Tag: music maker relief foundation

Guided by the Hand of God, Robert Finley Attains His Lifelong Dream

Posted on by Editor

Depending on how much attention one pays to labels, singer-songwriter Robert Finley could accurately be called both a blues and soul vocalist, even though he’s also performed plenty of gospel, and has a passionate faith that is often reflected in comments about his unlikely emergence as a national figure in his 60s.

“You can’t call it anything except the hand of God a lot of what’s happened in my life,” Finley tells BGS. “For me to be recording and performing now, to have met and established a friendship with a young white guy like Dan (the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach), and to be in the studio now recording and singing these songs when that’s what I’ve always wanted to do all my life, well it’s just God’s hand in my life.”

Robert Finley’s story is indeed a distinctive one. He was born in Winnsboro and raised in Bernice, Louisiana, and the lure of music was such he began playing the guitar at 11, purchasing one from a thrift store in town. “I remember hearing the gospel singers and people like James Brown,” he continues. “Singing is what I wanted to do from the time I was a kid, but as far as traveling and visiting places and doing some of what I’m doing now, no there’s no way I ever thought I’d be able to do that.”

One of eight children, Finley grew up in the Jim Crow South. His family were sharecroppers, and Finley was often working with his family in the fields picking cotton. When he got the chance, he attended a segregated school, but dropped out in the 10th grade to get a job. Now, at 67 years old, his voice has a power and authority that come from voicing experiences many only read about in history books.

The title of his third LP is definitive: Sharecropper’s Son, released in May on Easy Eye Sound. One of its singles, “Country Boy,” describes how Finley grew up. That’s working hard for little gain, carving out a life in less than desirable situations, yet never letting hardships or tough times overcome a burning desire to succeed. The video for the single was shot in the Louisiana fields where his family worked. The lyrics illuminate not only the backdrop of small town and rural segregation, but also highlight other places that have influenced and shaped his life.

Another important aspect of Finley’s life was his time in the service. His military tenure began in 1970, when he joined the Army to serve as a helicopter technician in Germany. But once more due to circumstances he again credits to divine intervention, the Army band needed a guitarist. He ended up accompanying the band throughout Europe until he was discharged, where he returned home to Louisiana. He initially split time between his other love, carpentry, and heading a spiritual group called Brother Finley and the Gospel Sisters. But then he was deemed legally blind and forced to retire as a carpenter.

“Once again, I have to give credit where it’s due to God, because who knew that anyone had ever heard of me or what I was doing in Louisiana,” Finley says, marveling at the fact that the Music Maker Relief Foundation discovered him before a 2015 date in Arkansas. They were thrilled by his sound and helped start a new phase of his career, with Finley appearing on tours with such blues vocalists as Alabama Slim and Robert Lee Coleman. Subsequently the title track of his debut album Age Don’t Mean a Thing celebrated what was essentially an artistic rebirth, and that 2016 LP attracted widespread critical attention.

A big part of that was due to Finley’s raw, fresh delivery, one clearly steeped in the blend of spiritual and secular elements that comprise classic soul, yet vibrant, dynamic and contemporary rather than a retro reflection mimicking past greats. Finley wrote most of the material and was backed by members of the Bo-Keys. Shortly after the LP, he met Auerbach, forging a musical and personal kinship that remains strong to this day.

“To think I would meet someone like Dan, a young guy with the soul and skill of the old-timers,” Finley continues. “Man, I couldn’t believe it when I first heard him play, and when we started talking about music, how quickly we connected and we still do.” Their first project was an original soundtrack for the Z2 Comics’ graphic novel Murder Ballads. Later came Finley’s second LP, Goin’ Platinum, produced by Auerbach. Finley would also appear on Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Revue tour, and later do his own series of shows on a world tour.

Then came something Finley describes as a “dream happening.” He was a 2019 contestant on America’s Got Talent, though he was eliminated in the semi-final round. But before that his tune “Get It While You Can” was released in a sneak peek that generated even more interest, to the point Sharecropper’s Son has been eagerly anticipated.

Its lead single “Souled Out on You” depicts the end of a relationship and describes in vivid fashion the ups and downs that eventually caused what was initially seen as a great thing to end. But its essence is Finley’s life story, something he says “I was really ready to tell. Dan and the people he had in the studio were perfect for what I wanted to say. It’s almost like they knew it like I did, and it was really something sitting in that studio and being surrounded by that talent.”

The session’s musical excellence would be expected from a band of this caliber, with guitar assistance coming from Auerbach, Mississippi blues ace Kenny Brown and fellow Louisiana native Billy Sanford, as well as pedal steel player Russ Pahl. With Bobby Wood on keyboards, bassists Nick Movshon, Eric Deaton, and Dave Roe, legendary drummer Gene Chrisman, percussionist Sam Bacco and a full horn section on board, the various songs’ backgrounds, arrangements and solos are outstanding. Auerbach, Finley, Wood, and Pat McLaughlin shared compositional duties.

Given Finley’s history, it wouldn’t be unfair to think at some point there might be either some regret or bitterness expressed regarding events or personalities in his past. But nothing could be further from the reality. Robert Finley is one of the most upbeat, optimistic people you could ever hope to meet, and that resilience and formidable spirit can be heard in his singing, and is reaffirmed in the final things he says to end our interview.

