Crossing The Walnut River One More Time

Winfield

2011-09-21T00:52:00.000-05:00

There's a slow sweeping curve in a small river on the lower Great Plains, near a medium sized town in the heart of the rural Middle West. Here, the years roll on in a constant path from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. Canadian blizzards take their turn with fierce,blazing summers; the Hard Red Turkey Wheat sits green through the long winters and becomes briefly a golden sea in June. Every year in late summer, through the gentle haze of this Idyll, we bring boxes of wood and wire, simple homes of fabric and metal, meals for both kings and peasants, and anything else that exists in our hearts to bring our lives to contentment. For that span of days or weeks, we exist as men and women are meant to exist - along the banks of a slow and thoughtful river, beneath a brilliant sky full of woodsmoke and wary raptors, in the ever-encircling arms and hearths of our own home fires. The primal spell of playing music until dawn starts many on a journey into the past, but soon becomes a promise for the future, a way to survive the brutal heat and the Arctic cold, an ever-present ritual to discover the joys of love and recover from the the pain of grief, to know, at last, the music of our true hearts.

Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee. This is my introduction to his book of photographs titled "Winfield", which is available at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2033835. The rest of his extensive body of work can be found at http://www.urbannaturemedia.com/#

Another Year Passes

2011-01-19T21:52:00.005-06:00

Tonight, watching that thin-lipped moon pause in a deep turquoise sky over a particularly garish expanse of Christmas lights, I was reminded of something my dear friend Michael Totty pointed out back when we were in High School - we put up pretty lights and sparkling tinsel in mid-winter because we have lost the ability to see the more subtle manifestations of natural beauty that the season has to offer. I still believe this to be true and sometimes just want to knock on doors and ask people to please turn that crap off and come out and look at this incredible moon right outside their door, a moon that may never again appear just like this, with this color sky, on this warm winter night, beyond this bare and magnificent tree.

And if you get a chance, find some tall grasses at the end of a sunny winter day, and wait till the sun has just disappeared, and look closely for the glow of the seed heads as they hold that winter sun briefly, faintly, into the coming night.

So, too, does the earth hold us, barely glowing, waiting for spring ...

Lunar Eclipse, December 8, 2010

2011-01-19T21:42:00.003-06:00

With all constancy, light bears down on us; but in winter it's low, almost hidden - the destiny of the delicate angle we face with the universe. This year, as we reach the apex of that arc, the full and glorious moon will slip like a frightened lover beneath the shadow of the earth, and the night owls will pause in silence as if to wonder if that light will, in fact, return to us.

We know ahead of time that this light will be like no other - a blackened moon on the blackest night of the year, a crown of darkness upon the sun's own child. When we weep, this is the light that fills us. When we are alone, this is the light we reach out to. But when we are lost, we get distracted. Like a moth, we follow whatever lights our way. The all-powerful sun persists, first here, then there, all possibilities, all hopes illuminated. Even at night, as the rumbling of the city continues, we search out every moon ray that seems to know which path to take.

For this one night, for this one instant, all light will be gone from us. The shapes, the shadows, the incessant need to illuminate will disappear. We will be left on a spinning ball of rock and water, weaving in an arc around a ball of fire, hidden even from it's own reflection by our own clumsy destiny. A night of smoke, and dance, and mirrors.

Pilgrims in the dark, we celebrate.

A Celebration of an Extraordinary Life: Stuart Mossman - A Modern Stradivari

2010-09-06T14:18:00.004-05:00

A Film Directed and Produced by Barry Brown

In American culture Hollywood and Kansas seem about as far apart as you can get. The glamour of the red carpet and the serenity of pulsing wheat fields rarely intermingle. But culture is universal and it's only the superficial expressions that seem foreign. The crossovers can be as real and varied as life itself. Within the world of commercial film, one family stands out as representative of some of the values and traditions that we hold dear here in the Middle West. One family always seems to pop up whenever the silver screen and the roots of our culture meet - the brothers Carradine, sons of the immortal John. When the stories of John Steinbeck or Woody Guthrie needed to be told, or a tender love song needed to be sung, one Carradine or another seemed to show up. And if you looked closely, you'd notice that the guitar David Carradine, as Woody, plays atop that freight train and in the jungle camps in Bound For Glory is not a vintage pre-war Gibson, but a Mossman Winter Wheat straight from Strother Field in lovely Winfield, Kansas. And you might also notice that at the emotional center of Bob Altman’s classic film about American culture, Nashville, when Keith Carradine sings the ballad "I'm Easy", the guitar in his hands is also a Mossman. That treasured Winter Wheat was custom made for Keith, based on his own design. These are not random examples of early product placement, but expressions of love for a man and his passion. That man is Winfield son, Stuart Mossman, and that passion is the forming of wood, wire and lacquer into a thing of beauty and song.

The feature-length documentary, Stuart Mossman, a Modern Stradivari, the love child of self-taught New York filmmaker Barry Brown, begins and ends in a cemetery. The beginning is a visit to the grave of the great luthier, who died in 1999, by his wife Kendra and his daughters Rebecca, Laura and sister Martha. The ending is Robert Carradine playing the Winter Wheat he built at Stuart's side, at the grave of the man who portrayed Woody Guthrie so many years ago - his oldest brother David. In between is the story of the man who helped return guitar building from a mass-market factory model to a craft of love and devotion. That same man was at the center of the birth of an American music festival that rivals all others -- The Walnut Valley Festival -- four days (or fourteen, depending on your level of commitment) of community and acoustic music that happens around the third weekend in September every year. Sadly, when Mr. Brown and his dedicated crew, Scott Baxendale, Suzanne Camejo and Casey Couser, came to film the festival in 2008, the campgrounds were under water, so there are no classic shots of much of what the festival is really about - pickin' in the Pecan and Walnut groves. Still, they do their best to portray the vibrancy of those magical days along the Walnut River, and their portrait of the man, the festival, and the guitars is one that all Winfielders will want, and even need, to see.

As so often happens with greatness, word gets out. The elder Carradine, just going about his business of directing a film, overhears someone talking about a man building phenomenal guitars out of a garage in Kansas, and decides he needs to look into it. David Carradine wasn't the only one. John Denver got word. So did Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and a host of others. David went to Kansas, and his brothers, all musicians and music lovers, followed. Their close friend, Barry, a man of many eclectic interests and a musician as well, also caught the message playing on a Kansas wind drifting over the state of California, not entirely unlike those dust bowl refugees from so many years ago. One by one they stepped into Mossman's humble shop and found themselves transformed by a piercing pair of sky-blue eyes and an enthusiasm as boundless as those Kansas prairies. And one by one they bought the guitars, spreading the word even wider. The Carradines brought Stuart into their world, as well, giving him minor roles in Barry's films, Cloud Dancer and The Long Riders -- the crews of which, predictably, ended up buying Mossman guitars.

Now, a decade after Stu's passing, those early supporters and enthusiasts have joined with a whole passel of musicians and luthiers to tell the remarkable story of Stuart Mossman, along with the troubled history of Mossman Guitars. Dan Crary, who played one of the pre-bluegrass folk festivals at Southwestern College in 1971, guitar wizard Beppe Gambetta, Oklahoma fiddler Byron Berline, and master Luthier Scott Baxendale all bring to life the wonder of these hand crafted guitars. They, along with a colorful lineup of Mossman's friends and family, also relate the wonders and passions of the man himself.

Kansans, especially, owe a debt of gratitude to the folks who have put this tribute together, but guitarists everywhere are continually blessed by the guitars Stuart left us. Also by the technicians, such as Scott Baxendale and Steve Mason, who learned their trade by his side. They are scattered across the country now, refretting guitars as fast as the hottest pickers can tear them up. There's also a final stage of this legacy in the new wave of small, high-quality luthiers who now ply their trade because Stu Mossman showed them it was possible to not only match, but to exceed the quality of even the best factory-born instruments. So when you pick up a Santa Cruz, or a Collings, or a Goodall, say a little thank you, under your breath, to Stuart.

This self-financed film is a labor of love for everyone involved in it's production. Anyone in Wichita the weekend of October 22 will be able to share that love, because Barry Brown will be joining the Tallgrass Film Festival for the premier Kansas screening of Stuart Mossman- a Modern Stradivari. Because of the inherent nightmare of film festival scheduling, exact times have not been set, but two screenings are likely. As well as a directors talk by Barry, the festival is scheduling a Winfield-style jam in the parking lot after the Saturday screening, and a gathering of unique and unusual Mossman guitars from across the country will be put on display at the Scottish Rites Temple beforehand. Exact times will soon be posted on the Tallgrass website, as well as the film's Facebook page. If you ever waiver in your perception of David Carradine's devotion to this story, all you have to do is remember that he named his daughter after the Mossman South Wind he owned, using the Kansa Tribe's word for it - he named her Kansas.

A Man of Honor and Dignity

2010-09-06T14:14:00.001-05:00

We've all seen the inside, the outside, and the harsh realities of modern life. We can easily find ourselves disconnected from our work, from our families, even from the Earth itself. We have mostly lost the village community that has been our natural heritage ever since that first Sapien rose upright and threw that bone into outer space.

So, we spend our lives trying to counteract the dissolutions of the industrial revolution, the ravages of slavery, the insanity of fascism, the false promises and prophets of capitalism. The natural response is simply to build an extended family that fills the ancient needs, to create something of value that is not connected to a mass marketing strategy or a political agenda, to reach back for something that is already loaded into our souls, a golden thread that keeps our own from drifting into the easy darkness and ties us instead into a human whole that can grow and flourish as we are all meant to do. Any spark can ignite the tender of a community, any art form, any form of reverence, any shared passion can do the trick. For an ever-growing number of souls here in central Kansas, that spark has been any old thing with strings on it, any song, old or new, that tells the truth of our joys and sorrows. And the capitol of that state of bliss, the village square of that ancient town, the glowing hearth of that perfect home is a little pub on North Broadway in Wichita, Kansas with the incongruous name of a vegetable not served on the premises.

But we forgive these shortcomings among family members. We gaze instead into the heart of that hearth, and look around us to see what bits of wood we can bring to the fire.

The blaze will be flaring up from noon to midnight on Saturday, June 5, at the above mentioned iconic sandwich bar. The man behind the bar, as always, will be Patrick Audley. What started out to be a benefit to cover mounting medical expenses has turned out to be a celebration of a man who has put on dozens of benefits for others, who has carefully walked hundreds of troubled young men into adulthood, and who has unfailingly supported any folk musician that has ever made their way to his door. Any follower of this list knows that I occasionally suggest events of special interest, but today I must go beyond suggestion. I must frankly insist that anyone who has ever felt the encompassing glow of that simple room, has ever felt the power and passion of this simply human music, has ever relished a #8 and a "ruby red", is required by the rules of karma to give something back to someone who has given us so much.

How we connect to our passion unites us; how we build our community inspires us; how we support the ones we love defines us.

Bring the love. And your checkbook,

The Legend Of Stuart Mossman

2010-04-03T13:30:00.002-05:00

- A Modern Stradivari

2010-04-03T13:10:00.012-05:00

Guitar-building workshop, Walnut Valley Folk Festival, April 1967

Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars, and it shows in the people that gathered around him.

Stuart Mossman loved people and it shows in the guitars he made.

Stuart Mossman loved music and it shows in the faithful legions camping on the banks of the Walnut River every third week in September. The simple truth is: that music would not ring throughout that valley if not for the fact that Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars.

And superlative guitars they are, over six thousand of them out there getting mellower and richer day by day, year by year, as any great instrument should. Did he have huge setbacks that would have stopped other men? Yes, but he loved to build guitars. Did he train and inspire (and give jobs to) a whole generation of luthiers and technicians that we reap the benefits of every time we get a neck reset or a treasured instrument repaired? Yes, because Stuart loved to build guitars. Did he develop a bond with every person he ever handed a guitar to? Yes, because he not only loved to build, but he also loved to share guitars.

So time passes, the guitars gain strength from the varied and endless vibrations of the strings, the woods learn new tones from mountain air or sea breezes, and men and women too change with the winds and tensions needed to be able to coax the music from the air itself. For a world of reasons, the festival carried on without and beyond the man who simply knew where music came from. In it's forth decade, there is no mention on the website or in any of the Walnut Valley literature of the man whose passion made it all happen so many years ago. That may change with the upcoming release of the feature documentary produced and directed by Stu's friend, acclaimed film artist and Hollywood renegade Barry Brown: "The Legend of Stuart Mossman - A Modern Stradivari". Not that Mr. Brown's work had any intent beyond his own personal celebration of Stuart's amazing dedication to his craft, it just seems that the power of his portrait will open the floodgates of both memory and awareness among those legions whose lives revolve around those magical days in September. The film has been submitted to The Tallgrass Film Festival, and hopefully will receive it's premier Kansas screening in Wichita in October. You can easily follow the film's life from it's Facebook page, and certainly check the Tallgrass schedule from their website and from local media. All of us who love this music and cherish the community it has spawned owe a huge debt of gratitude to Barry Brown, Scott Baxendale, David Carradine, Stuart's family, and all the other wonderful musicians and artist who came together to put the Mossman story to film. Bless them all, and help them make sure the film reaches all of those whose lives are permanently enriched by six lengths of wire stretched over a finely hewn wooden box. And remember, and tell your friends, it all came about because Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars.

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2009-11-21T12:54:00.001-06:00

Right outside my North window is a giant Soapberry tree, left a brilliant yellow by the most vibrant autumn in recent memory. Of course, the sunlight itself never reaches that window, but as it arcs low in the sky over Sim Park, every leaf of that magnificent tree throws it's oblate reflection into every corner of my tiny world, turning everything I own, every book and broken vase, every poem, every animal, every molecule of air we breathe into a shining, living gold. I swim in gold, I feast with ochre, I dream in a language spoken only by yellow. I rest my bones upon the trinity of the sun's crystal crimson, the sky's electric blue, and the soul of this tree. I sleep within the living death of every leaf. I take summer beneath my winter blanket and hold her close. I awake to the saffron songs of night birds who sing only in memory. I rise within a shadow as golden as the sun itself. I hold fast to that living sun and take it, burning holes in every pocket I own, with me wherever I go. It is then, and only then, that I am ready for whatever winter has in store.

