TheEverybodyFields, a band from Johnson City, Tennessee, lead by Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews, literally shushed the usually rollicking crowd at the Garage in Winston Salem, N.C., last Friday night, enchanting the beer drinking, stogy- smoking lot .
Like a fresh set of fingerprints in the archives of bluegrass, country, and folk history, the conjugal synchronicity of Sam and Jill’s voices carve a new niche in the music genre, as if they dashed a sprinkle of special Eastern Tennessee seasoning to make a brand new recipe.
Jill’s harmonies lilt like liquid silver, as serene as a Nightingale, dovetailing in perfect concord with Sam’s ardent crooning.
Their lyrics are potent poetry, masterpieces quilled by erudite masters who have tasted the bitter bile of a broken heart, throbbed with desire in newfound love, and fallen headfirst into the dark, black abyss of loneliness.
There is an underlying current of electricity between the 27ish duo. Jill places her hand affectionately on Sam’s leg and they hug with genuine care. They also banter and barb with that “you know I’m kidding but I’m half serious”, sparring about Jill’s old boyfriends and Sam’s girlfriend whose photographs he forgot to credit on their last CD.
Sam and Jill met as camp counselors in 1999 in Johnson City, Tennessee, where Sam was already playing the guitar and singing.
“I was envious at his ability to NOT be a camp counselor and play the guitar around the campfire with his friends because he didn’t want to hang out with the kids,” Jill explains.
“I had pigtails and hair down to my butt,” chimes Sam, who coined the name TheEveryBodyFields from the backyard of his home in his early 20’s, where “we hung out with people and drove around drinking beer with our eyes closed.”
“I liked that the name included everybody,” says Jill. “Everybody and fields aren’t usually put together in one space.”
The band toured the East coast in the early years behind the wheel of their Buick Rendezvous, booking gigs under Jill’s pseudonym, Ellen Y Larson.
The first song together was, “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning,” as performed by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.
Inspired by artists like Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, Wilco and the JayHawks, Sam and Jill write their own songs, with the exception of one.
“Sometimes our song writing is a collaboration, but most of the time it’s his song or my song,” says Jill. “Or, we’ll take a song to each other and say, “Hey, can you help me out?
"For me,” she continues, “when the feeling isn’t there, I can’t do it. I have to be alone. I put on these “weed eater” earphones when we are traveling in the car so I can think.”
“I stop a lot of songs to sit on them awhile,” Sam grins. “It’s tough to be your own boss when your fiends are all slackers or border line losers.”
Sam and Jill’s first release, “ Halfway There: Electricity in the South,” featured the song written by Sam about the plight of the victims of progress in the Roosevelt Era , “T.V.A., which won first place in the Chris Austin song writing competition at the 2005 Merlefest in Wilkesboro, N.C.
“And God, the Father, said,”Jesus Christ, I don’t know about this electricity. They use the day to steal the nights and made my waters rise, and trying to take my job away
Jill’s song, “The Silver Garden,” from the same release is a profound, though somewhat impatient promise to her sweetheart.
“There’s a part of you, deep inside of me, not the part that hides, not the part that leaves. You’ve loved me for years, I won’t ask you again. There’s nobody else, don’t ask me again. And I’ll go to the Silver Garden to be with you.”
Their second release, “Plague of Dreams,” in 2005 features the song, “Magazine, in which Sam writes that he’s, “two feet knee in doubt, a round of bases and at home I’m out. But if you’re never home, I doubt, that you’ll ever see me out. The parking lot is a hiding place, ‘cause under the cars you can’t see my face.”
Sam actually did hide underneath his family car when he was a boy playing Little League and got tagged out.“Everyone hated me because we lost the season because of me, so I went out to the parking lot and hid underneath our car,” he explains.
Unlike the first two releases which features Sam and Jill on vocals, bass, and guitar, former member David Richey on dobro, and guest musicians on fiddle, Sam and Jill’s third masterpiece, “Nothing is Okay,” expands the usual musical line up with lap steel instead of dobro, keys and drums.
