Weekend Update

But here's a weekend update while I have time.

I was sitting in the Speech Therapy waiting room on Friday talking to the other mothers and MerleFest came up. This woman (who as an undergraduate dated Rick Fox!) who I'm friendly with loves Elvis Costello so I promptly gave her Friday's tickets because I was too wiped out to go. I hope she went, cause I heard it was an awesome set. Nonetheless, we exchanged e-mails and I hope to hang out with her and her husband sometime because they have a booming social life as well as a child with special needs and that's a rare combination.

We got settled in the "Little Pickers" area right at 2:00 PM and who did we run into first? But Josh and Alex Boyer. Among 80,000 festival goers and we randomly ran into the Boyers three separate times. But I'm not complaining. MerleFest is not the same if you don't run into the Boyers. Alex (who was born the day after Grace) has been to 6 MFs and he's only 5! Then Monica and her husband walked up and it was a little mini Watauga High School reunion.

The kids wanted to jump and climb and swing and run around so that's mainly what we did all day. David and I have come to grips that MF with kids is a fantastic place for kids to play with excellent music in the background rather than a fantastic music-listening experience with excellent activities for kids. The kids ran around, played, danced, ate, drank sodas with caffeine and had a blast. We tried to catch a set by the Infamous Stringdusters on the Hillside stage, when one tune in, Grace literally somersaulted down a steep hill, and spilled her Sierra Mist all over her. It was all I could do to not laugh, because she was completely in tears, but we decided it was time to keep a movin.

The musicians of the 20th Homecoming Jam (Sam Bush, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, etc) delivered in high fashion and it was all very pleasant to the ears, but we spent that set literally as far back as you could be in the Little Peckers, I mean Little Pickers tent watching over the kids in the sandbox. Conclusion: David needs to build a really big sandbox to put in our backyard. Not one of those dinky plastic sandboxes in the shape of a turtle, either; a big one where they and the entire neighborhood can get in and play. If he builds it, they will play. They played happily for over an hour while David and I sat back and actually got to talk to each other. It was nice. I was too tired to stay for the last act, Alison Krauss, who didn't even begin until 9:30 PM, and we left MF probably earlier than we ever have. Maybe it has to do with getting free tickets (thanks, Jane!) but I wasn't consumed this year with cramming as much music into the schedule as I possibly could.

And honestly? The best music I heard all day was a 5-minute set that I happened on in a guitar-selling tent where three musicians were unassumingly taking turns with the lead on a favorite fiddle tune: "Arkansas Traveler."

Yesterday was a lovely time catching up with Kate, Daniel, Sheila and my dad (although, the visit was in two shifts but that's something I can't get into now) and I came to another conclusion: visits to Boone where we stay only one night rather than two or three are perfect. I think it's always better to leave wanting more than the other way around.

Friday Haiku With Bird

Singing the Blues

Not seeing Elvis.
Just gave my tickets away.
What I crave is sleep

Singing the Blues

Roots. Music. Singing the Blues

I've been thinking a lot lately about roots music, my roots, my music, etc.

I spent the better part of my first two years of life hanging out in or around my dad's drum set. He kept a pillow in his bass drum to muffle /improve the sound, and I often took naps on the pillow in the drum. Twenty-four years later, my dad reunited with his band from the 70's and played that same drum set at my wedding reception. (By then I was too big to crawl in the bass drum to grab a few minutes of shut-eye, but believe me, by the end of the day, I wanted to!)

Tonight we're heading back to MerleFest, but this year my dad won't be there. The line-up has just gotten too impure for him, I believe. He's incredulous that musicians like Elvis Costello will be there this year, and that happens to be the act I'm most excited about hearing. MerleFest is celebrating its 20th year this year, which means the first one was held in 1987, when I was 15. My mom and dad went to the very first MerleFest, a celebration of American acoustic musicians created to honor Doc Watson's talented son, Merle, who died in a freak accident in 1985. My brother, sister and I were invited to go with our parents to the first MerleFest (which my mom fondly remembered was so small and "grass-roots" that people sat on hay bails in front of the "main stage" that was the back of a tractor trailer. Now, more than 80,000 people attend). I declined, however, probably due to the backlash I still felt over missing Cheap Trick not long before.

Cheap Trick came to Boone in the 1980's, the same evening that Bela Fleck was performing at ASU's Farthing Auditorium. Bela Fleck is a world-renowned virtuoso banjo player who was just getting started in the early '80's. My dad was friends with people who were friends with him (and, in fact, Bela Fleck spent time in our living room back in the day), and thought it was more important to expose his children to the culture of Fleck's music than the electric sounds of Cheap Trick. I wasn't happy about being forced to go to another bluegrass music thing (especially at the expense of missing Cheap Trick!), but I was used to it. It had happened all my life. I can't tell you how many fiddlers' conventions, Appalachian Folk festivals, and barn dances I went to growing up. Those kinds of things were as much a part of my childhood as hearing the names of the musicians on whom my dad is writing the definitive pieces: Merle Travis, Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman and Etta Baker. Those names to me were like names of family members--distant aunts and uncles whose names I heard a lot and knew were somehow linked to my dad (and some of whom I'd even met before, again in my living room) but who I didn't know well.

Now, I'm beginning to "know" these musicians deeper and when people who know my dad ask what he's working on these days, I can say with confidence and knowledge, "He's still writing about Merle Travis and Lula Belle and Scotty, but he's also working on a piece on Etta Baker, the 93-year old African American NC guitarist who died last September."

