The Pumpkin Man of Connors Grove Rd.

These pumpkins look, um, ripe

October sky in the Blue Ridge

Monday morning, Oct. 20, 2014, 7:17 a.m., over the Blue Ridge Escarpment

A fiddler's show of courage after a bad fall

Saturday night's concert of the fabulous bluegrass group the Steep Canyon Rangers was terrific -- great musicians playing beautiful music against a stunning backdrop of Autumn finery at the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It was the final in a series of 20 weekly concerts sponsored by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation in alliance with a number of local and regional sponsors that have made the music scene along the Plateau District a don't-miss stop along Virginia's Crooked Road.  Here's a scene from up on the hill above the outdoor amphitheater:

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation has had a nearly year-long association with the Steep Canyon Rangers (which has toured with banjoist and comedian Steve Martin and singer Edie Brickell in recent years) in support of Parkway-related matters, most particularly the foundation's grant for new facilities at the Parkway's Graveyard Fields site in North Carolina.  The Steep Canyon Rangers' 2013 album Tell The Ones I Love featured a lively instrumental named "Graveyard Fields," and the group worked with filmmaker Paul Bonesteel, a member of the foundation's Advisory Panel, to produce a video to help raise money for the Graveyard Fields Project. That project included a new parking area and a restroom, both a huge benefit to fans of the area who have had inadequate parking and no facilities.

Rangers move on to their final song of the evening. From left, bassist Charles Humphrey, fiddler Nicky Sanders, guitarist Woody Platt, banjo player Graham Sharp, mandolin player Mike Guggino and percussionist Jeff Sipe, sitting in with the Rangers lately.

Last night's concert was in its closing number with fiddler Nicky Sanders clearly a crowd favorite.  He strutted and pranced and danced about the stage as he was virtually burning up his fiddle with hot licks you wouln't believe on a great song called Auden's Train (I think), when disaster struck. He missed his step in the evening damps and pitched over the edge of the stage and onto an asphalt-surfaced apron between the stage and the audience. Fiddle attachments went flying as Sanders sprawled on the ground awkwardly, and banjo player Graham Sharp jumped down to see if he could help.  In a show of guts and gumption and courage and, no doubt, a rush of adrenalin, Sanders bobbed back up, began reassembling the fittings on his fiddle, started tuning up, checked a nasty-looking wound to his left knee, then rejoined the band -- still playing its final song -- and got back on the stage for another few minutes of dancing and fiddling and making amazing music while the crowd came to its feet and applauded.   Here are a few pictures taken a few moments apart -- and then the Rangers' final bow, as band members linked arms while the crowd cheered and clapped.

Nicky Sanders, left in front of the stage, puts his fiddle back together as Graham Sharp watches, and plays, from nearby.

Sanders back on stage, band still playing, and starting his moves,

.

That knee has to hurt, but the show goes on.

Nicky Sanders takes another look.

 

And the Rangers take their bow.  What a night. And a helluva show!

Parkway's Midday Musicians take a bow

   An interesting thing happens every day during the warm months at the Blue Ridge Music Center near Milepost 213 on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  At noon, from May through October, a group of musicians, many of them professional players of considerable note, assemble in the breezeway between the museum and its intimate auditorium next door, and begins to play a variety of music reflecting the culture, history and lore of the mountains.  It's free.  People come from all over to listen. And it's the toe-tappingest place you'll find anywhere in the hills for the next four hours.

And on Fridays, something else happens. On Friday's it's an open jam, welcoming anyone who walks up to bring an instrument, or borrow a spare, or just join in or even lead the singing in a song.  I've sat in this Jim Marshall and Friends Jam for five months now (bass fiddle), and we've had visitors from around the globe.  (Mr. Marshall started the jam years ago and now resides in a nursing home; Mark Raynes and Renee Igo lead the Jim Marshall Jam in his absence.)  A few weeks ago visitors included a fellow from Spain who lives in London and who came forward to sing some compositions of his own.  A month ago, a woman who sings in a choir back home somewhere in the Midwest did a gorgeous version of Amazing Grace.  Two weeks ago, a couple from Argentina came up and sang seven or eight Argentinian folk songs in Spanish -- just superb music, though I recognized maybe one word in 20 or so. They stole the show, as Mark Raynes put it.

But that's the beauty of the free Midday Mountain Music program that runs every day for six months of the year: you never know what you are going to hear or who you are going to hear it from, but it's always interesting.  Some folks expect mostly bluegrass, yet what they hear is a mix of American roots music with a lot of influences from around the world.  Bluegrass, yes, but also traditional mountain music, folk music, blues, gospel, country, olde timey music, new timey music, funny songs, sad songs, train songs, cabin-in-the-hills songs, moonshine songs, lonesome-for-the-Blue Ridge songs -- even a 19th century Josef Wagner march, "Under the Double Eagle," popularized by John Phillip Sousa's band before Benny Goodman and later all kinds of bluegrass players jumped all over it. I wouldn't be surprised to hear some R&B and beach music once in a while.