Goodnight, Little Arlo, Goodnight

2009-05-12T11:09:00.003-05:00

I discovered Woody Guthrie in 1967 from a two inch column in my hometown newspaper, the Daily Oklahoman, announcing his death in a Brooklyn hospital. "Folk Singer Dies' was the headline, and I barely knew what a folk singer was, although I was already on the way to becoming one. I found a copy of his autobiography, Bound For Glory, and in that one book learned more about my home state and about the world in general than I had learned in all the books I had read or classes I had taken in my short fifteen years. A couple of years later I went to my first folk concert, a Woody Guthrie birthday celebration in Oklahoma City featuring Jimmie Driftwood, and a host of others that I can't recall. It was attended by Marjorie, Arlo and Nora Guthrie, and I remember the pride on their faces as each performer gave tribute to their husband and father. It was forty years later, as I was researching the history of the Walnut Valley Festival, that I discovered that the concert I had seen had been originally planned for Okemah, Woody's hometown, but the city of Okemah, still immersed in Woody's reputation as a radical and a communist, would not grant them a permit for the show. I couldn't help but think about that show tonight, as I watched "Little Arlo" on the stage of the Orpheum Theater, and how strange it must have been to have a father that was revered by much of the known world but roundly despised by the folks in his hometown, and I realized how that pride I saw on the Guthrie family faces had been tempered by forces that I was many years away from understanding.

Of course, Okemah now hosts a festival every year on Woody's birthday, a decidedly communistic affair with no admission and where all the performers play for free. Maybe they're just trying to make up for past wrongs. I'm sure I'll attend that festival someday, but having Arlo right here in town is certainly the next best thing. For all the "Woody" imitators out there, Arlo was certainly never one of them. His songs have always been carefree and easy, songs about riding motorcycles, passenger trains and "big airliners", his humor a more subtle but still substantial take on his dad's biting social criticisms. Still, he helped keep Woody's songs alive, recording songs like The 1913 Massacre and The Ludlow Massacre when no one else would. He was right on target tonight with "Pretty Boy Floyd" - what could be more timely than the lines "as through this life you travel/you'll meet some funny men/some'll rob you with a six gun/ and some with a fountain pen"? Also, "This Land Is Your Land" is not a song that normally brings tears to my eyes, but in Arlo's hands, on that stage in my chosen hometown, flooded by the memories of so long ago and of singing that song so many times and in so many places across this land, a good cry in the dark seemed most appropriate.

With his son, Abe, on keyboards, a very tight rhythm section, and the Burns Sisters on back-up vocals, Arlo Guthrie kept the Orpheum stage hoppin'- at least between stories. Backing up a natural-born storyteller must be challenging for a musician, but they all showed well-honed patience. My personal favorite was the story describing unwritten songs as fish swimming by, and instead of grabbing a line and a pole, you just grab a pencil and a piece of paper and see if you can catch one. I missed the actual punch line but it had something to do with staying downstream of Dylan, because he might throw some smaller ones back. I also loved his story about his very first memory when he was two years old, of simply standing next to Huddie Ledbetter, and how, almost sixty years later, his band took a day off searching for Leadbelly's grave in Louisiana. We heard how he made Steve Goodman buy him beers before he would listen to his songs, and we heard a retelling of a biblical story that turned out to just be a praise for the common man. The master definitely still has the touch.

Arlo closed his show with one of his dad's poems that he had put to music, a task still ahead for over three thousand songs. It was a song about peace, not the big peace that you see in the posters and slogans, but the small peace that lives inside one person, a peace that becomes the one true gift that one person can give to another. Arlo, you gave Wichita a great gift tonight. Thanks. And goodnight.

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The Power of the Picture

2008-10-15T22:36:00.005-05:00

In both my MySpace bulletin announcing the article and my letter congratulating the photographer, I used the word "finesse" in describing Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee's images of Winfield 2008. I hope you'll visit to see what I mean. (http://www.hodgsonrigsbee.com/)It was difficult choosing one image to accompany the letter to my old friend, but the blue tent/blue sky/blue port-a-potty was imminently powerful for several reasons. First, it immediately separates 2008 from every other "Winfield". That photo could never have been taken at either the Walnut or Pecan Groves. Also, I love the way the sky shows both the power of the storm that has just passed and the incredible clarity and calm that was about to descend on both the tent and the plastic shitter. Certainly, it would be far too academic for an admitted Old Folkie to go on about how both structures are temporary representations of our "real lives" relocated to a place where our "real" lives should perhaps be. Sorry, you'll have to get there on your own. I will, however, mention that there is a "forth blue" that is not immediately apparent - the native stand of Little Bluestem grass that everywhere surrounds Winfield Lake - mowed down strategically to make way for the tents, shitters, and everything else that eventually followed. This grass likely grew here long before any of us, or any of our ancestors thought to draw taught string over boxes of wood to accompany the pure joy of living on this earth, atop that hill, under that perfect sky.

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Letter To An Old Friend

2008-09-25T08:35:00.016-05:00

Dear Michael,

So great to talk to you recently, and I can't thank you enough for hosting my son on his journey to San Francisco. You asked about Winfield, and, as is my habit, I got pretty carried away with the answer. But then, we have over thirty years of catching up to do.

That little festival that we saw arise from the turmoil of the sixties has grown almost immeasurably since you left the land of sunflowers and catfish and ventured off to leave your mark on the world. Even I, living forty miles away, for many years have given way to the exigencies of raising a family and maintaining a business that required my full attentions in late September . I wasn't among the faithful when the campgrounds fell silent as the towers fell in New York in 2001, nor was I there to cheer the performers who rented cars to dash across the country under silent skies to their beloved Winfield. I was also absent during the sad and tragic death of Brian Redford in 1997, which brought the festival staff to it's collective knees in grief and put the future of our festival in serious doubt. But, I had gathered my musical wits about me recently and can now bear witness to the great flood of 2008, which turns out to not be so much about water and mud, but about the very part of our soul which makes this such a central part of our life. That one week camped at Winfield Lake showed us, in great relief, exactly why we go year after year - decade after decade - not for John McCutcheon or Tommy Emmanuel, as great as they are, not for Marley's Ghost or Hot Rize. We go for only one thing - ourselves - our community. Sure, Doc Watson and John Hartford brought us together in the beginning, along with Bromberg, Crary, the Blakes and all the rest, but it was a true community that was built up around this collective tradition of a music that heals the body and the mind, in much the same way a prosperous town would be built up around a sweet and steady flowing spring.

I shared some wine with some young folks from Valley Center just before I left on Sunday. They have yet to discover the music of John Hartford or even Doc Watson. Will they someday? Quite possibly. Will it matter if they don't? I don't think so. The Fast Food Junkies or Truckstop Honeymoon or the Bennett Brothers may be all they need. I know those folks were there the night before when Craig Dermer and Cody Bennett stepped into the middle of that field of Bluestem and played some of the most raucously sublime music that I have ever witnessed in all my years on this planet - it profoundly changed me and how music works in my aged brain - I can't imagine what kind of path it must have started them on. What's funny is that I had a complete field recording unit a few feet away in my tent - and right now I'd love to have the recording so I could learn the songs - but at that moment I could not do anything but be IN that moment - to exist only within that miracle of human spirit and song that is our reward for all the struggles of the rest of the year. As our fellow travelers stumbled in, drawn in like bees by the pure sound of molten honey, my companion and I sat at our dinner table and witnessed the beating heart of our musical heritage, passed down from fiddle to bow, father to son, friend to stranger, tramped across broken sod and frozen mountains, carried on backs through floods of great pain and great loss, packed in boxes and rucksacks across oceans when our homes could no longer hold us, and down strange and forbidding rivers as we searched for new ones.

This music needs no stage, no microphones, no sound board, no producer, no road manager. All it requires is an open space of Little Bluestem, a moon rising over a Kansas lake, and a few musicians with a story to tell. I wish you had been there, Michael, to see what you and Stu and all the others got started so long ago. I'm betting that that highfalutin' newspaper you write for will let you off for a few days next September, if you ask early enough, and I'll commit right now to finding you a tent and some sleeping bags. Pull that dulcimer out of the closet, I know you've still got it. Go back and read " Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" again if you have to. Do whatever you've got to do to get your sorry Okie-to-Oakland ass back here where it belongs. In Kansas. In September. In Winfield.

Sweet dreams,

Tom

P.S. The photograph is by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee, from his amazing collection at http://hodgsonrigsbee.com/web09/winfield01.html

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Any Old Perch In A Storm

2008-09-18T08:26:00.005-05:00

Sometimes a buzzard will roost wherever there's a little water and some good grub. Blue skies and dry roads also are required habitat for this species. And during full moon, they have been known to beat their wings in time with the song that springs eternal from the autumn earth of Cowley County. Carry on, amigos. See you at the Buzzard Lope.

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What's Winfield Without A Little Rain?

2008-09-13T21:49:00.014-05:00

The Walnut Valley International Waterway is open for business and barges are loaded with grain and cattle and headed off to the centers of commerce and industry. Long-landlocked farms are prospering with catfish and oyster production. Fields that once waved amber are being planted with rice and cormorants are being imported to protect the crop. In the backwaters, young men are building rafts and making plans with displaced agrarians to escape unhappy home lives. Canoes are paddled with old Silvertones and cheap fiddles that the owners have been wanting to replace for years. Life goes on. Winfield lives.

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Winfield on the Air (Before the Flood)

2008-09-09T21:11:00.009-05:00

This post was prepared before the quiet little Walnut decided to become the "wide Missouri" and send the land rushers rushing (O.K., some were definitely dawdling) off to friend's back yards, other local campgrounds, or any dry parking lot they could find. More on that later.

Front Porch Radio (http://www.frontporchradio.net/) has been active for several years as a way for folks to keep the spirit of Winfield alive in their kitchens, their bedrooms, and out in the garage while they're sharpening their tent stakes. No longer just a campground stage with broadcast capabilities, FPR has grown into a 24 hour internet stream of any and everything you might hear down on the Walnut River, anything from Patsy Montana to Split Lip Rayfield. Also, they've built up a video archive of many of the performers that have graced their little campground sound booth out in the wilds of the Walnut Grove.

In addition, they have been joined in these efforts this year by the Wichita State internet radio station, WSUiR. (http://wsuir.wichita.edu/index.html), The brain-child of John Harrison and Lauren Hirsh, WSUiR is a collaborative community and campus-based radio project. They have opened their studios and on-site equipment to anyone willing to make a programing proposal and go through their training necessary to make things work. Their plan is to set up a team of Winfield festival-goers to scout out and record actual campground music sessions, for streaming to the unfortunate souls strapped to their real lives somewhere beyond the Walnut Valley. The monstrously entertaining James Gates is scheduled to pull off a live feed of the James Gates Show, as well as five-minute spots at the top of each hour. They also plan to broadcast some "best of" Front Porch Radio recordings. The magazine, Naked City, is also one of the collaborators, although I'm not clear yet on their involvement.

Just like everyone else, I'm sure their plans will adapt to the weather and eventual festival decisions.

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It Ain't Your Grandpa's Radio Anymore

2008-09-08T01:38:00.008-05:00

Since the Great Depression, folk and traditional music has been preserved over the airwaves when it was faltering elsewhere. In the thirties, marketing geniuses heard dollar signs in the proliferation of "hillbilly" music, since it was mostly mountain folk who had migrated to the cities, only to find themselves not only completely cut off from their culture, but soon out of work with little other diversion besides the "talking box". In Nashville, WSM was beginning to broadcast the Grand Ole Opry, and out West, Woody started writing his first songs at KFVD while broadcasting the folk songs and hymns that he grew up with to the masses huddled on the California coast. Pete Seeger, Uncle Dave Macon, The Carter Family and hundreds of others might have never been heard by a wide audience if not for fact that three out of four families had such a box in their house. Even in the last thirty years, nothing has done more to bring folk music into the average American household than Prairie Home Companion.

Today, the internet has trapped the little rabbit of radio, and has got him running in a wheel to nearly every house in the land. Before I stir up whats brewing in Winfield, I'd like to head up to Kansas City for a spell. Up there, they have a beast known as Community Radio. Sound subversive? You bet it is. Folks putting on their own shows without answering to advertisers or paying huge sums to "public" radio syndicates? It's downright radical. Here's how they describe themselves: "KKFI is an independent, non-commercial, non-profit, 501(c)3, volunteer-based, community radio station. Our vision is to provide a broadcast voice to the voiceless...to those in our community who are otherwise un-represented or under-represented by mainstream media. Our eclectic music programming includes blues, jazz, reggae, rock, hip hop, alternative, Hispanic and world music. Our local and national public affairs programming includes shows dealing with working class, peace, justice, GLBT, and alternative health issues." Find them at http://www.kkfi.org/

Folk music fans score because the Foolkiller crowd has their own show - "Foolkiller Folk" - that runs from 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. every Sunday. The Foolkiller was a Folk Music and Theater Collective that operated out of Harry Truman's old haberdashery at 39th and Main back in the 70's and early 80's. They, along with the Wichita branch, The Market Street Forum, brought the likes of Utah Phillips, Rosalee Sorrels, Sparky Rucker, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott out here to the flatlands of the lower Midwest. Come to think of it, it was at a Foolkiller retreat that I got to hear Houston Stackhouse, the falsetto blues singer whose band was the house band the night that Robert Johnson was killed. And it was at a Foolkiller conference that I stood with twenty or more folks holding hands and chanting in a circle around Charlie Parker's grave. Mary McCaslin, Jim Ringer and Mark Ross dropped in regularly, and the wonderful folk quartet, Rosy's Bar and Grill, rose out of the Foolkiller ranks. The current radio show, "Foolkiller Folk" has three rotating "host couples": Valerie and Mark Andruss, Bob and Diane Suckiel and Steve and Kathy Peters. Each adds their own flavor to the show, and each of them are skilled exhibitors of the best and farthest reaches of this music we love. They keep people posted on concerts in the Lawrence/K.C. area and also organize their own house concerts through Cross Currents - The Kansas City Folk Arts Alliance (http://www.crosscurrentsculture.org/Index.htm)

Now remember, even though it's on the internet, this is real radio - there's no going to the archives to hear past shows. If you want to save something, you gotta thread some tape on a digital spool of some kind and record it yourself. However, they do post a playlist after each show, with links to purchase the individual tracks or CD's from Amazon.

There Still Ain't No Cane On The Brazos.

2008-08-26T23:24:00.005-05:00

O.K. - one more and I'll stop with the YouTube stuff. At least for a while. I just had to throw this version out for comparison. The iconic version for my generation was performed by the Band at Woodstock in 1969, and you'll hear it as well in the Dylan Basement Tapes, and see it on some early set lists. I hear the echoes of "No Cane On The Brazos" every time I hear "Tears Of Rage".

This lively take on it is by the New York quintet, Ollabelle, with Jason Crigler on guitar. It is very much the Bands arrangement - you can hear the echoes of Richard Manuel and Levon Helm with nearly every line. A great tribute, to be sure.

The faithful, the diligent, the near insane are already camping inside the stockyards of the Winfield Fairground. Somehow, this song is for them.