“Yes, I still live in Bernice,” he concludes. “Why would I go anywhere else? I know these people and know this area. Both the places where I was born and grew up in now have Robert Finley Days and they gave me keys to the town. You really can’t beat that. I’ve lived long enough to be able to do what I love and make a good living. That’s the best of the many blessings I’ve gotten from the good Lord, along with meeting Dan and being able to tell the world my story.”

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Bluegrass Memoirs: The Earl Scruggs Celebration (Part 3)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s note: Read part one of Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass Memoir on the Earl Scruggs Celebration of 1987 here. Read part two here.)

Boiling Springs, NC on Saturday, September 26, 1987: My workshop in the Gardner-Webb College Library with Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Sherrill and the Hired Hands ended at 4:30 that afternoon when Dan X. Padgett presented Snuffy with a hat. From my diary:

Afterward I hung around and listened for a while to the Hired Hands’ young banjo picker Randy Lucas play the Bach “Bourrée,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and another classical piece expertly on the banjo.

Here’s a nice example, from Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor, of Randy’s recent work in this milieu:

Then, supper time came.

I went for some barbecue (big regional difference thing — this barbecue was red, vinegary; with shredded pork) with Tom [Hanchett] and Carol [Sawyer] and then was kind of enticed away by Dan X Padgett…

I’d met Padgett the afternoon prior, when I first arrived in Boiling Springs; a respected local banjo elder, he was the teacher of the young banjo player in Horace Scruggs’ band whom I’d met earlier today. Padgett had a long and interesting career, with deep connections to Earl Scruggs and Snuffy Jenkins, as well as memories of an earlier generation of banjo greats. He was interviewed for the Earl Scruggs Center by Craig Havighurst in 2010. 

I went with him…

…to his car (an old Cadillac) to look at various memorabilia like photos of him with various important country and bluegrass people. He also showed me a very worn copy of the very first F&S songbook and when I expressed a strong interest in copying it he loaned it to me. I also talked with him about the possibility of obtaining a banjo like one he played during the afternoon, a miniature Mastertone about the size of a mandolin with an actual tone ring, flange, and resonator. He said he’d see about it and we ended up standing at his trunk trying out various instruments. 

I was picking away on “St. Anne’s Reel” when I noticed there were some people standing around me, and when I finished and looked around there was Doug Dillard looking at me with that big smile. Quite an introduction!

In an edition of the Shelby Star a week or so earlier, Joe DePriest wrote of Dillard’s association with Earl Scruggs, telling how in 1953 the Salem, Missouri teen first heard “Earl’s Breakdown” on the car radio. It hit him so hard “he ran off the road into a ditch.” Dillard got his folks to take him to Scruggs’s Nashville home. “We knocked on the door, and he came, and we asked him to put some Scruggs tuners on my banjo. He invited us in.”

A newspaper clipping from a 1987 edition of the ‘Shelby Star’ of an article by Joe DePriest on Doug Dillard

Earl welcomed banjo pickers to his home, especially if they wanted Scruggs Pegs. In the “Suggestions for Banjo Beginners” on the first page of Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook from 1958, Earl invited those interested to contact him in Nashville, and many did:

The first page of the 1958 ‘Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook’

In 1962 Doug and his brother Rodney went with their band The Dillards to LA, where they were “discovered” at the Hollywood folk club The Ash Grove. With best-selling Elektra LPs, they toured extensively in the West and appeared on CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show as “the Darling Family.” 

In 1966 Doug left The Dillards and ventured into what would soon be called “country-rock,” touring with the Byrds and forming a band with former Byrd, Gene Clark. Dillard’s banjo playing had been strongly shaped by his close listening to Scruggs. In the ’60s when players like Bill Keith and Eric Weissberg were pushing banjo boundaries in bluegrass, Doug was pushing boundaries in a different way by finding a place for Scruggs-style banjo in rock. He fitted solid, straight-ahead rolls into pieces like Gene Clark’s “The Radio Song”: 

Dillard was heard often on popular Hollywood studio recordings and movie soundtracks during the ’70s. He even had on-screen roles in Robin Williams’ Popeye and Bette Midler’s The Rose.

DePriest’s article quoted Dillard: “During all this time, ‘I never said goodbye to bluegrass.'” He moved to Nashville in 1983 and started a band. 

The bluegrass music business was booming in Nashville. A bunch of young pickers were there, touring in bands and doing studio sessions. New Grass Revival featured newcomers Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn; John Hartford, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas — all were in town. The Nashville Bluegrass Band started in 1984; that year Ricky Skaggs won a Grammy for his version of Monroe’s “Wheel Hoss.” Up in the Gulch district, between the Opry and Vanderbilt, the Station Inn was serving bluegrass seven nights a week.

I was introduced to the Doug Dillard Band this afternoon right there where Dan X Padgett and I had been jamming. His four-piece outfit drew from a pool of talented bluegrass musicians. 

