Your Lone Journey...

The 21st MerleFest has begun to fade into a wistful haze and as I now make an attempt to put a few appropriate reflections down I'm again daunted by the task of verbalizing what is and I hope always will be such a spiritual experience. Having missed but two of these celebrations of American music, I feel blessed to have witnessed so much, like the sweet intimate moment shared by festival host Doc Watson and the love of his life Rosa Lee after one of his many appearances over the weekend. Back in the early sixties they co-wrote "Your Lone Journey," a tender ballad about love and devotion and dying and reunion. The song's been covered by many including Emmylou Harris, Tim & Mollie O'Brien and most recently Alison Krauss & Robert Plant as "Your Long Journey." But when you listen to the words the authors' title is as it should be. It was a privilege to be able to tell Rosa Lee how much their song touches my heart. As do the four days spent in the Carolina foot hills sharing emotions set to music with loving care and intensity. Being part of the team behind the scenes at this complex and ambitious event that now attracts over 80,000 pilgrims to sleepy Wilkesboro every spring is one of my life's highlights. Thanks to Doc and B Townes, to Art Menius and Claire Armbruster, two who've moved on but whose legacy endures, to John Adair, Buck Parker, Maple Byrne, Cathy Caudle and my fellow Leeman and Cabin boy Sam Sanger, all of whom make my MerleFest experience richly rewarding. And of course there are the incredible artists from old favorites to new discoveries who inspire us and give so much of themselves.

The fine young Dobro player with the Infamous Stringdusters, Andy Hall on the far right, was pretty inspired himself during Thursday afternoon's opening set on the Watson Stage as he took a knee and proposed to lady love Janice Young. She said yes. Special stuff like that happens at MerleFest. But it's not always on stage. In room 419 at the Addison Inn, I spent the third hour of Friday morning soaking up one of the juiciest jam sessions imaginable made up of fellow Dusters Andy Falco and Jesse Cobb, former Duster and current Punch Brother Chris Eldridge, John Cowan's guitarist Jeff Autry and 9-time IBMA Dobro player of the year, Blue Highway's Rob Ickes. Just ripping it for their own amazement and a couple of us lucky bystanders. It gets no better. I don't have the time or frankly the energy to properly review this homecoming and the hundreds of artists who filled this year's four days so I'll post some photos with a few notes and hope to give you a feel for what happens here in hopes that you'll consider a first-hand look and listen April 23-26. 2009.

The day before MerleFest started, JAMinc took the fresh young Alaskan bluegrass band Bearfoot (playing Ashland Coffee & Tea that night) to Mary Munford Elementary here in town for an in-school performance and a very effective demonstration of what that upbeat bluegrass rhythm was all about. Here they are closing the Cabin Stage on Sunday afternoon.

Another Richmond connection: The Jerry Douglas Band played The National on Friday night (how was that anybody?) and helped close things out on a drizzly Sunday afternoon at MerleFest. Not real sure what to make of Jerry's lid but the set was superb as one would expect, especially when fiddler Luke Bulla's pristine voice took the Johnny Cash hit "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" to a whole new place. One of my top-three tunes the entire weekend.

Yet another Richmond link...John Cowan sat in with the Waybacks at lunchtime on Friday and both are headed our way. John and his band, now including former Richmonder Rebecca Hoggan's hubby John Frazier on mandolin and vocals are back at AC&T on May 15th. And James Nash (above), Warren Hood, Joe Kyle Jr. and Chuck Hamilton return for their fourth On Track For The Cure event for the Massey Cancer Center at the Science Museum on June 14th. See below for this year's special guest. And former Wayback Stevie Coyle does a house-style concert at the Positive Vibe Cafe on May 17th.

Oh yeah, the Wayback's special guest for this year's Richmond show is the hardest working man at MerleFest, Grammy winner Jim Lauderdale, seen here in the Cabin getting ready for one of his many appearances on many stages at the festival. That's Bryn Davies on bass and the aforementioned John Frazier. Jim not only oversaw and emceed the Chris Austin Songwriters' competition but performed with the Stringdusters, the Wilders and Dr. Ralph Stanley. He would surely be at least a nominee for MVP.

