Tag: documentary

Ken Burns, Vince Gill Discuss ‘Country Music’

Posted on by Editor

For the most dedicated country fans, the moment has finally arrived. The 16-hour documentary Country Music is complete and headed to PBS stations on Sunday, September 15. Across eight episodes, filmmakers Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, and Julie Dunfey tell the story of country music from its beginnings through the mid-1990s

On Today, Burns stated, “This is American history firing on all cylinders. It’s who we are. It’s another way to see the complicated 20th century, and it’s also for today a time where we can bring ourselves together. Country music reminds us we’re all the same boat together. The themes of a country song are the themes of human experience, of love and loss — two four-letter words that most of us are uncomfortable with.”

He added, “You know, we disguise it and say it’s about good ol’ boys, and pick-up trucks, and hound dogs, and six-packs of beer. That’s a small, tiny, little sub-genre. When you hear ‘Go Rest High on That Mountain’ by Vince…. He says, ‘At the end of the day, all I ever wanted from music was to be moved.’ Country music at its heart is telling us about basic human experiences, and that we’re all together in this. It’s only us, there’s no them, and that’s good medicine right now.”

Asked about the evolution of country music, Gill responded, “I think if you’re going to do a comparison, you have to do all music. It’s not fair to just take country music and say only country music has changed. Because jazz has changed, rock ‘n’ roll has changed, rhythm and blues has changed, there’s hip-hop, there’s rap. Every kind of music has found a new way to communicate with people. And we’re no different.”

He continued, “We are so grateful to Ken and Dayton and Julie for taking this on. And from my viewpoint, finally giving us some dignity and some respect that we have longed for ever since we started making this music.”

Bluegrass is One ‘Big Family’ in New Documentary

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On Friday, August 30 a brand new feature-length bluegrass documentary will premiere nationally on PBS. Conceived and created by Kentucky Educational Television, Big Family: The Story of Bluegrass Music offers a comprehensive look at bluegrass — its origins, the pioneers who shaped its sound, and its Kentucky connections and worldwide appeal. More than 50 stars, musicians, and personalities appear in the film, including Alison Brown, Dale Ann Bradley, Sam Bush, JD Crowe, Bela Fleck, Laurie Lewis, Del McCoury, Bobby Osborne, Ricky Skaggs, and Chris Thile. The Bluegrass Situation co-founder Ed Helms lends his voice as narrator.

Here’s our interview with filmmakers and producers Nick Helton and Matt Grimm.

BGS: How was the idea for this documentary conceived — and, was the “big family” concept a theme you expected to find going in? Did the perspective inform the content and footage, or vice versa?

Nick Helton: We had an idea of a bluegrass family tree going in, but realized that the connections between all the musicians wasn’t that straight. But the “Big Family” theme was a constant and seemed the obvious choice for the title. I’d say the content influenced the writing and editing.

Matt Grimm: That’s right, we would often ask our interviewees, “How would you describe bluegrass music in one word?” Several people responded that bluegrass music is just like a “family.” That theme continued to resonate as we conducted other interviews and could see the interconnectedness within the genre.

There have been bluegrass documentaries along these lines made in the past. What new ground did you hope to cover by making this film?

MG: Our aim was to tell the comprehensive story from the perspective of a wide breadth of those in the genre, while also sharing some great music and rare footage at the same time. While formulating the script with our writer, Teresa Day, we saw parallels between the evolution of bluegrass and America’s larger societal issues. For instance, the effect that economic migration had on the music in the 1930s or how the social revolutions of the 1960s played out in bluegrass music also. By including these larger themes, we hope the film will also have broad appeal and reach a wider audience.

NH: We hadn’t seen a documentary that went this in-depth, especially with interviews and narration telling the story. We wanted a film that would introduce a new audience to the genre, but also entertain and inform the fans of bluegrass music.

Kentucky’s bluegrass heritage certainly informs the film — and its inception — but how deep is that connection to you and the team at KET?

MG: KET has a long history with bluegrass music. Beginning in the 1970s, KET has routinely shared bluegrass music with its viewers. I grew up in New York State and was probably first introduced to bluegrass as a child watching The Andy Griffith Show reruns with my family. Watching “The Darlings” (The Dillards) pick together onscreen was so much fun. I have always enjoyed the music, but have grown to understand and appreciate it so much more now.

