Banjo Tales, A Filmmaker's Journal
A Filmmaker's Journal
by Yasha Aginsky
INTRO
Having listened to and played his music since the 1950’s, I first met Mike Seeger in 1978 when my wife Carrie and I made a film with him and Alice Gerrard about their love for old time music and it's role in their lives. (This film, HOMEMADE AMERICAN MUSIC, is available at yashaaginsky.com/productions).
During the next two years, Carrie and I and our two young sons met up with Mike and Alice to visit their musical mentors around the Southeast, to attend music festivals in the South and West and to hang out at their home in Garrett Park, Maryland. As I slowly shot and then put the film together, we had many cross-continent conversations about the project, and both Mike and Alice offered a lot of input in the film. For me, it was a great collaborative experience and though Mike and Alice separated shortly after we made the film, the four of us remained friends.
In 2007 at Mike’s suggestion, I was asked to direct a film produced by Chris Strachwitz about the legendary old time group The New Lost City Ramblers, of which Mike was a founding member. During the making of this film, (ALWAYS BEEN A RAMBLER, available from arhoolie.org), Mike told me of his new project to record about 25 old time banjo players who represented a variety of the current styles of the southeastern mountains. I told him that I would like to come along to shoot digital video of these encounters, and he thought that was a great idea. That is how this project was born.
As we traveled on our January and June shoots, I kept this journal which provides some narrative background to the portraits assembled for the whole project: a CD/DVD called JUST AROUND THE BEND (available from Smithsonian/Folkways SFW CD 40207) and a shorter director’s cut called BANJO TALES, in which some of the musicians mentioned in this chronicle are not included.
JANUARY 2009
Early in the morning of January 8, 2009, with my trusty video assistant and sound-man Slava Basovich, I flew from San Francisco to Roanoke to join Mike and Alexia at their home near Lexington, Virginia to prepare for the production.
The next day we planned our recordings and shoots. After checking out our gear, we hiked through the nearby woods and took a good look at the surrounding mountains: the Appalachian to one side, and the Blue Ridge to the other.
Our first shoot was on the third day of our journey. Given the rain and cold, we strongly suspected that our subjects would be recorded and filmed indoors on this trip. This wood be good for sound recording and would require lighting.
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Tina Steffey
The first stop was in a suburban tract in Salem, Virginia, a suburb of Roanoke. At the house of old-time musician Rhoda Kemp, a musical friend and mentor of our intended subject, Tina Steffey, we met Rhoda, Tina and her mom, Susan Trianosky, all of whom play music together in the Grayson Highlands Band.
Tina, a tall, dark-haired and charming young woman, married to bluegrass mandolin player Adam Steffey, spoke about her experiences hearing the music and learning banjo as a child and being one of the few of her peers to be interested in old time music while growing up in the Virginia hills. She played claw-hammer banjo on "Cumberland Gap" with Susan on guitar and then a solo "Rocky Island," which she slowed down for us. They also did some vocal duets.
Rhoda spoke about learning how to play in her family and then how she met Tina. She played a rousing banjo medley of "How Mountain Girls Can Love" and the Coon Creek Girls' “Banjo Pickin’ Girl” with Tina on guitar and Susan on bass. After the session, we returned to Lexington in the rain.
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Joe Ayers
On day 4, we drove north from Lexington towards Charlottesville and then east to the countryside near Palmyra. In an old wooden house hidden in the trees, we found Joe Ayers and part of his family.
Passionate about the origins of banjo music, Joe played us some of the earliest written tunes for the instrument on a nylon-stringed banjo with his son, Gabriel, joining in on percussion. Many were minstrel tunes of which we included "Old Jaw Bone" and "Johnny Booker" in our sequence. Joe played some bottleneck banjo, using a glass slide and singing "Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin' Bed," a Blind Lemon Jefferson gospel tune, with great feeling and a beautiful strong voice accompanied by the wood fire crackling away in the old living room fireplace.
