, Virginia, is a senior in high school. One day while looking through some old photos for her senior page, some unforeseen force punches me in the stomach with the realization that she, too, will leave for college in a few short months. I sink to my knees and sit cross-legged on the floor, tucking my muffin top into my jeans as unconsciously as tucking my hair behind my ear.
I hold the photo of Virginia’s first day in kindergarten, standing with her sisters in front of the woody station wagon dubbed The Old Gray Goose. I smile through my tears at her as a toddler sitting in our driveway with a plastic shopping cart upside down on her head. The Beatles song “She’s Leaving Home” plays in my head as I imagine myself as the mother in the song “standing alone at the top of the stairs/she breaks down and cries to her husband/Daddy, our baby’s gone.”
Most of Virginia’s friends have left by now. I have a few precious days with her until we pack her up and move her almost three hours away to Spartanburg, S.C. It’s too far for lunch or laundry runs, and I’ll have to figure out how to manage a maddening condition whereby one’s buttocks kill after sitting any longer than an hour.
Such is the passage of time. One minute, all three daughters are piled in the bathtub at the bewitching hour of 5 p.m. Fresh, clean-smelling little girls in matching cotton nightgowns snuggle on the sofa watching Wee Sing tapes, and the next minute Father Time plucks them away one by one to lead lives of their own. As it should be.
So, when Virginia goes to college, I’ll try to celebrate a new chapter in her life as I struggle with painful buns, a spreading muffin top and a fresh hole in my heart. I will kiss her and hug her and turn for one last look. She’s leaving home. Bye-bye.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer living in Greensboro. Contact her at CPGuilford@aol.com
(Updated Monday, September 6 - 6:18 am)
By Carole Perkins
Special to the News & Record
It’s Sunday morning on the day our oldest daughter, Caroline, is moving into her college dorm. My husband is behind the wheel of our red Suburban. I ride shotgun, and our middle daughter sits in the back. Caroline and her boyfriend drive her SUV, packed with the staples of college dorm life: a desk light, fan, office chair and clothes.
Advertisement | Advertise with Us
We meet just outside Raleigh, where Caroline will be a freshman. She glances at me over the sub she is eating and says, “What’s wrong? You’re acting funny.”
Tears well in my eyes. I swallow hard, unable to speak lest the dam breaks, despite having taken a snippet of a “mother’s little helper” to get through this day.
“This is hard on your mom,” the boyfriend says, explaining the obvious.
Up and down we ride, packed like sardines in elevators filled with excited young faces. In the hallway, a mother brushes away tears like annoying gnats. I’ve planned my crying time in the car on the way home after months of staying so busy I wouldn’t think about Caroline leaving home.
To me, it symbolized an end of an era when the family was always together. A chapter of my life as a mother was ending. Tomorrow, I will set two places at the breakfast table with Nana’s rosebud china instead of three.
The boyfriend is taking this harder than anyone expected. Caroline pulls him over to a bench and pats his knee, whispering consoling words. Finally, we get into the car to go back to Greensboro. The boyfriend sits in the back and puts his head in his hands saying, “I can’t believe this day is finally here.”
I turn around in my seat to look at him. My voice shakes, and I plead, “Please don’t get me started.”
My plan to cry all the way home is thwarted. With the boyfriend so upset, I assume the role of the stoic parent. Besides, I have never mastered the fine art of weeping in a ladylike fashion. No, sir. If I am going to cry, I will sob, snort, and pound my chest. So, mentally, I stick my finger in the hole in my heart like the legendary Little Dutch Boy did to stop the dam from overflowing.
I travel to Raleigh the very next day under the pretext of taking our youngest daughter to visit. I go back on Wednesday to take Caroline to lunch. A week later, I return with her freshly washed and folded laundry. The following week I’m back with her boyfriend’s laundry that I shamelessly offer to wash.