Ain't No More Cane On The Brazos

2008-08-26T01:04:00.010-05:00

This is yet another American traditional song captured by Lonnie Donegan and transfered to England to water the seeds of the British Invasion. It is said that the birth of the Beatles took place at a garden party where John Lennon played "The Rock Island Line" - a distinctly American song which had been popularized in Britain by the Scotsman, Lonnie Donegan. In fact, Donegan recorded the Leadbelly classic at Broadhurst Gardens just a week after Elvis recorded "That's Alright, Mama" at Sun Studios. It was July of 1954 when these two white men pulled the blue sword from the black stone (to paraphrase Mr. Bragg) and invented Rock and Roll. This was folk process accelerated by technology, mass marketing and a post-war economy that brought American blues and folk artists across the Atlantic, and later brought their Rock and Roll delineators back as conquering heroes. All said, it was more of a circle than an invasion.

I've always felt like Elvis never really sang the blues - he used the blues to develop his singing style. Lonegan, on the other hand, embraced the blues as an art form, and remains one of the few white folks who can really sing from the heart and the soul at the same time - which is what I believe the blues to be. He also sang a little Woody Guthrie, I don't think Elvis ever went there, either.

"Ain't No More Cane On The Brazos" is a traditional prison song from Texas. The Brazos meanders through the parts of the state where the cane fields grew, and for years the prisoners acted as basically slave labor to work the fields and harvest the cane.

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And Now For Something Completely Different

2008-08-25T10:49:00.006-05:00

Elvis has got nothing on Lonnie Donegan. Plus, he plays the banjo.

Here's Billy Bragg's excellent article on "The King of Skiffle"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/jun/21/popandrock

Is Tradition A Style Or A Form?

2008-08-24T01:52:00.005-05:00

It's easy to say that traditional music is music for which the authorship has been lost to the ages. But there are different levels of loss, and certainly different ages. Consider "The Rivers of Texas" - a wonderful ballad that mentions fifteen Texas rivers (Ann Zimmerman has an excellent Kansas version) and has a great sing-along chorus. This song was collected by the folklorist Vance Randolf who heard it from his friend, Irene Carlisle. She said she learned it from a cowboy that rented a room from her for awhile, whose name she had forgotten. She could have done the Roy Acuff thing and claimed that she had written it, and her kin folks could still be collecting royalties - but she opted for truth. So even though it's from the twentieth century, we don't happen to know who wrote it - does that make it a traditional song? And there were songs written over a hundred years earlier that we can still attribute to Stephen Foster or Silas Sexton Steele. All are considered "public domain" (because Steve and Silas's copyrights ran out, the cowboy never had one), but is one any more or less "traditional" than another? Of course, Mr. Foster, (the Bob Dylan of the nineteenth century), composed many of his songs around older, traditional melodies. In many cases, both still survive, but the Foster compositions remain the more compelling and years from now "Hard Times Come Again No More" may become as much a part of our future musical tradition as "Buffalo Gals" or "Black Jack Davey" are to our tradition today. Given enough time, so might "Blowin' in the Wind". It's all folk process, to be sure, I'm just fascinated by how it all fits together. And somehow I'm driven to comprehend the distinctions - maybe just so I can spot the next one when it comes around.

I'm also interested in how technology affects things. Perhaps Foster's songs have remained his own because he had access to printing presses to print his sheet music and distribute it at concerts, much the way we sell CDs today. Without this evolutionary step, his songs might have already become as "traditional" as say, "Banks of the Ohio" or "The Water is Wide". It's entirely possible that the authors of those songs were just as prolific as Steve and Silas, we just don't know because there's no record. And let's reconsider that cowboy with the "Rivers of Texas" song - today he would have drifted up to Denver and sang it at a couple of open mics and Harry Tuft would have been on the phone to some hot indie record company - and we'd have the next Townes Van Zandt. Maybe.

My favorite aspect of all this is people who are making their own music but making it in a way that sounds traditional - the Be Good Tanyas or Old Crow Medicine Show immediately come to mind. Doc Watson and Jean Ritchie are also both masters at this sleight of hand. The Holy Modal Rounders and The Incredible String Band made it look really easy, and had great fun with it. The wonderful ballad "Darcy Farrow", first recorded by Ian and Sylvia in the sixties, has the look, feel and texture of the very same ancient celtic folk song that Tom Cambell and Steve Gillette were trying to pass it off as for a class at U.C. Berekley. They had in fact written it themselves - based loosely on an accident Gillette's sister Darcy had on her horse. It was effective then, and was especially so later in the skilled hands of the Tysons. To this day, folks who never bother to read the liner notes assume that it's as old as "Barbry Allan". To this Old Folkie, that's the holy grail of folk music - to sound a couple of hundred years older than you really are. And still relate to the people around you.

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2008-08-21T21:23:00.017-05:00

More Thoughts On Folk Music

2008-08-20T21:54:00.013-05:00

In the posts from October 1st and 2d, 2007, this blog grappled with some of the ways folk music can be defined, as we seek to preserve whatever it is from the tremendous onslaught of things we know it isn't. Both posts offer quotes from the festival program from 1967, and one can see how some perceptions have changed over forty years, and how some things are very much the same. Forums such as Mudcat Cafe have batted this subject around endlessly, to the point that the oldtimers groan whenever someone re-opens a similar thread. Word junkie that I am, I'm always looking for new ideas. I see a couple of trends today that seem to be addressing the issue in productive ways. The term "acoustic music" is actually fairly useful, as long as all instruments in a group fit the description - it at least provides a dividing point that is understandable to all. Less general but more provocative is the idea of "roots music", which implies a folk-based starting point but often ends up with an electric bass here or there, maybe even drums. Of course, drum sets exist mainly to accompany the louder sounds of the electric guitar or jazz horns, but they are sometimes well employed in the execution of roots music, especially blues. I like the "roots" term because it implies a common link between blues and folk, and opens up the definition to include both the source of the style and it's progress through the folk process. At once easier and more problematic is the concept of "traditional music", and how it ties into all of this. To some, the terms "folk music" and "traditional music" are interchangeable. Others draw a definite line and tend to feel that the "acoustic music" and "roots music" terms just cloud the issue - or blur the lines.

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August Rains

2008-08-19T11:44:00.008-05:00

Doc and Rosa Lee Watson

One of my favorite musical treats from the past year was the discovery of the Robert Plant and Allison Krause album "Raising Sand", especially a gem of a song called "Your Long Journey" by Doc and Rosa Lee Watson. Although obviously written from the viewpoint of someone losing a life partner, and written when Merle was just a child, I couldn't help but think that the song was coming across the years as a tribute to him and his early departure from the stage for which we all still have tickets. It seems a perfect song for a cool, rainy day in August. I don't know of a more fitting convergence than a song from a guy who helped create the soul of Winfield and a young lady who walked away with the Walnut Valley fiddle crown at the age of fourteen. Equally beautiful is the version sung by Doc and Rosa Lee on their 1963 album "The Watson Family". That version, sadly, is not on YouTube but is available digitally along with twenty five other finely crafted tunes from the hills around Deep Gap, North Carolina. A well-spent ten bucks if there ever was one.

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2008-08-19T11:39:00.001-05:00

Summer at Last

2008-07-22T11:31:00.013-05:00

Greetings to those persistent enough to check these pages over the long year waiting for the next spin on the dance floor that we call Winfield. The Old Folkie (not fogie, thank you very much) is storing up extra braincells as we speak, and will again be posting some items of interest concerning the past, the future and most importantly, the presence of music in the Walnut Valley.

I'm going to start today with the photographs of the 1972 flyer that I transcribed in the post from May 18th. These were taken through the glass display case at the Winfield Library, so the image is not too clear. These were taken with the intention of being able to transcribe the text and not as an image for the web. But here you have it. This first page of the 1972 flyer mentions the Bromberg and Crary performance that I described as this blog was getting started almost a year ago (Sept.2, 2007), and confirms my long-held suspicion that that one performance was so phenomenal, and the roots that it drew on were so deep, that it spurred a contest and even an entire festival that have blossomed like few others in the ensuing thirty-six years.

I'll mention that there are plans to put the history that this blog has been uncovering into a more readable book form. It seems like the reverse-chronology format inherent in blogging can be a little confusing for any kind of permanent record. I welcome any and all suggestions in this regard, including possible funding sources, publication ideas, or personal histories from the festival's early days. I'm especially interested in information about The Black Eye, the little coffee shop that helped everything get started.

Beyond that, I would hope that tent stakes were being collected, reliable dog and cat care is being arranged, and that ample stores of frijoles rancheros are being frozen with love and sufficient cilantro.

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Old Buddy, Goodnight

2008-06-03T23:06:00.017-05:00

Bruce "U.Utah" Phillips

May 15 1935 / May 24 2008

This blog touches on the role this great man played in the musical development of the Old Folkie in the post from October 29, 2007

A small personal tribute can be found in the post from June 3 at

http://blog.myspace.com/thisgloriousnight

Bluebonnets Along That Lonesome Highway

2008-05-18T01:12:00.008-05:00

The graceful beauty of these twisted Scrub Oaks laced with the buoyant beds of Bluebonnet and Paintbrush makes a Texas springtime something that everyone should try to see at least once in a lifetime. Then, the Live Oaks spread their majesty over the ever-warming sky and you see why some folks never leave this place, or not for long. No, I'm still a Kansas boy, but I am getting filled with the rough physical style of both the people and the land here, enough that I should be bringing some Texas standards to the campfire this year - "The Rivers of Texas" is one I've always wanted to learn and "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue" is one I learned back in the eighties when I hung out here a bit.

I hope everyone got to see the Smithsonian exhibit at the Winfield Library. Every bit as interesting were the two companion exhibits, one concerning Mossman Guitars, and the other displaying artifacts and photographs from the Walnut Valley Festival. It was from the latter that I finally found proof for my original theory - the thing that kind of got me started on all this - the idea that the flat-picking championship was born from that most magical night when David Bromberg and Dan Crary blasted their flat-tops into orbit from Stewart Gymnasium. I found it in the flyer for the first festival at the fairgrounds in 1972, of which I had never before seen a copy. Here is the exact text, I'm assuming in the words of Stu Mossman:

"We would like to invite and welcome you to the first annual Bluegrass Festival and National Flatpicking Championship in Winfield Kansas.

"The idea to hold a National Flatpicking Championship developed as a result of a small, unpublicized folk festival that was held at Southwestern College in Winfield last year. Appearing at that event were flatpickers Dave Bromberg and Dan Crary, and these two fine instrumentalists were asked to get together on stage and demonstrate the type of back-room jamming that audiences never hear.

"Within the first two breaks on "Arkansas Traveler" the audience was on it's feet, cheering. This continued for over thirty minutes, as the two instrumental wizards ran through a series of old fiddle tunes, playing harmonies and counter-melodies rarely heard on guitar. It immediately became apparent that handled properly, a National Flatpicking Championship could be one of the finest additions to the growing schedule of Bluegrass events."

Of course, I described it all a little more dramatically back in September at the beginning of this blog, but then, I wasn't writing copy for a festival flyer. Mr.Bromberg never came back, but Doc Watson and Norman Blake stepped forward to do the heavy lifting with Dan that first year down on the river. And fortunately, the festival over the years moved beyond being just a bluegrass festival and embraced other folk-based forms including old-time string band music, rural blues, and some of our best topical singer-songwriters like John McCutcheon, Tom Paxton, and Tom Chapin. But the Flatpicking Championship, as Stu expected, ended up being the rocket fuel that put this festival into the stratosphere, and I was thrilled to see Mossman Guitars displayed with such professionalism and historical accuracy at the Winfield Library. Sue Birney, who served as curator for all three exhibits, deserves the heartfelt thanks of all who have this music, and this festival, in their hearts. She used our photo from this blog of Stu's guitar-making workshop in 1967 and reported that she heard from many people who were surprised to discover that the festival roots ran back that far. In a way, that means that I have accomplished the first step of my intentions behind continuing this blog - bringing that simple past into the present, bringing some of those early faces into the light of this new century. Sue mentioned the possibility of making the Mossman Memorial concert an annual event, and this is something I believe we should strive for. Equally important, I feel, would be something during the festival itself, something to educate people about the roots of one of the best "roots" festivals in the country. A mention on the website wouldn't be too much to ask for, either, it doesn't seem like.

Either way, time will go on, guitars will go in and out of tune, folks will fall in or out of love either down beside the river or in memory of it. Each of us will hold on to what is most important and leave behind the things we must, making the small and large decisions that will carry us into a future where our songs are the vessels of all we cherish, all we hope for, and all we remember.

Tonight, the Bluebonnets have dropped their blooms, giving way to the Indian Blanket, the Mexican Hat and the Missouri Evening Primrose. The moon is full and summer is more that just a promise, it's soon to be a real relationship.

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Late Notice: Special Dan Crary Concert

2008-04-09T11:11:00.005-05:00

Well, one of the worst things about trying to make a living out of town is the loss of time in front of my own computer, in my own office, with a guitar or banjo nearby to keep the creative juices flowing, and the rest of the world at bay. I did manage to let the Grandma's Farm list know about Dan Crary coming to Winfield in time for them to actually attend, but I should have posted it here back when the KAAA Newsletter came out with the announcement. Hopefully, I'll get into the flow a little better as time goes on.

So, it's later tonight as I write this that Mr. Crary will be giving a special concert in honor of Stu Mossman in Richardson Hall at Southwestern College. I still fantasize about splitting from the whole paying the bills thing and driving the 300 miles to be able to experience this historic occasion. The concert is in collaboration with the current exhibit: New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music, at the Winfield Public Library. The concert is from 7-9 on April 9th, and the cost is $5. There will be a jam at Baden Square, 700 Gary, following the concert. Everyone is encouraged to bring their Mossman guitars. The exhibit itself is a must-see for anyone with connections to the Mid-West music scene, and the concert would be sublime for anyone that loves that flat piece of plastic ripping up those wires stretched over that huge box. This is also part of an on-line history project and photo exhibit called Stu Mossman & His Guitars. : http://stumossmanguitars.blogspot.com/ . The good folks at the Winfield Library are encouraging people to log into the blog and send them photographs and/or stories of either Stuart or any of his guitars.

If you'll remember, Richardson Hall is where it all began with Bill Koch's opening lecture at the Southwestern Folk Festival in April of 1967. And Dan Crary, of course, has been central to everything that has happened in the Walnut Valley since then, beginning with that amazing performance with David Bromberg in the fall of '71. Flatpicking a guitar hasn't been the same since, nor has that little burgh on the Walnut River.

Furthermore, Barry Brown, who directed Stu (along with David Carradine) in his movie Cloud Dancer, is also coming this week. He is making a documentary on Stu with the Carradine brothers and Scott Baxendale. How awesome is that?

