PLATE 70 LV and Mary on a Caribbean cruise in 2005
Mary: We’d took a cruise there the first time, and this man had a shack on the island and invited us back, so that time we had to fly.
LV: I dried him in a living room on it [the shack]. I dried it in, put the windows, door, and sidin’ on it.
Mary: We were invited back this year [2010], but not to do any building, just to come and have the house to ourselves, but we ain’t going. I don’t like the plane ride, and that’s just a long way. Anytime you get on a plane, you never know what you’re gonna get into, whether it be storms or anything else.
LV: The world has changed a lot since I was a boy. Today things are all outta whack. I think our government needs to seek the Lord and His guidance ’cause you can’t run nothing without the Lord. It’s got outta hand, and the people in our nation don’t wanta think about God, and they’ve got it in their head that they can run this place without Him. I can warn ’em right now that you can’t run nothing without Him in it. You can’t even have a good business; you can’t even have a good home or nothing else without Him. Unless He’s the head of it, you ain’t got nothing. That’s the way I feel about it.
Mary: The government is trying to take God outta everything instead of invitin’ Him in. They’re working hard every day to make sure there’s no prayers, no name, and no mention of Him. They shouldn’t want to keep Him out. They should invite Him in.
Mathis music is available from LV Mathis, PO Box 125, Tuckasegee, NC 28783.
A Family Tradition
~Mountain Faith~
There is no sweeter blending of voices than that of sibling harmony. The band Mountain Faith is certainly a good example of some of the finest family harmony in the field of bluegrass music. Sam McMahan; his daughter, Summer; son, Brayden; and nephew, John Morgan, not only take the soulful sounds of traditional music to a higher level, but are also one of the most talented groups of musicians and able to compete with the best of ’em. Their interest in music, commitment to family, and love of God are shared with audiences across the country. They are a blessing to know and a joy to hear perform, whether it is from a stage during a concert up north or echoing down the “holler” from the outdoor pavilion at Old Mater Farm.
—Joyce Green
Summer McMahan
I’m Summer McMahan, and I’m sixteen years old. My cousin, John Morgan, is fourteen, and my brother, Brayden, is fifteen. We live close to Dillsboro, North Carolina, and John lives in Sylva, North Carolina. When we started playing music together, John was seven, Brayden was eight, and I was nine. We’ve been playing about eight years, I guess. I started first. I started out on piano before the fiddle, and I knew how to read music then, but I don’t remember it. I usually just play by ear. We all play by ear. My interest in the fiddle began when I saw the Fiddlin’ Dill Sisters, a local band. I saw them at a singing at Mountain Heritage Day, a festival sponsored by Western Carolina University, which features a display of Appalachian heritage and is attended by thousands. I was really little and said, “Mom, I want to play one of those,” so she called a man, and he started giving me fiddle lessons.
PLATE 71 “Mom, I want to play one of those.” Summer McMahan playing the fiddle
I started taking fiddle lessons and, after about a year, Brayden and John started taking fiddle lessons, too. They didn’t like it, so John decided he wanted to play the guitar, and Bray decided he wanted to play the banjo. I just mainly play the fiddle. The way we started playing and singing was, Dad had played the bass in church all his life, and so we got asked to sing at our church. We played “I’ll Fly Away,” and then my grandmother’s church booked us. After that the churches just started calling.
The band mainly consists of Brayden, John, and me, but my dad also plays with us. Sometimes we have a mandolin player. A lot of the time it’s a different mandolin player every time. I sing lead and alto. Brayden has a good lead voice. John has a good singing voice, too. His voice is deep. We pretty much all sing all of the parts [lead, tenor, alto, bass]. We just kinda switch around.
We travel to sing about every weekend. We usually play and sing three times every weekend, starting about May till about October. Our traveling doesn’t really cut into our social life, though, because usually we’ll miss like a Friday or something at school, and then we’re back. A lot of our friends go with us on trips we take. We travel and sing all over the United States. The farthest north we’ve been is Delaware. We go to Chincoteague, Virginia, every year, and we sing at the blueberry festival that they have. We’ve sung in Colorado, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alabama, and all the states around here. Those are just some of the farthest places we have been.
We go to Victory Christian School. Our school is run by our church. The school is right beside the church, as you start up Cowee Mountain in North Carolina. There’s a lot of people in our school that sing, so we’re not really different. Our school is very small [laughs]. In kindergarten through twelfth grade, there’s like fifty-something students. We have a lot of one-on-one time. I like going to a Christian school. I like how it’s a lot smaller. I’ve never been to public school; I’ve always been in the Christian school, so I don’t really know what public school is like. I think I like Christian school because I like to get busy and get stuff done.