NH: I’m a Kentucky native so there was some pride in making a film about our native-born music. I formerly produced/directed the KET bluegrass music show Jubilee, so I have been involved in the bluegrass music scene in a television capacity since 2007.

There’s quite an array of stars, artists, and interviewees who appear. What informed your selection process?

MG: We wanted the film to include a chorus of musicians from across the genre. All the interviewees bring their own bluegrass story and perspective. Hearing from those from California, New York, or even Tokyo was just as important to us as hearing from bluegrassers from Kentucky and Tennessee.

NH: We are lucky that the IBMA World of Bluegrass event exists. We attended that week-long conference twice during the interview process, which allowed us to interview dozens of people in one location. Other interviews were based upon availability of artists and their role in the story.

We definitely recognize that narration voice work. How’d you come to work with our friend and co-founder Ed Helms?

NH: Ed was on a very short list of narrators we felt had a tie to the music in addition to the chops for narration. We met someone from The Bluegrass Situation at IBMA in 2016 and when the time came to pursue narration used that connection to inquire about Ed’s interest. Ed was quick to reply, his schedule worked out, and he gave us a perfect narration read. We couldn’t be happier to have Ed involved.

MG: That’s right, Ed was perfect. We were thrilled he agreed to be a part of the project.

What do you hope the film accomplishes as it is released into the world? What response have you gotten from the bluegrass community?

NH: We’ve had a few preview events around Kentucky this summer to promote the film; the response has been overwhelmingly positive. We received a standing ovation at the first screening, which was an amazing feeling. We hope the bluegrass community is proud of how they are represented and that we bring some new fans to the genre.

MG: We hope the film connects the dots for some who have never heard the bluegrass story in this way. It has been wonderfully received. People have expressed their surprise over learning new aspects of the story and, I think, have found it very entertaining. We approached the task with a great deal of respect and admiration for the music. It has been our privilege to share this story. It’s been a lot of fun too.

Image courtesy of KET

Nicolas Winding Refn Brings Rare Country Music Films to UK’s Black Deer Festival

Posted on by Editor

Since he made a name for himself with the 2011 neo-noir film Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn has become synonymous with sleek, glossy visuals and pristine synthetic pop. That makes him an unlikely figure to participate in this month’s Black Deer Festival, the new boutique, UK weekender celebrating Americana and country music.

But the 48-year-old Denmark native has demonstrated his interest in US culture throughout his career, starting with an obsession with cult exploitation and horror movies that spawned a coffee-table book of posters (The Act of Seeing, 2015). Then there’s the archive of some 200 movies that he’s restored under the banner of his byNWR project – three of which are to get a rare public screening at Black Deer. They include a 1965 concert film featuring George Jones and Loretta Lynn, as well as a musical country and western comedy he describes as “like a Carry On movie, shot in the South.”

Based in Copenhagen, Refn is a frequent visitor to the States, where he once lived as a child. It explains the light transatlantic twang to his near-perfect English. But the fascination with American culture began before that, he suggests. “I think it started back when I was eight years old,” Refn recalls, “and my mom was in New York, basically assessing if this was a place we were gonna move to. So, she had been away for a couple of weeks, and she sent me a package with a 45 of Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again.’ Ever since then, I’ve always had an infatuation with that kind of country and western, and the more that I started learning about it, the more I started getting into it.”

Refn’s taste in Americana and country should be apparent from the films he’s selected for Black Deer. The first is Forty Acre Feud (1965), featuring comedy turns and musical performances from a host of stars from Minnie Pearl and Skeeter Davis to Ray Price. “It’s one of those strange country and western films that was specifically made for the Southern market,” says Refn. “It’s from an archive of a director called Ron Ormond. We happen to own his entire library in the collection. He made these very peculiar Southern-oriented drive-in movies. They very rarely even made it to the north in America. They’re very, very much part of a specific kind of illusion of America.”