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That evening, we stayed in Charlottesville at the home of Jon Lohman, Director of the Virginia Folklife Program, from whom we borrowed some additional movie lights which proved indispensable on the rest of our shoot.
On day 5 we four attended an all day meeting with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which was partially funding our project. Located on the outskirts of Charlottesville, the setting was very pastoral, and we enjoyed a nice winter walk around a lake.
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Robert Montgomery
Day 6 was a travel day on which we went for a long journey through Southwestern Virginia, across Tennessee, into Georgia and finally to Decatur, northern Alabama, where we spent the night. The next day, we met up with the subject of our journey, Robert Montgomery, who with his parents welcomed us into their comfortable ranch-style home situated in rural pastureland outside the small town of Moulton, Lawrence County.
Robert plays banjo in a bluegrass band and was introduced to old time and country music through his father’s extensive record collection. Strongly influenced by Leroy Troy and other Tennessee banjo players, he started playing as a teen-ager and continued through his college years. On "Lonesome Road Blues", he demonstrated the Uncle Dave Macon style tricks he had learned watching Uncle Dave on film and then from watching Leroy play. He showed us some strong guitar style ragtime finger picking on "Pig Ankle Rag." Robert told us that though he performs mostly bluegrass music, he loves playing old-time tunes around the house, which his parents confirmed.
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Leroy Troy
On day 8, we headed north up Highway 65 a bit past Nashville until we arrived at the Goodlettsville home of Leroy Troy, his wife and little children. Leroy was impressed by the early Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon at a young age and tried to emulate him. His teacher was Cordell Kemp, who had played with Uncle Dave. Leroy got good enough to audition for and play on the Grand Ole Opry, and as an actor and musician he became a regular on the Hee Haw TV show in 1983. A seasoned performer with a flair for showbiz, Leroy is also an avid collector of country music memorabilia that fills his backyard studio where we recorded and filmed him performing monkey shines on "New River Train." He then demonstrated his right hand technique slowly on "Old Molly Hare" and played us an excellent "Bully of the Town." Leroy is not only a talented player but also a walking encyclopedia of information and lore about music and musicians, as is evident by the décor of his studio. He told us about a cafe just down the road that served typical southern food and was a favorite of Bill Monroe’s when he was in Nashville. One of the waitresses there said she remembered Mr. Monroe probably enjoying some of the same deep-fried dishes we ate there. We then drove to Knoxville, where we spent the night before driving on to the snow-covered hills of Madison County, North Carolina in the morning.
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Peter Gott
High up in Shelton Laurel, Madison County, we arrived at the handmade log cabin of Mike’s old friends, Peter and Polly Gott. In the late 60’s, the Gotts came from New York to the southern mountains to live and raise their family and became an integral part of the community through hard work and their love of local traditions. Peter is an excellent woodworker, craftsman and instrument builder, and Polly is an accomplished painter and cook. She fed us fresh, natural farm food that was very welcome after days eating on the road. In the very cold weather, Peter, a good banjo player, was suffering from arthritis in his hands, but he managed to play his long departed local friend George Landers' "The Rabbit Song" and his version of "Cumberland Gap" for our sequence. Mike and Peter played some tunes together, and in the evening, we all played and sang together in their living room around the piano and next to the fireplace to keep warm. Peter told us many great stories about the old-timers he met in the area and about his days calling square dances nearby.
On day 10, after a chilly night sleeping around the woodstove in their son’s cabin, we bade a long goodbye to these friendly and gracious folks. We headed down the snowy mountain road, stopping to pay homage to George Landers’ abandoned cabin. When Peter Gott had first arrived on the mountain, George was his musical mentor and appears on film with the New Lost City Ramblers. He can be seen in ALWAYS BEEN A RAMBLER.
