For this week’s song of the week, we thought we would spotlight one of the artists performing at the upcoming John Hartford Memorial Festival (read our exclusive preview here), Jamie Hartford. Here he is performing his father’s song “In Tall Buildings,” accompanied by Mike Compton on mandolin, Mike Bubb on bass and Mark Howard on guitar. It’s a heart wrenching cover of this beautiful song, made even more so by Hartford’s introduction. He explains that the song was written about his grandfather, whom John would watch rush to work everyday, even after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Get your hankies ready, but also get excited for all the amazing performances that we have to look forward to at The John Hartford Memorial Festival.
As a bonus, here’s an episode of NPR’s Mountain Stage featuring selections from both John and Jamie Hartford, as well as Jamie Hartford solo. Check it out here.
Sarah lives a relatively quiet existence in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys dancing to bluegrass, trolling through sales bins at record stores, hiking, camping and attending screenings of old movies.
The incredibly wallet-friendly price of $75 for an advance full festival pass (note: camping not included, must be booked through Bean Blossom) also includes a special kick-off picking party and chili supper on Wednesday evening. Besides the stellar main stage line-up, the second stage will feature workshops, smaller acts and open picking sessions.
To say that the event is a multi-generational labor of love is no exaggeration. The two organizers – John Hotze and Dan Dillman– are 70 and 24 years old, respectively. They met through their mutual connection to Bean Blossom. Dan is the son of Dwight Dillman, the owner of the park, and Hotze has been a frequent attendee at festivals there. The connection between the two men grew over a shared love of music, and, a little over a year ago, they hatched a scheme.
“I started talking about the need to put together a John Hartford Memorial Festival, here at [Bean Blossom],” Hotze describes. “Dan approached his dad, and his dad said, ‘Go for it.’ I think his dad really didn’t think anything would happen. Dan is pretty young and hasn’t done a whole lot [like this before] so he thought it was going to die on the vine. But we really pushed to get it together.”
When putting the lineup together, Hotze’s traditional bluegrass background complimented Dillman’s enthusiasm for new progressive acts nicely. “We were on opposite sides of the table with the bluegrass thing, him being into jamgrass, and me being more into traditional bluegrass,” Hotze explains. “So we wound up with a compilation of bands with a really good variety of music.”
Celebrating an Artistic Legacy
With the luminaries, up-and-comers, and innovators represented on the bill, the on-the-fly collaborations and sit-ins will surely lead to some unforgettable musical moments onstage at Bean Blossom. Since all the artists are there, ultimately, to honor Hartford, a sense of celebration is already palpable amongst the musicians who will be in attendance.
“I can’t wait to get to the first Hartford Fest, because the type of folks who honor John are the kind of folks I want to hang out with,” says Vince Herman (Great American Taxi, Leftover Salmon). “I think it’s about time a multi-day festival was held in his honor so that the depth of his catalog can be pulled out at campfires, so that kids can learn his tunes at this festival for years to come – and so someone can make some really cool t-shirts. Bean Blossom is the ideal location for this to happen, given John’s deep respect for all things Bill Monroe. Having never been there myself, I’m chomping at the bit to get there.”
Bassist Larry Sifford, of The Missouri Boatride Bluegrass Band, echoes that sentiment.
“We felt John was deserving of a memorial event,” he reflects. “There are many songwriters and musicians but none in my book were able to capture the unique and almost mystical legacy John left.”
Herman also comments on Hartford’s influence as a songwriter, describing Hartford as his, “Favorite 20th century writer, and he’s heading up the 21st so far [for me].”
“His deep love of roots music was clear even in his L.A. psychedelic early works. His ‘word movie’ style of writing never failed to deliver on record, and his songs opened the gates to bringing the crowd along with him during his live shows. I have never seen a performer with such control of a crowd. His immense presence was part of that, but his songs sealed the deal.”
Besides being a magnetic performer, Hartford was also an iconoclast. Danny Barnes, a persistently innovative artist himself, learned a great deal from Hartford. His first “concert proper,” as he describes it, was seeing John Hartford at Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, sometime in the 70s. He remembered being impressed at how a musician could make music that was so utterly contemporary and relevant to what was happening in the here and now, while still having obviously done his homework in traditional forms. When he befriended Hartford later in his life, he gained insight into his approach.
“One thing [Hartford] told me was that, if a person really wanted to be like Bill Monroe, they should go out and start their own style of music, rather than mechanically play and repeat what Bill played,” Barnes explains. “Folks were copying the wrong part of Monroe’s work. In a sense, to me, that’s John’s legacy. People associate him with the hat and the dancing and the shtick, as it were, and that’s all cool and a part of him. But I think that observation that he had could totally change acoustic music, or picking music, or whatever you call this stuff. I feel like I have been working very hard to keep that written down, on a piece of butcher paper on the wall of the woodshed of my mind. In a sense, I have devoted my whole professional life to this ethos. He was the first that codified it for me in such a succinct way.”
But to Hotze, Hartford was, “Just a nice warm friend I had in high school.”