Rhythm guitarist, vocalist and emcee Ginger Boatwright was a seasoned veteran. During the ’70s she’d toured and recorded with Red White and Blue(grass), and later formed The Bushwackers, an all-female group that began as the house band at Nashville’s Old Time Picking Parlor. Her story is told well in Murphy Hicks Henry’s book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. Henry calls her “The first ‘modern’ woman in bluegrass” alluding to her folk revival roots, her styles of humor and dress, and, most importantly, “a softer, smoother, more lyrical quality” of singing.

Having a second guitar as a regular lead instrument in a four-piece band was uncommon at this time. When I met Doug’s young lead guitarist I was surprised to discover he was the son of Lamar Grier, whom I’d hung out with twenty years earlier when he was a Blue Grass Boy. David Grier was 26. He’d studied the lead guitar work of Clarence White (there’s a photo of him with White in Bluegrass Odyssey), Tony Rice, and Doc Watson. He was already an experienced pro.

Playing the electric bass, which was unusual for the time, was Roger Rasnake, a singer-songwriter from Bristol on the Tennessee-Virginia border.

In 1986 Flying Fish released this band’s first album, What’s That? (FF 377). Here’s the title cut. The band is augmented to six pieces by Vassar Clements on violin and Bobby Clark on mandolin; both played on the album. What we see and hear first is Ginger’s dynamic emcee work. Doug’s composition shows a banjo picker who knew fiddle music — a melodic “A” section followed by a punching Scruggs-style “B” part. 

Rasnake made a point of telling me Roland White had sent his regards. 

Roland was an old California friend, whom I’d met in 1964 and gotten to know when he was playing with Monroe. He’d just joined the Nashville Bluegrass Band. It was a pleasant surprise to hear from him.

Roger wanted to buy a copy of my book, so I took him up to the library and he bought one which I autographed. I signed several others during the day, including several that people brought with them.

I rested a bit before heading over to Gardner-Webb’s Lutz-Yelton Convocation Center. 

That evening was the Doug Dillard concert in the gym. It was good, with Ginger Boatwright doing the MC work, Lamar Grier’s son David picking some nice lead guitar, and good singing by Roger, Doug, and Ginger. 

Rasnake did one of his own songs from their album, “Endless Highway.” 

It’s familiar today because Alison Krauss covered it in her 1990 album, I’ve Got That Old Feeling.

There was a grand finale at the end with picking by Horace and the boys, and also fiddler Pee Wee Davis, whom I heard briefly in the back room for a while. I bought a souvenir photo of the Dillards with Andy Griffith. Home and in bed by 11.

On Sunday morning:

Up and away by 7:30, carried my bags to Tom and Carol’s dorm. We hit the road and drove to Shelby where we went, on Joe’s advice, to the Pancake House, a local place on the strip which was sure to have livermush. We went in and sat at a table and when the menu came I eagerly perused it. Sure enough, at the top of the list on the right-hand side was “Livermush and Eggs.” And, in case I’d missed it, about halfway down the same list was “Eggs and Livermush.” So I ordered that and actually ate some. Very peppery, other than that not much taste and what there was didn’t really excite me. I mixed it with eggs, like one does with grits. Maybe it’ll help my banjo-picking, who knows.

In Chapel Hill I stayed the night with Tom and Carol and had a bit of time to visit friends and relations and buy a box of instant grits at a supermarket. Next day I was back home in Newfoundland, writing up my diary.

The weekend at the Earl Scruggs Celebration brought me face to face with a music culture in which bluegrass nestled. Seeing, hearing and talking with Snuffy, Pappy, Horace, and Dan put me in touch with generations older than mine, what Bartenstein has called “The Pioneers” and “The Builders” of this music. I feel fortunate to have seen, met and heard them all. Just as important for me was hearing new younger performers like Ginger Boatwright, David Grier, and Randy Lucas.

This was my first opportunity see my folk guitar hero, Etta Baker. It came near the start of her late-in-life performance career. In 1989 the North Carolina Arts Council gave her the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; in 1991 she won an NEA National Heritage Fellowship. Wayne Martin produced her first CD, for Rounder, in 1991. Later she collaborated with Taj Mahal. Meanwhile Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization “fighting to preserve American musical traditions,” gave her the support she needed to pursue her career as a musician up to her passing at the age of 93.

It was also my first time to see Doug Dillard. If Snuffy and Pappy personified the era when bluegrass emerged from old-time, Dillard’s new band blended the contemporary sounds of an era when classic, progressive, and newgrass elements were shaping and blending the sounds heard as bluegrass thrived in a festival-dominated scene. 

Instead of an alpha male lead singer/emcee/rhythm guitarist, he had an alpha female. Replacing the mandolin or fiddle one expected in a band with a banjo was an acoustic lead guitar. Instead of an old “doghouse” upright the bass player had an electric. The lead vocals were shared between male and female. Repertoire ranged from bluegrass classics through old pop and rock favorites to band member compositions. The group was touring widely. State of the art bluegrass, 1987.

So how did all this fit together for me? I recalled the start of my visit when Joe DePriest took Tom, Carol, and me to visit the Shelby graveyard. 

He showed us three graves: first that of Thomas Dixon, the local writer whose The Clansmen was turned by D.W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation. Not far away was the grave of W.J. Cash, author of the immensely influential The Mind of the South. Joe and Tom pondered how the two men would have felt about being buried so close to each other; the image that sticks with me is one of Cash glaring at Dixon.