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Jerry, Sam and Sammy Adams
At the foot of the mountain in the valley of Shelton Laurel, we arrived at the large trailer home of Sam Adams, a preacher. Built like a football lineman, Sam showed us to another trailer out back that had been converted into a sound studio. There we set up to record his pharmacist father Jerry Adams, who displayed a smooth, two-finger picking style on "Sandy River" for us. He told us that he especially loves to play the old ballads of Madison County, which he started learning as a teen-ager.
After Jerry recorded solo for Mike, he asked his son Sam and teen-aged grandson, Sammy, to join him for a couple of tunes, including Doc Boggs' "Country Blues," while Jerry’s elderly father looked. As we packed up our gear, Sam picked up a fiddle and soulfully played one of the hymns he plays in church. We had the three generations of the musical Adams pose for a family portrait before saying goodbye and driving east to Mt. Airy.
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Brien Fain
Day 11, on the outskirts of Mt. Airy, Virginia-born airplane engine machinist Brien Fain and his wife welcomed us into their house. Brian had some time off from work after injuring his back. As we recorded him in his basement with a nice fire burning in the fireplace, he told us that he began playing banjo at the age of 15 after his father died. He talked lovingly of local traditions and said that he often participates in music gatherings and competes in banjo picking contests. Here he plays a tune he learned from his father which he called both "Long-Tongued Woman" and "Daddy Frank."
Brien, who has a vast knowledge of the history of the region, played and sang a soulful version of the Civil War era "My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountains" for us. We saw him again in June at the Mt. Airy Fiddler’s Convention buying a banjo.
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Rhiannon Giddens
On day 12, in a residential district of the city of Greensboro just below the Blue Ridge Mountains, we met up with Rhiannon Giddens, who we recorded and filmed in her friend Carol's home. Quite pregnant with her first child, Rhiannon agreed to play solo banjo for us, something she rarely does. She told us that her family liked many kinds of music and that after the formal musical training she received in college, she was attracted to the old-time southern music that she heard at contra dances. Rhiannon learned fiddle and banjo, and she is a trained singer gifted with an amazing voice.
Here, she plays and sings her mentor Joe Thompson's version of "Georgia Buck" and the Ola Belle Reed song "Gonna Write Me a Letter" and talks about the future of old time music. For the past several years, she’s been performing and touring the USA and Europe with the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
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Day 13 was a travel day, and before starting out, we made it to a Winston-Salem sports bar to watch President Obama be inaugurated on many screens with an interracial and highly enthusiastic noontime crowd. It was an historical moment to remember before the long ride to Charleston, West Virginia.
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Franklin George
The next day 14, we were up in the hills to the east of Charleston, in a comfortable house on a snowy ridge above the town of Spencer, West Virginia, where Franklin George and his wife greeted us. A well-known and well-loved folklorist and folk musician in West Virginia, Frank has been playing banjo and fiddle for almost as long as he’s been able to talk. He showed us photos of a violin and a banjo that his father made for him. With a twinkle in his lively eyes, Frank shared many stories about the early old time music scene in West Virginia. He told us he had learned directly from many of West Virginia’s and Virginia’s finest players, and he played some of the first tunes he learned for us on some very old homemade instruments, including "Liza Poor Gal" and "Sourwood Mountain."
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After a stop in Charleston, we drove back to Mike and Alexia’s home in Lexington, Virginia.
On day 15, we worked with Mike on some introductions to each musician for the film. It took most of the day, after which we shot a few images of the surroundings and took some crew photos.
The next morning of day 16, Slava and I returned to Roanoke airport, from where we flew home via Charlotte and Phoenix to San Francisco.
JUNE 2009
Day 1 was June 2, 2009 when Slava and I flew from San Francisco to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. We met up with Mike and Alexia that night in a motel near the airport.