And so the fall of freshman year passes. I learn the fine art of gentle weeping. I might be in Harris Teeter studying soup labels and the tears will roll down like a sprinkler on a timer. One day after wandering the town in such sadness, I run into a friend whose daughter has gone to college that fall.
“How are you?” I ask, touching her shoulder like a comrade in arms.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she chirps. “Lauren loves college, and she’s really happy.”
Cheated out of a bonding moment with another mom in misery, I drive away muttering to myself. How can she be so chipper, so positive about how happy her daughter is? Doesn’t she have a hole in her heart, too?
Christmas break for Caroline’s school is almost a month long. She fills the house with her friends and her big personality . One day toward the end of the break, I actually find myself for half a second relishing the thought of having our house just a little calmer. It is getting easier to let her go.
Two years later, our middle daughter, Virginia, is a senior in high school. One day while looking through some old photos for her senior page, some unforeseen force punches me in the stomach with the realization that she, too, will leave for college in a few short months. I sink to my knees and sit cross-legged on the floor, tucking my muffin top into my jeans as unconsciously as tucking my hair behind my ear.
I hold the photo of Virginia’s first day in kindergarten, standing with her sisters in front of the woody station wagon dubbed The Old Gray Goose. I smile through my tears at her as a toddler sitting in our driveway with a plastic shopping cart upside down on her head. The Beatles song “She’s Leaving Home” plays in my head as I imagine myself as the mother in the song “standing alone at the top of the stairs/she breaks down and cries to her husband/Daddy, our baby’s gone.”
Most of Virginia’s friends have left by now. I have a few precious days with her until we pack her up and move her almost three hours away to Spartanburg, S.C. It’s too far for lunch or laundry runs, and I’ll have to figure out how to manage a maddening condition whereby one’s buttocks kill after sitting any longer than an hour.
Such is the passage of time. One minute, all three daughters are piled in the bathtub at the bewitching hour of 5 p.m. Fresh, clean-smelling little girls in matching cotton nightgowns snuggle on the sofa watching Wee Sing tapes, and the next minute Father Time plucks them away one by one to lead lives of their own. As it should be.
So, when Virginia goes to college, I’ll try to celebrate a new chapter in her life as I struggle with painful buns, a spreading muffin top and a fresh hole in my heart. I will kiss her and hug her and turn for one last look. She’s leaving home. Bye-bye.
Carole Perkins is a freelance writer living in Greensboro. Contact her at CPGuilford@aol.com
The Brand New Life
Thursday, August 12, 2010
(Updated 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Special to the News & Record
Standing outside The Green Bean in Greensboro on a steamy summer night, four musicians from The Brand New Life serenade downtowners with flute, sax, tuba and bells. Luring the gathered crowd inside, they take the stage with the rest of the seven-piece band to create a primeval rhythm that stirs couples to jitterbug and dancing girls to sway hips with arms overhead.
As saxophone players Casey Cranford and Walter Fancourt find their groove, Jared Mankoff's sonorous tuba invites the audience to listen. Congas player Evan Frierson (performing barefoot) creates African beats accompanying Daniel Yount's pulsating drums. Ben Ryle's electric guitar riffs slide over Seth Barden's thumping upright bass.
A few gray-haired audience members bob and do the chicken-neck jerk, but most of the crowd reflects the youth of The Brand New Life, whose ages range from 18 to 23. They're also all graduates of Grimsley High School.
According to Cranford and Fancourt, two people were instrumental in forming the band: Fancourt's neighbor Devin Foust, a musician whom Fancourt describes as having a "spirit that is indefinable," and Grimsley band director Stephan Stuber, who taught six of the seven members. Stuber described them as hard workers with supportive parents.
"They were very self-motivated and a special group of guys," Stuber says. "It's very rewarding to see them play together."
The Brand New Life's instruments, improvisations, solos and musical influences such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis and John Coltrane might suggest a jazz band, but don't be fooled. Its new self-titled CD, due out this month, was recorded at Hillcreek Studio in Asheville with Russell Anders, as well as at Greensboro's Quetzal Recording Studio. The album is a confluence of African and European music traditions with funky instrumental rhythms and occasional psychedelic overtures. Jungle calls and trills combined with indecipherable words and indefinable instruments spell adventure.
