My father was an inventor, and, when I was ten, he decided he was going to move our family from Texas to California. In college in California, I met Ralph Stanley after a concert at UCSB. I really loved the clawhammer-style banjo he learned from his mother. After the concert Ralph told me that if I wanted to learn the old-time style, then I needed to go back to North Carolina, Virginia, or someplace in the Southern Mountains. So, in the summer of 1969, I traveled throughout the Appalachians from north Georgia all the way to West Virginia with my banjo-picking buddy Steve Keith, looking for traditional musicians. We were amazed to find hundreds of old musicians born in the late 1800s. It was clear they were a different breed and the last of that pioneer generation. This generation would be gone in a short amount of time. So I just finished college and moved back to Asheville, North Carolina … and that’s how my interest in mountain music began.
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, there was not much differentiation between bluegrass, old-time, and even country music. It was all kinda one thing. There were banjo and fiddle players, of course, but there were also ballad singers, old-time piano players, harmonica players, and mouth bow players. There were even old-time people that played panpipes. There was tremendous variety. It was generally referred to as mountain music. Styles were not so segmented like they are now. These days people are shut off in their little niches.
When I moved to Asheville, I started really working hard on learning the banjo. That was my only goal in those early days … to be a really good clawhammer banjo player. As time went on I began to learn other instruments. In the last ten or twelve years, I’ve been working really hard on the slide guitar and Doc Watson’s style of fingerpicking guitar. Doc and I started working together in 1998, and I realized I had a rare chance to watch him and learn from the master. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it and learned a lot, which is amazing considering I started learning in my fifties.
PLATE 59 David Holt with the slide guitar and banjo—two of the many instruments he plays
Performing with Doc has had a huge influence on me, and winning a Grammy with him for Legacy was a career highlight. Doc learned a lot of his repertoire from old seventy-eight rpm records. He has a very wide-ranging view about what kind of songs he will sing. As Doc says, “If a song has something to say, I might sing it.” One song I learned from him is “Ready for the Times to Get Better” that Crystal Gayle actually recorded first. It’s a fingerpicking song, very beautiful. It has the feel of an older song, but words that a modern audience can relate to. Doc is a real master of taking an old song and making it sound new, or a new song and making it sound old. He has been able to attract a huge audience because of this. I have tried to follow his example: I try to play great songs really well and engage the audience as I go along with stories.
I do a lot of songwriting. I enjoy writing when I am inspired. On every CD, I usually record one or two of the songs that I have written. I think I’ve written some really good songs, but songwriting is not my emphasis. My real love is with the traditional material. I like learning the old stuff, and I love playing it for other people. Traditional music is where my passion is. One of my main goals has always been to keep the old-time mountain music alive. I just love it. Being a guy born outside the Southern Mountains, I could look over the whole scene and see what needed to be done. To give you an example: I lived up in a little community in North Carolina that was way up in the mountains. There was a kid up the road from me that had known me his whole life. He could’ve come to me at any time and taken banjo lessons from me; I would’ve been happy to show him. His grandfather and I were good friends and played music together. This young fellow didn’t get interested until he saw me on satellite television on the Fire on the Mountain show (on The Nashville Network in the 1980s). It was seeing the music he had all around him on television that got him interested in learning it. I started thinking, “There’s a lot of power in making sure that the music keeps on going by trying to get it on television and in front of young people.” That was one of the things I tried to do back in the eighties and nineties.
The Fire on the Mountain show was started after the producers that worked for The Nashville Network saw a show I host for North Carolina Public Broadcasting System called Folkways. They asked me to host the new show. We did ninety-five half-hour shows, featuring everybody from Bill Monroe to Etta Baker. The show ran from 1984 to 1989 and is without a doubt the best collection of traditional music of the 1980s that exists. Unfortunately, when CBS bought The Nashville Network, they just put the tapes of Fire on the Mountain in storage. Maybe someday they will release them to the public.