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Justin Robinson
The next day, we headed just west of Durham to meet up with Justin Robinson at a stable where he kept his Arabian horse. Sensing our confusion about the exact location of the stable, Justin came over to meet us near the driveway, a 6'3" dread-locked and bearded beanpole in his twenties dressed in a bright magenta T-shirt. He showed us around the stable, and then we set up to record and film in the reception area, a large room with a tin roof and one wall of plate glass windows. We set Justin up in a corner and he recorded a couple of tunes, one local instrumental called the "Chapel Hill 2-Step" and a rousing song called "Black Annie" that he had learned from his mentor, Joe Thompson.
Easy going, well-informed and gracious, Justin had a lot to say about each tune and the people he learned them from. We mutually decided to move into the woods out back, where it was somewhat cooler and much prettier. Airplane, leaf and bird sounds abounded and provided background ambiance to our recordings. As Mike set up to record, Justin and Alexia discussed the native plants and trees surrounding us. Then Justin talked about his life in music, his family and recorded a couple more tunes, including a local version of "Liza Jane" and Grandpa Jones’ "Old Rattler," one of his childhood favorites.
We urged Justin to get his horse out of the stable and as we filmed, he groomed him, saddled him, walked him outside before riding him in a corral. After I shot a few exteriors of the stable, we wrapped the gear and sat around talking in the reception room. Justin told Mike about his explorations of local Native American tribes and their musical traditions, which crossover with each other and with African-American traditions. I asked him why it was that more African-Americans didn't play old time music, and he said he thought it was mainly because black people in general were not very nostalgic; having had such a painful past, he said he thought the culture in general had lost it's interest in looking backward.
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Riley Baugus
Day 3 began with the promise of a storm. We left Raleigh-Durham in the morning and drove north through Winston-Salem to the rural digs of Riley Baugus, a 45-year-old native of Walkertown, North Carolina. Riley and his wife live in a large trailer home located on about an acre of very green and partly forested land.
Riley is a big, friendly guy and non-stop talker, full of quips and jokes who enjoys using various accents. An excellent banjo player and singer, he has just gotten back into making old, mountain-style fretless banjos, the kind seen in the movie Cold Mountain, for which he made three of them and also sang some ballads. He and Mike both played on the Allison Krause/ David Plant recording that won a Grammy in 2009. He still travels constantly and plays often with Dirk Powell, Kirk Sutphin and Ira Bernstein among others.
Riley is a seasoned performer and plays and sings forcefully with total mastery. We recorded two songs outside in his backyard facing the woods: Fred Cockerham’s "Roustabout" on the fretless and his own version of Liza Jane, called "Big Liza’s Christmas Holiday." He talked some and then showed us his garden, of which he was very proud - especially his 5 ft. high tomato plants and his garlic. We filmed his compost bin that he had welded together. When it started raining, we moved inside the trailer. He sat in a big easy chair and leaned way back, placing the banjo on his belly and playing the instrument almost facing straight up to the ceiling; no problem getting a good shot of his hands at work. His "Pretty Polly" and "Sally Ann" were gems, and we got him to do a slowed down version of Sally Ann to really see what he was doing with his right hand. He gave us a very detailed demonstration of Round Peak banjo style and played us his version of "Cumberland Gap." When we finally said goodbye, we drove up the highway further north to attend the 38th annual Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention.
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The rain subsided on the morning of day 4, and we took a moment to explore downtown Mt. Airy, which has a pseudonym of Mayberry from a fictitious town invented for the Andy Griffith show. From the stuff displayed in the store windows, you can tell that Andy Griffith is their town hero, along with Donna Fargo who sang the hit song, "I'm the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" and legendary old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell.
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Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention
The Fiddlers Convention fills up the huge Mt. Airy fairground on the edge of the town and attracts old time and bluegrass musicians and dancers from all over the country. Cars, trailers and RV's were packed in around a central stage for the "competitions." Up on the hill were cars and tents, and though all the campers were covered with the mud and wet grass from the rains, no one seemed discouraged. Walking around with Mike was quite amazing, as every two minutes someone came up and greeted him, including quite a few people that he didn't know.