PLATE 72 “We travel to sing about every weekend.” Mountain Faith at one of their performances
I don’t know what Brayden and John plan to do, but when I finish school, I’m thinking about going to Tennessee State and majoring in bluegrass. Then on the weekends, I can keep doing what we’re doing [performing]. If you get a degree in music, then you can do studio work, keep singing, and really work in any aspect of the industry. A lot of professors at Tennessee State are members of groups, and they teach and keep traveling and singing, too.
Sam McMahan
My name is Sam McMahan. I was born February 5, 1963. We were raised at Punkintown [Pumpkintown], right up here through these mountains. I’ve been in and around music all my life; I remember, growing up, my papaw singing at all the churches around here. He’d make us grandkids get up and sing, too, so I’ve always been around music, but Summer, Brayden, and John really got me into it. When they started playing, they wouldn’t get onstage without me. That’s how we started playing and singing as a group in our church. They got up to sing and play and said I had to get up there with ’em, so I got the bass and went. I had learned to play the bass as a teenager. I actually learned on the electric, but I switched to the stand-up [doghouse bass] and now that’s all I play. My brother has played piano for a southern gospel quartet for years. He’s played with The Inspirations, The Florida Boys, and several others.
PLATE 73 The cover of Mountain Faith’s latest CD, Billy Red
Where we live here and have the music shows was a tomato farm for seventy-five years. The main part of the house here is over one hundred years old. The ol’ man, Claude Buchanan, that owned it laid his last crop at age ninety-four. He was always called the Mater Man and that’s how I always knew him. He had an old Ford truck, and I don’t think he ever got it out of second gear, so if you met him on the four-lane road, he was going twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, tops. He would haul tomatoes out by the truckloads, and he washed every tomato by hand. One time some people did a video of him. They was going out west and wanted to take it and show the people out there. Claude was washing tomatoes with a big ol’ chew of tobacco in, spitting and all, and the lady told him to say something to the people out west. He’d look at the camera for a minute, and then go back to washing. She said, “Now, Claude, you’ve got to find something to say to the people.” He looked up at the lady and said, “It didn’t flash [laughs].” He thought she was taking a picture, and she had been videoing him that whole time. His daughter put the farm up for sale right after he died. She had several golf clubs wanting to buy the property and offers from other developers, but she wanted to keep the land as a farm, so we were able to buy it
from her. This whole area [motions to the area surrounding his home] was all a big tomato patch. We tried growing tomatoes, before turning the farm into a bluegrass farm, but didn’t have much luck. That’s how our Bluegrass on the Farm got started. This is our fourth year [2010] having it, and we start shows in June and run through October. We change the lineup of groups every year. We just have a wonderful time. Claude’s daughter lives in Canton, North Carolina, and still comes to a lot of our singings here.
It usually works out where we have music scheduled for every other Saturday night. Now, this year, we will have Dailey and Vincent here on a Friday night because that’s the only day that they had open in their schedule. Then we will have shows on the second Saturday of July, August, September, and on the second Saturday of October, we’ll finish up. We usually have a good turnout in the fall because the leaves are all changing and there’s a beautiful view from out there at the pavilion. For our festivals we have about seven hundred come through here, give or take a few. Some of the night singings and things, we’ll have about three hundred or so. We have people come from Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, all over, so it’s a good time. We just got the septic system put in this year for campsites and hopefully, by next year, we’ll have about ten sites.
We donate the money made at the Mater Farm singings to different organizations. We donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation the first three years, and this year we’re contributing to Life Challenge. It’s a shelter for abused women and children, and it’s run by the Baptist Association. We usually are able to donate about two thousand dollars.
We have recorded three albums. We recorded a “chipmunk” album when the kids were seven, eight, and nine; Brayden was as wide as he was tall, and John’s guitar was bigger than he was, so we called that the chipmunk album [laughs]. We’ve made two more CDs that we sell now. One was all gospel, and we just got the proofs back from the newest one. It is our first bluegrass CD, and it contains five bluegrass and five gospel songs.
Playing and singing is our hobby and our ministry combined. That’s a hard thing to balance out. We all like to perform at bluegrass events and at church. We like to go to Long Creek, South Carolina, on Friday nights and play bluegrass and gospel and have a good time. Then we also want our music to be a ministry when we go into church on Sunday. I think all three of these guys are well balanced. They understand what we’re trying to do. When we go into a church or anywhere to play, it’s easier to play and have a good time when the audience responds well. Some churches where we go are more contemporary and don’t have an appreciation for bluegrass music, and you can’t even tell if they like the music. If you know the people are enjoying it, then you are enjoying doing it.
Along with all the traveling and singing, I also own a business. I change a lot of tires [laughs]. I have a tire store here in town. I put these kids to working, too. John and Brayden help, and Summer runs the deli. She gets up at five o’clock and works until time to go to school.