Three glamming jammers from the "Merle's Girls" set on Saturday evening that included Alison Brown, Sally Van Meter, Sierra Hull, Missy Raines and (above) Claire Lynch, Laurie Lewis and Rhonda Vincent.


Bela was in the house this year, but Flecktone-free and only on Sunday with his significant other Abigail Washburn and their worldly Sparrow Quartet featuring (left to right) Bela Fleck on banjo, Casey Driessen on violin, Abigail on clawhammer and Ben Sollee on cello. Chamber music for the new age.

A cool gene pool created a blonde, a brunette and a redhead who all swim in the deep end musically, who are all sisters and who sing, play and write some great new acoustic music. The three Lovell Sisters, from left Rebecca, Jessica and Megan have matured well since their first MerleFest last year as a group. Rebecca was also the first female to win the festival's mandolin competition in 2006. They are no novelty act.

And while we're talking sisters, The Waifs from Australia had been to MerleFest before but flew below my radar for some reason until this year when they became one of my two favorite new bands. Sibs Donna Simpson and Vikki Thorn above, along with Josh Cunningham, Ben Franz and David MacDonald bring the down-under to life with great songwriting, haunting harmonies and deeply layered arrangements. And wait until you hear Vikki coax the most profoundly mournful notes out of her harmonica on "Vermillion" from their new Compass cd sundirtwater. My other MF discovery this year was a band I was too enthralled with to take pictures of...Ollabelle. Featuring Levon Helm's daughter Amy, this mixed-gender quintet opened for The Band's iconic drummer on Saturday night and it was pure magic. More on them down the road. A new fan is born.

Saturday night was one of the strongest I can remember with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder with Bruce Hornsby followed by the great Levon Helm who went way over time with nearly two hours of classics old and new including the plaintive "Anna Lee" from his Grammy-winning Dirt Farmer cd to the one we were all "Weighting" for. It was a thrill to see him having such an obviously great time alternating between drums and mandolin with a big fat horn section and B3 and even King Sammy Bush. Levon's richly raspy voice weathered a bout with throat cancer in the mid-90's. He survives and thrives and we're the lucky ones.

Just one more Richmond connection...the night before they closed down opening night on the Watson Stage, Old Crow Medicine Show (right) brought the house down at The National at 7th and Broad. Great energy, adoring fans and a strong finish to day one. Same kinda thing happened the next night as Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives put on a grade-A show only to be followed by the over-the-top Avett Brothers who seemed a bit more reined- in than I'd seen them lately. Maybe too much ketchup. But another huge finish for Friday night in America.

I'll finish up with two road warriors who closed down the Cabin Stage Friday night in their own inimitable style, Peter Rowan and Tony Rice. Pulling heavily from their wonderful collaboration album You Were There For Me and accompanied by Rickie Simpkins on mandolin and Mike Bub on bass, these beloved veterans cast their spell. To find that they still have it after forty-year careers is a joy and an inspiration. And thanks for Old Santa Fe, Pete.


So as the Sandy Feat sculptors finish up another of their perishable masterpieces, I'll back on out with some twinges of guilt for not even mentioning Tish Hinojosa, Kenny Ball and Kenny Sultan, Dirk Powell and Riley Bauguss, Ruthie Foster, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, David Holt, Dan Tyminski, Sunday morning gospel at Creekside with Doc and NBB, and at last, the return of our hero Tim O'Brien. MerleFest is a cultural and spiritual feast that challenges and rewards in a deeply moving way. Don't miss the next one.

Hope to see you this Thursday at In Your Ear Recording for what should be a fine pairing...a house-style concert presented by JAMinc and WCVE-FM featuring Piedmont blues master John Cephas and rising singer/songwriter from Asheville, Eliza Lynn. It'll be recorded for a later broadcast on Page Wilson's Out O' The Blue Radio Revue. Reservations on our JAMinc Website, but hurry.

Good night all....TT

Big Country...