In front of a banjo vendor, we met up with Brien Fain who was considering buying a bicycle-spoke banjo and was eager for Mike's opinion of the instrument. Mike played "Give the Fiddler a Dram" on it, and Brien played a bit of "Sweet Sunny South."
In the maze of RVs, we found banjo player and builder Kevin Fore and his wife Trish Kirby Fore, who Mike had met at a banjo competition where he was a judge. Kevin showed us his formica neck banjos in the style of Kyle Creed. With generators and hub-bub blasting all around us, we shot and recorded Trish playing "Mississippi Sawyer" and Ola Belle Reed's "High On a Mountain," as well as a ballad that was compromised by the surrounding noise.
On the other side of the campgrounds, we found Matt Kinman, who we would film in Eastern Kentucky the next week, playing with Bill Birchfield of the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers and filmed them playing "Fall on My Knees" among other tunes. At one point, Mat lept up and started dancing with some passers-by. As the daylight disappeared, we listened in on many other musical jams happening at nearly every campsite.
At 10:30 the next morning, we again ventured to downtown Mt. Airy, and Main Street was abuzz with old time musicians and tourists. Two guys leaned on guitar cases as they chatted, and one guy walked along the street playing. Some merchants were setting up for outdoor concerts.
We walked into the Convention grounds under clear skies and 85˚, searching for musicians who appeared in our film. We found Rhoda Kemp and Tina Steffey, the women who are were our first subjects filmed back in January. Rhoda is a round, white curly haired woman of about 75 with a twinkle in her eye and an American flag on her banjo. Her big, fully equipped trailer was parked in a choice spot for several days before the Convention, ready for all her old music buddies to come by and jam. Tina came down to Mt. Airy to hang out with her for the weekend and got right on the cell phone to get some musicians to come by for a jam. Soon a group made up of old friends from Orchard Grass, plus Tina and a younger fiddler named Matt Kirwan, formed a nice group. They played and sang for a couple of hours, with Mike sitting in on a few tunes at their urging. In the film, I used parts of "Sourwood Mountain" and "Foggy Mountain Top" from this session.
At the end of the day, we headed back to the stage area in the middle of the RV Park where old time bands were lining up to play for prizes and each musician who plays receives $5 - which offsets the entry fee to the convention. There I noticed a group of three gangly young guys practicing a tune while waiting in line who told us that they were from eastern Kentucky and had only begun playing a couple of years ago mentored at Morehead State by Jesse Wells, who appears later in our film.
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Debbie Yates and Brian Grim
On day 5, after a good night's sleep and a good look at yesterday's rushes, we traveled up through Grayson County, Southwest Virginia, to Brian Grim's farm off Peachbottom Road. His farm is on a hilltop above Elk Creek with many. Brian is about 40 with a healthy blond moustache, a direct gaze and easy-going manner. He and his family moved into their new 40 x 40 foot traditional log house in 2008 after nine years of building. Depending on the season, he delivers the mail six days a week, comes home and then leaves again to shear sheep, while his wife takes care of the farm and three daughters. Twice a year they throw big feasts, to which they invite a couple hundred musicians from all over.
His younger sister Debbie drove up from Konnarock, Virginia for this session with Mike. A banjo player, singer and fiddler who earns her living as a potter, Debbie now mostly plays and records with her husband Tim Yates. We heard that Debbie and Brian grew up playing old time tunes together having learned from White Top Mountain teachers and been encouraged by their parents. Now they get together at each other’s houses mostly on special occasions.
As we filmed and recorded outside Brian's house on the large surrounding deck, their fiddle and banjo duets on "Cumberland Gap" and "Nancy Blevins" and their talk were peppered with sheep bleating and roosters crowing throughout the session, authentic ambiance for their old time music. While Brien fed his sheep, Debbie recorded some solo banjo tunes, including "Kitchen Girl," and played some fiddle to Mike's banjo.