I'm hoping for full reports from several folks that I'm sure will be in attendance. Over 50 Mossman guitars are expected to be booming at the jam. If I can find a hill down here in north Texas, I'll climb on top of it and listen for maybe a faint resonance bouncing off the Arbuckle Mountains, rattling across the Red River, and assuring me that this music that I love will never die.

Carry on, Dan, Stu, and all the rest. And thanks.

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Mid-Winter Report

2008-02-22T22:32:00.010-06:00

It’s been now roughly six months since I started this trek into the history of the Walnut Valley Festival. I really thought it would be a simple process - I knew there was some “pre-fairgrounds” history - and I started out to chronicle that phase because it seemed to be disappearing from the general consciousness. Along the way, I discovered some glaring errors that seemed bound up in some aspects of the festival that were neither musical nor conducive to building a musical community. But yet, the community is there, the music is there, and I’m left wondering if the contradictions I’m coming up with really matter to the folks in Winfield or to the thousands that claim Winfield as their musical home.

Of course, I’m no historian, but I’ve begun to think of myself as a student of the historical process. I’ve only got this one ride on the carousel, and I’d like to think that one or two of the molecules that I push around will still be bouncing when I’m gone. Myself, members of my family, and many of the people I hold dear, claim Winfield as their musical heart, so maybe this is my dent in the fabric that stretches across the time-space continuum of vibrating strings and voices tilted back and sung to the stars. This is what I have loved most in this old life, and preserving a bit of the purity of that feeling is all I’m going for here. I just want the story to be true, at least this once.

Here are the things that struck me as I did my research:

The Walnut Valley Festival Archives fail to include or otherwise recognize the first two folk festivals at Southwestern College, which are clearly it’s predecessors. Consequently, a whole group of students and academic visionaries are denied their proper legacy in the history of one of the first and finest festivals of it‘s kind in the entire Midwest.

The Festival also fails to give any mention or credit to the one man without whom this festival would not exist at all, Stuart Mossman. Merely writing that sentence is difficult for me, my fingers twitch, and my brain leaps to more mundane, more easily understood problems. And I have avoided trying to understand it at this point, and to just lay out what seems true, and that’s the guts of it - Stu Mossman was the soul of this festival, and that soul has been ripped out without honor or recompense.

So my position is clear and I will try not to dwell on it. It’s a small campaign, and I’m well aware that it pales in comparison to plenty of other problems in the world today, but this is where I chose to live, and I’m going to see if I can have some small impact on a community that I believe has the capacity to someday help solve some of the bigger problems.

Also, I’d like to mention another historical journey to another music festival, and to give an update on one of the best of the current local festivals.

I'm hoping to add more information later but for now I want to pass the websites along to whet your appetite. There’s StringBreak, which happens on May 3 just a few miles east of Newton. http://www.myspace.com/stringbreak

Then on May 24, the Jackpot Saloon in Lawrence will be the scene of the 25th reunion of Musicians Unite And Sing in Climax . The web site has all of the music that Doug Dubois, John Barger and friends recorded on those two magic weekends in Climax, Kansas in1983 and 1984. http://www.climaxfestival.com/

Stay warm. Only 207 days till Winfield.

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A Walnut Valley Love Song

2007-12-28T18:41:00.000-06:00

"There is a friend by my side walking
There is a voice within me talking
There is a song that needs a singing,
Carry it on, carry it on ..."

Rik and Brenda's story is a Winfield story if there ever was one; a story about how that one week in September can bring profound changes to all the other weeks, to all the months, and on to all the years a body can string together.

Rik Stevenson is originally from up around Shenandoah, Iowa, a little diamond in the Loess Hills. Rik was born into music, his mom was a musician and he still has a little banjo-uke that she played in a swing band in the thirties. Rik is a championship fiddler, an impassioned songwriter, and a very tasty guitar player. He can play that old-time hill-country music or his rough-and-tumble country blues with equal passion. He can also make a digeridoo vibrate your very soul. Rik spread his music far and wide - he played whenever and wherever he was asked. He once opened for John Hartford steaming up the Missouri River on The Brownville Riverboat. He played frequently around Kansas City and was involved with the beginnings of the now-famous "Tick Fest". It was natural that he would drift on down into southern Kansas for "Bluegrass" in Winfield.

Some people are just natural-born residents of the Pecan Grove. I imagine the first time Rik pulled his '49 Chevy panel truck into the ticket line with the gods-eye and the 'coon tail swinging from his rear-view mirror, no one even bothered to inform him that there even was a Walnut Grove. And he went on like that for awhile, coming down on the good years, staying home in the lean. His little farm in the hills and his music were all he really needed. He raised up a son and a daughter, and watched a marriage go by the wayside.

It was 1999. As can happen to anyone, Rik met some folks from the Walnut Grove, and decided to pay a visit. He bravely trod across the bunker with only his old Martin and a few Coronas for protection. He located his new friend, Wichitan Kelley Slack, and ambled into the campsite with a new version of "Rank Stranger" on his lips. Well, it was Rik's first and only trip to the Walnut Grove, and it was Brenda's first time in Winfield, come down to see what all the fuss was about. I wish I'd have been there when she first spotted that quiet farm-boy strolling into their camp. I know they were never strangers (rank or otherwise) again after that, never really left each other's side for any length of time. Falling in love to the plink of a mandolin and the draw of a fiddle bow, beneath those massive walnut trees, under that warm fall sky, would have to be a glorious thing. You only have to visit their home and gardens now to see that glory still alive.

Under a canopy of cottonwood and pecan trees, they married during the Walnut Valley Festival in 2000. Rik became one of a rather large group of people who have made Wichita their adopted home, and he showered his love of all growing things over every square inch of the home he shares with Brenda up on North Oliver. He also gave his musical gifts to the wider community, gaining accolades on the didgeridoo with the Native American group "Passing Through", and finding musical cohorts in both the blues and folk music scenes in Wichita.

Early in 2006, doctors discovered a tumor alongside Rik's left occipital lobe. In March, a large cancerous tumor was successfully removed from Rik's brain, and he began the tedious radiation and chemotherapy treatments needed to keep the cancer at bay. Rik has also gone under the "cyber knife" with some success, but continues to struggle with the effects of the steroids necessary to prevent the swelling that could seriously affect his vision and other brain functions.

On January 19th, at the Murdock Theater in Wichita, the KAAA is sponsoring an event that will not only raise the money to cover a very special pair of glasses for Rik, but will also serve as a kind of musical celebration of Rik's phenomenal successes against this very difficult disease. And, at the Stevenson's insistence, a portion of the proceeds will also go to the P.A.T. Fund for it's continued support of Wichita musicians in need.

We are honored to have as one of the featured performers a rising star in the roots revival movement: Matt Cox, from Rik's hometown of Shenendoah, Iowa. One short visit to his website will certainly be enough to entice most "Winfielders" to come out to hear Matt's gutsy-sweet offerings. (http://www.mattcoxmusic.net/) There is a rumor that Matt's good friend, Ben Green, will accompany him. Cross your fingers.

Local blues legends, Aaron Moreland and Dustin Arbuckle, musically and spiritually wise way beyond their years, will join the bill with one of their trademark kick-ass acoustic sets.(http://www.morelandarbuckle.com/). Helping to kick everything off will be a whole host of Rik's friends, including Wayne and Artheta Long, Trevor Stewart and the Free Staters. Tickets are $10, available at the door or from KAAA board members. Special V.I.P. seating is available. Please help us pack this place to the rafters on January 19th.

Now, the days are getting longer and both the pecan and walnut trees bide their time along the river. A whole new year of new songs is upon us, and there may not be a better way to keep the Winfield spirit in our hearts than to come and share some music with great folks like Rik and Brenda. We hope you can join us.

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Kiowa Christmas

2007-12-24T14:03:00.000-06:00

This is a song written and performed by Rik Stevenson and recorded by Al Nieves at Grandma's Farm in November of 2006. Rik's flute has been blessed in a Lakota ceremony to heal the hearts of all who hear him play it. May all of your hearts and these blessings go out into the world tonight, and for all nights to come.

Merry Christmas from the Old Folkie and all the fine folks at the Kansas Acoustic Arts Association.

http://members.cox.net/tomjames/02%20Kiowa%20Christmas.mp3

Moreland and Arbuckle with Rik Stevenson

2007-11-28T13:04:00.000-06:00

This is "Outback Blues" from the Moreland and Arbuckle disc: Caney River Blues.(http://www.morelandarbuckle.com/). Aaron Moreland and Dustin Arbuckle have been on board from the very beginning to perform for a benefit concert for Rik (and other performers via the P.A.T. Fund) on January 19th at the Murdock Theater in Wichita. We are not only hoping to raise the money for a very special pair of glasses that Rik needs, but also to celebrate his many victories against a very persistent cancer. Watch this space for details, and please let me know if you are able to make a donation to Rik's cause.

http://members.cox.net/tomjames/12%20Outback%20Blues.mp3

Carry It On

2007-11-05T11:49:00.000-06:00

Well, not having posted anything for a week, folks may begin to think that my trip down Nostalgia Road is complete. Please do not fall victim to such wayward thinking. There is still much to tell, and much to discover. The difference is that the first phase has been the easy part, a few library searches; a few phone calls and emails; Google searches of the performers mentioned in the materials so kindly provided by Brent Pierce and Sam Ontjes. However, those materials have only dealt with The Southwestern Folk Festival of April 1967. No one has come forward with any "primary source" material from either the Walnut Valley Folk Festival in October of 1971 or the activities at the Black Eye in the years between. And I haven't even begun to ask a fairly important question: Who was the Cultural Arts Board and where did they get their Visionary Training? They not only provided funds for the '67 and '71 festivals at Southwestern College, but were still co-sponsoring the Walnut Valley Festival into it's second year, maybe longer.

So the next phase will involve some more phone calls and emails, of course, but will also move into some long lunches and maybe some late beers to really get to the heart of this story. And maybe a trip or two.

I've visited the Kansas Historical Society's fabulous library in Topeka and discovered that the Bill Koch papers are divided up and the ones that may contain "A Folk Music Breakthrough" are archived at K.U. That trip is in the plan, as is another visit to Winfield to implore Dave Seaton of the Winfield Daily Courier to run an article about the blog that might draw out some more photographs, flyers, programs and stories.

My goal for this project has always been to discover the complete history of the contemporary folk music scene in our little neck of the woods, South-Central Kansas. The fact that we have a major festival that has survived for forty years is a result of many factors and many different influences. I'd say that the Denver Folklore Center and the Foolkiller in Kansas City provided some of the early lifeblood to the festival, as well as The Market Street Forum in Wichita, and the Sword in the Stone in O.K.C. And we've really only touched briefly on the Mossman Guitar Factory, and it's pivotal role in all of this. The Walnut Valley Association, of course, must be considered, as well.

So this is all to say that the blog will continue, but the pace may be slower. I plan to be more persistent in reaching some of the early performers and promoters, but the exigencies of life and work are being more persistent, as well. Please bear with me, come around when you get the chance ... and don't put that guitar down.

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A Moment to Stop and Ponder

2007-10-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

Memory works at you like a bend in the river wearing out the side of the bank with it's force. I think the reason that I spent this year's festival immersed in my memories of the festival at Southwestern College is because I was the age that my kids are now when I showed up in tie-dye and bell-bottoms just in time to hear Pat and Victoria Garvey fill every corner of Stewart Fieldhouse with "The Trail of Tears". As I see Mike and Rose starting to find their way in the world, I can't help but retreat into the ways it happened to me, the things I saw and heard that put me on the path I'm on now. The shock of having my daughter move two thousand miles away didn't help any, but the beauty and grace of camping with her those last few days along the Walnut will be with me always.

Maybe nostalgia just breeds saddness, but some things I learned saddened me, too. The loss of Rose's companionship is a natural and bittersweet thing. The loss of Stuart Mossman's name from this festival is not something that I can reconcile within the world that I believe in, the world I was led to believe in by the guts and heart of this music that came from the very soul of this country.

I tell people that it took me ten years to learn to play the guitar and sing at the same time, and that it took me another ten to do it in the same key. That always gets a laugh, but it is no exaggeration. Add to those twenty another twenty to learn the songs I want to play, and I'm ready to complete the assignment given to me so many years ago by Utah Phillips when he said, "This is your music, it's being taken from you and sold back to you. You might as well learn how to make it yourself".

Today I feel like part of my heritage has been stolen from me, and never sold back. Nearly an old man, I'm ready to call myself a musician, only to find that the thing that started me here just barely exists. Is it that blatant - that I must verify that past before I can validate myself? Or can I claim altruistic goals of bringing a bit of honor and truth to the history of a great, and in many ways unique, festival?

What if the hidden parts are where the uniqueness comes from?

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Guitar Making Demonstration

2007-10-29T11:43:00.001-05:00

Stuart Mossman, Saturday morning , April 29, 1967.

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The Prehistoric String Band

2007-10-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

O.K. I know a lot of you have been sitting on your hands through most of my ramblings, which is fine - if I needed comments to carry on I would have quit long ago. But it would be beyond cool if some old Southwestern students could figure out the personnel of this premier, prehistoric Walnut Valley string band.

I have reason to believe that this photograph was taken by Murl Webster, who worked at The Courier at the time. He may also have taken the ones of Pat and Victoria Garvey, and the one of Jimmy Driftwood on stage with the young folk music culprits. As I have mentioned, he had a great two-page photo spread after the festival, on May 1st, 1967. It would be incredible if someone out there had these pages in a scrapbook somewhere, so everyone could see them. One of them is a campground pickin' party that for anyone from around that time would be another trip through memory lane identifying the faces around the fire.

These have been some excellent photographic moments from that first festival, starting back on 10/16 , but I've been saving my favorite for last. If it's true that every picture tells a story, this next picture is at least a book worth reading on a cold night when camping out along some Kansas river is just a cruel memory.

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Glenda Bickell

2007-10-24T11:29:00.000-05:00

I wish I had more to add about Glenda Bickell, something to go along with this stunning photograph, but the info from my post of 10/11 is all I've got. Well, that and this quote from the Winfield Courier of 4/29/67, the same issue that's on Herb Pedersen's web site:

" ... The most quiet the audience got was when Glenda Bickell, Wichita, performed. But, she had a quiet spell-binding voice."

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The Good Doctor

2007-10-23T12:12:00.000-05:00

The thing that most amazes me about Doc Watson is not the rush of notes that fill up the half-beats between chord changes, or the rich baritone as clear as the skies over his home in Deep Gap, North Carolina. It's not even his unflinching commitment to playing some of the oldest music in this country alonside the youngest and brightest each new generation has to offer. The thing that astounds me is his ability to play for thousands of people and be as relaxed as if he were playing on his front porch.

Merle Watson was only seventeen when this exquisite photograph was taken on April 29, 1967, again by Bill Stevens. After Merle's death in a tractor accident on the family farm in 1984, Doc cancelled the first week of an upcoming tour, but by the second week he was ready to go back to work, saying: "Merle would have not wanted me to just lay down and quit on this".