This is what the John Paul Jones Arena looked like a few minutes after the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert last Thursday in Charlottesville. D & I joined our daughter for a belated Christmas present to take in this big-time high-tech country pop extravaganza and I must say it was in impressive showcase for two talented stars who have reached a level in the music biz that affords them a dazzling level of staging and support. I'll confess that this remarkable excess of sound and lights is something I'm fascinated by...the perfectly synchronized efforts of a crew of 140 people who set this gear up, run it and tear it down in every arena they play just to make it all larger than life...a half dozen tractor trailers and dozen tour buses to move them all around...a live concert video production with mulitiple cameras including one flying over the floor like in the NFL. The technical coordination and wizardry just blows me away and even though acoustics and my unfamiliarity with Keith and Carrie's tunes made lyric comprehension difficult, I still enjoyed the scope and specatacle of it all. Keith Urban was a tireless and generous performer, welcoming three teens with a big sign on stage for multiple hugs and a lifetime memory to take home and after strolling out in the crowd playing his electric guitar, he proceeded to take it off, sign it with a Sharpie and give it to some random guy in the crowd...to keep! Looked like a nice Les Paul or something too. And he lingered long after the show pressing flesh and signing anything and everything. Both kids earned their money, and so did the team that puts in so much long before and long after the stars have done their thing. Big time.

We at JAMinc are very excited about our new venture with Page Wilson's venerable Out O' The Blue Radio Revue which will result in his airing many of our In Your Ear Studio A concerts on WCVE on Saturday nights. For the past couple of years we've staged over a dozen of these intimate performances lovingly captured by Carlos Chafin and the peerless gear at IYE. You can look forward to hearing edited sets by Dirk Hamilton (our most recent), John Cephas & Eliza Lynn (our next one on May 1st) and we hope many of our past shows featuring Peter Ostrouschko, Phil Wiggins, The Kruger Brothers, Bruce Molsky, Jake Armerding and many others. Page plans to air approximately one half hour of live recorded concert in each hour of his weekly program. We're jazzed to find such a perfect way to share these wonderful musical experiences with a wider audience and we'll let you know here and elsewhere when the first one will run. In the meantime, join us for the incomparable Piedmont blues man John Cephas and rising singer- songwriter Eliza Lynn, who's recently toured the British Isles with the likes of Nanci Griffith and Dougie MacLean. It should be memorable evening. Just visit the Website for more info and for reservations.

Kay and company at Ashland Coffee and Tea have a strong spring lineup set to go in our favorite listening room starting with a terrific bluegrass band from Alaska called Bearfoot on April 23rd, to be followed by Eliza Gilkyson, Jake Armerding, Brad Spivey & The Honky Tonk Experience, Slaid Cleaves w/Charles Arthur, John Cowan, Steep Canyon Rangers, Chatham County Line, Justin Townes Earle and the Biscuit Burners. That gets us into June, and that's not all. Check their calendar for the full roster.

Don't forget The National welcomes Old Crow Medicine Show on April 23rd and Jerry Douglas on April 25th. That'll give him plenty of time to make his Sunday afternoon set at MerleFest, which by the way starts a week from Thursday and for which we'll try to offer some running commentary. If you're going, look me up around the Cabin Stage, my home away from home for those four glorious April days every year for the past eighteen.

I don't remember a more beautiful blooming spring than the one we're in the middle of, but maybe I'm just more receptive to such things as the years fall away. Blessings to count...TT

The Cline Shrine...