Last Sunday, my dad and I had a long phone conversation about the research he's doing on Etta Baker and how Paul Clayton was involved in "discovering" Etta--and Clayton's influence (and crush) on Bob Dylan and the personal ties my dad has to the people who were involved with the origin of Dylan's "Tambourine Man," and Peggy Guggenheim's cousin Diane's role in the Folk Revival movement--and on and on. I was drawn to everything my dad was saying, and it was 2 parts interesting because it just was, but it was 3 parts interesting because of his connection and interest in all of this and my respect for my dad's life's work. My dad considers his best written work yet to be the critical essay he published in 2003, The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia, where he juxtaposes African-American blues with Appalachian white blues using definitions of the primary blues aesthetic and the basic elements of a folkloric event: text, texture, and context. To read the beginning of this highly informed piece, click here.

I respect my dad's commitment and scholarship to the pure forms and definitions of folk music
yet I reject the rigidity and limitations those definitions impose. My dad won't give Gillian Welch and David Rawlings a fair listen because he'd rather hear that type of music sung by authentic women of Appalachia rather than GenXers from LA. His loss. And my musician cousins in Tallahassee, FL, who turned me onto traditional Irish music and bought me my first penny whistle (I now own 5!) have made their position clear that "learning directly by ear from an authentic traditional Irish musician is the best way to learn the subtleties of style in the true aural tradition that the printed page cannot depict." I'm sure that's true but I don't live in Ireland, and it hasn't stopped me from playing jigs, reels, and hornpipes with Bob and Cindy (and Matt and Kim). I was over at Bob and Cindy's house two nights ago playing my penny whistle and flute with them and even singing. And you know what? We sounded good. And we had fun.

I learned how to read music when I was six and started taking piano lessons and that skill has served me well providing enjoyment to me and others. My mom used to give me a dime everytime I played "The Rose" or "Run for the Roses" on the piano, and my grandmother loved it when I played "The Entertainer." She loved it so much that of her eight grandchildren, she willed her baby grand piano to me. My dad makes me play Bach's "Prelude in C" every chance he gets, and I think I'm going to start charging him to listen. (But my rates have gone up). Piano at age 6, violin at 9, flute at 12, guitar at 22 and pennywhistle a year later. I think I'll take up the mandolin next. I know I'm not great at any of it, but I'm good enough, and good enough is good enough for me.

I can't deny my dad's musical influence on what I like and what I play. (How could I? Classical, jazz, blues, bluegrass, gospel, rock-n-roll--it's pervasive. In fact, my dad said over 20 years ago that the only other profession he would rather do than being a college professor is to be a full-time drummer for ZZ-Top). But you know what? I had this funny feeling yesterday as I was looking at this year's MerleFest schedule. Yes, I'm excited about Elvis Costello and Sam Bush and Alison Krauss and Tony Rice and so many more. But I also had this funny reminiscent feeling of "No, don't make me go to the African-American Stringband Tradition tent." And I had this fantasy that if my dad was going to be there this year and by some chance of fate so was Cheap Trick? I'd say, "Daddy, can you watch Grace and Johnny for awhile? I'll be back in an hour."

Birthday Parties, Bubbles and Ballgames

This past Saturday I was out and about from 8:30 AM-8:30 PM. In the morning I had to work a few hours while David had the kids. Then I rushed back home to pick up the kids (but not David) to drive to Raleigh for Rosie Scott-Benson's b-day party. Rosie's grandfather knows my dad and asked what he was up to (which I'll write about in another post) and shared some stories about when they were at the ASU "Loft" together in NYC. Then we met David and 2 1/2 other families at a Durham Bulls game that no one watched. With 7 adults and 6 kids, spilled beer onto heads, cotton-candy in hair and all over faces, and a never-ending plea for "more corn dogs," it was impossible to have everyone together at the same time. So if you were there but missed the following exchange, I think it's worth repeating.

Me: Izzy, can I borrow your bubbles for a minute? I'm going to pour a little of your bubble juice into mine because I'm running low.

Izzy: I do it.

Me: Let's do it together.

(I guide the pouring of her bubble juice into my container, but when I'm ready to stop pouring, she's not and her bubble juice spills into Johnny's halfway melted sno cone cup)

Me: Oops

(A few minutes later Johnny returns to his sno cone that I'd forgotten about)

Johnny: Oooh, this tastes terrible!

Quick Stuff

Just when I thought our kids couldn't be any happier living in our neighborhood, on Sunday evening when we were out enjoying the great Earth-Day weather, another neighbor walked up and wanted to know if we wanted the swingset in his yard that his godson has outgrown. It's the metal old-school kind that I grew up with, and David and the neighbor literally picked it up from one yard and moved it to ours. It's slightly rusty and it's the kind where the poles raise an inch or so off the ground when the kids swing too high (sending me into cardiac arrest) but it's great, and they love it! I especially love the two double swings that they can get on and enjoy without needing me to push, but what I love the most are the conversations that they come up with when they think I'm not listening--just two free kids, pretending to be their favorite characters and getting lost in their own little worlds--just priceless kid-chatter.

There's so much going on these days at work and in life that I can hardly see straight. Unfortunately, the CROP WALK got rained out a week ago, but I met my fundraising goal and I thank you to those who donated...(I know who you are). Friday and Saturday are MerleFest and a quick visit to Boone then upcoming Literacy Council fundraisers, music parties, dance recitals, more work events, visits from cousins, I can't wait! It's times like this that David says, "I think I like it better when you're depressed."