Joe gave us copies of the Greater Shelby Chamber of Commerce’s glossy full-color brochure, Shelby…it’s home. In it Thomas Dixon is identified as the author “whose novel Birth of a Nation became the first million-dollar movie” thus avoiding the fact that book and movie inspired the racist revival of the KKK. It describes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist W.J. Cash simply as “author,” not mentioning his progressive stances in print against the Klan and Nazism.

Tom wondered, what if the paths of Cash (who lived in Boiling Springs) and the young Scruggs had crossed at the time? He told us:

Cash … thought that the South had no “Culture” to speak of — what would he have had to say about Scruggs’s contribution?

Joe took us to a third gravesite, that of a local Confederate colonel killed in a Civil War battle; after detailing that part of his life its headstone:

… describes him as a lover of the arts who twice rode by horseback all the way to a far-off northern city (Baltimore? New York?) in order to hear Jenny Lind sing. This tells you where Cash’s mind was when he spoke of Culture.

The Shelby brochure ended its historical section saying “Cleveland County has also produced two North Carolina governors and an ambassador, but our most famous son is country singer Earl Scruggs.”

So much for official culture in 1987! 

Gardner-Webb’s decision to honor Earl Scruggs reflected a shifting intellectual landscape. A local musician of humble origins — a mill worker — had taken on new meaning and significance because of his national and international recognition and popular culture success. He deserved honor and celebration in his home. I was glad to help.

I don’t know if there were any further Earl Scruggs Celebrations at Gardner-Webb, but today there’s an Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, which is planning to hold its inaugural Earl Scruggs Music Festival in September 2022. 

(Editor’s note: Read part one of Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass Memoir on the Earl Scruggs Celebration of 1987 here. Read part two here.)

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Neil V. Rosenberg: Terri Thomson Rosenberg

Stay On Your Ass: If Days Still Mean Anything to You, It’s a Long Weekend!

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Our plans: GET. OFF. YOUR. ASS. 2020: Nope, lol.

In the past, supporting musicians, writers, and creators meant going out to shows, buying drinks at venues, volunteering at festivals, and so much more. But music fans and supporters around the globe are finding new ways to show up for the folks who supply the soundtracks to our lives.

States and local jurisdictions may be loosening coronavirus lockdown restrictions, but the numbers are still very clear. Memorial Day or not, the healthy, safe choice is to just stay distanced, stay apart, and stay on your ass! We’ll continue to bring you a few of our favorite events, livestreams, and COVID-19 coping resources that we’ve scrolled by on our feeds or found in our inboxes each week until that reality changes.

Did we miss something? (We probably did.) Let us know in the comments or on social media!

Rhiannon Giddens Honors Bill Withers, Aids COVID-19 Relief Efforts

In early May, Rhiannon Giddens released a gem from her vault of B-sides and outtakes. Recorded in what she refers to as a “very un-socially distanced time,” Giddens and co. perform a lively tribute to an icon of American music. The release of this cover and music video celebrate the life and music of Bill Withers, while also portraying life in quarantine and raising funds for Global Giving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund.

Like many of his other hits, Withers’ “Just the Two of Us” has an infectious cheerfulness that, especially when juxtaposed with images of quarantine and sheltering in place, can brighten any day. Giddens explains, “When Bill Withers passed, we suddenly remembered we had made this beautiful [cover]… So whether it’s just the two of us, or just a few of us; whether the lockdown has been for months or it’s about to be lifted; COVID-19 is here for the foreseeable future, and the more we can be alone together now, the better the future will be.” 

Whiskey Sour Happy Hour Concludes

Our month-long online variety show came to a close last night with a surprise bonus episode featuring performances from past WSHH performers like Billy Strings, Valerie June, Rodney Crowell, and more. Last week, for the superjam of our final “official” episode, our cast of pickers pulled off this incredible cover of “The Weight,” a perfect finale for the series.

It’s been an incredible journey building and sharing these shows with all of you over the past few weeks, but the fun isn’t quite over yet. We’ve left all episodes of Whiskey Sour Happy Hour online so we can continue raising money for MusiCares and Direct Relief, two organizations leading the charge with critical support for musicians and front line responders facing this crisis.

Over your Memorial Day weekend, why not binge the whole show, enjoy world-class songs and comedy, and if you can, give a little to support the cause, too? Watch all episodes and donate here.Our friends at Direct Relief have been working ceaselessly since the advent of this pandemic to supply personal protective equipment to front line responders. Watch this brief video that captures the importance and the magnitude of the work they’re accomplishing.

California Bluegrass Association Says to “Turn Your Radio OnLINE”

Founded in 1974, the California Bluegrass Association is one of the oldest and largest bluegrass associations in the world, with over 2,700 members. They produce events throughout the year, including the jewel in their bluegrassy crown, Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival, held every Father’s Day weekend in Grass Valley, CA since just a year after the organization’s inception.

This year, the festival has canceled all in-person programming, asking bluegrass fans in California and around the world to turn their radios “OnLine” to take part in music performances, live interviews, online interaction, and so much more, featuring artists such as Tim O’Brien, Laurie Lewis, Molly Tuttle, Lonesome River Band, Special Consensus, Joe Newberry & April Verch, and others.