Refn is as fascinated by the director’s backstory as the film itself. “The interesting thing about Ron Ormond is that he and his wife June ran a mom-and-pop exploitation business down South, and they would fly around in a private plane to collect revenues from the various drive-ins. Then they had a near-fatal crash that made them very religious, and they turned their bag of tricks to the whole religious crowd in the South, and started making films like If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, which was produced by a guy called Estus Pirkle, who was a real hardline pastor. It’s quite an infamous religious propaganda movie about Communism spreading through the US.”

Perhaps the more conventional of the three titles is Ray Dennis Steckler’s Wild Guitar (1962), in which a young rock ’n’ roller gets into the music business and falls foul of a manipulative manager. “That’s a really interesting flick,” says Refn. “It’s a great kind of document of Los Angeles in the early ‘60s. It was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, a famous cinematographer that went on to win multiple awards for his work with much bigger directors, like Steven Spielberg. But as a film it’s actually quite a groovy coming-of-age, kind of cautionary tale about rock ‘n’ roll. It has some great rock songs in it. In fact it has everything in it: dames, music, good photography, gangsters, guns, fights, love, and mayhem.”

Rounding off Refn’s three choices is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers (1967), one of only two films directed by the lesser-known Larry E. Jackson. “It’s an amazing, low-grade It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World kind of thing — with fantastic country and western music in it. And they play the whole songs until the end. It’s quite surreal in a way. It’s a bit like a Jacques Tati movie, I guess. It’s more like a comedy really. It’s just a really, really fringe comedy of a certain era that’s gone. It’s very innocent and kind of quirky in a way. But the music is just absolutely outstanding, and the way that the musical numbers are introduced is just fantastic.”

Each of these films, with their ragged edges and primal, analogue sounds, will come as a surprise to those who only know Refn from his recent English-language work and see him as a pioneer of the digital era. “I always say you have to love and embrace all kinds of music,” he observes. “For me, a lot of it is about, ‘Is it sincere? Is there something within it?’ I think if you always approach music like that, then in a way there’ll be something in all genres that touches you.”

Photo credit: Kia Hartelius (portrait); Scott Garfield (with car)

WATCH: An Exclusive Preview of ‘Revival: The Sam Bush Story’

Posted on by Editor

With his extraordinary musicianship and boundless energy, Sam Bush embodies the spirit of bluegrass. The award-winning documentary, Revival: The Sam Bush Story, captures him in peak form, with testimonials from many of his fellow musicians.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Bush remarked after seeing the film for the first time. “Your friends are talking about you. You’re watching yourself back when you only had one chin. It’s pretty amazing to think I got out of high school 45 years ago and have been fortunate to play music ever since. I hope people come away from watching the film with a greater appreciation for Americana and acoustic music.”

The film may be purchased or rented on Amazon on Thursday, November 1. Here’s a preview:

Image Used With Permission from Revival: The Sam Bush Story

‘MAKE’ Documentary Explores the Lives of Creatives

Posted on by Editor

People love focusing on the "how" of the creative process — how to write a song, how to finish a novel, how to paint happy trees like Bob Ross. What sometimes gets overlooked in the conversation about creativity, however, is the "why." Why are artists driven to create? Why do people give their lives over to creative pursuits? Why is creativity so essential to the human experience?

The folks at Musicbed — a company that specializes in licensing music for video, film, and advertising — believe that, when it comes to creativity, the why is often just as important as the how. To get to the heart of that big question, they made MAKE, a feature-length documentary showcasing the creative lives of several musicians, filmmakers, and designers.

"For about two years, we had been making short, four- or five-minute films with our artists and with filmmakers that we worked with, just following their creative lives and their journeys and their struggles," Musicbed founder and CEO Daniel McCarthy explains. "Basically, we had been making short versions of this film for about two years. Every creative, whether it was a filmmaker or one of our musicians, they all said the same stuff, which is that they had been following this passion and then this passion turned into some sort of success and they very easily fell into this trap of chasing the success versus chasing their passion. They all had very similar life struggles in trying to get back to the root of why they were doing what they were doing. It felt like everyone was saying the same thing without saying it the same way. "

Musicbed's meticulously curated selection of license-ready music includes songs from Sugar + the Hi-Lows and Daniel Ellsworth and the Great Lakes, and they've worked with major clients including Nike, Google, and Mercedes-Benz. For MAKE, they rounded up friends and colleagues, like indie duo Sylvan Esso, filmmaker Eliot Rausch, and singer/songwriter Drew Holcomb. The team strives to work with artists who are as passionate about music as they are, and who share a similar outlook on the creative process. "When you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, it makes the how a lot easier," McCarthy says. "It actually makes the how enjoyable, if you love the why."