On the other hand, the PBS Folkways series can be downloaded for free on iTunes! Or you can look at it on the website unctv.org [University of North Carolina Television]. All of these shows are downloadable, so you can look at them any time you want. They include everything from old cooking ways to traditional crafts and, of course, mountain music.
I got into storytelling when I was collecting songs and heard the old-timers telling me tales about things that happened in the mountains. I remember banjo builder and player Stanley Hicks; he was a good friend of mine. He told me about an elephant that was hanged in Erwin, Tennessee, in 1916. I said, “Hanged? That seems impossible!” So I researched the story from old newspapers, and, in about 1973, I told the true story in a concert for the first time. I realized people would sit moderately still for a three-minute song, but they’d be glued to their seats for fifteen minutes for a good story [laughs].
In 1976, I was invited to tell stories at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. There were about a hundred fifty people there. Today the festival has grown to about twelve thousand people. I was lucky to be part of the storytelling revival from the very beginning. In those early days, I told a lot of folktales and true-life stories I had heard from mountain people. Today I’m using storytelling more to set up songs. I use my storytelling ability to make a song interesting to a modern audience who doesn’t know anything about the music. For example, there is a song I do called “The Cannonball.” Well, there was an old ballad-singing lady, Inez Chandler, that I used to go see up in Sodom, North Carolina. She had an unusual chorus for “The Cannonball.” To get the audience interested in the tune, I introduce it with a little story. I tell them that Inez had a wonderful way with language, and she always had an unusual ballad or song that had been passed down through her family. I would stop by her house, and she’d always say, “David, you want some coffee?” I’d say, “Sure, I’d be happy to have some coffee.” She’d say, “I’ve only got the ol’ ‘decapitated’ kind [laughs].” “Well, that’s all right; I don’t like coffee with a ‘head’ on it anyway.” She said, “Excuse the smell. I cleaned the place from top to bottom with ‘pneumonia.’ It’s so clean though that you could hear a pin drop [laughs].” She’d just say things like “You’ve buttered your bread and now you can sleep in it.” That’s the way I’m using storytelling now, to set up a song, make it more interesting to the audience. Most everything I do I’ve learned from mountain people throughout the years. I rarely get material from books or CDs.
I don’t really come from a musical family except for five generations of rhythm bones players. There were lots of natural storytellers, though. My family, being from Texas, had lots of stories about battling terrible weather, Indians, and everything else. I had a great-uncle who had emphysema, and he still smoked nonfiltered Camels. He had a tracheotomy hole that he could blow smoke rings through. He used to tell me stories about Jesse James and how I was related to him. Just so happened that about a year ago I had the genome testing, and it turns out that at the top of the list of famous people I was related to were Frank and Jesse James. I thought he was “talking through his hat” when I was a kid, but Uncle B. was telling the truth [laughs]. Storytelling in my family, like in most families, just happens, and it’s not formal or done in performance style. They just launch into something that happened in the ol
d days. I guess that’s why I ended up really liking true-life stories. I love folktales, too, but I really like the storytelling where you don’t even realize you’re being told a story. You’re just being told what happened, and you’re captivated by it.
I talk to people everywhere to try and find stories—to find a good story, you really have to dig around. For example, Micaville, North Carolina, was one of the largest mining capitals of America. People would go out and dig in their backyard for mica. A big chunk of mica sold for seventy dollars a pound back in the late 1800s. That was a lot of money back then. They could split the mica real thin, and then they would sell those sheets that were used in potbelly stoves for the window so that you could see through it. The mica wouldn’t burn or get hot. Now, that is not a story, but it is an interesting premise. So now I’m looking for a true story about something that happened to one of the mica miners—how he struck it rich or something. To have a good story, you have to have an interesting setting and something compelling has to happen to the characters in the tale. A story has to lead to a climax. I am in the process of talking to people, following leads, and hoping to come across some bit of history that will make a great story about mining in Micaville, North Carolina.