If I ever find out that Patsy Cline somehow, somewhere was able to find out about or even hear our concert at the Virginia Historical Society last Friday night celebrating her life and her music, I'd like to ask her if she had a good time, hoping that she would be grateful to the talented people who put in a lot of time and effort bringing her songs to a new life. It was a gratifying experience for me to work with this amazing bunch of musicians who poured themselves into the project wholeheartedly and did themselves proud. First to Brad Spivey, Mike Lucas, Randy Cook, Mark Watts, Clark Ball and keyboard queen Lucy Kilpatrick, thanks for learning the songs so well. To Sara Arthur, Donna Meade Dean, Kelli Moss and Terri Simpson, our more-than-fabulous female vocalists, thanks for making some great old tunes new again. To the quintessential country gentleman George Hamilton IV, thanks for coming from Nashville to be part of this and for your warm and gentle words and songs during the show. To the number-one Texas Wildcat Jimmy Dean, bless you for all that you've done for so many over the years, including our audience held firmly in the palm of your hand through every verse and chorus of "Big Bad John." Incidentally and appropriately, Jimmy's big number-one hit peaked on the Billboard charts the very same month as Patsy's "Crazy," in October of 1961. Thanks to the mildest-mannered sound man I've had the pleasure of working with...Jan Williams of FCP Sound & Light in Lancaster. He's unflappable, has great gear and knows what to do with it and he makes it all look easy. And for those who weren't able to make the show, and especially for those of us who were, thanks to the legend, Bill McElroy of Slipped Disc for what I'm confident will be a perfectly-polished digital recording of the whole thing.

From Winchester, thanks to Prof. Warren Hofstra of Shenandoah University for coming up with the symposium in the first place, to John Lewis and Mark Foreman for the loan of the WINC mike flag, and to Linda Ross for trusting us with the elegant cream-colored leather jacket worn by Jessica Lang in the Patsy biopic Sweet Dreams. The Hatch Show Print poster by Nashville's Jim Sherraden was hand done, signed and numbered especially for this event.

Lastly and obviously, I'm indebted to the Virginia Historical Society and Pam Seay for giving me the chance to do something like this. Cynthia Moore, Paul Levengood, Jennifer Mason, Carol Anne Baker, Doris Delk and Keith Cox should all be given credit for helping extend the Society's horizons toward the less-explored fields of the performing arts, which comprise a colorful reflection of our Virginia culture. What's next?

I do want to offer up a "save the date" notice for Friday, June 13th when the eclectic and compelling string band The Waybacks head back to town for the fourth Music For Massey fundraiser for the Massey Cancer Center at VCU. This year they'll be sharing the bill with Americana singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale, who scored the bluegrass Grammy earlier this year. It'll be back on the tracks at the Science Museum of Virginia, and I'll let you know when tickets go on sale.

So now that I can part Patsy's company for a while, it's tax time which always seems to coincide with the delicate purple blooms of Virginia's redbud trees. Visually they're about my favorite part of spring and they prompt me to count my blessings, which can become less obvious while feeding the TurboTax questionniare. And there's the annual pilgrimmage to MerleFest in a few weeks....sweet.

TT

The Learning Curve...

(Terri Simpson, Mike Lucas and Randy Cook at Mike's studio last week)
Getting ready for this Patsy Cline tribute concert at the Virginia Historical Society this Friday night has been an adventure that I'd take nothing for. To get such dedicated and enthusiastic work out of our amazing musicians has been a true joy to witness and I just hope we'll have a big crowd to pay them off with our cheers and applause. Brad Spivey and his woodshedding honky tonkers with keyboard ringer Lucy Kilpatrick have spent their weekly rehearsals for the past two or three months learning this often tricky material, and the last two weeks' run-throughs with singers Kelli Moss, Sara Arthur and Terri Simpson have been a real thrill. I hesitate to say too much more, especially with Jimmy & Donna Dean coming to go over their stuff tonight, but if you're a fan of the the American classics made popular by Winchester's ambitious, courageous and pioneering girl singer, you need to be at VHS on the 4th. The concert caps a day long symposium entitled "Sweet Dreams...The Life and Times of Patsy Cline" You can do the whole day with lunch included or just the concert. Call 804.358-4901 for reservations.

Sadly we're up against extraordinary guitarist David Grier at Ashland Coffee and Tea and Hot Tuna's Jorma Kaukonen at the National, but as our musical options grow in this town, so do the frustrations that on any given night, chances are you're missing something good.

Just get out and hear some of this live music in town. Or check wonderful art galleries teeming with folks for First Friday along West Broad downtown. If you haven't been, you'll be blown away.

TT