And here's the most amazing thing: This daily offering of music is played and sung by volunteers who put in more than 100 hours of performance time each every year.  Add in travel time -- some come from two hours or more each way every week to perform -- and jam groups that can grow to more than 20 musicians at a sitting, and you've got thousands of hours donated to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the enjoyment of its visitors.  Four hours of music, by the way, is a pretty long gig.  These folks play because they want to. It is a service to the public, and judging by how many people come every day to sit and watch, they appreciate it.

So it was entirely appropriate and gratifying that the National Park Service recognized the volunteer Midday Musicians at a luncheon the other day at the Folk Art Center near the Blue Ridge Parkway headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina. The annual gathering honors volunteers all along the Parkway who do a terrific job as interpreters and maintenance volunteers.  My friends Mark Raynes and Renee Igo accepted the Parkway Partner Volunteers of the Year Award on behalf of all the musicians who play at the Blue Ridge Music Center.

From left, Richard Emmett, Renee Igo, Mark Raynes, Mark Woods. Photo from Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation website.

With them were Richard Emmett, music program director at the center, and Blue Ridge Parkway Superintendent Mark Woods.  The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, the private fund-raising partner of the Parkway, agreed to operate programs at the center after the Parkway requested its help several years ago. The Foundation named Emmett to operate those programs, which include the Midday Mountain Music as well as the weekend concert series, which concludes today with the Steep Canyon Rangers.


At the awards ceremony Tuesday, Superintendent Mark Woods had this to say:  "Through your service, visitors to the Blue Ridge Music Center have the wonderful treat of hearing authentic, live music seven days a week, every day the Music Center is open. This service over eight visitors seasons [since the opening of the Music Center] likely represents a contribution of over 30,000 volunteer hours. How wonderful to consider how many tunes have floated from instruments during that time."  Amen.

Riding the ridges for the Floyd library

Chuck Flynt and his wife Diane have done a lot of good in the places where they have lived and worked in North Carolina and Virginia over the years, and they've figured out interesting ways to make it fun, too.  Chuck turned 74 this year, and as he has in recent years, he invited his friends to ride along with him on a birthday run up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Chuck Flynt leads the 2014 Tour de Chuck out of the parking lot and on toward the Parkway

Chuck's offer was simple: For every mile you ride, we'll donate a dollar to the Jesse Peterman Memorial Library in Floyd. This year there were 22 riders.  They seemed to enjoy it. Got a lot of exercise on a beautiful day. And wound up doing a good deed for readers and fans of the library in these hills.

Getting ready to go

 

And here's the amazing thing: Chuck rides a mile for every one of his birthdays. A number of his friends join him in that, but others are more suited to shorter rides.  Diane aims for 40, she says -- a good age and a good number.  

Diane pedals out front with the Lap Dogs

The Flynts have ridden in a lot of places, and often invite new friends to the Blue Ridge to visit -- and to ride.  "We were especially happy that Larry Stark joined us from Denver and Jenny Turek from Marin County," Diane said in an e-mail Monday. "We met these two on our Spain Backroads trip and they made the trek to VA just for the birthday ride. We met two other bike riding couples from PA who will come next year, when we will avoid the Jewish holiday and leaf season both, somehow."

Not a Le Mans start, exactly, but getting going just the same

Jim Newlin, pulling out smiling

I popped by a parking lot near Mabry Mill on the Parkway Sunday morning to shoot some photos and see the long riders -- the Big Dogs -- off in their northern run up beyond Rakes Mill and back, a total of 28 miles. Later I dropped in on the mid-morning start of the southern leg down to Groundhog Mountain and on to Fancy Gap with the Lap Dogs and (Diane said she couldn't help it) the Puppy Dogs, who could ride the 26 miles to Ground Hog and back or the 46 miles to Fancy Gap and back.  

Diane, Susan Icove (center) and Mary Ann Koch, about set to go

In all the riders chalked up 1,195 miles, the most posted in the three years that Chuck has used his birthday ride to raise money for the library.  In 2012, the Flynts donated $1,005 for the mileage ridden. Last year, the total was $707. It's beginning to build up nicely. "That adds up to $2970 wonderful,  much-needed and appreciated dollars for the library," Cathy Whitten, library branch manager for the Jessie Peterman Library, emailed me this morning. "We are so grateful to all of you who ride and donate.  It’s just the most delightful thing to us that you all would do this!

