Where the hollows come alive with melody
Vibrant bluegrass music seems to spring from the Appalachian landscape
The Red Barn sits alongside Scioto Rd. in a narrow valley in northeastern Tennessee, a few miles from the borders of North Carolina and Virginia. Most of the time, the hollows, as such valleys are known in this part of Appalachia, are quiet, but, on Thursday nights, for the past 30 years, they have come alive with music.
The Red Barn is the site of a longstanding tradition in these mountains: old-time music, string-band music and bluegrass music.
Practitioners take up guitars, mandolins, banjos and fiddles, and, in the words of one of the genre’s classic tunes, “make them sing.”
Community traditions are embraced at the casual weekly gatherings. There is no charge for entry; all ages are welcome; fans refrain from dancing during hymns and, just as it is for a church supper, food is brought for sharing. “It’s family entertainment: no alcohol, no riff-raff,” said Burl Mast, owner, founder and banjo-picker.
There are dozens of these venues in this three-state area, which is known for barn dances, for porch-picking, for “sittin’ in” wherever a community of musicians has gathered.
Residents say it is the original capital of country music, a valid claim given the role played by the area’s three main cities, Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol. The population of these and nearby smaller towns totals more than 500,000 people, making the area one of the largest metropolitan centres in Appalachia.
It’s the mountains and hollows that give the area its character. An earlymorning October drive on one of the twisting two-lane roads winds through a many-coloured autumnal landscape sprinkled with wisps of low-lying fog, the mountains looming over the fields.
In the past, the mountains meant isolation, which was relieved peri- odically by gatherings for church, for barn-raising or harvest help. The gatherings meant string-band music.
By the late 1800s, Southern Appalachia had become known for its musical heritage. When they emigrated, many of its Scots-Irish settlers brought their jigs and reels.
In 1927, Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company spent two weeks in Bristol recording area artists. Those pioneering sessions included songs by the Carter Family of Virginia (A.P., his wife, Sara, and his sister-in-law, Maybelle) and Jimmie Rodgers of North Carolina. The resulting records garnered national attention, attracted more musicians to the Tri-Cities, as the area became known.
When radio and television were speeding the spread of country music across the nation in the 1950s, bluegrass and old-time tunes could be heard, it seemed, just about everywhere in the region. At church gatherings, gospel quartets moved outside and were joined by string bands. Front porches were turned into stages as music-makers jammed. Livestock shared their quarters with revellers at barn dances. Fiddles, guitars and banjos accompanied haircuts at the Star Barber Shop in downtown Bristol, where the main street defines the Tennessee-Virginia line.
Beginning in the early 1950s, the Star Barber Shop’s owner, Gene Boyd, and several friends held jam sessions, with Boyd fiddling when he wasn’t cutting hair. Musicians came and went depending on what other tasks they had to take care of that day. The tradition ended when Boyd retired in 2008 at age 80.
As more formal places sprang up, more musicians began to make a living doing what they loved. Tunes made famous by A.P. Carter and his family became part of America’s musical heritage as mainstream artists recorded them.
In 2010, East Tennessee State University in Johnson City began offering a degree in Appalachian Studies: Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music. The program draws from the surrounding mountains and from around the world.
Bristol’s Rhythm and Roots Reunion, which began in 2001, attracted more than 55,000 fans in mid-September for three days of picking, flat-step dancing and fellowship. The lineup included scores of acts including Emmylou Harris, Jeff Tweedy, Seldom Scene and Ray Wylie Hubbard.
A visitor can pack a week’s worth of music into a weekend just about any time of the year.
Or make it two weekends, filling in the daytime with visits to the new Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum, which opened in August, features exhibitions ranging from the music’s beginnings: The porch for open-air gatherings, the church for gospel singing, the lowwattage radio station for broadcasting live performances. It has a special section on Tennessee Ernie Ford, a Bristol native. There’s also a 100-seat performance-and-teaching theatre and a venue featuring a floor designed for clogging.
The music played a major role in defining the community, said Jessica Turner, the museum director, an ethnomusicologist. The museum seeks to participate in a tradition of neighbourliness, by encouraging residents to bring in old family photos. “We want them to be a part of the museum,” she said.
Displays include a song-mixing area and a recording booth where visitors can sing along with classic numbers in a sort of karaoke experience.
Visitors can check out the schedules of dozens of music sites in the area. Many offer opportunities to perform at open-mike nights.
One of the longest-running musical venues is the Down Home, a club near East Tennessee State University. Down Home opened in1976, seats about150 and offers beer and wine as well as Tex-Mex food. Entertainment ranges from local acts to nationally known stars such as the Red Clay Ramblers and the Boxcars.
While Down Home features a college vibe, the Carter Family Fold, operated by Rita Forrester, a granddaughter of A.P. and Sara, draws diverse crowds to a remote hollow about 48 kilometres north of Johnson City near Hiltons, Va.
Opened in 1974, the place and adjacent buildings hug Pine Ridge alongside the original A.P. Carter store, now a museum. Tickets for most shows are $10. No alcohol is allowed, and there is plenty of room for flat-step clogging.
Forrester recognized a group from the nearby Jonesborough Senior Citizens Center. Several of the resi- dents took to the dance floor when the night’s headliners, the Hillbilly Gypsies from West Virginia, began their second number. Flat-step clogging dominated, but when the children joined in, the dancing became more freestyle. Participants, Smith said, “were obviously called to dance.”
I began my immersion in the music at the Red Barn in the town of Unicoi. The barn’s atmosphere serves to place the music into its community context. After a prayer by a local preacher, one of Mast’s groups — he called it the “Old Guys Band” — opened with a set of traditional songs before giving way to another informal group, with Terry Barnes, a fiddler, sitting in. Barnes announced his presence with a mournful fiddle solo and received a raucous reception from the crowd. A longtime area fixture, he had recently returned to the stage after health problems.
A collie, wet from being outside, wandered through the crowd. A young child rode her sister’s hip as they grazed at the food table. People helped themselves to the coffee. When the audience became too noisy, Mast turned on a sign over the stage warning them to quiet down.
A Second World War veteran celebrating his 88th birthday was recognized. Between the acts, a sympathy card was passed around for signing as one of the regulars had recently died. After one song, a band member began good-naturedly ribbing a fan. “This is the only place I’ve ever been,” Haney said, “where the band heckles the audience.”
As I travelled around the area for five days, it seemed that the musicians seemed to know one another. At the end of my visit to the Red Barn, when the fans were heading back to the highway, when the musicians had left the stage, Terry Barnes stood there.
“One more for the road,” he said and launched into a boisterous, good-time anthem, “Orange Blossom Special.”
Grinning like a possum, fiddle bow flying, he was playing to an empty barn. The New York Times