Hotze and his friend Paul Breidenbach, who played guitar with Hartford in one of his early bands, The Missouri Ridgerunners, were making frequent Greyhound bus trips from St. Louis to Nashville as young teenagers in the mid 1950s to catch shows at the Grand Ole Opry. It was on one of these trips that they met Hartford, who was three years older. They quickly bonded over a shared love of bluegrass music, and discovered that Hartford also lived in St. Louis. They would then get together a few times a month, sometimes making trips down to Nashville together.
“He was addicted to bluegrass music,” Hotze recalls. “I happened to have a reel-to-reel recorder and I was recording the Grand Ole Opry back in, probably starting in ’55, and I specifically recorded mostly bluegrass, Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs, so when we’d get together, John would always want to know, ‘What do you have that’s new? What did Flatt and Scruggs do?’ So I shared the music and I helped him learn some new stuff.”
“John was just a normal guy back then. I’m amazed at everything he did in his career. He was just one of us, but, well, he was exceptional.”
A Part of History
For bluegrass fans, there could be no better setting than the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park & Campground in Bean Blossom. Over 55 years of musical history have taken place on these hallowed grounds, nestled in the rolling hills of Brown County, Indiana. Monroe fell in love with the park after playing a jamboree there in October 1951, purchasing the land two months later. The first bluegrass festival was held here in 1967, and since then countless legends have graced the stage and picked in the campgrounds. “To most artists who know what Bean Blossom is, it’s a privilege to get to go there and perform,” Hotze says.
It’s an environment that also brings out the welcoming, friendly side of its attendees. “You might have a physicist, a doctor, a farmer, or a blue collar worker, but the barriers are completely down when you are in the campgrounds,” Hotze describes. “It’s a very warm feeling. I’ve been to several festivals, and there’s been no other park that has had the cozy, comfy feeling that Bean Blossom has. You don’t feel like you’re in a huge crowd at Bean Blossom, even though there could be a couple thousand people easily.”
Hotze’s love for the venue comes from a fan’s perspective. He has many stories of his adventures in the campgrounds at Bean Blossom, falling asleep listening to the late night picks from tent, or staying out until 8am taking in the nonstop music, meeting friends old and new. With the John Hartford Memorial festival, he is hoping that attendees will have their own memories and stories to take with them when the event is over.
“Its my dream that, after the festival the fans leave and say, ‘That was really neat, I hope there’s going to be more,’” he says. “I want the artists to feel, ‘We had a lot of fun, I hope that we can come back and do it again.’ That’s what I gage as successful. I’d like to see it become an annual John Hartford Memorial Festival.”
It’s a tough economic environment for the music industry, and, even in stronger financial times, most festivals in their first year rarely manage to break even, much less turn any sort of profit. Although money and logistical concerns have certainly provided their share of curveballs in the past year for Hotze and Dillman, their motivations for putting on the festival have always remained in the forefront.
“It is to do something to honor John,” Hotze says, summing it up.
Tickets to the John Hartford Memorial Festival are available here. The SPPS will be on site, taping all the performances.
Sarah lives a relatively quiet existence in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys dancing to bluegrass, trolling through sales bins at record stores, hiking, camping and attending screenings of old movies.
The SPPS is proud to be involved with the first annual John Hartford Memorial Festival, which is taking place June 1st through 4th in Bean Blossom, Indiana. The event boasts a must-see line-up, and we’ll be running a preview article in a couple days with thoughts from organizer John Hotze, as well as reflections on Hartford’s legacy and influence from Vince Herman, Danny Barnes and Larry Sifford, who will all be taking the stage at Bean Blossom that weekend, amongside many other fantastic acts.
Since we’ve got Hartford on our minds (although, don’t we always), this week’s song of the week called for a Hartford song. Of course, picking just one if his songs is a challenge, almost futile, really. With his extensive, rich catalogue, there will always be old favorites to cherish and new treasures to discover. I just went with one I’ve been personally digging a lot lately – “Let Him Go on Mama.” A warm and witty character study, it is also a commentary on how, in constantly changing times, it’s easy for some to be written off as “old fashioned” and their insight overlooked. With a world moving forward even quicker than the year “Let Him Go on Mama” appeared on 1976′s Mark Twang, the song boasts an even more timely message. One of Hartford’s main artistic drives was to make the past a relevant experience to the present, and “Let Him Go on Mama” paints a disappearing way of life in vivid brushstrokes, as the protagonist witnesses, “The railroad trains, the bus, and the planes are taking up all the slack/He’s been watching all those river towns slowly turn their back.” Plus, it’s just simply a great tune. Enjoy, as we look forward to all the wonderful tributes to Hartford that will be taking place in Bean Blossom June 1st through the 4th.
Sarah lives a relatively quiet existence in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys dancing to bluegrass, trolling through sales bins at record stores, hiking, camping and attending screenings of old movies.