"We have a great time together on and off stage," Yount says. "We are always hanging out, trying to be creative. Our material is all original. You might hear us play a cover, but it will probably be obscure or maybe humorous like 'Yackety Sax,' by Boots Randolph."
When the discussion shifts to musical technique, Cranford and Fancourt grow serious. Cranford demonstrates a polyrhythm, a technique where one rhythm is played over another, by beating his fingers on a coffee table in Fancourt's living room.
"We tie syncopation in with polyrhythms," Fancourt says. "It gets people going crazy."
Although The Brand New Life, whose name came from a song written by Mankoff with the lyrics, "Open up your head/Clear out your eyes/This is now your brand new life," has steady gigs around the Triad and is booking its own shows across the state, its goal is to expand its touring range and play larger festivals such as Shakori Hills in Silk Hope. Although the band has played in smaller festivals, including Fun Fourth Festival and Summer Solstice (both in Greensboro), Cranford and Fancourt say it is a daunting task to organize seven young members, adding that they could use some help with booking and management.
In the meantime, The Brand New Life's goal is to have fun sharing its music and getting people up on their feet.
"I think the idea is to get down or sit down," Fancourt says. "You can sit and enjoy our music, which is fine. But the more people moving around and going crazy the better we play. Sharing with people and giving them a good time is what it's all about."
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
(Updated 3:00 am)
By Carole Perkins
Special to the News & Record
Standing outside The Green Bean in Greensboro on a steamy summer night, four musicians from The Brand New Life serenade downtowners with flute, sax, tuba and bells. Luring the gathered crowd inside, they take the stage with the rest of the seven-piece band to create a primeval rhythm that stirs couples to jitterbug and dancing girls to sway hips with arms overhead.
As saxophone players Casey Cranford and Walter Fancourt find their groove, Jared Mankoff's sonorous tuba invites the audience to listen. Congas player Evan Frierson (performing barefoot) creates African beats accompanying Daniel Yount's pulsating drums. Ben Ryle's electric guitar riffs slide over Seth Barden's thumping upright bass.
A few gray-haired audience members bob and do the chicken-neck jerk, but most of the crowd reflects the youth of The Brand New Life, whose ages range from 18 to 23. They're also all graduates of Grimsley High School.
According to Cranford and Fancourt, two people were instrumental in forming the band: Fancourt's neighbor Devin Foust, a musician whom Fancourt describes as having a "spirit that is indefinable," and Grimsley band director Stephan Stuber, who taught six of the seven members. Stuber described them as hard workers with supportive parents.
"They were very self-motivated and a special group of guys," Stuber says. "It's very rewarding to see them play together."
The Brand New Life's instruments, improvisations, solos and musical influences such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis and John Coltrane might suggest a jazz band, but don't be fooled. Its new self-titled CD, due out this month, was recorded at Hillcreek Studio in Asheville with Russell Anders, as well as at Greensboro's Quetzal Recording Studio. The album is a confluence of African and European music traditions with funky instrumental rhythms and occasional psychedelic overtures. Jungle calls and trills combined with indecipherable words and indefinable instruments spell adventure.
"We have a great time together on and off stage," Yount says. "We are always hanging out, trying to be creative. Our material is all original. You might hear us play a cover, but it will probably be obscure or maybe humorous like 'Yackety Sax,' by Boots Randolph."
When the discussion shifts to musical technique, Cranford and Fancourt grow serious. Cranford demonstrates a polyrhythm, a technique where one rhythm is played over another, by beating his fingers on a coffee table in Fancourt's living room.
"We tie syncopation in with polyrhythms," Fancourt says. "It gets people going crazy."