I was the administrator at Victory Christian School for several years. I prefer a Christian school to public school because of the content of the subjects. In a Christian school even the math word problems are teaching morals instead of just the core stuff. They also have Bible classes, too. It’s a place where kids can go and be a good Christian without all of the peer pressure. There’s still some there, just not as bad, I don’t think. Hopefully, when they get older and get out in the world, their Christian education will help them make better decisions. I do, however, believe there are Christian teachers that are called to teach in the public school system, my wife being one of them. I believe the Lord can call you into the teaching profession because my wife has a great ministry there in her classroom and school.
Several of the private schools around here join together and provide the opportunity for the students to participate in sports just like public school. Summer, Brayden, and John all love sports. Summer played on the summer volleyball team for private schools this year; they won the volleyball state championship. The guys play basketball and golf.
Editor’s note: Brayden and John are long on talent but short on words. Brayden did tell us that he’d rather pick than sing. He said he was content and happy with music and traveling and that he enjoys it as long as the sound system is good and it’s not too cold.
Mountain Faith music is available from Sam McMahan,
138 Old Mater Farm Road, Sylva, NC 28779;
www.mountainfaith.bandzoogle.com.
Fishers of Men
~The Primitive Quartet~
There are some singers who sing “a little bit of country and a little bit of rock ’n’ roll,” and maybe a gospel song somewhere in their performance. Then there are singers who have dedicated their lives and careers to working strictly for the Lord. The latter would include The Primitive Quartet. The Primitives have traveled the country spreading the Gospel for many, many years. They are steadfast and have not wavered from their faith or their commitment to God. They walk the walk and talk the talk. If you spend just a few minutes with any one member of this group, you will realize what true, sincere Christians they really are. They have blessed untold millions with their CDs, videos, and live performances. I’m sure the angels perk up and listen as the voices of Reagan, Norman, Larry, Jeff, Mike, and Randy blend in sweet traditional harmony that flows with the ripple of the river and echoes through the mountains of Candler, North Carolina, where their annual gospel singing is held each July. The members of this group have never lost sight of where they came from. They are down-to-earth, generous, true friends to family and fans alike.
—Joyce Green
Larry Riddle
I’m Larry, and I was born on April 15, 1952, to Glenn and Lois Riddle in Marshall, North Carolina. I lived in the era when we didn’t have inside plumbing and when we had cows, chickens, hogs, and raised most everything we ate. I had a wonderful childhood, roaming the mountains, playing and fishing in the creek, swinging on grapevines, and climbing jack pines. My uncle Hilliard taught me how to make roosters fight, and I dearly paid for that. Every time I went to gather the eggs, a rooster would flog me. Finally, the Lord called it home, with a little help from me. The world is a different place today; it really is a different place to live.
My mom and dad sang in church when we were small and traveled to many singings in the area. I grew up singing a little bit with them and got gloriously saved when I was eighteen years old. The group was born in ’73. We started on a fishing trip, and we’re still fishing, singing, and huntin’, and enjoy it. We started out singing as two sets of brothers—me and my older brother, Reagan, and Norman and his older brother, Furman. Furman kinda took me under his wing when I was first saved, and we spent a lot of time huntin’ and singin’ and goin’ to church.
I’ve been singing with The Primitive Quartet for thirty-seven years. We’ve been singing this mountain music a long time. I was twenty-one when I started singing with them. During the first five years of singing, they’d take up an offering for us, and we were so embarrassed, we’d try to give it back to them. We never, ever intended to do this for a living; it’s just something that happened. We sang five years locally, close around home. Then Archie Watkins with The Inspirations was having some problems with his vocal cords, and they asked us to travel with them for a while. We actually traveled with them for eighteen months. That was a tremendous gift and a blessing to be able to travel the country, meet all the promoters, and be introduced to all their people. If it hadn’t have been for that, we probably would never have sung professionally, but God just kinda laid it in our laps. We all were self-employed at that time, so we could both work and sing until the one [the singing] took over the other one [working] and made it possible. God has been good to us. He has really been good to us. I’m very thankful.
PLATE 74 The Primitive Quartet: Larry Riddle, Norman Wilson, Randy Fox, Reagan Riddle, Mike Riddle, and Jeff Tolbert
We have always gone with acoustic music—just our ol’ moun
tain and bluegrass music with mandolins, guitars, basses, fiddles, and banjos. We sing shape-note music. It used to be in all the songbooks, but now it’s round notes. That’s the way we learned to sing, by shape music, and it’s kinda progressed along as time went on. Reagan writes a lot of the songs that we sing. We get songs from other writers, and we still try to put a couple of shape-note songs on every CD. Our music has gotten away from all shape notes, though. We cut our teeth on the shape-note music that you heard on albums for years, but now we put the music to original songs ourselves.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 30