It seemed apt to pick a Hazel Dickens song this week, and Kathy Mattea does a mighty fine version of “Coal Tattoo,” which she featured on her stellar 2008 album COAL. For that album, Mattea wanted to choose songs that represented not only the people – and Mattea’s own family history of working in the coal mines – but also the West Virginia landscape she grew up in. Dickens is represented by both “Tattoo” and a haunting rendition of “Black Lung” on COAL. There are many links to draw between Mattea and Dickens, both as artists and activists with deep connections to their home soil. Dickens may no longer be with us, but her music and influence will live on. This is but one example.
Read our tribute to Dickens’ life and celebrate her music here.
Sarah lives a relatively quiet existence in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys dancing to bluegrass, trolling through sales bins at record stores, hiking, camping and attending screenings of old movies.
They’ll never, never, never keep us down They’ll never, never, never keep us down They cheat, rob and kill but we’ll stop that big wheel They’ll never, never, never keep us down
It’s almost too easy to focus on human beings’ confounding capacity for greed, fear and cruelty, especially during these difficult times. But our species also possesses an inspiring amount of courage and vision. As the popular activist phrase goes, “Another world is possible,” and those that are strong enough to stare darkness in the face, and speak to it directly with a fearlessness that comes from love, may just be the hands that pull us back from the brink and help forge that other world. Hazel Dickens was one of those beautifully brave souls and we at the SPPS were indescribably saddened to learn of her passing this past Friday, due to complications from pneumonia. She was 75.
Born June 1st, 1935 in Montcalm, West Virginia, in the heart of coal mining country near the Virginia state line, Dickens was one of eleven children. Her father was a Primitive Baptist preacher, as well as a singer and banjo player. The family’s livelihood was directly tied into the coal mining industry. Her father supported the family by hauling timber to the coalmines. Dickens’ brothers were miners, and three of them would eventually die of mining-related illnesses. Another sister cleaned the house of one of the mine supervisors.
She grew up in absolute poverty. The Washington Post quotes a 1981 interview in their tribute to Dickens where she describes one winter where she wasn’t allowed to go outside because her family could not afford to buy her a winter coat. But the music the family sang in church and heard on the radio, especially the Grand Ole Opry, provided some distraction, and planted a musical seed in Dickens from a young age.
With little employment opportunities to be had in Montcalm, she left with her parents for Baltimore when she was sixteen. She held jobs as a factory worker, waitress and store clerk, saving up enough to buy a guitar and standup bass. Dickens began playing in local bands, and found herself in the burgeoning folk revival of the 1960s, where she worked with artists such as Mike Seeger and Joan Baez.
As part of the duet Hazel and Alice, with Alice Gerrard, she pioneered a space for women on the bluegrass stage, drawing on a resounding mountain folk sound that harkened back to many old-time women singers and string bands. Hazel and Alice also brought a female perspective to their songs, something lacking in the then male-centric world of bluegrass. In a 1987 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air [listen to snippets of it here] Dickens said:
There did seem to be a large space there that women like me and other women that were coming along could fill. And that was to give other women that didn’t want to sing the old traditional songs — to give them something that they could identify with and something that they could sing. I’ve had many women tell me that I was the only woman who came along that was writing songs that they could sing within the tradition.
Dickens often directly addressed the oppression of women in her songwriting, with overtly feminist songs like, “Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There.” The very word “feminist” has been unfairly (and, I would argue, systematically) sullied to the point where, if one utters it, it tends be couched in apologetic language (“Yes, I am a feminist – but you know, I’m not one of those feminists.”). Although she may have had humble reluctance about her status as an icon in the movement, I doubt Dickens would make such apologies.
After striking out on a solo career in the mid-1970s, Dickens’ songwriting became even more political. She used her unmistakable voice – and that voice would shoot electricity straight down your spine – to shine a light into the lives and struggles of coal miners and their families. A tireless advocate the rights of union workers, her music was a moral compass, so much so that it was prominently featured in films such as the documentary “Harlan County, USA” and John Sayles’ “Matewon.” Perhaps less spoken of was her congruent activism against environmentally devastating mining practices, such as strip-mining. Poor working people should not have to choose between two iniquities, and Dickens understood the link between environmental degradation and economic inequality, making connections that many still fail to draw.
Dickens’ legacy is one of standing against injustice when you see it and using art to speak for those whose voices are often silenced in the din of America’s great politicized shout fest. We need her now more than ever, but we can also learn much from what she leaves us. In whatever ways we are called, may we have even a shred of that unflinching courage and see what Dickens saw – another world, just over the horizon. Sometimes it’s hard to see it, but it’s there, waiting. Now it’s up to us to bring it into focus. There would be no better way to honor Hazel Dickens’ memory.
Keep reading to watch interview snippets and celebrate Dickens’ music.
Sarah lives a relatively quiet existence in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys dancing to bluegrass, trolling through sales bins at record stores, hiking, camping and attending screenings of old movies.
The SPPS is a non-profit (501c3) electronic library that archives, saves, researches and shares historic Americana recordings. The goal is to promote music through the appreciation of its history and sounds.
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