The webcasts will be accompanied by an online auction to raise funds for the CBA’s newly announced COVID Artist Relief Fund. Items being auctioned include fine acoustic instruments, books, music lessons, historic bluegrass memorabilia, and items of interest from popular musicians.

Get all of the information, full performance schedules, and more right here.

Music Maker Relief Foundation’s Freight Train Blues 2020

Our friends at the Music Maker Relief Foundation, the Hillsborough, N.C. based nonprofit whose mission is to promote and preserve American musical traditions by partnering directly with elderly musicians, have announced their 2020 music series, Freight Train Blues. The event, which ordinarly takes place at Carrboro Town Commons in Carrboro, NC, will now be broadcasted on Facebook, YouTube, and by WCHL 97.9FM out of Chapel Hill.

Featuring performances from Phil Cook, Mandolin Orange, Thomas Rhyant, and more, Freight Train Blues celebrates the life and legacy of Piedmont blues legend Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, a pioneer in bluegrass, old-time, and blues and whose songs have left an indelible mark on all of American roots music.

You can tune in all through May and June! Get more information from MMRF here.

Reinventing a Broken Wheel – Frank Conversations, Future Opportunities


BGS co-founder and executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs will moderate the sixth session in Folk Alliance International’s “CommUNITY Online” series of sessions and panels on Friday, May 22 at 2pm CDT / 12pm PDT. Joined by David Macias (Thirty Tigers), Erin Benjamin (President/CEO Canadian Live Music Association), Enrique Chi (artist/activist), and Megan West (Facebook/Instagram) this group of industry experts will discuss, identify, and explore opportunities to innovate, pivot, and move the industry along in new directions. We each have a role to play in constructing our “new normal” — from immediate action to big picture initiatives, this conversation promises to be inspiring, provocative, and realistic.

Register for free, inform the conversation, and participate here.

Justin Hiltner and Jonny Therrien contributed to this article.

Lakota John Laces Native Lineage with North Carolina Roots

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Born and raised in North Carolina, of course John Locklear (AKA Lakota John) could draw from strong regional and cultural influences to create his sound: old-timey, down home, acoustic blues. But his North Carolina roots aren’t his only connection to the Piedmont, and the vast, richly diverse musics that come from his home state. His Lumbee and Lakota lineage most certainly have an equal influence on his picking, his songs, and his style — especially given the huge impact Native and Indigenous Americans had on the creation of American roots music in general. It’s an impact that continues to this day, despite constant erasure and attempts at exclusion.

Ahead of Lakota John’s performance as part of BGS and PineCone’s fourth annual Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass — at IBMA’s Wide Open Bluegrass festival in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 27 — we had a chat about why old-time blues isn’t just time capsule music and what folky magic must be in the water in North Carolina.

BGS: So many folks view this style of down home, old-time blues as antiquated music, as “throwback” music. What do you think blues, especially of the kind that you make and play, can bring to this modern era? What value is added to it if we allow it to be in the present?

Lakota John: Awareness of the genre itself and the fact that without roots music, many other types of music wouldn’t exist. Roots music is the foundation of other music and by bringing it into today’s musical conversation, younger generations can embrace its importance as a foundation and use it to innovate and create new styles of music.

What was your own entry point to this style of folky, vernacular music?

I grew up listening to the music of the ’60s and ’70s, because that’s what my parents listened to. Around 10 years old, I became curious about the earlier influences on the artists who produced music in the ’60s and ’70s, which led me back to blues, bluegrass, and roots music. I could see the correlation between the earlier music and later music in so many ways and found it really interesting how the music evolved.

Erasure is so prevalent in American society, many people — including historians, journalists, and ardent fans — don’t realize how fundamental Native and Indigenous influences were (and still are) to American roots music. Who influenced you? Who do you point to, to help reduce and eliminate that erasure?

I feel Jelly Roll Morton, Rev. Gary Davis, and Charley Patton are just a few of my influences who approached music with a percussive and syncopated style which is something Native and Indigenous people have always shared through their music and traditions. With later musicians such as Muddy Waters, Link Wray, The Allman Brothers, Jesse Ed Davis and many more, the basic structure remained but they incorporated an electric sound into the blues along with other styles to create their own unique sound.

Part of that erasure is simply because most colonizers and descendants of colonizers, immigrants, etc. do not realize that Indigenous people are still here. What do you say to folks, even the most well-intentioned and progressive among us, who have this very common blind spot when it comes to Native Americans, Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous rights? 

Native peoples walk in two worlds, the traditional and contemporary; we’ve always been here and always will be. We’re more than the stereotyped “Hollywood Indian” and definitely not museum artifacts. Hopefully to clarify this common blind spot I’d say, “I had some difficulty finding my keys and a parking space for my buffalo this morning.”

Shout & Shine returns for its fourth year at the IBMA’s Wide Open Bluegrass Festival at the end of September. What does bluegrass mean to you? What, if any, of its influences have filtered into your music and art?

That’s awesome. I grew up listening to bluegrass music and I definitely incorporate some elements of the bluegrass style into my own music. Bluegrass is an interesting art form and a very important category of roots music.

