bluegrasshat http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com Most recent posts at bluegrasshat posterous.com Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:40:22 -0800 Everybody Needs an Uncle Paul http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/everybody-needs-an-uncle-paul http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/everybody-needs-an-uncle-paul

My Uncle Paul is what I consider a great man.  He's kind, compassionate, and mostly understanding.  Everyone has their flaws but Uncle Paul's good traits far outweigh any of his bad.

My Aunt Bonnie married Paul when I was in my late teens.  He raced cars, dune buggies, played bluegrass music, and is a wonderful mechanic.

The reason for this post is to discuss his profound influence on my Dad and me but most importantly how he unselfishly brought my Dad and me closer together.

It had been years since my Dad had played bluegrass.  He sat at home and occasionally would pick up the guitar and sing a little but nothing involved.  He had always been approached but couldn't seem to get motivated to play with anyone again.  My Dad tells this story about one of the last times he played in a bluegrass band when I was a kid.  He said they (his bandmates) were all standing around at practice and one of the guys kept saying, " We're just not good enough.  We'll never be good enough to make it big."  So Dad used his logic and applied it to the previous statements.  The bass player is good enough.  The banjo player is good enough.  The mandolin/fiddle player is good enough.  Well, that just leaves one and that's me...I guess I'm holding them back so I'll just quit! And he did.

Years went on until Bonnie met Paul.  Paul loves bluegrass music and plays all the time.  Everybody loved Paul and therefore Dad was apprehensive and was reserved until he found out Paul too played Bluegrass.  Well this was one of the best things that ever happened to my Dad and he and Paul soon became very close and eventually would travel to Suwanee, Florida twice a year for a Bluegrass Festival they would have there.  Dad met many new friends there through Paul and on his own and eventually became a regular fixture there.  They both would tell stories how they would play for 6-7 hours a night singing and playing and never once singing the same song twice.  This amazed everyone down there because no one had any idea that Dad was such a song repository.  Dad had an amazing voice but also an uncanny memory when it came to songs.

Through those years I never played Bluegrass, I sang some with Dad when I was a kid and when I realized it wasn't cool then I cut that out.  Eventually I came to want to learn how to play guitar and maybe eventually play lead.  One evening we stopped by Uncle Paul and Bonnie's and visited, I think Dad mentioned that I was wanting to learn and Paul called me over.  He was playing a "Sigma Martin" guitar and looked me in the eyes and held out the guitar and said, "Here."  That was it, he gave it to me and I learned how to play in no time and this is because... Paul was learning to play resonator guitar at that time through an accomplished musician named Will Parsons in Berea and he even payed for me to have guitar lessons when he went for his lessons.  

Well, all that said I learned how to play lead guitar and then took up mandolin which I learned to play myself.  I even played down in Florida with Dad a couple times and it was awesome.  But there finally came a break that I think Dad and I both hoped would come...the chance to play in a band together.  We played in a band call "The Blue Dawg" for a few years and it was great.  Dad sang lead and played rhythm guitar and I sang tenor, played mandolin and some lead guitar.  It was a great experience for both of us and we eventually went on to start our own band "Eddy Hopkins & Son."  

We played together for years and I was playing with my Dad the night I met my wife.  He was with me for so many special moments in my life but all the special moments before then were on my terms not his.  The special moments were ones I generated but when it came to music we did produced them together.  

Dad and I had a very significant wedge occur through religious differences and the one thing that held us together was our music.  I say all this because I don't feel any of that would have been possible without the love of my Uncle Paul.  He was instrumental in so many positive results in my life by being such a good person, being so unselfish and doing acts of kindness at the right moments and they produced years of joy for my whole family.  

Anyone who has read my previous posts knows my Dad is no longer with me but we played music right until he couldn't play anymore.  He left a legacy of music behind and I have hours of audio and video to prove it.  My son knows his Papaw was a singer and is able to remember him through audio and video in ways that memories cannot.  I hope to someday sing with my son the way my Dad sang with me.  

And if I ever get turned aside from Bluegrass I pray my Uncle Paul will be there to put me straight.

 

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Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:25:00 -0700 Walter Roark http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/walter-roark http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/walter-roark

Walter Roark was a banjo player in one of my Dad's bluegrass bands.  The band was Kentucky New Grass or Big Apple Grass, something like that.

Walter was an amazing self-taught musician.  My Dad told me the story of how Walter learned how to play.  Walter's father would leave his banjo sitting in the corner and when he would leave he would tell young Walter to not touch it.  Needless to say that was an invitation for Walter to dig right in. Walter would pluck and roll on the banjo, replicating the music he would hear on the radio.  But, when Walter's father came home there the banjo sat.  There would be instances where, as Walter played, a string would break and he would have to figure out to re-string the banjo before his father came home.  This was definitely a teaching tool that a father used, knowing his son very well, to invite his son to develop his musical abilities.  