After Brian showed us the details of his hand-hewn log cabin, Debbie had to leave to drive home and feed her own girls. We were invited to supper with Brian and his family and enjoyed their great hospitality until we left to drive north to our motel in Wytheville on Highway 81.
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George Gibson and John Haywood
On day 6, I awoke with the first light and took a walk which lead me through a small town cemetery full of headstones in varying degrees of moldy disintegration. Then we took a three-hour drive west and then north into Whitesburg, Kentucky. After checking into our Super 8 motel, we followed Mike and Alexia out of town past the road to Hazard, where long ago we had visited Roscoe Holcomb, and then up 20 minutes into a hollow, to meet George Gibson. George was waiting on the dirt entry road to drive us through Big Doubles Creek up to his family's well-preserved log cabin, which would serve us as a recording studio for the next few days of rainy weather.
George is a 70-something native son who moved away long ago to Florida, where he now lives, but returns often to his Knott County home. He is a masterful banjo player who has encouraged and influenced many younger players. He is also a knowledgeable regional folklorist and historian, with many stories to tell.
We set up to record one of George's protégés, John Haywood, who recently moved to George's land from Louisville and lives just up the road with his young family. John played and sang "Big John Henry," and a few others. He talked for a long time about his journey away from rural Kentucky to Louisville, and then coming home because he missed being part of the traditional rural culture. He is an artist as well as a musician.
We sat around and chatted with George Gibson about the history and politics of the area. We learned that this small southern town of 1500 was highly dependent on the local mining and drilling industries. Consequently, pollution is rampant and people aren't rich enough to fight the corporate lawyers. Drilling run-off or illegal oil storage spills frequently fouls the city water supply and rural wells.
Sure enough, when we arrived at our Super 8 Motel, there was a handwritten sign on the reception desk that all
drinking water should be boiled until further notice.The next day, we drove with Mike and Alexia, up Wolfpen Creek Rd. to
Big Doubles Creek, where we were again picked up by George Gibson and driven up through the creek to his log cabin. We set up to record and film him outside in his backyard with birds, leaves and wind providing sound ambiance. It went well, with George playing and singing several ballads including "Morgan's March" and "Coal Creek March," and then playing his version of "Shortenin' Bread." He talked about his musical education from his dad and grandfather, and had a story for each tune. Though he lives in Florida now, he comes back to his family land whenever he can and continues to work on the buildings. He says he is going to be building a bridge from the road into the property so that he doesn’t have to drive through the creek to pick up visitors, but that he's in no hurry. It probably keeps the unwanted visitors to a minimum.
We had picnic lunch on George's porch and visited for a while with him and his friend big Jack from down the holler who has also moved to Florida. John Haywood took us to the one hip, young cafe in Whitesburg, where his paintings are displayed. His paintings and etchings are scenes of Appalachian culture, mostly with stories taken from the old time songs. Even though they are often depicted dancing or playing music, the characters look suspicious and forlorn, witnesses to the hard life led in these hills for generations.
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Jesse Wells, Jamie Wells and Bret Ratliff
Day 8. We met up with Mike and Alexia and drove back to George Gibson's house for another day of recording and filming with Jesse Wells, his dad Jamie, and his close friend, Brett Ratliff, all active players and teachers of old time music. Jesse and Brett are in their early thirties and each is very motivated to carry on the music though their collecting, archiving, teaching and performing. Jesse works at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music at Morehead State University, and Brett teaches at Appalshop. We filmed him playing solo on "Whitesburg" and playing several duets with his dad, Jamie Wells: "Old Aunt Jenny With Her Nightcap On" and Cuttin' at the Point," as well as one with Brett, "Lost Hornpipe." They played until Jesse had to leave because his wife was expecting their first baby any minute. Brett talked about discovering and being taken with old time music as a young adult and how it reminded him of his youth in Van Lear, and then played and sang several tunes, including "Indian Village" and "Fair and Tender Ladies."