IBMA being hosted in North Carolina, in Raleigh, for the past number of years seems like a perfect fit. What is it about North Carolina that makes it such a hotbed for roots music? What do you get out of living and performing in this richly musical area? 

Man, I really think there’s something in water here. The south has always been a hotbed for roots music, possibly because of the many trials and struggles the south has been through in our country’s history. Because I’m from North Carolina, I’m connected to the community and music that has been an influential piece to what I do. This place is one of the richest musical areas where I have been fortunate enough to have access to artists and mentors who were and continue to be pioneers in the development of roots music in America.

Photo courtesy of Music Maker Relief Foundation

Music Maker Relief Foundation: Keeping the Blues Alive

Posted on by Editor

It’s no secret that the South is home to some of the greatest musicians around, past and present. From early bluesmen like Robert Johnson to country legends like Hank Williams, the South has produced some of the foremost forebears to our current musical culture. And while the South has big names a-plenty, it’s also rich with local musicians hoping to keep the region’s musical history alive, often, unfortunately, doing so with little to no recognition.

The Music Maker Relief Foundation was established for that very reason: to, in its own words, “preserve the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time.” Founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1994, the 501(c)3 non-profit has grown from a handful of passionate music lovers helping a small coalition of local musicians with simple necessities like securing food and paying bills to a globally recognized entity responsible for working with over 300 artists, releasing more than 150 albums, and spreading Southern music to all corners of the world.

Timothy Duffy co-founded Music Maker with his wife Denise after enrolling in the folklore program at UNC, Chapel Hill. His time working in UNC’s archives led to a chance meeting that planted the seeds for what would become Music Maker. “There aren’t many jobs in folklore,” Duffy laughs. “I was working for the archive and met an old bluesman named James ‘Guitar Slim’ Stephens in Greensboro. Before he passed, he introduced me to a guy named Guitar Gabriel in the early ‘90s. Gabe and I became partners and we put out a cassette. He was a great blues artist. He was very famous in a circuit that was never documented by white folks. It was called the Black Carnival Circuit. So he knew everybody. He knew all the musicians because he’d played in their towns for 40 years.”

Through his time with Guitar Gabriel, Duffy realized there was a vast community of phenomenally talented blues musicians that was virtually unknown to the rest of the world. Even more troubling to Duffy was how many of these musicians were living in poverty. “I soon realized that there was no place for these guys in the music business,” he says. “The blues guys never sold many records. They could barely scratch by a living. You’ve got B.B. King and that’s it. If anyone knows a blues artist after B.B., that’s amazing.”

The contrast Duffy’s own experience encountering countless talented players with the widely held notion that the blues was a dying art appealed to his presevationist roots. “There was this really weird view that the blues was dead,” he explains. “That was clear to me after meeting people like Alan Lomax, Archie Green, and some of the greatest folklorists of our time. It was just another case of politics of culture, of people appropriating what they wanted and keeping it for themselves and putting the culture down.”

Duffy saw the work of these little-known musicians as essential to preserving the musical legacy of the South and worked with Guitar Gabriel, Willa Mae Buckner, Preston Fulp, Mr. Q, Macavine Hayes, and a number of other North Carolina blues players to start Music Maker. A large focus of the organization’s initial efforts was simply providing these musicians with the financial assistance they needed to keep playing. “They were very disenfranchised economically. They were living on $3,000 or $4,000 a year,” he says. “We bought cases and cases of Ensure, because a lot of these guys had strictures in their throats, had nutrition problems. We bought clothes, shoes. We paid electric bills. That’s what it was founded as, at first.”

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Thanks to the group’s passion, it didn’t take too long for Music Maker to begin growing into the internationally respected organization it is today. Word spread throughout the blues community that Duffy and his team were doing good work, and the community rallied around them. “Taj Mahal heard about me in 1995,” Duffy says. “I flew out to L.A. and hung out with him, and he introduced me to B.B. King. B.B. fell in love with the project and took me around London, New York, L.A., and introduced me to all of these influential people like the Rolling Stones, Dan Aykroyd — wonderful people that supported the organization. That was our start. Now we’re here, 22 years later, and we’ve issued over 300 records.”

That increased notoriety for Music Maker has, as Duffy and his team hoped, also brought newfound fame and success for the artists involved. “A lot of times, in these small communities, that elevates them greatly,” Duffy says of Music Maker’s artists. “They go from this obscure guy that lives in an old trailer, now, to an international figure in their community that has played Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, traveled all to Australia, France, Argentina. That elevates interest of the music and it helps them in their mission to keep this music alive and vibrant in their communities.”

While Music Maker has been an invaluable resource for older blues musicians like Ironing Board Sam and Pat Wilder, it’s also played an integral role in developing the careers of a number of emerging and newly established roots artists. Newer artists Music Maker has worked with include Dom Flemons, Spencer Branch, Cary Morin, and, perhaps most famously, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. “When I learned that the Carolina Chocolate Drops were learning from Joe Thompson, an old banjo player from right down the road, I went and saw the performance,” Duffy says. “We took this small, fledgling group that barely knew how to play instruments to a Grammy-winning phenomenon, that really did quite well.”