"We have partnered with Musicbed a lot over the years, making videos together, and we share very similar DNA in terms of an 'art first' mentality, so when they asked me to play a part, it was an easy answer," Holcomb says. "I hope the film will inspire people to take chances for their creative dreams. There is plenty more room in the world for more dreamers and creatives to invent new things, make new music, and keep telling new and different stories."

The film also looks at traps that creatives can fall into while trying to make authentic art in often competitive landscapes. "Every filmmaker, every musician, they all can pick up these little tactics to figure out how to make something," McCarthy says. "The synth is really popular right now in music. Every musician that we represent could figure out a couple little synth sounds and very specific things you can do to make your songs sound relevant or be some sort of hit, but it ends up being a rip-off, sometimes, because you’re just figuring out these little quick wins.

"When an artist uses their real voice, they can say, 'I know why I’m making this; I know what I’m trying to accomplish,' and then they start being who they’re supposed to be instead of some echo of someone else’s product."

While the film doesn't provide any one template for becoming a successful musician or an award-winning filmmaker, it succeeds at getting to the heart of what drives artists: passion.

As McCarthy puts it, "I think that art gives people a lot of meaning. It adds to the cultural conversation. It helps people endure and understand suffering and joy. I just wanted to be a part of that. The arts were a major pipeline for me in my youth to understand my place in the world, challenge my assumptions and expand my heart. So the creative process, for me, follows that."

 

Check out Drew Holcomb's Musicbed Session for "American Beauty."

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Get Ready for Winnipeg Folk Festival with This Cult Classic Film

Posted on by Editor

"Winnipeg, Winnipeg, snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg. My home for my entire life.” 

We may as well have written those words ourselves, with how excited we are to get to Winnipeg for Winnipeg Folk Festival next week (although we would have swapped out “snowy” for something a little more summery). Great music, great food, and our very own BGS mini-fest? Yeah, it’s kind of the best.

Our love for the capitol of Manitoba aside, the above declaration comes from the 2007 film My Winnipeg, a strange, award-winning journey to the heart of one man’s experience growing up in, you guessed it, Winnipeg. Filmmaker Guy Maddin revisits his birthplace in what he describes as a “docu-fantasia,” assembling city shots and short, recreated scenes from his childhood in black and white to create a vision of Winnipeg that is as eerie as it is entertaining. 

The story chronicles Maddin’s attempt to “escape” Winnipeg which, as he describes in the trailer, he can only do via “extreme measures,” including subletting his childhood home, hiring actors to play his siblings, even bringing in a dog to “play” his childhood pet. There’s a healthy dose of Freudian psychology, a bizarre soundtrack, and some questionably poetic descriptors (“My mother, as perennial as the Winter, as ancient as the bison …”) guiding viewers along as Maddin attempts to “leave [his home] for good.”

The film was a critical success, landing on a number of top 10 lists and taking home Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007. It's one of several films for which Maddin has earned acclaim since releasing his first film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, in 1988.

Check out an interview with Maddin below, and head over to the Criterion Collection, if you want to watch the film in its entirety. And don’t miss us next week at Winnipeg Folk Festival! We promise we won’t mention Freud. 

Wendell Berry and the Virtue of Hope: A Conversation with Filmmaker Laura Dunn

Posted on by Editor

For legions of folks, Wendell Berry is far more than a writer and a farmer. He's also a hero, an icon, a role model. His plain-spoken, yet poetic way of moving through the world inspires those who seek to tread a similarly thoughtful path without leaving much in the way of footprints. Through his book writing and community building, Berry shares his message of heart, of healing, and of hope — a message that filmmaker Laura Dunn set out to capture and convey in her new documentary about Berry, The Seer.

You had an interesting challenge on your hands to paint a portrait of Wendell by sketching out his world and his view without ever filming him. Because his voice is there and his life is there, you almost don't notice that he's not actually there. Mission accomplished?