I remember Dad telling me a story where they were running late for a show and Walter was in the back of his big, ugly Dodge.  It had this huge bench seat and Dad said he was going about 70 mph and every time he would take a curve he'd see Walter fly through his rear view mirror.

One time Walter was coming over to my parent's house for practice and my Mom had just cleaned the glass door and Walter ran into that thing 3 times before he realized there was a door there.

When Walter was on stage he could play banjo with the best. But unfortunately  Dad talked about Walter's one real flaw.  If Walter looked into the crowd he would jump time, no matter what.  So, when Dad played music with Walter, everyone in the band would watch Walter as he took his banjo breaks just waiting for him to look up.  They knew that if he looked up during one of his breaks they could jump time with him and nobody would ever know.

Walter is one of those great characters that Bluegrass music has blessed me with.  

I have alot of great memories of him and was happy to have been a small part of his.  

He was a damn good banjo player and not enough in the world like him.

 

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Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:47:00 -0700 Coping with Dad's passing...4 years gone http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/coping-with-dads-passing4-years-gone http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/coping-with-dads-passing4-years-gone

My Dad died four years ago, today.

I sang and played music with my Dad for years and it was really the best thing he and I had ever done.  We did it together.  

His musical stylings influenced me and I was able to meld them into our music.  

All he ever wanted was "drive".  That's the word he always used and to us it was well defined.  The melody had punch and we accentuated it with our instruments.  If your feet weren't tapping or your chin bobbing in time with our strong, percussive rhythm then our music was missing something.

When I play the guitar or mandolin I am treating them as a percussive instrument as much as a stringed one.  I was essential to my Dad's bluegrass music vision.  I was his disciple and he the teacher.  I never put that idea into words before but when I play or sing he is definitely moving through me.

I never sang lead the whole time I sang with Dad.  I did the things he couldn't.  He judged and critiqued  when I did something he could, but when I sang harmony, played mandolin, or played lead guitar he couldn't say a word and all he ever did was watch.  That's the sad thing, I couldn't stand his comments.  They grated upon my nerves and caused such tension that it hurt our musicality.  We were not in harmony so I chose the road not traveled and that resulted in a pure tone between us.

We had many things we didn't agree upon.  Church, politics, sports, insurance, you name it and we would probably argue about it.

A few things on which we did agree:  good steak, Granny's breakfast, and hard, driving Bluegrass Music.

01_Dream_of_a_Miner's_Child.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Thu, 21 Jun 2012 06:19:00 -0700 Blue bird Singing http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/blue-bird-singing http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/blue-bird-singing

I was listening to some shuffled music this morning and a song my Dad and I recorded started playing.  My first inclination was to skip it off but after a few beats I decided to let it play and I'm glad I did.

My Dad has been gone for a few years now and we were in a bluegrass band for years and after all the things we went through together the one thing we still shared was our music.  The only pictures we had together for his last years was of us playing music.  I loved my father so dearly but differences in religion drove an insurmountable wedge between us.

My cousin loves this song (Blue bird Singing).  She said she couldn't get enough and would play the CD over and over again.  In the chorus my Dad would sing the lines and then I would call back only to come together in unison on the third line in perfrect harmony.  

My Dad always said that family members had the best harmony because they have similar voices based around their genetics.  I find it so amazing that we could be so "together" as we sang but be so far apart in our relationship.

Blue bird Singing is possibly the best song my Dad and I recorded together.  Its about as close to perfect as we could get.  The instrumentation is also very good, beautifully simple but appropriate.  If only our lives together could have been as perfect as our music.

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Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:07:00 -0700 The Lonesome River http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/the-lonesome-river http://bluegrasshat.posterous.com/the-lonesome-river

I sit here alone on the banks of the river

the lonesome winds blow the waters run high

I hear a voice call out there in the darkness

I sit here alone too lonesome to cry

What is it about a river?

They're hypnotic, mezmerizing, calming, ever-changing.

Above are the haunting opening lyrics to The Lonesome River written by Carter & Ralph Stanley. We seek rivers for peace on one bank and pain on the other.  A rushing river can drown out all the noises but a calm river can make the environment alive with sounds never before heard.  

We seek the rivers, for some reason we seek them.  They bring life and death but they do not love or hate us.  We like to ascribe emotions and reasons behind results that we do not like.  Floods are seen as malicious and hateful, drowning (aside from burning) is considered one of "the worst ways to go."

Our music embraces the river and uses it for good and evil.  It brings release to our sorrow and gives wing to our joy. 

The second verse shows a river's duplicity:

We met there one night on the banks of the river

sat there holdin' hands and makin' our vows

Swore we'd never part and be happy together

But a new love she's found - she's gone from me now.

I love this song and it is just one example of how a river can be the central figure for our emotional state.  The Stanley Brothers did a wonderful job writing and performing this song.  It breaks a man's heart because it is so simple and is a situation that no man wants to find himself.  

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