Outstanding on this CD is Jill’s song, “Wasted Time, a desperate bargain with her lover, co-written by Megan McCormick , is a two- in- one song bridged brilliantly by an interlude that ends with Sam’s repetitive and reassuring words, “It’s not your problem”
“Hey, it’s me. I know it’s 3:00 a.m. Saying please, pick up the phone, I’m all alone and need a friend. I’m so grateful, and you’re so tired of me. If you hold me now, I promise to let go when you leave.”
On stage at the Garage, Sam and Jill play two riveting sets, trading bass and guitar back and forth like proud parents of new babies.
Jill’s beautiful, unclouded face is unperturbed as she closes her eyes during each song.
Sam, with his quirky, curly brown hair and thick muttonchops, turns his head sideways, almost grimacing with emotion as he sings, the perfect contrast to Jill’s tranquility.
He takes a step back and nods his head in steady affirmation while Jill stills the crowd to silence with, “Wasted Time, accompanied by Josh Oliver on keyboards and vocals and Tom Pryor on lap steel.
Pausing between songs, Jill tells the audience wryly, “Sam has this cryptic way of telling us what we are playing next. He plays the G cord and he thinks we should know what the next song is.”
Sam takes a sip of red wine and slams the house down with “Don’t Tern Around.”
He likes to misspell words on purpose because he thinks it looks “neat.”
“Terd looks better than turd, don’t you think,” he muses.
They close the second set with another new song,“That was my favorite show I’ve ever seen these guys do,” says David Butler, a 50ish volunteer DJ for WQFS 90.9 from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.
“I love TheEveryBodyFields. I find them totally unique. I’ve never been to the Garage where you didn’t hear loud conversation and beer bottles breaking. There were a couple of numbers where it was “whisper quiet.”
David Butler and countless other fans believe Sam and Jill will be quite famous.
“I wouldn’t want to work for someone else,” admits Sam. “I’d just like to keep making records with 100% artistic freedom.
“I’d like to be widely respected and to have enough money to build a house,” says Jill. I’d want to be like Gillian Welsh, who can still walk down the street unnoticed.”
Their upcoming tours include gigs on the West Coast, the Midwest, as well as their well traveled route along the East Coast.
In the meantime, Jill says her dog just died and she thinks about her all of the time.
“I cried in the car coming here today,” she says.
Sam looks surprised. “I was asleep,” he says.
“No,” corrects Jill gently, “You were in the back seat.”
Visit the everybodyfields' website
Monday, January 21, 2008
Thursday, March 10, 2005
It’s sad to see family business closing its doors.
I open the glass door framed on either side by two large windows displaying living room and dining room furniture. A bell jingles as I step into a brick building with high ceilings on East Market Street in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Walking down the narrow, rubber covered aisle flanked by more furniture stacked in tiers along the walls, I make my way to the desk in the back where the proprietor of Dabbs Furniture Company sits watching my approach.
It’s 1981 and I’m 20 years old, a student at Guilford College. I’ve come to announce my intentions to a man I haven’t seen in a long while.
“I’d like to learn the family business,” I say.
“Great,” replies my father, Bob Dabbs. “You’re hired.”
Selling furniture and keeping accounts was a sweet deal for a full-time college student. I had flexibility to leave for classes and during slow times, I studied, struggling to stay awake as the steady hum of the tall, oscillating fan stirred the air.
A few months later, my adored, older brother, Steve, announced his intentions to join the family business.
“Great,” replied our Dad, delighted to receive the heir apparent.
Steve and I laughed away the tedium of slow summer afternoons entertained by a steady cast of characters which included the young, charismatic Reverend Michael King, and the lady who talked so fast her teeth clacked. We never could understand what she said.
My father’s loyal co-worker of several years, Bob Oakley, a/k/a “Snook’ums,” so named for the cartoon character with the lock of golden hair across his forehead, served as mentor and translator.
I became accustomed to seeing street people relieve themselves and take sips from mysterious bottles wrapped in brown paper bags in the alley that separated the building from the huge, spooky warehouse where most of the furniture was kept.
Working in the family business was not always easy. Emotional baggage had to be checked at the door at 9:00 am and retrieved after hours. During more than one Thanksgiving family meals, the carving knife danced almost telekinetically in each of our hands, as if to carve someone or something other than the turkey.