Many people have been an influence on me and my music. If you look on my website, I have put up photos I’ve taken of some of my mentors. Doc Watson, as I mentioned, has been a huge inspiration to me. An old fiddler named Bayard Ray was a great help to me. When I first came to Asheville, he’d come over every day and teach me a new tune. He was from that same little community as Inez Chandler. Dellie Norton was a singer who sang old ballads handed down from her family for four hundred years. She also knew all about how to heal with herbs and old-timey ways of making a go of it in the mountains. I give credit to Grandpa Jones and Roy Acuff, who were good friends of mine. They knew how to entertain an audience with old-time music, and I learned a lot by watching them. I tell you another person I admire, Wade Mainer. He is still alive now, and he’s one hundred and three years old. He was from Waynesville, North Carolina. He has been a friend for almost forty years. Wade was a professional old-time musician. Etta Baker, the wonderful blues guitarist from Morganton, North Carolina, was a great friend to me. Walt Davis from Black Mountain, North Carolina, taught me a lot about old-time music because he was a professional old-time musician back in the 1920s and ’30s.
I try to learn as much as I can from these folks who made a living in the music business way back when because, even back in the thirties and forties, it was still old-time mountain music. My inspiration for storytelling came from Ray Hicks and Stanley Hicks, who were superimportant to me, as well as to a lot of young folks. Even though I don’t tell their stories, just to be around people who are traditional tellers is so powerful. You can see how storytelling naturally fits into their lives. I hope I’ve absorbed some of the soul of music and storytelling from these people because I think that’s the key thing—having the power of some of the music come through you is just amazing. That makes the music engaging and soulful. All the old-timers added their own personality to a song. The music always has to come through you.
The best thing about this job is being with old-timers and other musicians. I still love to visit folks way back in the mountains and spend time with them. That is a great joy for me still. Certainly, one of the highlights of my career is getting to work with Doc over the last thirteen years. We tour two or three weekends a month, and I treasure every concert.
I hope that years from now, I will be seen as a guy that helped to open the door to traditional music in the Southern Mountains. I want people to see what an incredible treasure mountain music is. It doesn’t exist everywhere. Only the southern Appalachian region has these kinds of songs, this wonderful music, and traditions imbedded in the culture. This is really powerful music. I want people to see me as a good player and a person who presented the music well; someone who was easy to get along with and helped open the doors so other people could experience what I have experienced. It is very important to me to see the music carried on. It is a wonderful living tradition, and each generation has to pick it up and bring it into the future. I’ll do whatever I can to help make that happen.
David Holt’s music is available at www.davidholt.com.
PLATE 60 David with his mentor, Doc Watson
“It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it ain’t been real fun!”
~LV and Mary Mathis~
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary …” These could be the words LV Mathis would use to describe his soul mate of fifty-four years, Mary Walker Mathis. Of course, “Lyin’ Varmint” might be the quick response from Mary. The truth is, this couple has weathered the storm, held on to God, and survived the test of time. They are a loving, talented couple who live in a beautiful home on the lake in the mountains of Tuckasegee, North Carolina, a home crafted, designed, and built by LV himself. The soft hand of a mostly self-taught pianist joined the hand of a soon-to-be carpenter, and a true love story began on the swings at a carnival in 1954. The Mathises have written the recipe for relationship survival. They have worked together, played together, laughed together, and cried together. Friends who visit feel the warm welcome extended by this couple, and no one ever leaves with an empty stomach. I would guess they have never met a stranger. Mary and LV Mathis are a blessing to know and love. I am thankful for the opportunity God has provided for me to become their friend.
—Joyce Green
Mary: My name is Mary Alice Walker Mathis. I was born in Townsend, Tennessee, March 21, 1939. I am the oldest. I have four brothers and one sister. They all live in Tennessee except my oldest brother; he lives in Candler, North Carolina. They are all still living.
