Do you know any ... Kentucky songs? - Cynthia
It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians. -- Dan Fogelberg
Whenever I roll into down SR 32 and onto Main Street in Morehead, Kentucky, the mountains in the background bring back a wellspring of memory. My daughter was born in the shadow of those hills. Two marriages, two college degrees, an invaluable education*, a host of friends, and a connection to place that I am only recently coming to terms with.
I take in the hills and remember the leaves splashed in fall colors, and the stark beauty of winter -- the kind of beauty you have to know intuitively to understand. The apocalyptic summer when the hills burned, and seemed to burn for the entire season, leaving a scar on the hills that took years to heal. On a clear day, I think I can still see it there, even though the treeline has grown back in. Rolling down 32, I see and feel my own scars, too. Though I am was not born nestled by those hills, I am bound there by failure, by success, by enlightenment, by mistakes, by some good decisions. I am so bound to it that I avoided returning for nearly a decade. It wasn't time, I told myself. It wasn't time, and I wasn't ready.
The Morehead Old Time Music Festival takes place on the Jaycee Farm. $20 for the entire weekend, and that included camping. Considering any nearby campground would cost at least that for one night, Amanda and I thought that was a pretty good deal. The weather was supposed to be cool, with a chance of rain. We found a good spot along the treeline, and set up the tent. Campfires weren't allowed, but we packed in some simple food and our own booze. Kentuckians For the Commonwealth had a food tent there, selling coffee, tea, hamburgers, hotdogs, and wonderful brown beans and cornbread. We had everything we needed.
We could sit in front of our tent and listen to the music, drink beer, our homemade mead, and bourbon. Friday night I ran to a remnant of an old ghost of myself -- Ryan Perkins, (one of the festival organizers) who remembered me though I didn't remember him at first. Once upon a time, he had dated Posie, my first ex-wife's sister. That sort of thing happens often when I go back there, running into echoes of an old life. Saturday, I got out my guitar to pick around. I don't have any illusions about my talent; I only picked up the guitar again less than a year ago. But I love music, and I enjoy playing.
Will you play with us?
I looked up to find a banjo and a violin, each attached to a bone skinny, silver-haired Old Timey aficionado.
You may regret that. I'm not very good.
They were desperate, though. I was sympathetic to their plight. There were more than a few musicians around, all of them enormously talented. I didn't feel anywhere near qualified to sit in with any of them. Amanda was, as always, a gracious hostess, and we sat around and tried to find something to play. They introduced themselves. Judy played the violin and Cynthia -- who might be the most androgynous person I've ever come across. They weren't from the area, and weren't even from Kentucky. I knew that quickly because of their accents. They were from Indiana. But since I was born in Ohio, I try not to hold that against them. We don't have any control over where we're born. But we can decide where home is.
I played one of the songs I know fairly well -- a John Prine song called "The Great Compromise." Cynthia and Judy liked it just fine and we managed to get through a 3 piece version of it.
How long have you been playing? I asked.
Oh, Cynthia said, if you put it all together over the years, it probably amounts to about two weeks.
They tried to teach me The Tennessee Waltz, but my recall for music theory hasn't improved even though I can play a bit better than when I started. The sad thing is, I used to understand the circle of fifths; but even when I played guitar before -- back when I wanted to be a rock star -- I never applied music theory to playing guitar. I don't even know why. I studied the piano. I studied the trumpet. I can still sort read note music. But not with guitar.
Judy and Cynthia were used to people with more experience. But they asked me to play another song anyway and I played "Poncho and Lefty." They had apparently never heard of it. And I could tell they weren't all that impressed.
Do you know any... Kentucky songs?
Cynthia asked me that, and it took me back a bit.
You're around a bunch of old people here, she said. You ought to learn some.
I didn't quite know what to say. I know quite a bit of old country and bluegrass, but not to play it. I grew up listening to George Jones. I found Hazel Dickens, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, and T. Texas Tyler and Lefty Frizzell, and Doc Watson and Bill Monroe and the Carter Family. But not to play it. Not yet.
After "Poncho and Lefty," I played an Old Crow Medicine Show tune, "Wagon Wheel." I didn't know all the words by memory, though -- which was too bad, because I play that one fairly ok. Cynthia and Judy wandered off, leaving me to wonder what the hell a Kentucky song is. Bluegrass is regional in origin and there are different flavors of it all over Appalachia. The south has taken it up, but still -- the music I identify as Bluegrass was born out of the hills, with that echo of sad Irish songs, the mixture of spirituals, hymns, and traditional English Ballads. I didn't -- and I don't -- understand what Cynthia was talking about.