I resented being the first to express interest in the business only to be shoved aside when the male heir arrived, automatically earning a higher salary and securing his place as future owner.
“Well, after all,” my father explained. “You’ll want to quit working and raise a family one day, right?”
Three years later, I graduated from college and took a giant step across the street to sell advertising at the Greensboro News and Record. It was a hard decision but the right one.
In 1986, Dabbs Furniture moved to a larger location on Lee St. Joined now by my younger brother, David, a photographer by trade and mountain man at heart, the Dabbs Dynasty was complete.
As accurately predicted, I happily married and retired to raise a family.
Eleven years after moving to their final destination on South Holden Road, the daily grind of managing a “Mom and Pop” store combined with heavy competition from overseas has taken its toil.
The Dabbs boys have spilled blood and sweat and cried tears, but they’ve run a successful and lucrative” b’ness,” as my southern father often inflects. They are tired, but the burden has been lifted. The store is closing in March of 2005.
Looking now at the glass windows covered by signs announcing “Going Out of Business Sale,” I am saddened. Reels of film thread through my head as I struggle not to cry.
I am four years old, sitting in our black Valiant with my brothers and our mother, Jackie, at Rex Anderson’s Esso next to Mitchell’s Clothing store on East Market Street, having just visited our Dad two doors down, letting the “Tiger fill our tank.”
I am six, in a plaid dress and white bobby socks, skipping down the aisle at Dabbs Furniture, thrilled to be watching my first color television program, The Wonderful World of Disney.
I am twelve, fetching a glass of grape juice for my Dad who is sprawled on the den sofa watching Sunday football on one of his three televisions, stacked crudely but effectively on an early version of the now popular wall unit assembled with bricks and plywood. He is exhausted from working six day weeks.
I am sixteen at Southeast High School, laughing when the boys yell, “Hey, will a Little Dab really do ya?”, referring to the radio commercial we ran at the time.
Thirty years later, I am watching my daughters visit their beloved “Grandabbsy” at the store on South Holden Road. The girls are fascinated by the 1958 R.C. Allen typewriter their grandfather still uses to pound outraged letters to newspaper editors, government officials, and anyone else who gets his goat.
Uncle Steve cracks them up making announcements about them on the P.A. system. Uncle David rests his feet, shattered by a fall from the roof of his log cabin a few years ago, making long stints on the concrete floor agonizing painful.
The girls never leave empty-handed. There’s always a hand fan, a ruler, or a pen with the Dabbs Furniture logo. More often, their doting grandfather slips them a little cash. They like that best.
They’ll have lots of souvenirs and memories, most notably tapes of the television commercials they often starred in.
There are no heirs now. Our sons Max and Ross lead golden lives at Duke University. Our daughters Caroline, Virginia, and Emily are too young for the passing of the torch. Steve and David have no children. I have no time.
Though I’ve often teased my husband, Robbie, that he only married me because I’m heiress to the Dabbs Furniture Empire, there remains a yearning , put aside so many years ago by the young girl who first announced her intentions to run the family business, growing stronger now in the woman who dreams of resurrecting a new furniture company sprung from the roots of grandfather Henry Dabbs fifty-four years ago, and perhaps one day propagated by his great, great grandchildren.
Like a tongue that can’t resist probing the gap where a lost tooth once was, I return to the idea again and again. I can’t help it. It’s in my blood
Walking down the narrow, rubber covered aisle flanked by more furniture stacked in tiers along the walls, I make my way to the desk in the back where the proprietor of Dabbs Furniture Company sits watching my approach.
It’s 1981 and I’m 20 years old, a student at Guilford College. I’ve come to announce my intentions to a man I haven’t seen in a long while.
“I’d like to learn the family business,” I say.
“Great,” replies my father, Bob Dabbs. “You’re hired.”
Selling furniture and keeping accounts was a sweet deal for a full-time college student. I had flexibility to leave for classes and during slow times, I studied, struggling to stay awake as the steady hum of the tall, oscillating fan stirred the air.
A few months later, my adored, older brother, Steve, announced his intentions to join the family business.
“Great,” replied our Dad, delighted to receive the heir apparent.