Arthel "Doc" Watson still performs with his old friend Jack Lawrence, and occasionally with Merle's son, Richard, especially at "MerleFest", held every April at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, N.C. Here's Doc from their website:

“When Merle and I started out we called our music ‘traditional-plus,’ meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play. Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is ‘traditional-plus’ ... "

Sounds good to me.

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James Corbett Morris a.k.a. Jimmy Driftwood

2007-10-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

Jimmy took his last name from a joke his father played on his mother when he was born, handing her a bundle of driftwood wrapped up in a blanket instead of her new son. The term "larger than life" has never been more appropriately applied to a human being. I wasn't in Winfield in '67, but I got to see him in '69 at a Woody Guthrie Memorial that had to be moved to Oklahoma City when the town of Okemah denied the organizers a permit. The stage vibrated when Jimmy walked across it, some kind of inner tremor from a faultline that leads straight back to Stone County, Arkansas. The air did a slow buck-dance in anticipation of his crouching frame as his mouth bow commenced to call out like some old heeler clear down at the end of the draw out to Timbo. It wasn't music that come out of this man so much as it was the beginning of music, the newly born heart of music, the eternal soul of music wrapped up in a bundle of sticks.

It might have been the first trance of my young life.

In the second photograph, Jimmy can be seen holding his trademark guitar, the one he learned to play on and which he used in all of his concerts and in all of his recording sessions. It was made by his grandfather from a fence rail, an old ox yoke, and the headboard of his grandmothers bed. With him are two young gentlemen who were a big part of the driving force behind this festival: On the left is Sam Ontjes, festival director, who lives now in Hutchinson, Kansas, on the right is Stuart Mossman, guitar builder, who died in 1999. Not today, but someday, both men will be recognized as co-founders of the Walnut Valley Festival.

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The Gentleman from Navasota, Texas

2007-10-18T19:05:00.000-05:00

In my post from 9/04, I gave a very brief biography of Mance Lipscomb, author of such great tunes as "Captain, Captain" and "Sugar Babe". The picture at the top is from the Guitar Styles Workshop on April 29. The lower one is from his set at the field house on April 28. I'd like to quote here from an essay by John Minton:

"Lipscomb represented one of the last remnants of the nineteenth-century songster tradition, which predated the development of the blues. Though songsters might incorporate blues into their repertoires, as did Lipscomb, they performed a wide variety of material in diverse styles, much of it common to both black and white traditions in the South, including ballads, rags, dance pieces (breakdowns, waltzes, one and two steps, slow drags, reels, ballin' the jack, the buzzard lope, hop scop, buck and wing, heel and toe polka), and popular, sacred, and secular songs. Lipscomb himself insisted that he was a songster, not a guitarist or "blues singer," since he played "all kinds of music." His eclectic repertoire has been reported to have contained 350 pieces spanning two centuries. (He likewise took exception when he was labeled a "sharecropper" instead of a "farmer.")

"His encounter with Strachwitz and McCormick (of Arhoolie Records) in 1960 marked the beginning of over a decade of involvement in the folk-song revival, during which Lipscomb won wide acclaim and emulation from young white audiences and performers for his virtuosity as a guitarist and the breadth of his repertoire. Admirers enjoyed his lengthy reminiscences and eloquent observations regarding music and life, many of which are contained in taped and written materials in the Mance Lipscomb-Glenn Myers Collection in the archives and manuscripts section of the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He made numerous recordings and appeared at such festivals as the Berkeley Folk Festival of 1961, where he played before a crowd of more than 40,000. In clubs Lipscomb often shared the bill with young revivalists or rock bands. He was also the subject of a film, A Well-Spent Life (1970), made by Les Blank. Despite his popularity, however, he remained poor. After 1974 declining health confined him to a nursing home and hospitals. He died in Grimes Memorial Hospital, Navasota, on January 30, 1976, and was buried at West Haven Cemetery."

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Johnny Vandiver, April 28th, 1967

2007-10-18T02:58:00.000-05:00

I touched briefly on the story of Johnny Vandiver back on 10/04. I don't have a date on the photograph from that post, but I'm guessing early seventies. The change here is more profound even than that of the Garveys. It's possible that fractals have eliminated paisley forever. Still no sign of Jo Wright.

There is a somewhat sensationalized but very good article by Kathryn Casey about Vandiver and the events that led to his 1985 murder at http://www.kathryncasey.com/bio.htm . I'd like to quote a paragraph from that article, originally published in Rolling Stone, not only because it gives a good account of the man, but also because it quotes a fellow who showed up in Winfield in '71.

"John Vandiver spent twenty of his thirty-nine years playing on the Texas music circuit. He was one of those musicians who were always poised on the brink of success but who never quite made it. “There were people of much greater success who considered Johnny their peer,” says folk star David Bromberg, who’s recorded with the likes of Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan. Bromberg would occasionally play with Vandiver when he was in Texas. “I myself was very happy to be known as Johnny Vandiver’s guitar player.” "

It makes sense that these two white, middle-class bluesmen would bond over the fact that they each got to learn at the feet of really great bluesmen, Reverend Gary Davis for Bromberg and Mance Lipscomb for Johnny Vandiver. To hear these two play together would have been kind of a haunting echo of two blues greats, that as far as I know, never actually played together.

It might have also been an echo, without them realizing it, across a gap in time connecting two folk festivals in a little town in Kansas.

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Mr. & Mrs. Garvey

2007-10-17T04:32:00.000-05:00

For those with some time on their hands, you can jump back to the posts from 8/30 and 9/03, and perhaps you'll be shocked at the change in style and demeanor of this extraordinary couple, Pat and Victoria Garvey. The years from 1967 to 1971 ignited some of the greatest cultural changes of any four-year period in history, and they are living, visual, proof. I have reason to believe that the photographer here is Murl Webster.

Since their work only exists on vinyl, I guess I have to invite you over to my house to show you what amazing musicians they were. You could search out Steve Goodman's version of "The Lovin' of the Game", which is awesome, but you wouldn't get that eerie harmonic convergence of the two voices. Come to my New Years Eve party and we'll play the albums, and I'll show you the chords to "Song For Kansas". I'm serious, just send an email. Wichita's close to everywhere, right?

The Garveys, along with Art Eskridge and Charlie Cloud, are among the few that played both student-run festivals. I had the great pleasure of speaking with Victoria (now Armstrong) by telephone from her home in southern New Mexico. I hope I was able to rein in my profound admiration for her and her work. Understandably, she doesn't remember a lot about Winfield - they played all over and you know, frankly, forty years is a long time for the human brain to hold much besides sawdust and old movies. She does remember Stuart, of course, because they had one of his guitars, and she remembers the Bromberg - Crary thing from 1971 - but anyone within half a mile of that gymnasium remembers the Bromberg - Crary thing. Victoria is still active on the folk circuit as half of the duo, Don and Victoria Armstrong. Kansans can catch them on occasion at the Iron Horse in El Dorado.

Pat Garvey suffered a stroke in 2006 and is residing at the Eastern Montana VA Home.

Next, another profound fashion statement, this time from Johnny Vandiver.

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A Closer Look: Vern & Ray with Herb Pedersen

2007-10-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

The last picture I posted was Vern and Ray with Herb Pedersen on the front page of the Winfield Daily Courier (taken from Herb's own website), so it makes sense that I start with them to post these new photographs. These shots are from the same concert, April 29, 1967, in the Stewart Field House. We're pretty sure the photographer is Bill Stevens. Left to right are Vern Williams, Ray Park, and Herb Pederson.

Interestingly, Mr. Pedersen remembers that the guitar was his 1935 Herringbone (Martin D-28), the banjo was a 1930 RB4 Gibson Mastertone, and Vern's mandolin was a Gibson F4.

Ray Park also did a few songs by himself at the guitar styles workshop in the afternoon.

A Grand Beginning

2007-10-13T18:51:00.000-05:00

I think we can safely say that the very first event of the very first Winfield festival was the lecture given by Kansas State University professor of folklore, William Koch, who passed away in 1984. The title was "The Folk Music Breakthrough", and it was delivered in Richardson Auditorium on Friday, April 29th, 1967.

I know it appears that I am sitting at a computer typing, but I am actually actively looking for a copy of this lecture, or any of the materials from which it drew. Somehow, I expect to find some magical text that proves to us that it would be a far better world if we would all just get together and play guitars and sing songs to each other for days and weeks at a time. And that we should just call it "Winfield".

We've all dreamed crazier things, for sure. This one just happens to have happened on a pretty big scale.

A long-time associate of Mr. Koch's, Dr. Jean Sloop, has been very helpful in beginning this search, and with helping me understand what kind of fellow dedicates his life to this elusive thing called Folklore. She traveled the state with him, presenting programs of folk songs and stories, most with Kansas origins or connections. He was a co-founder of the Kansas State Historical Society, and is the author of several books on the subject.

Yes, I would like to start with Professor Koch's lecture and then move forward, to bring us up somehow to the time and place this whole blog started - on that afternoon drive back in August, out fourteenth street and through the Winfield Fairgrounds. However, it looks like some time digging through the State Historical Society archives and maybe even the KU archives will be required to accomplish that end, or I should say, that beginning.

I would like to have Bill's words in front of me, so I can more effectively put myself in those students positions, to try to see some stuff the way they saw it, to try to go forward from there one more time, maybe without getting tripped up this time.

Fortunately, an amazing cache of photographs has just surfaced that, hopefully, will hold our interest while the excavation is taking place. I'm just going to add a few at a time, to keep our appetites whetted - and to buy me some time on the business end of a pick and a shovel.

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It Is Our Music, After All

2007-10-12T01:33:00.001-05:00

In an early example of the participatory theme that has infused every festival that's unfolded in the Walnut Valley, on Saturday afternoon there was an "open concert", I guess we'd call it an "open mic" now. The only performers listed in the Courier are The Country Boys, Dorothy May, The Buchanan Trio, and Jim "Sugar Bear" Kudlacek. I'm sure others signed up after the Courier was printed, and I'm betting Stuart Mossman was among them. If you know of any others, please fill us in.

The Country Boys were from Belle Plaine, Kansas. Four years later, they were on the bill for the '71 festival as The Bluegrass Country Boys, and later evolved into Jack and Mike Theobald and Bluegrass Country, arguably the first working bluegrass band in Kansas. They always packed the house when they played at "The Forum" on North Broadway in Wichita in the 70's.

Jim "Sugar Bear" Kudlacek was living in Oklahoma City at the time of the '67 festival and acted as a secondary contact person for tickets and information. For a while in '68, he directed a television show in Tulsa called "Dance Party". There is one reference through Google to a ceramic artist by that name, but no information on where he might be, or whether it's the same person.

For Dorothy May and The Buchanan Trio, I have no information- maybe if I keep stirring the pot, something will rise to the surface.

Other than that, and whoever else may have also played at the open concert, there is only one major participant left to cover - the professor who started it all off ...

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Folk Singers Abound

2007-10-11T01:20:00.000-05:00

We only have a few more folks to cover in order to fill out the archives of the 1967 festival - the rest of the performers who were listed as "Guest Artists". Here, more than ever, I need the help of folks who may have been at these shows to help me fill out their stories, to preserve their place in Winfield history.

Eunice Shedden, from Oklahoma City, was scheduled to perform but had to cancel at the last minute. She was the house singer at the "Sword and Stone" in OKC for several years and did some touring, mostly on the east coast. She occasionally played at the Black Eye in Winfield. She now lives in Atlanta, and says she hasn't played in thirty years, but still has her '35 Martin D-18 in the closet.

Glenda Bickell performed on Friday evening. She was listed as a "ballad singer" from Wichita, and I have talked to at least one person who remembers her from that time. I'm not sure where she was from, but she apparently left the Big Cow Town for the Mile High City not too long after the festival. A Google search yields one hit as a back-up singer for Judy Collins, listed last of fourteen backup singers for a live album.

Charlie Cloud was the grandfather of a Southwestern student, Misty Maynard, a freshman in 1967. He was a seasoned storyteller who had honed his skills on the Chautauqua circuit in the 20's and 30's. Mr. Cloud took the stage on Saturday night, and by all accounts held the fieldhouse spellbound throughout his performance, as he did again in 1971. There's a photograph of him accompanying my post of 9/01.

The Shannon Singers were apparently Mike Dunn and Francis Love from Pueblo Colorado. I can find out absolutely nothing about them. So far, anyway. They played on Saturday evening.

The Revelators were a gospel quartet, also from Wichita, who performed on Sunday for the gospel sing. The lineup has changed over the years, but the Revelators are still a working group in the Wichita area.

Harry Weldon was attending Wichita State University when he helped out with the blues workshop on Saturday afternoon. I found a reference to him in Pat O'Connor's essay "A Blackout Tavern - A Study in 60's Folklore" ... "(the owner, Gil) McNabb met Harry Weldon and Tom Collins through the bar. These two individuals were to have a profound impact on the underground movement in Wichita, in folk and blues music and in poetry and fiction. Weldon, at first a folk singer and part-time bartender at A Blackout, later managed the tavern. He lived in West Virginia before attending Wichita State and brought with him folk songs from that region, and others. Among Weldon's most requested songs were "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "Grand Coulee Dam." In addition to ballads, the folk singer performed bottleneck blues and played the autoharp.

"Weldon, in addition to being an astute folk musician, was a writer who edited the university's literary magazine, Mikrokosmos in 1968. According to the 1983 Mikrokosmos 25th anniversary issue, Weldon "held a party with the [competition] prize money, assuming the prizewinners would rather have it that way." Not all of those awarded prizes appreciated this option." Harry Weldon moved to Nova Scotia after graduating, apparently to escape the draft. He passed away in 2002.

Another person who helped with the blues workshop was "Poor Bill" Miller. There is an excellent Native American songwriter with a very clean finger-picking blues style named Bill Miller, but I don't know if it's the same person.

One final guest artist was Art Eskridge. A Dallas musician at the time, Art was born in Winfield, eventually settled there, and still lives there. I haven't been successful in reaching him to discuss these pages, but he is one person who has experienced the entire history of the folk festivals in Winfield. He performed at the Friday evening concert and participated in the blues workshop on Saturday afternoon and the gospel sing on Sunday morning. Art also performed at The Walnut Valley Folk Festival in '71. A photograph of Mr. Eskridge can be found with the post from 9/01.

Next, a few more performers from the open concert, held in the late afternoon on Saturday.

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A Poem From The '67 Program

2007-10-09T00:50:00.000-05:00

Wrangle up your mouth-harps
drag your banjo out,
Tune your old guitarra till she
twangs right stout,
For the snow is on the mountains
and the wind is on the plain,
But we'll cut the chimney's
mounin' with a livelier refrain.