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Matt Kinman and Clifton Hicks
Day 9 brought early morning thundershowers. I grabbed the camera and headed downtown to the Summit City Café to shoot John Haywood’s paintings calmly in a deserted space. Amelia, the owner, was there as I worked, she played a recent CD that Mike helped produce of her great grandmother, Addie Graham, singing unaccompanied ballads. Later we made the drive out to George Gibson's house in the pouring rain, where George met us as usual in his SUV to drive us through the rain-swollen creek up to his cabin. There, we found the two young banjo players, Matt Kinman and Clifton Hicks, and we spent the next six hours recording them.
Matt Kinman, an Arizonan now living in North Carolina, is an accomplished player on all traditional instruments and a powerful singer, as he demonstrates here on "Cold Icy Mountain." He told us of his life on the road following this music and the musicians who play it to learn from them, while helping them out with chores and repairs on their farms. His young friend Cliff spoke of being a returning Iraqi War vet, who dropped out and became a Conscientious Objector. He played and sang "Little Birdie" and "The German War" with lots of feeling. They both spoke to the profound musical and cultural influence of George Gibson.
After lots of goodbyes, we drove north up Highway 15 a couple of hours to a motel in Campton, northeastern Kentucky.
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Jackie Helton
Day 10. With gray skies and the threat of rain, we had a brief meeting with Mike and Alexia to plan our trip out to our subject Jackie Helton’s place. On the road, Slava and I went for lunch in Hazel Green, right behind the gas pumps. With Slava being a vegetarian, eating on the road in the rural South had become quite a challenge, and this was no exception. The local fellow sitting next to us at the counter eating a hamburger looked up and said to the cook, "Wow, that grease falling from the stove hood is really gross, ain't it?" She replied, "Yeah I guess, but I can't reach up there. Good thing it isn't dripping on the food." Gulp.
We drove awhile to the Maytown Grocery where we got directions to Jack Helton's trailer home, near Wolf. When we rolled up, Jesse Wells and a Morehead State fiddle student named Sarah were already there playing tunes with Jackie. Also present was Jackie’s sister, her husband, their son and another neighbor. Jackie, a pudgy, balding, 64-year old bachelor was sitting in his easy chair, chain-smoking cigarettes. We set up lights and turned off the air conditioner because of sound considerations, and the heat and cigarette smoke were intense.
Jackie started by saying that he hadn't been playing much banjo and was nervous as hell. So we started with a tune by him, Jesse and Sarah to loosen him up, but it quickly became the Jackie Helton show, as old tunes and stories began to roll out of him. He would play a tune like "Rocky Island" or "Darlin' Corey," sing half-heartedly and then hold up his hands apologetically and say, "That's the best I can do." When Jesse played with him, it helped Jackie’s confidence and improved his playing quite a bit, but not his wheezing voice. Outside under the carport, we chitchatted with Jackie and his buddy and then packed up the gear and returned to Campton. Apparently just after we left, Jesse and Sarah joined Jack outside to learn some of his tunes, and we missed the best music connection of the afternoon. Win a little, lose a little.
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We drove back to the Campton motel in the rain. When we arrived, the Mexican highway workers housed there were all hanging around outside their rooms on the first floor; our rooms were on the second floor. As usual, I greeted them in passing, but this time the biggest one, a big, dark friendly faced guy with curly black hair starting to gray, greeted me in excellent English. "Did you guys find the beer?" he asked, pointing out the one place down the road where you could buy beer. I took it as an invitation to talk, and he had plenty to tell me about their roadwork for the Hinkle Corporation of Paris, Kentucky and the overt racism they faced in the rural south that had the result of keeping them prisoners at the motel. Having worked 40 hours this week, they had the weekend off, but they couldn't return home to Memphis because it was too far away and too expensive in gas. Nor could they go into town, because the white guys there threaten them and the police watch every move they make. So they go to the one Mexican restaurant in town and there they are obliged to sit in the back. When they leave, they have to go straight to the motel. "How much longer do you have to do this?" I asked. He said he has two more years to pay off a 6-bedroom house for his wife and three kids and their two trucks. He moved away from San Diego where he lived for a long time because he could only work for the minimum wage there. He was promised more work in Memphis, but because work had been scarce, he and his team had to take this road job and the next coming up in North Carolina. Counting my lucky stars, I wished them well.