Although The Brand New Life, whose name came from a song written by Mankoff with the lyrics, "Open up your head/Clear out your eyes/This is now your brand new life," has steady gigs around the Triad and is booking its own shows across the state, its goal is to expand its touring range and play larger festivals such as Shakori Hills in Silk Hope. Although the band has played in smaller festivals, including Fun Fourth Festival and Summer Solstice (both in Greensboro), Cranford and Fancourt say it is a daunting task to organize seven young members, adding that they could use some help with booking and management.
In the meantime, The Brand New Life's goal is to have fun sharing its music and getting people up on their feet.
"I think the idea is to get down or sit down," Fancourt says. "You can sit and enjoy our music, which is fine. But the more people moving around and going crazy the better we play. Sharing with people and giving them a good time is what it's all about."
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Songs of Water wants to thrive in hometown's creative scene
Thursday, June 3, 2010
By Carole Perkins
Special to Go Triad
Although Songs of Water packs theaters in Charlotte and fans in Norway and Sweden feast on their CDs, Greensboro has been deprived of their delightful smorgasbord of music, featuring instruments such as the Irish bouzouki blended with bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs' fretless banjo.
But that's about to change.
This summer, Songs of Water returns to their Greensboro roots for the release of their second album, "The Sea Has Spoken," featuring guest appearances by Skaggs and tuba player Mark Daumen from Chapel Hill band Lost in Trees.
"The Sea Has Spoken" is a brilliantly crafted musical journey where indigenous sounds from myriad cultures blend in otherworldly harmonies that are somehow familiar.
Founder Stephen Roach is a self-taught hammered dulcimer player, guitarist and African percussionist, as well as vocalist and songwriter. His blood runs rich with musical DNA from a large family of bluegrass musicians. His cousin, Tony Rice, played with Skaggs in the 1980s, inspiring the song "The Family Tree," about the coincidence of Roach playing with Skaggs some 20 years later.
"I had a conglomerate of musical backgrounds that I wanted to do something with," says Roach, who started playing and writing with his friend and co-founder of the band, Jason Windsor, in 2002. "I had the idea to do an instrumental album using all these instruments and cultural backgrounds, so we did our first album together, and the band came out of that."
Roach met Skaggs' son and daughter, Luke and Molly Skaggs, on tour in California, and Luke Skaggs joined the band, taking it to a new level. Ricky Skaggs became a big supporter and offered his studio, Skaggs Place Studio in Nashville, Tenn. Most of the main tracks were recorded there by Charlotte producer Joel Khouri who finished the album at his Bright City Studios. Wake Forest University allowed the band to use its instruments for the recording.
"We worked on this album almost two years to get it the way we wanted it," Roach says. "We wanted 'The Sea Has Spoken' to be a work of art. Like classical music, it has different movements inside of one larger body of work. You almost have to listen to it as a whole work. It's such a journey from beginning to end."
The eight members of Songs of Water are as eclectic as their music. Classically trained violinist Marta Richardson, cellist Sarah Stephens and guitarist Windsor complement Roach and Luke Skaggs' folk, bluegrass and world music studies. Guitar player Greg Willette offers Eastern European gypsy influences; Molly Skaggs contributes Appalachian folk music roots. Michael Pritchard's polyrhythmic drum textures anchor the band with a tasteful and experimental style.
"We're constantly searching out new sounds and new ways to express creativity in our art and music," Roach says. "But the music is not so much world music as it is American music in the truest sense because there are so many cultures represented in this area, it's a natural transition to incorporate those sounds and then employ them into instruments. We'll do some old spirituals from the Appalachian Mountains but then accompany it with something from Africa."
Roach says the band's live performances are where most of that energy comes to life by causing audiences to fall silent while playing in theater settings or whipping them into a frenzy at larger festivals.
Because 75 percent of the music is instrumental, the audience is invited to create their own story about what the song is about. Some of the songs are named by the audience members who sometimes bring their own canvases or writing journals to express what they hear.