The times were hard when I was growing up, you know, ’cause we were dirt poor; most of the folks were. We had a lot of fun, though, and I don’t know how much we considered ourselves to be poor. My daddy was an alcoholic, but my mama saw to it that we always had something to eat. She just worked in the home there and just raised all six of us. I remember she made banana pudding in a dishpan. That was a big banana pudding! I still remember her doing that. There was not much left of it by the time she would get some. LV remembers my mama for her biscuits and her gravy.
I don’t know how old I was when we got electricity. I was probably eight or ten years old. I was a lot younger than LV was when he got electricity. He can tell you when he got electricity, but we had it when we came here to Cullowhee, North Carolina, because we had an electric stove.
LV: We hadn’t got modern inside when you got here.
Mary: Before we had electricity, we kept things cold in the creek. They had a little house that was built over a creek or stream, and we kept milk and cream and stuff in it. We had cows at one time, but I guess we got more modern. I don’t know how long we had a cow. Daddy worked construction, and we moved a lot. That was why we moved here to Cullowhee. Daddy helped build the lake here. We never had a really big house, and we were constantly moving place to place.
PLATE 61 Mary Mathis’s grandpa Walker’s homeplace in Wears Valley, Tennessee
My daddy was a good worker when he worked. He was raised to that. He never knew anything different. When he was growing up, his dad (my grandfather) had stills, and my dad carried the sugar to the stills when he was five and six years old. My grandfather went to California when I was about five or six years old, and I didn’t know at the time why he left. He left a beautiful farm in Wears Valley, Tennessee, and it’s still there today. I found out later that my grandfather had left because the revenuers were after him. He lost everything he had in Wears Valley when he went to California. He never came back, so I really don’t remember a lot about him. That’s all my dad knew growing up, and there was a lot more than one running still in the county. None of us ever drank; I hated it.
I went to so many different schools when I was growing up. I think one year I didn’t go to school at all. I think I should have been in the first grade that year
I didn’t go. Back then they didn’t come to get you, so I just didn’t go to school. They probably didn’t even know we existed. I grew up going to so many different schools that I never really got established anywhere. When I went, we had quite a few kids in a class, and sometimes we doubled up in classes [more than one grade] and only had one teacher. Mama took us to school when she could.
PLATE 62 “I don’t know how much we considered ourselves to be poor.” Mary Mathis as a child, seven or eight years old
We had a television when I was probably about fifteen ’cause we didn’t have one when I was a kid living in Cullowhee, but we had one after we moved back to Tennessee. You know, I don’t remember much about television, and I don’t remember watching it because there wasn’t that much on it, but maybe one channel. I can tell you the first television that I ever saw was in Maryville, Tennessee, at this drugstore combination grocery store, and they had a television up on the wall and Howdy Doody was on, and that’s the first time I ever saw a television.
I sung as a little girl in school. I loved country music and I had my little songbook, and I’d listen to the songs on the radio. I listened to Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” I liked all that stuff. I was never able to afford her records, but I loved her music, and I loved her singing. I would go to the classroom sometimes, and I would sing. We also listened to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, and all them older ones.
Daddy had a car. Should I tell her what kind [to LV, laughing]? Daddy fixed up pieces of junk and whatever he could get for a car. We had an ol’ ambulance one time that we rode in. I must have been six or seven years old, and we just got in the back of that thing and rode like we was in a limousine. We had a hearse one time, too. It still had the rollers in the back of it [laughs]! It had a big, wide side door on it, too; you could go in that way or go through the back where they shoved the caskets in. We had a good time, though. It didn’t bother us [laughs]. We were glad to have anything that had wheels that we could go in. My dad, many times, wouldn’t go anywhere with us. He’d just want to stay home. I loved to go and travel, so since we’ve been married, we’ve traveled a lot, since I didn’t get to when I was growing up.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 28