Steve and I laughed away the tedium of slow summer afternoons entertained by a steady cast of characters which included the young, charismatic Reverend Michael King, and the lady who talked so fast her teeth clacked. We never could understand what she said.
My father’s loyal co-worker of several years, Bob Oakley, a/k/a “Snook’ums,” so named for the cartoon character with the lock of golden hair across his forehead, served as mentor and translator.
I became accustomed to seeing street people relieve themselves and take sips from mysterious bottles wrapped in brown paper bags in the alley that separated the building from the huge, spooky warehouse where most of the furniture was kept.
Working in the family business was not always easy. Emotional baggage had to be checked at the door at 9:00 am and retrieved after hours. During more than one Thanksgiving family meals, the carving knife danced almost telekinetically in each of our hands, as if to carve someone or something other than the turkey.
I resented being the first to express interest in the business only to be shoved aside when the male heir arrived, automatically earning a higher salary and securing his place as future owner.
“Well, after all,” my father explained. “You’ll want to quit working and raise a family one day, right?”
Three years later, I graduated from college and took a giant step across the street to sell advertising at the Greensboro News and Record. It was a hard decision but the right one.
In 1986, Dabbs Furniture moved to a larger location on Lee St. Joined now by my younger brother, David, a photographer by trade and mountain man at heart, the Dabbs Dynasty was complete.
As accurately predicted, I happily married and retired to raise a family.
Eleven years after moving to their final destination on South Holden Road, the daily grind of managing a “Mom and Pop” store combined with heavy competition from overseas has taken its toil.
The Dabbs boys have spilled blood and sweat and cried tears, but they’ve run a successful and lucrative” b’ness,” as my southern father often inflects. They are tired, but the burden has been lifted. The store is closing in March of 2005.
Looking now at the glass windows covered by signs announcing “Going Out of Business Sale,” I am saddened. Reels of film thread through my head as I struggle not to cry.
I am four years old, sitting in our black Valiant with my brothers and our mother, Jackie, at Rex Anderson’s Esso next to Mitchell’s Clothing store on East Market Street, having just visited our Dad two doors down, letting the “Tiger fill our tank.”
I am six, in a plaid dress and white bobby socks, skipping down the aisle at Dabbs Furniture, thrilled to be watching my first color television program, The Wonderful World of Disney.
I am twelve, fetching a glass of grape juice for my Dad who is sprawled on the den sofa watching Sunday football on one of his three televisions, stacked crudely but effectively on an early version of the now popular wall unit assembled with bricks and plywood. He is exhausted from working six day weeks.
I am sixteen at Southeast High School, laughing when the boys yell, “Hey, will a Little Dab really do ya?”, referring to the radio commercial we ran at the time.
Thirty years later, I am watching my daughters visit their beloved “Grandabbsy” at the store on South Holden Road. The girls are fascinated by the 1958 R.C. Allen typewriter their grandfather still uses to pound outraged letters to newspaper editors, government officials, and anyone else who gets his goat.
Uncle Steve cracks them up making announcements about them on the P.A. system. Uncle David rests his feet, shattered by a fall from the roof of his log cabin a few years ago, making long stints on the concrete floor agonizing painful.
The girls never leave empty-handed. There’s always a hand fan, a ruler, or a pen with the Dabbs Furniture logo. More often, their doting grandfather slips them a little cash. They like that best.
They’ll have lots of souvenirs and memories, most notably tapes of the television commercials they often starred in.
There are no heirs now. Our sons Max and Ross lead golden lives at Duke University. Our daughters Caroline, Virginia, and Emily are too young for the passing of the torch. Steve and David have no children. I have no time.
Though I’ve often teased my husband, Robbie, that he only married me because I’m heiress to the Dabbs Furniture Empire, there remains a yearning , put aside so many years ago by the young girl who first announced her intentions to run the family business, growing stronger now in the woman who dreams of resurrecting a new furniture company sprung from the roots of grandfather Henry Dabbs fifty-four years ago, and perhaps one day propagated by his great, great grandchildren.
Like a tongue that can’t resist probing the gap where a lost tooth once was, I return to the idea again and again. I can’t help it. It’s in my blood
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