Badger Clark

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A Man and a Banjo

2007-10-07T03:37:00.001-05:00

Herb Pedersen, the man who played banjo with Vern and Ray and sang that haunting high baritone harmony, has continued a stellar career both as a headline performer and as a studio whiz kid in television, movies and the recording industry. Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Emmylou Harris, David Grisman, Tony Rice and Vince Gill are just a few of the music greats who have used his incredible talents on banjo, guitar and dobro. As a Berkeley native, he was the perfect choice to take the Jerry Garcia role when "Old And In The Way" reformed as "Old And In The Grey". Mr. Pedersen recently concluded a summer tour with Chris Hillman.

If you'd like to hear a little of what was heard at the Stewart Fieldhouse back then, Arhoolie Records has just released a live recording of Vern and Ray with Herb Pedersen from the San Francisco State Folk Festival in 1968, just a few months after they played in Winfield.

There is a very interesting photograph on Pedersen's website (http://www.herbpedersen.com/home.html). If you go to the "Photos" page and look toward the lower left, you will see a photograph from the Winfield Daily Courier, April 29, 1967 - the same one accompanying this post. Actually, I had to snag their image because the microfilm image in the Courier archives at the Winfield library is too poor to publish. If you look carefully, you can see the folds in the old Courier, someone stuck it their pocket years ago, probably Mr. Pedersen. Thanks for the pic Herb, and for forty years of great music.

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A Bluegrass Revolution

2007-10-05T11:59:00.000-05:00

Another treat for Southwestern festival goers was the lilting bluegrass sound of Vern and Ray, with Herb Pedersen on banjo. Originally from Newton County, Arkansas, Vern Williams and Ray Park headed up the very first bluegrass band in northern California, "Vern and Ray and the Carroll County Country Boys", as early as 1959. In 1966, after teaming up with Pedersen, Vern and Ray packed up their families and moved across the country to try to peddle their beautiful hill country sound to the Nashville music world. Unfortunately, they only lasted 18 months, they were just a little ahead of Nashville's eventual infatuation with bluegrass. As a result, however, little Winfield, Kansas, got perhaps their first real jolt of the music that would eventually sweep throughout the Walnut Valley.

Sam Ontjes remembers going with his friends to the Ozark Folk Festival to recruit Jimmie Driftwood and Doc Watson, and being mesmerized by the harmonies coming from one of the back stages. Their budgets were already strained to their limits, but the students really wanted to bring that high lonesome sound back to Winfield. They offered Vern and Ray $100, which was all they had, and to their amazement, these early bluegrass wizards accepted. Of course, this was before the days of putting entertainers up in hotels and letting them eat restaurant food.

Kansas bluegrass pioneers, Jack Theobald and his son, Mike, who played the '71 Southwestern festival and many Walnut Valley festivals in the 70's and 80's, surely were at that show with Vern and Ray, and perhaps were inspired by their tightly rolled sound. Surely they were encouraged to have in their midsts such fine representatives of the music they loved. Some of the other traditions still hang on at the Walnut Valley Festival: the old time folk music, the story-telling, the old country blues and the songwriters who craft their tunes around the older instruments and stylings, but by far the main sound oozing out of the Walnut Valley stages and hanging over the campgrounds like a fog bank on an Appalachian morning are the sweet echoes of Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, and folks like Vern and Ray.

Vern Williams and Ray Park returned to California and continued to leave an indelible mark on the bluegrass world. In 1997, the duo received the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award. Vern Williams continues to perform with the Vern Williams Band. Ray Park died in 2002.

Bluegrass ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

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The Fateful Fate of John Vandiver

2007-10-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

We've touched briefly on the headliners for the '67 festival: Jimmie Driftwood, Mance Lipscomb, Pat & Victoria Garvey and Doc & Merle Watson. Now that we know the full lineup, I'd like to look at some of the other performers.

Someone named Jo Wright apparently played with Johnny Vandiver at the first Southwestern festival. They are listed as playing 'ragtime' but it appears that Vandiver's repertoire at the time leaned more towards a rural, acoustic blues. Were they afraid to call it blues because they weren't black? I'm not sure. I haven't come up with any information about Jo Wright, but the tale of Mr. Vandiver is well known throughout the Texas/ Colorado music scene. His brutal murder along with his girlfriend and manager, Debbie Davison in February of 1985, is another tragedy to follow the Texas curse that took Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Holly, Blaze Foley and most recently, Walter Hyatt, who was killed in the ValuJet crash in 1996.

When John Vandiver was in Winfield in 1967, he was an early disciple of Mance Lipscomb, and had been traveling as Mance's road manager, chauffeur and built-in opening act. Imagine, he paid his dues and played the blues at the same time.

Here's an excerpt from a story from the vast legacy of John Vandiver, written by his good friend, Dewey Don Lyon. It seems John was opening for Bob Marley, and two songs into his set the crowd began hollering for Bob ...

"... John was much man and not easily intimidated. He finished the song, pushed that arch-topped Alvarez to the side, and started laughing. He grabbed the mic with both hands, locked eyes with the audience, and said in that jolly sort of voice, “Hey, y'all! Nobody wants to see Bob Marley more than I do! Why do you think I'm right up here so close, anyway? Think about it. I got the best seat in the house! Now, here's how it is. I've been hired to play 45 minutes before the Wailers come on, and I'm gonna do it. Now, y'all can sit there and yell for Bob Marley, or you can kick back, burn one, and enjoy the show!” Deafening silence. Suddenly, the Hall erupted in delighted laughter and applause and people jumped to their feet and cheered! What a rush! And John? With a twinkle in his eye, he laughed that special Vandiver laugh, pulled the Alvarez back over his belly, said,“All right, then!”, and belted out: “Judge, Your Honor, won't you hear my plea, befo' you open up yo' court, ” The crowd went nuts! It was pure magic, and surely one of his best performances ever! When he finished the set, the crowd roared, “ENCORE! ENCORE!” They were pumped! He was pumped! He went back out and did “Against The Law” and had that crowd singing back to him in the way that only John could do it. It was 24-karat Vandiver gold! As a postlude, when the Wailers came onstage, the excitement was intense, for sure, but when Bob Marley himself came out to join them, it was absolute euphoria! It was certainly one of the sweetest nights I can remember! "

There is a wonderful video from 1981 of Vandiver playing with Shake Russel and Dana Cooper at http://www.livefromtexas.com/. Look for the link for "New Artists Videos"

I'm hoping that there's someone out there who remembers seeing Johnny Vandiver at Stewart Gymnasium or in one of the workshops in 1967.

Maybe he was playing a little ragtime back then.

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The Black Eye

2007-10-04T02:52:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, I remember reading something that Marjorie Guthrie had said : "Kids must live and love in a make-believe world, before they can exist in a real one". That may not be an exact quote, but it's close. I remember it because I was in the process of moving through the make-believe part when I read it.

It was something that some folks at Grace Methodist Church of Winfield clearly understood, and which they put into practice when they opened a coffee house called the Black Eye on Halloween night in 1966. It was student-run, and except for the obviously illegal stuff, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted. There was music by aspiring local singers, and occasional small concerts by folks coming up from Oklahoma City or down from Wichita. There were poetry readings, drama students rehearsing scenes, and budding pundits espousing the wisdoms of the day. The people that I have talked to from that time are still amazed, forty years later, at what a tremendous gift they had been given in the form of a little cinder-block building across the street from their school, where they could play and sing and act and dance out the future that they each so carefully stalked.

I've yet to discover the reasons why it was four years before Southwestern put on another folk festival, but it seems like the "Eye" is the one thread that ties the two festivals together. It is possible that it's existence built the base of players and singers that would be able to appreciate (and invite their friends and family to) the final folk festival in 1971.

And all those others that followed, you know, out at the fairgrounds.

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A Word On "Folk"

2007-10-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

"Folk" is the name given to that form of music which originates within a culture. It is that form which expressed every man's hopes and pains, his fears and aspirations -- the gut-stuff a person feels about the life around him. Rather than being written only for profit, most folk music is composed to create a mood, to tell a story, or to lament lost love. As such, folk music and folk musicians are the reflections of the heart of a culture and are one of it's most valuable heritages. The term "folk" encompasses several types of music: ballads, work songs, some protest songs, blue-grass, and a variety of blues (e.g. "Texas Blues"). The listener to folk should bear in mind that the music is intended for enjoyment and expression without the conventional limitations of more formal compositions. The result is an eased and free-flowing quality unique in music.

- Danny Fauchier

Like the previous post, this is from the 12-page program handed to participants of the Southwestern Folk Festival, April 28-30, 1967. Danny Fauchier is also credited with designing and writing the program. My sincere thanks to Brent Pierce for these documents, and to Messieurs Ontjes and Fauchier for allowing me to quote their words.

Even the local reporter for the Winfield Daily Courier gave his or her (there is no byline) shot at defining this thing called folk music. Here are the first two paragraphs of the article "Blind Artist At Festival" from Thursday, April 27, 1967 (The headline refers to Doc Watson) :

"At Southwestern College's Folk Festival this weekend, several recording stars are going to be featured. But, these are folk stars with a difference. They all sing traditional folk songs instead of the popular music that is sometimes called folk music.

"True traditional folk music is always sung first and then written down..."

This could get a little fuzzy, especially when you start using terms like "true traditional" and "is always" in the same sentence. There was plenty of original music at the festival, and I doubt if the reporter asked Pat and Victoria or Jimmie Driftwood or Mance Lipscomb in what order they composed their songs. The first paragraph is also a little vague, to say the least, but I list this here to show the traps that one can fall into.

This old folkie has long since given up trying to define folk music, I'm of the "lets quit arguing and sing" school. There are songs we know the authors of, and those we don't. If we don't - it's safe to call that a traditional song - but then you can also argue about what tradition it came from. This is what folklorists are for, in my opinion. For songs for which we do know the author, the debate still rages, or at least putters along. Perhaps "Oh! Susanna" would be a traditional song today if old Steve Foster hadn't had access to pen and paper.

After years of debate, the Ozark Folk Center finally set 1941 as the cut-off date for musical compositions performed at the center, as that is the year that "Walking The Floor Over You" came out, the first widely popular country song featuring an electric guitar. This also marks the time before legions of young American men were exposed to all kinds of different cultures during the wars in Europe and Asia. This seems reasonable, in that they are trying to preserve a certain tradition that had existed with very little change over many generations. There will always be a place for new stuff.

Next, we'll dig even a little deeper into the traditions of music in and around Winfield, Kansas.

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Welcome Purists, Semi-Traditionalists, and People

2007-10-01T12:49:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned, the students who started the Southwestern Folk Festival were on a voyage of discovery, not a display of their expertise. They looked at what was going on in the rest of the country and came up with their own approach. The following is the welcome page, quoted in full, from the packet that was handed out to all attendees - even the title of the page is significant:

" Welcome Purists, Semi-Traditionalists, and People" by Sam Ontjes, festival director

"From everyone who worked so hard on the Southwestern Folk Festival to everyone who came - welcome! I don't think any of us realized how much work would be involved. To represent all phases of American folk music in a three day festival would be virtually impossible. The possibility of such an endeavor in three weeks would be unlikely. Furthermore, the festival planning committee is by no means a group of expert folklorists, but rather a group of highly interested students who want to know more about the rich and oftentimes neglected culture in which we live. Our goal has been to accumulate a representative sampling of American folk music with what limited resources we had, and to make it available to the public for the sake of instruction as well as entertainment.

"In doing this and trying to be honest, we ran into the same problem with which folk festival committees have been confronted from Newport to Monterrey - that is, agreeing on a definition of folk music. With all due regard to the serious folklorist and the ethnologist, we have deemed it necessary to broaden our definition of folk music to include all working songs, love songs, cradle songs, drinking songs, patriotic songs, dancing songs and narrative songs which deal with people in general. From the participants of this festival, you can expect to hear traditional as well as contemporary music. The purist might argue that nothing written in the last thirty years can be considered a folk song. The folk process, however, did not end thirty years ago. It continues today, in spite of automation, jet planes and Metrocal. During the recent "folk boom" , Big Bill Broonzy was asked if he considered all of the songs he was doing to be folk music. He replied with a grin, "I never heard a horse sing any of them". Along the same line, Pete Seeger has said, "Let's quit arguing and sing"."

"Whether considering a primitive Appalachian ballad or a more contemporary topical song, we hope you will accept the music for what it is - a segment of American history. You can expect to hears songs about all kinds of folk from all types of ethnic backgrounds. The average listener isn't expected to be wildly enthusiastic about everything he hears, but we hope he will listen. In this sense, the success of the Southwestern festival depends upon the listener. With your ideas and suggestions, we hope that this might become an annual event.

We're glad to be here, and we hope you're glad you came."

Forty years later, they're still coming. I think Sam and his fellow committee members should be right proud.

Tomorrow, another slightly more academic definition of folk music, taken from the same festival packet.

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The Ozark Folk Center

2007-09-30T04:21:00.000-05:00

Just as you can't tell the story of the Walnut Valley Festival without Stu Mossman, you also cannot tell the story of the Ozark Folk Center without Jimmie Driftwood.

The Folk Center was originally conceived of as a way to showcase (and create markets for) indigenous crafts from the Mountain View area of Arkansas. As almost an afterthought, the organizers wondered about bringing music in - you know, to make people so happy that they would want to buy stuff. The logical choice to head that up was Jimmie Driftwood, recently returned resident with some minor notoriety in Nashville and on the Grand Ole Opry, and some fairly major royalty checks from his two big hits, "The Battle Of New Orleans" and "The Tennessee Stud". Expectations were that he would fill the hall with Nashville stars, and I guess if that had happened they might have beaten Branson to being Branson. Instead, Jimmie Driftwood felt that the local musicians represented a unique musical tradition, and that this was the music that should grace the halls of the Ozark Folk Center. People who had never been on a stage before were suddenly on one every Saturday night, and very soon, headliners at a major folk festival. The plaintive and sometimes raw voices of Stone County became the highlight of the Ozark Folk Center, always under the careful direction of Mr. Driftwood, who had a skill for focusing on what any given musician could do best.

Then another pretty miraculous thing happened, the Folk Center was taken over by the park service, insuring it's longevity and eliminating any chance of the Branson thing ever happening in Mountain View. This also made it one of the very few state parks centered on culture instead of recreation. The Arkansas Folk Festival flourished all through the sixties, and continues today.