Songs of Water continues to stretch musical imaginations with national attention on the top 20 list on the NPR syndicated radio program "Echoes" and guest appearances on several local radio shows, including WFDD (88.5 FM). But Roach says they want to focus on becoming a voice in their hometown of Greensboro.
"We love Greensboro," Roach says. "Most of the band is from here, and we really believe this place thrives with music and art because there are so many creative people here. I think people are looking for something new and different, but they are also looking for something authentic. That's what we want to give is an authentic expression."
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
By Carole Perkins
Special to Go Triad
Although Songs of Water packs theaters in Charlotte and fans in Norway and Sweden feast on their CDs, Greensboro has been deprived of their delightful smorgasbord of music, featuring instruments such as the Irish bouzouki blended with bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs' fretless banjo.
But that's about to change.
This summer, Songs of Water returns to their Greensboro roots for the release of their second album, "The Sea Has Spoken," featuring guest appearances by Skaggs and tuba player Mark Daumen from Chapel Hill band Lost in Trees.
"The Sea Has Spoken" is a brilliantly crafted musical journey where indigenous sounds from myriad cultures blend in otherworldly harmonies that are somehow familiar.
Founder Stephen Roach is a self-taught hammered dulcimer player, guitarist and African percussionist, as well as vocalist and songwriter. His blood runs rich with musical DNA from a large family of bluegrass musicians. His cousin, Tony Rice, played with Skaggs in the 1980s, inspiring the song "The Family Tree," about the coincidence of Roach playing with Skaggs some 20 years later.
"I had a conglomerate of musical backgrounds that I wanted to do something with," says Roach, who started playing and writing with his friend and co-founder of the band, Jason Windsor, in 2002. "I had the idea to do an instrumental album using all these instruments and cultural backgrounds, so we did our first album together, and the band came out of that."
Roach met Skaggs' son and daughter, Luke and Molly Skaggs, on tour in California, and Luke Skaggs joined the band, taking it to a new level. Ricky Skaggs became a big supporter and offered his studio, Skaggs Place Studio in Nashville, Tenn. Most of the main tracks were recorded there by Charlotte producer Joel Khouri who finished the album at his Bright City Studios. Wake Forest University allowed the band to use its instruments for the recording.
"We worked on this album almost two years to get it the way we wanted it," Roach says. "We wanted 'The Sea Has Spoken' to be a work of art. Like classical music, it has different movements inside of one larger body of work. You almost have to listen to it as a whole work. It's such a journey from beginning to end."
The eight members of Songs of Water are as eclectic as their music. Classically trained violinist Marta Richardson, cellist Sarah Stephens and guitarist Windsor complement Roach and Luke Skaggs' folk, bluegrass and world music studies. Guitar player Greg Willette offers Eastern European gypsy influences; Molly Skaggs contributes Appalachian folk music roots. Michael Pritchard's polyrhythmic drum textures anchor the band with a tasteful and experimental style.
"We're constantly searching out new sounds and new ways to express creativity in our art and music," Roach says. "But the music is not so much world music as it is American music in the truest sense because there are so many cultures represented in this area, it's a natural transition to incorporate those sounds and then employ them into instruments. We'll do some old spirituals from the Appalachian Mountains but then accompany it with something from Africa."
Roach says the band's live performances are where most of that energy comes to life by causing audiences to fall silent while playing in theater settings or whipping them into a frenzy at larger festivals.
Because 75 percent of the music is instrumental, the audience is invited to create their own story about what the song is about. Some of the songs are named by the audience members who sometimes bring their own canvases or writing journals to express what they hear.
Songs of Water continues to stretch musical imaginations with national attention on the top 20 list on the NPR syndicated radio program "Echoes" and guest appearances on several local radio shows, including WFDD (88.5 FM). But Roach says they want to focus on becoming a voice in their hometown of Greensboro.
"We love Greensboro," Roach says. "Most of the band is from here, and we really believe this place thrives with music and art because there are so many creative people here. I think people are looking for something new and different, but they are also looking for something authentic. That's what we want to give is an authentic expression."
Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com
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