But when I was there, nestled by the hills, with Amanda, it was the first time in a very long time that I felt like I was home.
It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians. -- Dan Fogelberg
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| My Best Angle: Image By Amanda L. Hay |
I take in the hills and remember the leaves splashed in fall colors, and the stark beauty of winter -- the kind of beauty you have to know intuitively to understand. The apocalyptic summer when the hills burned, and seemed to burn for the entire season, leaving a scar on the hills that took years to heal. On a clear day, I think I can still see it there, even though the treeline has grown back in. Rolling down 32, I see and feel my own scars, too. Though I am was not born nestled by those hills, I am bound there by failure, by success, by enlightenment, by mistakes, by some good decisions. I am so bound to it that I avoided returning for nearly a decade. It wasn't time, I told myself. It wasn't time, and I wasn't ready.
The Morehead Old Time Music Festival takes place on the Jaycee Farm. $20 for the entire weekend, and that included camping. Considering any nearby campground would cost at least that for one night, Amanda and I thought that was a pretty good deal. The weather was supposed to be cool, with a chance of rain. We found a good spot along the treeline, and set up the tent. Campfires weren't allowed, but we packed in some simple food and our own booze. Kentuckians For the Commonwealth had a food tent there, selling coffee, tea, hamburgers, hotdogs, and wonderful brown beans and cornbread. We had everything we needed.
We could sit in front of our tent and listen to the music, drink beer, our homemade mead, and bourbon. Friday night I ran to a remnant of an old ghost of myself -- Ryan Perkins, (one of the festival organizers) who remembered me though I didn't remember him at first. Once upon a time, he had dated Posie, my first ex-wife's sister. That sort of thing happens often when I go back there, running into echoes of an old life. Saturday, I got out my guitar to pick around. I don't have any illusions about my talent; I only picked up the guitar again less than a year ago. But I love music, and I enjoy playing.
Will you play with us?
I looked up to find a banjo and a violin, each attached to a bone skinny, silver-haired Old Timey aficionado.
You may regret that. I'm not very good.
They were desperate, though. I was sympathetic to their plight. There were more than a few musicians around, all of them enormously talented. I didn't feel anywhere near qualified to sit in with any of them. Amanda was, as always, a gracious hostess, and we sat around and tried to find something to play. They introduced themselves. Judy played the violin and Cynthia -- who might be the most androgynous person I've ever come across. They weren't from the area, and weren't even from Kentucky. I knew that quickly because of their accents. They were from Indiana. But since I was born in Ohio, I try not to hold that against them. We don't have any control over where we're born. But we can decide where home is.
I played one of the songs I know fairly well -- a John Prine song called "The Great Compromise." Cynthia and Judy liked it just fine and we managed to get through a 3 piece version of it.
How long have you been playing? I asked.
Oh, Cynthia said, if you put it all together over the years, it probably amounts to about two weeks.
They tried to teach me The Tennessee Waltz, but my recall for music theory hasn't improved even though I can play a bit better than when I started. The sad thing is, I used to understand the circle of fifths; but even when I played guitar before -- back when I wanted to be a rock star -- I never applied music theory to playing guitar. I don't even know why. I studied the piano. I studied the trumpet. I can still sort read note music. But not with guitar.
Judy and Cynthia were used to people with more experience. But they asked me to play another song anyway and I played "Poncho and Lefty." They had apparently never heard of it. And I could tell they weren't all that impressed.
Do you know any... Kentucky songs?
Cynthia asked me that, and it took me back a bit.
You're around a bunch of old people here, she said. You ought to learn some.
I didn't quite know what to say. I know quite a bit of old country and bluegrass, but not to play it. I grew up listening to George Jones. I found Hazel Dickens, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, and T. Texas Tyler and Lefty Frizzell, and Doc Watson and Bill Monroe and the Carter Family. But not to play it. Not yet.
After "Poncho and Lefty," I played an Old Crow Medicine Show tune, "Wagon Wheel." I didn't know all the words by memory, though -- which was too bad, because I play that one fairly ok. Cynthia and Judy wandered off, leaving me to wonder what the hell a Kentucky song is. Bluegrass is regional in origin and there are different flavors of it all over Appalachia. The south has taken it up, but still -- the music I identify as Bluegrass was born out of the hills, with that echo of sad Irish songs, the mixture of spirituals, hymns, and traditional English Ballads. I didn't -- and I don't -- understand what Cynthia was talking about.
But when I was there, nestled by the hills, with Amanda, it was the first time in a very long time that I felt like I was home.