Then came the split, over a bass fiddle, the story goes. Jimmie asked high and low throughout Stone County - no one had ever owned a stand-up bass, or played one. Now that part of Arkansas is as isolated as anywhere in this country, there's not a lot of folks passing through - so if the locals didn't have one - it didn't exist, and Jimmie's position was that it shouldn't be used on-stage as a representation of the indigenous music of the area. Others disagreed, obviously wanting a fuller musical range, and later, some more contemporary songs. The musical styles remained very similar, an outsider might not have been able to tell the difference without it being pointed out to them, but the split was deep - ideology fueled by jealousies, power trips and personality conflicts. The two groups ended up playing on separate nights, and Jimmie Driftwood was eventually fired. Concerts continued at the Folk Center under the Mountain View Folklore Society, and Jimmie continued his jams at the big barn at his home every Friday night. Word spread far and wide that anyone was welcome to come to the jam , and if you brought a sleeping bag, you could sleep in the barn at the end of the evening. The music continued, but the rift in the music community would live on for many years. A wonderful oral history of the performers and organizers of the Arkansas Folk Festival and the Ozark Folk Center can be found at http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/groups/library/rcol/oralhistory.htm

Jimmie Driftwood is mentioned in our post from September 4th, as he was a featured performer at the Southwestern Folk Festival in 1967. He died in 1998, less than a year before the passing of Stuart Mossman.

We know for a fact that there was a group of Southwestern students at one of those early festivals in Mountain View, and that several of the performers that they heard there ended up playing for their little festival in Winfield, Kansas, in 1967, and in later years, as well. They, too, had an ideology, but also just a thirst for knowledge about the folk culture that was all around them. They did not claim to be experts. They were merely seeking knowledge, and seeking it in the most direct way possible - by inviting performers into their town and into their homes. Also, from the very beginning, hands-on workshops with performers were made available to all festival attendees.

In some ways, a person might think that a huge festival in a small mid-western town in the early 00's might find failure in the fact that half of the folks never even enter the grandstands to watch the festival acts. However, these festivals were set up from day one to be participatory events. It is a testament to the vision of these early organizers that the campgrounds in Winfield have taken on their own life, with their own communities and their own stages. In every imaginable way, Walnut Valley remains a folk festival.

Next: The official position of the Southwestern College Folk Festival staff (One of the best I've heard)

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Do you hear the voices in the night, Bobby?

2007-09-30T01:12:00.000-05:00

The story of little Bobby Zimmerman exemplifies many of the arguments of the time, so let's start there, then move westward. And to do that we really need to start with Joan Baez, who started out as a "true" folk singer, in that she was singing only traditional songs - songs whose authorship is lost in time. She first introduced Bob Dylan to the larger folk scene in New York by having him appear as a guest artist at her shows. He, of course, was singing mostly his own original songs, which were accepted as being in the folk tradition - especially because many of his early songs were based on traditional melodies. Dylan was the living embodiment of folk process, it seems to me. But this is where the divisions began - all those discussions about where our music comes from, and consequently, where it's going. Are there some that never listened to him just because he wasn't singing traditional music? Probably. Were there millions that saw him as a very powerful folk singer? Definitely. And there may be just as many now who wonder how that slipped away.

What happened after Newport in 1965 is that Dylan started playing the first half of his shows on acoustic guitar, and the second half with an electric back-up band, which eventually morphed into The Band. The stories of people booing and walking out as the second set began are legendary and often mythical. But they still came, maybe just so their voices could be counted. Much of the Newport ruckus was from poor sound quality and time constraints. Reports from other shows vary, but a split had definitely occurred, and it was about more than whether or not your guitar had an electric cable.

Bob Dylan not only abandoned an older musical style, he also abandoned the aspect of folk music associated with the movement for social change. As an artist, that was his right. From a commercial standpoint, it was brilliant. But that mantle was still being carried by Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Malvina Renolds, Pete Seeger and many others, many of whose careers were hindered or ended due to media and publishing company boycotts.

So there are the two basic questions: How old is your music, and do you express your opinions when you play? Back here in the Midwest, most people only worried about the first one.

Next stop: Mountain View, Arkansas, and the search for a bass fiddle.

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What do we call our music? And why?

2007-09-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

The most common, and sometimes most dreaded, question asked of a musician is "what kind of music do you play?" A guy walking beside me one night in the Pecan Grove eventually quit talking to me because I couldn't condense "the kind of stuff I play" into one artist that he could recognize.

For some, it's easier than others - classical players or rock and rollers don't have to hesitate long; maybe the same with jazz and blues, but the breakdowns within these forms can also be extensive, as we all try to come up with labels that fit our particular sound so that people not listening to it can know what to expect.

Some of it is valid, some hogwash. 'Rockabilly' and 'Surf Music' became real things, but I couldn't identify a "Progressive Rock' song in the seventies, and I can't today, either. A certain local DJ gets wrapped up in whether a cut is 'Classic Jazz' or 'Straight-Ahead Jazz' and I end up screaming at the radio, " Quit drooling over the sound of your own voice and play the damn song."

It is possible that 'Folk Music' is hardest hit by this need to categorize, since in one way or another, it is the roots of the other forms, and one wonders where the separation must begin, and what, if anything, survives? When famous bluesmen or rockers put out an "unplugged" album, is that folk music? When Joni Mitchell or John Denver mesmerized thousands of people with just a guitar and their own voice, was that folk music? There are as many who would answer no to both questions as there are who would answer yes. Remember the folks who left after Bob Dylan brought out the Butterfield Blues Band for his second set at the '65 Newport Folk Festival? They were certainly justified in their passion for "Folk Music" but I think history has proven them wrong for "Good Music".

Many younger players today do not remember nor have heard about what Pete Seeger called "the great folk scare of the '60's". It was a very important time when great bluesmen had a brief respite from poverty to play New York folk clubs and college campuses, and other folk artists such as Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and The Weavers achieved national acclaim, but also eventually faced widespread censorship for their left-wing views. There were bitter debates within the folk music community over what defined a "folk song" and how far a topical song should go in expressing sometimes radical ideas. Many separations born then still exist today.

Our own little folk festival in Winfield, Kansas, in 1967 was one of the very first Midwestern attempts to enter this national debate. Students at Southwestern College sought to define as well as showcase the incredible variety of American folk music as part of their own education. A really amazing thing, if you think about it. Talk about hands-on education.

Today, we have escaped controvery but lost some historical ground by referring to anything played without electric guitars as "acoustic music". This may be too generic to have any real value. I believe that it is still appropriate to ask -"What is folk music?". The organizers of the first Southwestern Folk Festival certainly thought so. That they expressed it by organizing a festival is phenomenal.

Next post, we'll enter the debate.

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To the mountain, and back again

2007-09-18T03:13:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that Winfield is very much like a homeopathic - a small dose of a very powerful medicine that can, and most likely will, alter the very fabric of your being for years down the road. It's so powerful that we build things to keep that spirit alive: Stringbreak, Grandma's Farm, the KAAA campouts, the Carp Camp campouts - hell, the Carp Camp jams twice a week year-round. That's some good medicine.

I think there's an innate urge to claim and play our own music, to somehow offset the din of the corporate commercial pop charts. That's a big part of why this and other festivals are growing year by year, decade by decade; why people are immersing their children in it from birth; why those few days in September are the center of so many lives.

The story of the birth of the Walnut Valley Festival is still unfolding, and I now have in hand some very interesting documents from the '67 festival, including discussions of what "folk music" is, and what the educational objectives were that inspired the early organizers. Those who have followed so far I hope will return in a week or so when the story will pick back up. I have another journey to take, in another direction, concerning the passing of my father this past spring. Things may be a little clearer from the upper reaches of the Sangre de Cristo; maybe little Winfield Kansas will be in sharper focus, maybe a lot of things will be.

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Little bird, sweet bird

2007-09-17T20:24:00.000-05:00

For me, the 2007 Walnut Valley Festival started with Canadian geese shrouded by the clouds of mist rising off the Walnut at dawn on Wednesday, and ended with a loudly repeated owl call, just across the river, just before sunrise on Sunday. The high point in between was that big Swainson's hawk that circled the crowd right at the end of the Kirk Rundstrom memorial at Stage Seven. He went round about three times and then headed back west, across the river, as if he were late for something, just as the last echoes of Kirk's recorded voice bounced off the Cottonwood trees.

So it was definitely a bird festival, but only symbolically. There were some tough old cardinals that stayed for the duration, but other than that and a few sadly outnumbered mosquitos, those geese were heralding the exodus of every living creature that can't somehow make a string vibrate over some kind of box.

I did some string vibratin' myself, as late and as long as I could make it happen. I'm a person that loves to listen to music, but choosing to listen over playing is very difficult for me. I tried to think about Stuart, about searching out folks who knew him or who were around for those early festivals, but the distractions were fast and furious, everything from grandkids to swing music, and staying in the moment seemed the best all-round decision. There's plenty of time for the past.

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And now, to the river

2007-09-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Well, my little venture into the past is over, for now; I'm ready for the festival to begin. I'll complete this older story as facts become available, as other stories get told, either in these pages or in some other form. Right now, it's time to get grandpa's banjo out of the case, brew up some 90 proof coffee and see if I can get Scott Summers to park his fiddle down near my little spot on the banks of the Walnut River, just on the edge of Winfield, right down the road from paradise.

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It's my heart, too

2007-09-11T12:12:00.001-05:00

I wish I had met Stuart Mossman. I might have in '71 but I don't remember. I had a chance to see him perform a time or two, back when I was busy raising kids, but I never made it happen. It's like so many other things - you think you have plenty of time for that stuff. Part of me wants to go now and find his wife and his daughters and tell them how he changed big parts of my life just by being who he was and doing what he did, but I'm guessing they've heard it dozens of times, and after seven years just want to be left alone.

And then another part of me wants to approach his town, little Winfield on Walnut, and inform them that this was some great man you had here, and I have just a few questions about him, such as: Why is his name nowhere in the Walnut Valley Festival literature or website? Why are the festivals that he and Sam Ontjes, Dan Daniels and many others worked so hard on, that established the core audience, not listed in the archives?

Why is that lovely sculpture in Island Park just "some pickers" and not Stuart Mossman? Why is the "Sixties Room" at the Cowley County Historical Museum devoid of any mention of the little guitar factory founded in 1965 that put their capital city on the friggin' map?

Why did he never once "play the festival"?

Why have his family all left town?

Maybe it's because I'm not a "regular Winfielder" that I don't already know these things, but a big part of my musical heart is here, as well, and I've become kind of curious in my old age.

A Man and His Guitars

2007-09-11T11:34:00.001-05:00

From the beginning, Stuart Mossman was an outsider, a man who had been born up Chicago way, lived back east, went to high school in Dallas. I wonder if he didn't bring a fearsome taste of the outside world to a quiet midwestern town that was prohibiting things long before prohibition came along. But he was also the son of a bedrock Winfield family, grandson of a former Southwestern College president. "Therein squats the toad", as they say.

And young Stuart had a way with wood, an understanding of how to get it to sing. He was a friend and student of the legendary Don Teeter of Oklahoma City, one of a very few certified Martin repairmen back then. Don helped Stuart with some critical issues around his truss rod design and the placement of the Mossman bridge. As he learned his skills in his garage, if you would pay for the wood, Stuart would build you a guitar. If you didn't like it, he would buy the wood back, if you liked it, he would charge a fair price. He sold every one. When I asked Victoria Armstrong (who played both folk festival as Victoria Garvey) how she and then-husband Pat had come to play for a little folk festival in southern Kansas in 1967, she replied, "Well, we had one of his guitars." Apparently, that's all it took.

Loss of precious woods to fire, botched distribution deals, and health problems from all the dust and chemicals, all tried to slow Stuart Mossman down, with limited success. Many of the folks down on the Walnut understand why. In a quote from "Triple Exposure" he says, "It (music) is the single one thing I've done throughout my whole life. I don't think I could get along without it. I play everyday. I have no idea what happiness is. I'm driven. I try to achieve things to my satisfaction, and if I achieve it, that's great. But happiness is way too hard for me to figure out."

Stu Mossman passed away on March 2, 1999.

There is a complete history of Mossman Guitars on the web site of the current owners. It is a reprint of a 1997 article in "Vintage Guitar Magazine" by Eric Shoaf. http://www.mossman-guitars.com/History101.htm

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Musical Heart

2007-09-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars, and it shows in the people that gathered around him. Stuart Mossman loved people and it shows in the guitars he made. Stuart Mossman loved music and it shows in the faithful legions camping on the banks of the Walnut River every third weekend in September. Literally hundreds of people have spent millions of hours making the Walnut Valley Festival what it is today; but since I am not here to demean anyone's business acumen or tireless devotion, I can state the simple truth that this campground would not be full of all these folks if it wasn't for the fact that Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars.

And superlative guitars they are, over six thousand of them out there getting mellower and richer day by day, year by year, as any great instrument should. Did he have huge setbacks that would have stopped lesser men? Yes, but he loved to build guitars. Did he train and inspire (and give jobs to) a whole generation of luthiers and repair technicians that we all reap the benefits of every time we get a neck reset or purchase a treasured instrument? Yeah, all because Stuart Mossman loved to build guitars. David Bromberg stopped performing for four years so he could learn the luthiers trade, mostly with violins. Is there any chance he could have been inspired by those tours of the guitar factory that were a mainstay of the early festivals? I'm guessing so, all because this one guy really loved ... one thing ... any one thing, really, is all it takes to make a huge difference down the road. For Stuart, that thing was guitars.

(photo Winfield Daily Courier)

Back to the College one more time

2007-09-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

In my post from last weekend titled "Walnut Valley Folk Festival", I asserted that the idea of a flat-picking championship was borne in the fall of 1971 from two superlative flatpickers dueling it out on stage like Miles Davis and Red Rodney. The following picture, of Bromberg and Crary on stage together at Stewart Gymnasium, is the same shot that I photocopied from the Southwestern yearbook, The Moundbuilder, and posted last week. Then I found it again in the "Courier", with a little wider crop that lets us see at least part of Bromberg's guitar, and a caption. So, at least the caption writer for that edition appears to agree with me.

Next, I'm going to start on another question I asked early on: What are all these incredible people doing in Kansas?

Many of you already know.

2007-09-07T10:10:00.000-05:00

1968 - How about a little mind travel ...

2007-09-06T01:33:00.000-05:00

Forty years is a long time for a memory to be trusted for much. When I first asked Brent about the festivals at Southwestern he said, "Yeah, we did two, one in '67 and one in '68".

There are four articles in the "Courier" and two in the "Collegian" about the '67 festival, but I found no reference to a festival in '68. He and I both assumed he was just remembering the later festival, in '71, as the "second" festival.

Then I found this in the November 11th, 1967 issue of the Collegian. Brent was right, or close to right, a '68 festival was at least planned . I'd love to know what happened. It was a very volatile time, perhaps anti-war politics reared it's ugly head in a basically conservative town. Or maybe key people graduated and moved on. Whatever the reasons, it would take Southwestern College four years to hold another folk festival in Winfield, but that festival would be seminal to all that came after.