In addition to artist advocacy, Music Maker has kept busy over the years with all kinds of projects, including a photgraphy exhibit (“Our Living Past”), a book and CD (We Are the Music Makers), and the Music Maker Blues Revue, a touring group that has recently played as part of Globalfest at New York’s Webster Hall. “Gabe and I started [the revue] back in the early ‘90s,” Duffy says. “When we go play Lincoln Center or jazz festivals, we bring all these guys on stage and do a revue show. That cast is ever-changing as people pass away.”

Upcoming projects include a fundraiser to purchase instruments for the town’s prison bluegrass band and a new blues club set to open at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the latter of which has support from Durham Bulls owner Michael Goodman and his family. “They started a new brewery called Bull Durham Beer,” Duffy explains. “Right by the box office, they’re opening a blues club. For every beer that you buy there at the taproom, they’re giving Music Maker a dollar and also providing a budget for us to hire Music Maker acts. I think it’s going to be the nation’s greatest blues club because it’s one of the only places you’ll see these kind of guys playing. “

It sounds like a lot, but the folks at Music Maker see their work as a labor of love — one inspired by their deep admiration for Southern music history and the musicians sacrificing it all to keep that history alive.

“All music is from the South,” Duffy says. “All modern music. There’s not one popular form of music that doesn’t trace its roots back squarely to the South. The blues, bluegrass, pop music … it’s America’s greatest legacy to the world. It’s better than the Colt .45 or whatever guns we invented. The music is the greatest thing we’ve done.”

Lede photo of Eddie Tigner by Tim Duffy

Counsel of Elders: Taj Mahal on Understanding the World

Posted on by Editor

Taj Mahal is an innovator. If he didn’t work in music, it’d be easy to imagine him in a more scientific field, engineering together something uncanny he came up with only in a dream, a fleeting moment of thought that held enough weight to solidify imagination into actuality. As it is, his creativity finds shape in the only natural language that can ever truly convey meaning: music. A bluesman through and through, Mahal has redrawn that genre to reveal its full spectrum. For those purists who might take issue with the fact that “the blues” under Mahal’s thumb doesn’t keep to its strict geographical boundaries, he reveals it as a bridge to a more global experience, one that landed in the West Indies during the slave trade and traveled farther north over time. Whether incorporating African rhythms from countries like Mali and Ghana or lighter melodic fare from the Caribbean, Mahal knows no bounds. He paints, as he says, from his lineage, enlarging the picture with every brushstroke.

His newest record, Labor of Love, is a blues project with several previously unreleased Music Maker Relief Foundation artists, such as the one-armed harmonica player Neal Pattman and the blind singer Cootie Stark, who have both since passed away. Originally recorded in 1998, the album pairs solo Mahal tracks with moments of collaborative fusion. It marks Mahal’s first studio release in four years and is a powerful look at foundational blues songs like narrative ballads “John Henry” and “Stag-O-Lee” (“Stack-O-Lee” on the album). For a musician who has surpassed 50 years in the industry, his voice may sound a tad gruffer than it did at its very start, but those grains are simply wisdom he’s acquired over the years. Mahal looks upon the world — and the music in every corner — with a well-traveled perspective, always ready to draw connections between here and there, then and now.

I saw you play at the Blues and BBQ Fest in New Orleans back in October, and one line you sang has stuck with me ever since: “If you don’t like my peaches, then don’t bother me.” That feels like necessary advice in any day and age.

You can’t spend what you ain’t got, you can’t lose what you ain’t never had: That’s the blues. It runs the rainbow of emotions. I enjoy it just because of that. Whatever happens in life, the blues has got a song for it, a phrase for it: “I’ve been down so long that down don’t bother me. I’ve been down so long that up don’t cross my mind.” As far as I’m concerned, it stays solid for what humanity is at any time, so I love it.

It’s interesting that you mention an emotional spectrum, because that points toward your own approach to music, which borrows from so many different traditions.

Here’s the thing: It’s already there. I don’t think people really understand that. If you go online, there’s something called a two-minute version of the slave trade into the West, and it shows each year from when it started from Africa into the “New World.” Once you understand that, you realize that you have people from pretty near the North Pole to the South Pole who are related to one another, but don’t know one another. Okay, so where do you hear it? You hear it through the music.

For me, I was raised to be well aware of my own culture. My mother was an immigrant of the South and my father’s parents were migrants from the Caribbean, so the idea that we’re connected was there all the time as a kid. I just see it as looking up my relatives. It’s already inside; I hear it. It’s like, “How come I’m hearing Cuban music?” I like it because the Nigerians are really important in terms of what’s in there — 26 percent of my DNA is Nigerian. Another significant portion of it is Congolese and Cameroonian, and this one and that one, and hunter-gatherers and Bantu. It’s like, “Dang! You got the whole continent going on in you!” Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana …

So you’re singing your lineage?

Exactly. And, you know, I’m drawing from different parts. I found out what my job would be as a musician, because you didn’t just play music, it was something that was attached to value to your particular tribe, and different tribes had different ways of doing it. In one area, as a Creole, I would be responsible for the history of the family that I was attached to.

That kind of value challenges the music industry’s primary money-making goal.

They will stifle music that is really important, culturally, to a group of individuals because they’re not making money off of it. It’s just weird. So maybe, if you’re not making money off of it, make it available and let the people who need to have that have that. But no, “We’re in control now!”

