home again (naturally)

By Robbie on December 1, 2009

Heartfelt thanks to all who made the trip to see one of my (or "our") shows in the southeast/midwest/northeast over the last two weeks. It was a good run in terms of turnout and box-office, with a couple exceptions. Johnson City was one, but as I wrote here before leaving, no one much has ever come to see me play in Johnson City, so at least the financial loss had a pleasant tinge of tradition undisturbed. The best thing about being in Johnson City, and Charlotte the next night, where I had another weak off-night turnout, was just being in that part of the country, the great North Carolina/Virginia/East Tennessee Axis of Awesomeness, where the natural beauty of the Appalachians is well looked-after by landowners and everyone reveres American acoustic country music (even if they don't show it by coming to my shows). In Galax, Va., which is a bit of a musical mecca because of its famous annual fiddle and old-time convention, Robbie Gjersoe and I visited two instrument shops. At the first we met an amusing fellow who said his name was Junior Brown, though he proved not nearly as nuts as the other one. The other stop was to meet the highly respected luthier Jimmy Edmonds and play his guitars. Turned out that mostly who we met -- Jimmy was a taciturn and busy man -- was his charming wife and 2-year-old son, and a few of his friends, whom we regaled with bluegrass tunes for an hour or so.

In Wendell, N.C., the next afternoon I struck pay dirt at a little store called Zepp's. I went there to play a Will Fielding banjo, and though there was none there, thirty other great open-backed banjos hung from a demonically glittering wall. I had to buy one. After playing each, I was getting attached to a short-scale model of wenge and orange wood made by "Doc," a Vietnam vet and Christian missionary living in Eugene, Oregon. It had a long and somewhat dulcimer-like tone, and a novelty called a "frailing platform," a widening of the fretboard near the head on the 5th-string side where a player could anchor his right thumb. But finally I bought a banjo by Chuck Lee of Ovilla, TX. The tone was equally striking, though darker. The deciding factor was the wider string spacing and higher action. My hands seem to have gotten spoiled by the generous spacing on my McAlister 00 neck. On my beloved new Chuck Lee I can plunk away in a mentally abstracted state, without fussily supervising the exact angle of my first knuckle or governing the exuberance of my frailing hand. In theory I can. People of Brooklyn who saw my premiere on the instrument last week: go easy on me. It took "My Three Sons" a good two years to hit its stride.

Back in Charlotte, a trio of hard-drinking, large-spirited youngsters whisked us away after our show to a spooky tavern called The Thirsty Beaver. Usually I don't guess it's that spooky. But near midnight on this Thursday, arising from the low-hanging fog on the desolate roadside, a tiny freestanding shack far from civilized norms, The Thirsty Beaver did not warm the blood at first sight. Inside, the brother of one of our hosts was tending bar, and the jukebox was on honky-tonk fire: Roger Miller, Paycheck, Ferlin, Webb, even yours truly. Under the bartop glass sat an enviable collection of 45's from the fifties and sixties, and memorabilia lined the walls -- an 8 x 10 of Johnny Paycheck in tight jeans and moustache that in 1972 doubtless said "tough fucker" but in 2009 say "ass fucker." Cans of beer and plastic cups of everything from char-4 bourbon to fennel-infused ladydrinks kept appearing, and beautiful women -- a banjo frailer, for instance! -- plied me with discourse. There were people of many types...well, they were all white and between 21 and 60, but within that demo they were pretty variegated...and the incredible thing was that every one of them had a scholarly knowledge of country music. Who played that great steel line on "The Blackboard of Your Heart"? What label were Johnny and Jack's hits on? Where was Wayne Kemp born? Ordinary folks know this sort of trivia only about sports and movies. I myself don't know it after four plastic cups of 90-proof mouthwash. The inmates of The Thirsty Beaver, jocks and railroadmen and queers and govt workers and small businessmen and permanent idlers, know it all, and I salute them, and all the brainy yeomen of the southeast, who know how to build good tools, take care of their stuff, raise some hell, and otherwise mind their manners.