Most of the riders in this year's Tour de Chuck, at Groundhog Mountain Sunday. Don't know who took this picture, but it's a good one. That's Chuck and Diane in the lower right, front row.

 

How 'bout these apples?

It's been a pretty good garden year up here in the hills, particularly for the aging apple trees put in the ground many decades ago by the Woods and the Conners and other farming folk who lived on this property. Most years the crop, if that's the right word, is puny.   This year, by comparison, has been bountiful. 

We picked some yesterday from our best two trees, high above (well, ok, up the hill from) the pond. The first batch tasted to me like golden delicious and our friend Sandy Dupont thought they were closer to a Granny Smith, so for now we're calling them a golden granny. They had a lot of spots and zits and dings and blemished on them, but they were good. Martha B. made apple crunch and served them under a big scoop of gelato.  Mighty fine.  Here's a look into the five-gallon bucket:

The second batch wasn't as good, but also was more golden than red.  All these apples seem to be blushing somehow.  Dunno what this one is. A grouchy granny, maybe.

 

Then there was the third tree, way down the hill that had just a few more greens in it, in the egg basket on the left.

And finally there was the tree across the creek that had some red apples, on the right, above. Some of them were misshapen, but so am I, so what the heck. 

Oh, three other apples arrived -- with a new tree that I picked up from Slaughter's Nursery in the spring. Had three blooms on it.  In late August it delivered three apples, smallish but good.  That's the apply farm report for 2014.

Gentleman George Hamilton IV, gone too soon

It would have been the summer of  '63, when my pal Fred Birdsong came by the house.  His father was an executive with Blue Bell, at the time one of the world's largest denim manufacturers, and the president of the company had asked a fellow from Winston-Salem to drop by the next evening and sing a few songs for a few friends and family.

I didn't know it at the time, but the company president's daughter was confined to a wheel chair, and this fellow from Winston-Salem had a big hit going.  It was a country song, and while I wasn't into country music yet, I had heard it a time or two on the radio and liked it. It would be a huge crossover hit.


I had never been in the home of Rodger LeMatty before, though I went by it several times a day going to and from Page High School. It was a big white house with columns at the corner of Cornwallis and Elmwood, a couple blocks from a girl I was sweet on.  I was working at a day camp that summer, and just had time to clean up a little before getting to the LeMatty's house at the right time.  Fred and I found seats on the floor, the thickest white rug I had ever seen.

I've had the same feeling a time or two, when the lights went down at the Majestic Theater in New York and the organ began rattling  the walls and tinkling the chandelier in the open moments of "Phantom of the Opera,"  and another time in Arizona when I heard the Kingston Trio's George Grove belting out the first chorus of a song I had written with Wood Allen a few months earlier.   Absolute chills, combined with what felt like partial levitation. Hard to describe it right, but what I heard that evening in the LeMatty home made me want to be in show business.

I don't remember the other songs that George Hamilton IV sang that night.  Probably his 1956 hit, "A Rose and a Baby Ruth" was one of them.  Maybe "To You And Yours (From Me and Mine)."  Could have been "If You Don't Know I Ain't Gonna Tell You."  But I will never forget hearing this short, simple song, a man singing about a place he missed:  Abilene.

It's an eternal theme in a lot of genres.  Performer hits it big, goes off to the crowded city, enjoys the high life, but things aren't always right, people aren't always nice, nothing like back home.  If there's anything wrong with that song, it's that it's just two short.   Just two verses, and before you know it, the song is over, and there you are wanting more.  But maybe the genius of the song is that it was short and to the point, and didn't need anything else.

They say the song was written about a town in Abilene, Kansas.  But every time I've heard it since then -- and every time I've sung it -- it has simply been about a place back home.   I don't know if Hamilton thought of the leafy street he grew up on in the Ardmore section of Winston-Salem when he sang it, but I'll bet it crossed his mind more than once, even as he took country music around the world and delighted audiences everywhere.

I only saw Hamilton that one time, and was sad to read about his death Wednesday in Nashville. From everything I've ever read about him, he was the genuine article -- a low-key, easy-going, charming gentleman, generous with his time, warm in his words and his smiles and his handshakes. I have read about a lot of stars in the music and entertainment world, and some of them are not the kind of person you want in your living room for long.  Some are.  George Hamilton IV always was one of them.

The words:

Abilene, Abilene
Prettiest town I've ever seen
Women there don't treat you mean
In Abilene, my Abilene

I sit alone most every night
Watch those trains pull out of sight
Don't I wish they were
Carrying me back to Abilene, My Abilene.

Crowded city ain't nothing free
Nothing in this town for me
Wish to the Lord that I could be

 in Abilene, Sweet Abilene.

Women there don't treat you mean
In Abilene, my Abilene

-- Bob Gibson, Lester Brown and John D. Loudermilk