This is the dartboard at my grandad’s house . All of tjise holes are mine or logan’s or my grandad’s To me it is worth a bajillion dollars
Original liner notes to Doc Watson’s debut record 1964
by Ralph Rinzler (who ‘discovered’ Doc playing electric guitar in a dance band and talked him into playing acoustic guitar and recording some of the folk songs he knew.)
“At a moment when folk song is another kind of pop music to millions of Americans, when young musicians with talent and determination sit down with impresarios to figure out new angles, gimmicks and tricky arrangements for folk type songs, along comes an unassuming man from a little community thirty-three hundred feet up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and brings us an insight into a way of life and art.
Here is one of my favorite existing tributes to Earl Scruggs by the late John Hartford. Never has Gastonia NC had such a fine mention in popular music.
Earl Scruggs 1924 - 2012
60 playsGetting vocals into “World Awaits Us All”
drinks with: Cults
“Everybody’s influenced by [David Lynch]. Or I mean most people. I had to write this really long paper in college about avant garde and kitsch, what separates high art from low art. And I think he doesn’t see those boundaries. The same with Roy Orbison, that’s why he’s drawn to that music. Because at the same time something could be cliché and kitschy, it can be totally revolutionary and have a new feeling and be amazing.” Original content at AmericanSongwriter.com
St. Cecilia’s day
Don’t ever let it be said we have never played a show at a convent.
Today is St Cecilia’s day (patron saint of western music). There is a giant convent on a hill (off of 8th / Metro Center) overlooking Nashville that was built in 1861. The photo above is from March 6, 1906.
It was built at night-time by a group of Nuns from Ohio, who wanted to start a school. Apparently they built during the night so as not to offend the local neighborhood, who would have though it inappropriate for a bunch of women to be doing construction work.
At several different times during the civil war, ‘skirmishes’ between confederate and union soldiers started on their land. Each time they did, the nuns would run out (in in full habits) between the two sides pointing guns and tell the soldiers to take their fight somewhere else. They also gave food to soldiers of both sides throughout the war. (These details I got from one of the nuns at the motherhouse.)
In the 1930’s Timshel’s grandmother went to high school here, and almost became a nun herself.
Record Making
It takes a whole different level of “preparation” for us to get a record done these days. Last night as we were packing up a cardboard box full of quilts/pillows/bottles/ipods, special animals, getting the boys in footy p.j.s, hustlling to the car and across the bridge to Logan’s house, letting everyone dance around the studio and talk to Logan and Bryan enough, settling in with our book on tape, shutting the sound proof doors of each age groups’ isolated booth, and heading back into the control room to talk “songs” etc.,…well, I thought a few pictures might be appropriate. (posted by Timshel)