I covered that festival briefly in posts from 8/30 through 9/2. I'm going back to it one more time later today, and may still jump around some as I learn more about each one.

Landrush is in five hours. I got my T-shirt, I think I'll sleep in.

A note about photos

2007-09-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

All of the photos from the '71 festival (posted 8/31 through 9/3), were photocopied from a hard copy of the 1972 "Moundbuilder", the Southwestern College yearbook. Most likely they were taken by Bill Stephens. The quality would be a little better if the Memorial Library scanners had been working. The only exception is the lovely shot of Pat and Victory Garvey posted on 9/3. This is the picture that the student newspaper, "The Collegian" ran on October 22, 1971, the day before the festival. No one credited photographers back then. Michael Totty might know something about it. This one, and all of the photos from yesterday and today were scanned and printed from microfilm readers, hence the horrible quality. When I find hard copies of these I will reload better images.

The photos of Mance Lipscomb, Jimmie Driftwood, and Doc Watson, all accompanied articles from "The Winfield Daily Courier" run on consecutive days during the '67 festival. The Mance photo might have been from the Southwestern show, as it ran on Saturday the 29th, and he played on Friday. Jimmie and Doc are obviously promo shots, which the one of Pat and Victoria may be as well. The photograph of Merle Watson is from the Merlefest website.

There was also a great post-festival spread that the Courier ran on Monday May, 1, with photographs by Murl Webster. The scans are so horrible that I can't post them. As soon as I get my hands on a hardcopy of the Winfield Courier from May 1, 1967, I'll post a great shot of what may very well be the first Winfield picking session. Please leave comment if you have the same and would trust me not to abuse it between you and a copy machine.

Southwestern Folk Festival, 1967, days 2 & 3

2007-09-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

Here is what I've gleaned from phone conversations with Brent Pierce. His computer is down and he can't send digital images. It sounds like he has the complete festival attendance packet listing all concerts, workshops and lectures. I will post the images as soon as the snails deliver them.

Here are the principal festival staff:

Festival Director: Sam Ontjes
Public Relations: Roger Fenton
Publicity: Brent Pierce and Stuart Mossman
Sound & Stage: Alan Menne
Tickets: Frances Timmons
Physical Preparation: Rick Johnson
Cincessions: Beth Gore
Photography : Bill Stephens
(also one of the three possible photographers for the '71 shots.)
Faculty Consultant: Dr. Douglas Moore

Doc Watson

2007-09-05T09:53:00.000-05:00

Well, here's one person that needs no introduction to the gentle masses that have become the Walnut Valley Festival. Merle Watson was only seventeen when he and Doc took the stage as the Saturday headliner for the Southwestern Folk Festival, April 29, 1967. They also conducted workshops, and led parts of the gospel sing on Sunday. Doc and Merle returned for the first three years at the fairgrounds, then again in '76, '80 and '82. Every true Winfielder should go to Merlefest at least once. Doc also came in '86, '87 and '88 with Jack Lawrence.

Merle Watson

2007-09-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

Merle Watson 1949-1985

Here's Merle around 1979, doing what he loved best.

Southwestern Folk Festival, 1967

2007-09-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

Now we have to move back in time five years, to the last three days of April, 1967. The event was called "Southwestern Folk Festival" and the festival poster listed these performers:

Jimmy Driftwood
Doc Watson
Glenda Bickell
Pat & Victoria
Johnny Vandiver
Art Eskridge
Merle Watson
Mance Lipscomb
Eunice Shedden
and more ...

The Winfield Courier from Monday, May 1, and Saturday, April 29, confirms the appearance of all of the above except Eunice Shedden. She might have played, I just don't know for sure. The same articles also report the appearance of five performers not listed on the flyer, Vern and Ray, the The Revelators, Jo Wright, "Poor Bill" Williams and The Shannon Sisters.

In an advance article from the Southwestern Collegian on Friday, February 10th, Stu Mossman mentions two other entertainers as scheduled to play, the Kider Family and the Hays Hammer Dulcimer Players. He also writes: "Possibly, Byron Berline, 1965 National Fiddle Champion, and his Blue Grass group will perform."

Also mentioned in an article from the Collegian on the first day of the festival, April 28, are: The Country Boys, Dorothy May, The Buchanan Trio, Jim "Sugar Bear" Kudlacek and "many more". It's not clear if any of these folks actually played. And who the rest of the "many more" might be I've yet to find out.

The festival began with a lecture by William Koch entitled "The Folk Music Break Through", delivered in Richardson Auditorium on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Koch, an associate professor of English and Folklore at Kansas State University, is president of the Kansas Folklore Society and has published numerous articles on central plains life and folklore.

Mance Lipscomb

2007-09-04T18:27:00.000-05:00

Mance Lipscomb is a blues giant. He was born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, in 1885, where he lived until his death in 1976. As a boy, he took the name Mance - short for "emancipation". He was a tenant farmer whose clean finger-picking style and songwriting prowess were discovered during the country blues revival in the early sixties, which brought him great fame, but, sadly, as a black man in the south, not much wealth. Once, hitchhiking around the country in the early seventies, I was picked up by two budding guitarist who were on their way to Navasota to sit at the feet of the wiry little guy with a booming voice and a special way with wire stretched over a wooden box. I think there were a lot of guys doing that. Between his own albums on Arhoolie Records, and his appearance on compilation and folk festival albums, he was on over forty records.

That he played in little old Winfield in 1967 is a pretty big deal, and a legacy that should not be forgotten. He played on Friday night, April 28, sharing top billing with another legend from another part of the country, Jimmie Driftwood.

Jimmie Driftwood

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This is obviously a publicity shot, but it's what the Courier ran at the time. Besides, I've heard that he was was already in his "black period" when he first came to Winfield.

James Corbitt Morris was the son of a folk singer, Neil Morris. He was a high school teacher whose famous ballads "Battle Of New Orleans" and "Tennessee Stud" were written to make history fun for his students.

Mr. Driftwood is also a giant. Later, after a successful Nashville career including the Grand Ole Opry and Carnegie Hall, he returned to Mountain View, Arkansas and devoted the rest of his life to preserving both the Ozark Mountain culture and the local environment. He's also the first person I ever saw play the mouth bow.

Jimmie Driftwood returned to play the Walnut Valley Festival for four years in the middle 70's. He passed away in July of 1998, just a few days after his 90th birthday.

The treasure's not the takin', it's the lovin' of the game

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Pat and Victory Garvey were a study in opposites, he with his shaved head and drooping mustache, she with her dainty face and raven-black hair. Then there were his high harmonies over her exquisite melody lines, and his ability to use really incredible words in songs, and make them work, like "lambent moon" or "frost and ague". The title of their second album "songs: 1965 - 1971" pretty much describes the length of their relationship, I think, but in that time they made two albums of songs both plaintive and subtly humorous. Here's one of the best song titles ever: "It's Quite A Lovely Painting, Mrs. Custer, I'm Sorry Things Turned Out That Way For George".

"The Lovin' Of The Game" is a true gem of a song, and has been recorded by several other artists, most notably Steve Goodman on "Somebody Else's Troubles", with guitar work by, hmmm, David Bromberg. And their 1968 album on Epic, "Mr. & Mrs. Garvey", featured the guitar work of one Charlie Daniels.

Also, in a true and just world, their song, "Song For Kansas", would be the Kansas State song. Here is the chorus:

"And the calf will fall aborning
on the gleaming soil of morning
white and blinded by the dung
that grows the flowers of the cottonwood
where meadowlarks will perch and pierce the air,
until their song is sung"

The melody is every bit as perfect as the poetry. Come by the KAAA booth from 5-7 on Thursday and Friday and I'll sing it for you.

The rest of the line-up in 1971

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Virginia Klemens was a nineteen year-old blues singer from Chicago.

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The Simmons Family performed traditional Ozark folk songs.

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Art Eskridge sang railroad blues in the Jimmie Rodgers style

Charlie Cloud told stories from the Chautauqua circuit

Also performing in '71,but not pictured, were the Blue Grass Country Boys from Belle Plaine, Kansas, and The Arkansawyers, from Mountain View, Arkansas. All photos so far are from the 1972 Moundbuilder, whose photographers for that year were David McMullin, Jim Banks, and Bill Stephens. Thanks, guys.

Oh Yeah, the couple from Thursday's post. That was Pat and Victoria Garvey, extraordinary songwriters from Sante Fe, New Mexico. There will be more about them in a little while - not only because they're awesome, but because they are also a link to the first folk festival in the Walnut Valley, some say the first in the Midwest - the Southwestern Folk Festival, April 28-30, 1967.

The Walnut Valley Folk Festival

2007-09-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

The first time I ever set foot in Wichita was to deliver to Mid-Continent Airport a tall, lanky, New York jew with a huge afro and the hands of a basketball player. David McMullin was at the wheel. Michael Totty, Don Sarlin and I were crammed in the back seat. The year was 1971 and the guy with the monstrous hands was David Bromberg. Watching those fingers curl over his knees and extend toward his shins gave me a little insight into just how the man on the other end of those formidable digits had hammered, coerced, bamboozled and simply annihilated every possible combination of notes from a 00 Martin just a few hours earlier. That he and another guitarist by the name of Dan Crary had just set the stage for the first and most enduring flat-picking contest in the whole country was nowhere apparent. That we were in the presence of greatness, was everywhere.

I only ended up in Winfield for the weekend because my best friend from High School, the aforementioned Mr. Totty, was attending Southwestern College, and had invited me up for a folk festival he was helping organize. I hitchhiked up from our hometown, Oklahoma City, did alright on the Interstate, but took a while to get from I-35 over to the Cowley County seat. I arrived late and walked into the field house just as Pat and Victoria Garvey were singing "The Trail of Tears", a beautiful and haunting song about the displacement of the Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations - a song that I still perform today. I was mesmerized. They moved on to "Song for Kansas" which is hands down the best Kansas song ever, a song I also still sing. By the end of that second song, a die had been cast, and a life in song had been laid out before me, a life I embraced but took years to fulfill, a destiny that I was only slowly able to live up to. There was a lot of music to get through first.

What I thought was the final act that night at Stewart Gymnasium, having arrived late and not seen a program, was a clean-cut Kansas City dude - conservatively dressed, with a neatly trimmed moustache and muleskin cowboy boots polished to a high sheen. However, for all of his quiet appearance, Dan Crary was doing something that I just hadn't ever heard before - playing fiddle tunes on the guitar. Note for blazing note. He carried Billy through the lowground and came back with a blackberry blossom. His "Moonlight On The Water" was only two things, moonlight and water. Ushers had to come through and remove all the jaws from the floor. (meanwhile, I was still pondering what the other chord was that went with "G" and "C").

Turns out Dan wasn't last. That's when that 6 foot 5 inch New Yorker, with another eight inches of hair on top on that, strode to the middle of the stage in maybe three steps. All the ravages of memory not withstanding, I still remember his exact words, "Man, I'd have to be a fool to follow that guy with a fiddle tune ... but I don't look this way for nothing!" Here, whatever memory served me up to that point is lost in an oblivion of melodies both sacred and profane, sensuous and nearly senseless, active surgical removal of all twelve guitar notes so they could be reinstalled in another universe, on another freight train to oblivion, a rubber-tired taxi to the stars. I can't name a single song he played, but this Bromberg fellow sure knew how to shake down a Mid-Western folk festival audience and leave them with just their skivies and their rapidly dissolving notions of the pure simplicity of mountain music. When he was done, the crickets packed up their fiddles and went home, the tree frogs gave up in disgust, and the whippoorwill moved his home a few miles farther south, just in case this fool ever came back.

For all that, the night wasn't over. Mr. Crary was still to grace the stage one more time, this time alongside the slightly manic Tarrytown boy last seen taking the train to Harlem for his guitar lesson with the Reverend, Gary Davis. The two young men might just as well have taken a big ole Kansas twister down off of God's shelf and said "Hey, this is mine - I forgot I left it here". Extra staff had to be called in to replace lights knocked out by the flying notes. Lifetime quests were forgotten in search of discordant chord patterns that it would take David Rawlings thirty years to discover. Seismographic readings started to resemble the melody line for "The Boggy Road To Milledgeville".

But hey. That was only the concert. The party that night at Stu's house is where it all took place. Hell, the devil wouldn't stop in Georgia, and you know it. Two men. Two masters from different universes. A contest was born that night - that's what men do.

Now this looks a little more familiar

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And there's that one guy again ...

Here's a couple of questions for you

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Who are these people?

And what are they doing in Kansas?

Here's the plan

2007-08-29T02:36:00.000-05:00

So, there's actually several motivations for me to begin this silly little excursion into the past, some personal, some at least a touch more universal. Part of the latter is collecting a full history of the folk music scene in the Walnut Valley. I just today found out about two earlier festivals in '67 and '68, because Brent Pierce's website came up as I searched the artists that had performed at the Walnut Valley Folk Festival in 1971, the one I attended, the one that changed and/or saved my life.

According to Brent, he, Stuart Mossman and Sam Ontjes concieved of, found funding for, and produced two festivals in 1967 and 1968. He said, "We called them folk festivals because we didn't know what else to call them". Remarkably, he still has playbills and other items from those concerts which he has graciously offered to let us post on this site.

So, I call on anyone who has memories (or memorabilia) from either of these three concerts, or from the shows at The Black Eye, to post a comment to this blog - so your story, your piece of the history can be added in. Me, I have to start with my first trip to Wichita ...

A Drive Through the Park

2007-08-28T08:43:00.000-05:00

Since most of my initial experience in Winfield was up on the hill, then later only among the masses at the fairgrounds, I had never taken an evening drive on 14th street, out past the joggers and dog walkers, through empty campgrounds and off across the old metal bridge over the Walnut. If I was a local, I'd know the name of that bridge, of course, and also the name of the old stone one that it replaces, whose limestone abutments still haunt that stretch of the river, and whose disruption of the flow causes the huge undercut bank just to the east. You don't have to be local to see that.

The sun had just gone down, and the earth was in that hush of cool air washing over a day of baking sun. As I headed back east through the park, I thought I caught a glimpse of a magnificent hot air balloon, glowing and transparent with the fire that gives it loft. But no, it was only the moon. But a moon worth parking the machine up on the railroad dike and watching as it clears the trees over a peaceful Kansas town. Believe me, there was still plenty of fire, and slowly, loft. The peace, however, is going to be soon interrupted, as evidenced by the land-rush behemoths lurking to my left.

So, I headed home, I had what I needed - thanks to the good folks at Memorial Library - proof that there is a predecessor to the Walnut Valley Festival, although a short-lived one. Oct. 23d, 1971, really did happen.

2007-08-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

" ...sure, you can borrow my guitar, just save me some of that coffee."