Yeah, oh yeah. That's great to hear. I've been doing documentary films for a while and I'm tired of the sort of sprawling issues piece. I was interested more in something personal, something intimate. I really wanted to do a portrait. That way you get to know a single person and piece together a bunch of different issues.

Wendell's my favorite writer — has long been — and I'd met him in the course of working on my last feature. I wanted to do something with his work. So I set out to do it that way, though I knew pretty early on that he was anti-screen, of all kinds. That certainly presents a challenge, but I like that challenge. It might make it less marketable, but that's not why I do films.

I mean, it'd be one thing if he didn't want to go on camera because he's shy or whatever. But his opinion about screens, I think is really interesting and provocative. He thinks they deaden the imagination, that they contribute to the decline in literacy. So I think not having him on screen actually reflects something essential about him, if that makes sense. I thought it was a good challenge because it actually forces you to open up your imagination and think in a different way … which is what Wendell does, through his writing.

Absolutely. The thing that steps up and takes his place is community. I feel like, whether it's online or on land, community is something that everyone craves and you put it at the heart of this film. So channel Wendell for me on the importance of community.

That's great. I think you totally picked up on the other reason why not having him visible is really significant.

He once said to me that our culture likes to idolize people, put people up on a pedestal. But it's not true. We are all just a function of those who are around us. I am defined by my family, my neighbors, my landscape. That is who I am.

There's a great quote in one of his awesome fiction books called The Memory of Old Jack. One of his most famous fictional characters is an old farmer named Burley Coulter and Burley says, “We are all of one another.” All of us. We are part of one another. I think that's essential to understanding Wendell's world view. If you look at the wood engraving image that comes up as the title card in the film, it's a picture of Wendell, but he's looking away from the camera. His coat and his body are made up of images from his place.

That's a huge part of it, too, and one of the other concepts that jumped out for me, as well … the idea of having intimacy with a place — really knowing the land and its inhabitants. That's such a huge part of Wendell's perspective and motivation.

Yeah.

Do you feel like that practice has been lost as folks have migrated into cities or can that still happen in urban settings? Can people have those sorts of relationships?

I hope so. It is a highly mobile society, though. I live in Austin. I moved here for grad school 15 years ago. It has changed dramatically. It was a sleepy college town when I came here and it has become a big, urban center. So I've seen that kind of displacement because there are so many people moving in here from elsewhere and that pushes the prices up and displaces all of the folks, like me, who can't afford to live here anymore. I think that mobility makes connecting to your place and putting down roots very difficult. It's financial or economic forces that are displacing us. So I think it's a real challenge.

However, I would say that I think the way Mary Berry talks in the film about taking a walk and showing your children how to look and see … and I think the example of Steve Smith, the farmer who reimagined his own farm and started a CSA — the first one of its kind in Kentucky — and paid off his farm … There are urban farms, there are all kinds of ways that one can connect to where he or she is. It doesn't have to be multiple generations on a single farm. [Laughs]

So I would answer your question both yes and no. I do think people can always find ways to root themselves and connect to their neighbors and their landscape and their kids. I think that's one of the beauties of Wendell's world view is that it shows you the large-scale problems, but the answer that he gives is always, “If there aren't large-scale solutions to large-scale problems, it's all about the small scale.” That's where you can have agency in your life and in your world. That, I find very empowering, for me personally.

Piggy-backing on that, there's the bit about mistaking small places for nowhere …

Exactly.

That is something I think we are all guilty of, if not individually, then collectively. But the lives lived in small places aren't a joke to be laughed at. I don't know if you'll agree, but it seems like this election season is highlighting that those people need to be taken very seriously.

Yeah. Isn't that fascinating? I agree. I'm from the South and I went to college in Connecticut. And I have this one foot in the documentary film world, but I also have the other foot as a stay-at-home mom with six boys in Texas. So I think that I'm well-aware of how these ideas are so polarized … the stereotypes of the South, the stereotypes of rural people. And the tyrannical political correctness of the documentary film world is very much of that ilk.

The Democrats think they are so enlightened, but there's a huge disconnect between urban and rural. That's, I think, one of Wendell's key messages. You can buy all the organic food you want at Whole Foods, but if you have a total disregard for the culture where that food is made, there's a degradation of the people, there's a degradation of the land, and ultimately, your consumption is not going to have any effect, if the economics are such that people think they can't farm.