That’s long been the struggle. There’s an entire history of Black banjo players that weren’t recorded because someone decided it didn’t fit a particular image.

That’s a big part of opening up these vaults that are full of incredible information.

When the muse hits, what does she deliver? And how do you transform it?

Sometimes it’s the whole song, sometimes it’s a line. Sometimes I’m walking and something comes in, and I’m listening to it. I work a lot from the bass line. I like good bass line in my songs.

That’s interesting.

I mean melodic percussion.

That’s where African music gets it right. So much of Malian music is that beautiful melodic percussion.

We started out here making walking bass — the African-Americans came up with walking bass — and the Jamaicans came up with talking bass. You listen to Bob Marley, you’ll become totally aware of bass, and what they do is they go in — the particular sound they make on Bob’s stuff — he went into the studio, after everything was done, and he would go over the bass lines with a Stratocaster guitar, because he said a lot of people can’t hear the lower bass, so you put a tone on an instrument that they can recognize that opens the vibrations of the bass up into their body and into their mind. Here’s what it does: Jazz gives you back your mind, blues gives you back your soul, reggae gives you back your body. It’s only my opinion.

I think you just came up with a new t-shirt design. I would wear that.

Well, thank you very much. You just gave me an idea.

You’re quite knowledgeable about African music. Who are the artists from the various countries on the continent that inspire you?

I listen to everything: Sunny Agaga, Sunny Adé, Papa Wemba, Franco, the Soul Brothers out of South Africa, Brenda Fassie out of South Africa. Of course, Mother Africa herself: Miriam Makeba.

So what does your record collection look like? Is it huge at this point?

It’s all over the place. I never got rid of my vinyl.

Smart.

I’m a vinyl guy. I moved into whatever it is — CDs and MP3s and stuff that I have to have — to deal with it, but for listening, it’s vinyl.

Turning to Labor of Love, I’ve heard you cover “Stag-O-Lee” before and you included another version on the album, which has a lighter, almost sweeter, feel. How do you approach these covers each time?

This version probably vibes off of Mississippi John Hurt. I don’t really think about it. These songs are living. I’m presently working with a professor, Cecil Brown, who has written an incredible book on Stag-O-Lee [Stagolee Shot Billy], and we’ve had a lot of time over the last few years to sit down and talk about this individual. He’s done an awful lot of research on him. It’s a living thing, a living person, in terms of what they do and who they are and how it goes and what they’re up to and what their life was like.

It’s this one moment that transforms into an American myth.

That kind of character existed in the community when I was growing up. He became even that much more as time went on and the communities crumbled. The area of town I lived in was one thing when we were growing up and then, when the economics changed, a lot of people moved out of the town. Well, they created the suburbs around there and the center city just fell apart. Kids growing up didn’t have the doctors and the lawyers and the principals and the school teachers all in town like it used to be. It used to be, you could see these people and you could make it forward and do something great yourself, but everybody moved away and dispersed and what was left in the inner city was the pimps, the hoes, and then it was whatever kind of drugs that were there. And then, of course, when crack hit, it just went crazy. [“Stag-O-Lee”] was an old story talking about a new problem.

Speaking about old stories talking about new problems, it feels like we’re in a time of new stories talking about old problems.

Yeah.

And, look, the country has always had a pretty backwards mindset when it comes to race, but this feels like a big step back.

If you back up, we ain’t that long out of slavery, and this country isn’t that old, and it’s built from people that didn’t really … they had some parts of it cool, but they didn’t see Tupac and Biggie and Snoop Dogg coming down the road. They didn’t accommodate for that.

I think Trump has opened up space for a certain population to vocalize what has always seethed underneath the surface.

Which may not be a bad thing. I don’t know. I’m of the opinion that, you know what, this is what people have been saying all along, and everybody’s acting like it’s so brand new. No! It’s been there all the time. You have to remember that, in the ’50s, Elvis came along touting Black music. A lot of people didn’t like him because he was a white man doing Black music, but the white folks didn’t like him doing Black music, either! But at the same time, because he did, a whole lot of doors opened, and if you follow behind him for the next several decades, Black music was the music of the Americas. Certainly in the United States. So was the poetry, so were the books, so was the art, so was the spoken word. All that was there. Almost all of that stuff has been x-acto-knifed out of our culture at this point, so you don’t really have anything that really responds to it, so these people are responding in a vacuum.

People only want to engage with people who share their point of view, so that point of view becomes reflected and nobody has to disagree.

Or learn how to agree to disagree.

Yeah, we’ve lost that.

Okay, here’s something different: My whole thing is, I don’t like Bill O’Reilly, so I had to learn how to listen to him when I don’t like what he’s saying because I was saying, “You’re reacting to him. He’s got you where he wants you. You need to respond, so that whatever he says, he says it and you respond to it. Get clarity of mind.”

It’s such an important part — to understand what someone else thinks and why.

That’s right. Who knows? We’ll see what happens. That’s why I stay with the music. That helps. It gets me through all of this. That’s why people like what I do, because it gets ‘em through it.

No matter how bad it looks, you put on a record.

There you go!

 

For more wisdom from the elders, read Amanda’s conversation with William Bell.

Photos courtesy of the artist.