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Day 11 was a travel day, 7 hours on small highways from Eastern Kentucky, through West Virginia and Virginia back to Mt.Airy, North Carolina and into our favorite Microtel motel, which features big suites with views out back of the soft green woods and the Ararat River banks, a stark contrast to strip-mined Kentucky. On the big green lawn behind the motel, a huge beaver very happily munched away on greens or grubs. The East Indian motel manager explained that the beaver is somewhat of a local star and then he took pity on Slava, a fellow vegetarian and told us about a very good Thai restaurant in town, run by a young and gregarious Thai-American man with a Carolinian accent. We thought we had been beamed up to multi-cultural heaven.
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Marsha Todd and Richard Bowman
On Day 12 around noon, we met Mike & Alexia for a 30-minute trip to the new log cabin house of Marsha Todd, just built by her contractor father Richard Bowman on the outskirts of Mt.Airy.
Richard learned to play fiddle from Tommy Jarrell and then created a family band called the Slate Mountain Ramblers featuring Marsha on banjo and his wife Barbara on bass. They play almost every Saturday night for local dances and have been doing so ever since Marsha was small. She proudly showed us her 297 prize ribbons from various dance, banjo and fiddle and string band contests, which she displays strung out on her basement walls. We recorded and filmed Marsha and Richard playing outside on the massive deck in subdued afternoon sunlight, surrounded by lawn and woods, this time without the animal sounds. The session started out with dance tunes like "Sandy River Belles" and "Soldier's Joy." Richard said he taught Marsha a few chords when she was young and then told her to figure it out on her own. She plays really fine 2 and 3 finger styles, as well as claw-hammer. We interviewed them together, and then she sang and played a few tunes on her own.
Knowing that his was our last shoot, we wrapped up the shoot and asked Marsha to take a photo of the crew.
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As we loaded up the cars and said our goodbyes, Mike said that he was very pleased with what we had managed to record and film, and we made plans to work together on the material in September. As we drove off in the direction of Mt. Airy for the evening, Mike waved cheerfully and then he and Alexia drove directly home to Lexington, Virginia.
Day 13 was our final travel day. We drove the 3 hours to Raleigh-Durham Airport and caught our flight to Charlotte, Phoenix and finally, San Francisco, concluding an unforgetable journey through the American Southeast.
Afterword
Several times during the journey, I had asked Mike if we could record him talking about the project and the musicians, something we had done at the end of our first shoot in January. We never did find the time to do so, perhaps because Mike was a lot more tired and sick than it appeared. He had been living with leukemia for more than 10 years, and needed daily rest. Having kept up an intense pace until the end of our shoot, we made a plan for him to record at home and send me the CD for use in the editing.
A week later, Mike made a weekend journey to San Francisco with Hazel Dickens to attend and sing at a memorial for his friend Archie Green. When I called him to ask about his health, the recording and some other business for our film, Mike told me that he was really exhausted and was going to take tests to determine what was wrong. More time passed, and he weakened further, telling me that he could no longer play music and was canceling all gigs and plans to travel.
By this time, I was on a mountain farm in central France and checked in as I could with Mike and Alexia to see how he was doing. Alexia told me that he had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a very aggressive cancer from which there was not much chance of recovery. After a period of hospitalization, instead of undergoing extensive and invasive radical medical treatment, he opted to return to his home near Lexington and live the rest of his days peacefully and quietly. Mike Seeger died on August 7, 2009 at home, a week short of his 76th birthday, surrounded by his loved ones.
This documentary is a tribute to him, to the music he loved and to his dedication to helping the musicians who continue to play it.