There's a huge disconnect. Mary Berry said it wonderfully. She was at SXSW when we screened the film and she had a great quote about all the eco-consumers in Austin. She said as the demand for local and organic foods is going up, the number of farmers in the country is going down. She said that less than three-quarters of a percent of our population are farming. That is staggering.

So, yeah, there's a cultural divide there. And I agree: The election season is illustrating it, powerfully.

In the film, Wendell draws that line. It's populism versus capitalism which he frames as value over profit. When he draws the line all the way back to the source with “farming as art as life” … you can't separate those things. It's all Creation, no matter what your spiritual inclination might be. It's the political as the personal as the political. It all ties together.

Yeah. Truly! I love how you talk about it. That's encouraging to hear. I mean, I'm a Christian and Wendell's a Christian, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a right-wing propagandist. [Laughs] My politics are complicated and personal. I'm registered Independent because I can't attach myself to a formulaic world view. I was raised in a Christian family and I was taught those values, but there are many people who would hear me even say that and make a whole lot of assumptions about what a bad person I am. I'm so tired of those stereotypes. They are wrong and they have consequences. So, yeah, Wendell is definitely elevating the rural people.

I mean, I'm making a documentary and I know a bit about the documentary film world, which tends to lean left in a big way. I've always voted Democrat. It's not like I'm a card-carrying Republican, by any means. But I want there to be more complexity in politics. I say all that to say that the documentary film world, the powers-that-be in it are very attached to political correctness. I mean crazy attached. I thought, “What are they going to do with a film that looks lovingly at white, male, tobacco farmers from the South?” [Laughs] “What are they going to do?” It's been interesting. It's been embraced by some and shunned by others. I know that it provokes those politically correct radars in an anxious way.

[Laughs] The other idea that really struck me was the idea that making art equals making life, that you can look through a man's art and see him (or her). That must've resonated with you, as well, as a filmmaker.

Totally. Those of us — and I get the sense you're this way — who are trying to resist an industrial machine that tends to destroy everything we love, you try to find ways in your own life to do good work, to be inspired … to try to live a happy, good life against a lot of odds, these days. I think, for me, art is — and the Berrys reflect this — art is this beautiful way to work against the ugly things in the world. It isn't simply about a painting on the wall or a film.

Tanya Berry really elevates the domestic realm and imbues it with an artfulness. Like I said, I'm a full-time stay-at-home mom with six kids and part-time homeschool, yet I'm trying to be a filmmaker, too. There's often a sense of divide for me, personally. Tanya illustrates this. She elevates the domestic and shows that all aspects of life can be imbued with an artfulness because artfulness is, really, a way of seeing, a way of living. That, personally, helped me connect the different pieces of my life.

I don't have kids, but the whole thing about … when Mary's describing how they would make them look at things, make them appreciate things, and really engage them and their minds in thinking critically and with wonder. Gosh, if more parents engaged on that level, the world might have a chance.

I know what you mean. It's so crazy how our culture obscures all the most-basic things. You know? All this talk about education, but what about simply spending time with your kids and talking to them about what they see?

Or what they think or what they feel?

Right? Yeah. It's amazing how we obscure the most fundamental, natural paths, sometimes.

What was your biggest take-away from the project? What changed you? What has stuck with you?

Honestly, it was time with Tanya … kind of on a continuation of what we were just talking about. That's why the film goes there. It starts with Wendell and examines his fundamental, key arguments because I couldn't make a film about Wendell, in good conscience, without making classical arguments because that's what he would want. [Laughs] He wouldn't want it just to be an artsy-fartsy, feel-good piece. It has to have classical applications. So I knew I had to examine his ideas in that way.

But I think where we end up is with Tanya, mostly. I think there's a sense of hopefulness there. I think her connecting those dots for me, personally, between art and life was key.

And I think making environmental documentaries across the past 20 years can be very depressing. If you do the math, it's not looking so good, in terms of our natural resources — our fresh air, our clean water, our landscape … it's very depressing. At some point, I talked to Wendell about that and he said, “Of course you have to hope. Hope's a virtue. So we've got to find a way to have it.” I appreciate that because it challenges you. Like, “Quit sitting around whining. Find a way to create hopefulness in your own life. Make it happen.”

So, for me, personally, Tanya and Steve Smith, with his farm and CSA and the way he reimagined his landscape by looking for little glimmers of hope in his landscape, makes me want to find them in my own landscape and nurture them, grow them, rather than getting so overwhelmed with the looming specifics.

I'll be honest, I'm still going to do everything I can, because I believe in karma and I don't want this on me, but I think we're past the point of no return with the environment. It breaks my heart.

Yeah. Yeah.

If everyone had started doing everything they could 40 years ago, we wouldn't be here. But it hasn't happened.

It's amazing what we can do, when we want to. I think about us going to the moon and stuff. It's unbelievable what we can accomplish when we want to. I also think the resilience of nature is pretty freaking amazing. If we'd get out of the way, it can also heal itself pretty well. So I think there's good reason to despair, for sure.

But I know Wendell, through his work, points to the ugly in a very sobering way. It's hard. But, through the way he writes about things and talks about things, he shows the beauty there, and it's helpful, it's inspiring. So, hang on to that.

Photos courtesy of Laura Dunn and Wendell Berry

Watch Rad ’80s Bluegrass Documentary ‘That’s Bluegrass’

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There's nothing quite like a great, vintage documentary. And one about bluegrass? Well, that's documentary gold, in our opinion. So we were pretty excited to find That's Bluegrass, a late '70s/early '80s documentary that explores the genre's front porch origins and features footage of Jimmy Martin, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt, and more.

Director John G. Thomas captures the landscape — physically, in beautiful shots of Appalachia, and spirtitually, by showing the deep roots of the genre's community — through 53 minutes of live performances, candid interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. Highlights include a young Marty Stuart playing mandolin for Lester Flatt, some insider scoop on Earl Scruggs wanting to hire a guy named "Bill" (that's Monroe, for those of you playing along at home), and footage of Dr. Ralph Stanley, now 88, back in his younger years. Performances include "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the latter of which you likely recognize from the classic television show The Beverly Hillbillies. 

It's so good that Rhonda Vincent herself stumbled upon it, posting a link to Facebook and citing one of the film's best moments — Lester Flatt singing the theme song for Martha White baking products. The documentary also contains the last filmed interview with Flatt before his 1979 death from heart failure at the age of 64.

Check out the trailer and watch That's Bluegrass in its entirety over at Vimeo — a couple bucks if you want to rent it, a few more if you'd like to make it yours forever.

That's Bluegrass from Echelon Studios on Vimeo.

FILM PREMIERE: The Orphan Brigade, ‘Soundtrack to a Ghost Story’

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Artist: The Orphan Brigade (Neilson Hubbard, Ben Glover, and Joshua Britt)
Hometown: Franklin, KY
Album/Film: Soundtrack to a Ghost Story
Release Date: November 13

In Their Words: "I grew up in Franklin, KY, where the house is located. My uncle ran the Octagon Hall as a Civil War Museum when I was growing up, so it was kind of 'in the family.' I studied history at university and always loved the wild history of Kentucky so I loved hearing about the place. Over the last few years, it developed this haunted house reputation thanks to many of the television ghost shows. I went there a lot as a kid, but for some reason, never spent a lot of time in the actual house. I would go to family gatherings on the grounds and run around in the fields.

When I went back after all these years, it felt like stepping into an old, distant memory. Even during the first visit, we started talking about recording music in that place because it's pretty obvious that the house has some unique sound characteristics. The Octagon Hall has a big heaviness to it, just in the architecture, but also because the place is full of a history filled with slavery and death and personal tragedies. It's centered right in the middle of the place I come from in the South. It's a part of my life I do feel a love and a pride for, but this place forces me to look at that past — and at brotherly warfare and poverty and death — and decide for myself what a life is. Also, that whole part of Kentucky is one of the most beautiful places I have laid eyes on. Going back to Franklin and to the Hall made me feel all of those things at once, and that is the strong force that inspired me to make art there." — Joshua Britt

THE ORPHAN BRIGADE – Soundtrack To A Ghost Story // THE FILM from Neighborhoods Apart Productions on Vimeo.

Photo credit: Jim Demain