I teach kindergarten through fifth grade—every kid in school, pretty much. They understand that I was coming from outside of the box here and that I was interested in doing things that were creative and different from typical elementary school classrooms, so the principal said, “Okay, do all that stuff and have a good time, and I know you will figure it out,” so they left me alone. They just left me all alone and let me create what I did because there was no curriculum in place to tell me what I should do. There’s state guidelines and national guidelines as to what should be in music curriculums, but they are very broad, and they don’t tell exactly how to meet those guidelines. This course has to do with teaching basic principles of music, teaching music to kids that can be used in the real world, and showing what connections it makes to occupations. Here I was all over again in a classroom making up what I do from scratch, and this time employing the wisdom of the kids was a little bit different because teenagers can articulate what they mean or what they want more skillfully than five-year-olds or even ten-year-olds. I figured out how to ascertain by observing their behavior and observing what gave them joy and what picked up their curiosity. It’s been a brand-new challenge intellectually as a teacher, but the lessons I learned here in Foxfire about how to teach are all still there, and it all still works. It’s just as important to pay attention to the kids and learn from them now, too.
I teach instrument building; we build instruments out of tin cans and used guitar strings, bamboo, and stuff that we recycle that other people were gonna throw away. That’s a whole lot of fun. Right now we’re working on an instrument built out of cardboard tubes. Last year somebody asked me if I wanted some eight-foot-long and three-foot-in-diameter cardboard tubes. I said, “Sure, bring them in here; I’ll figure out something to do with them.” So we made these vertical-tube percussion instruments out of them. You can try this at home if you want to. I bought these pairs of flip-flops—they have terry cloth on one side of them. They’re kind of like house flip-flops. You take that cardboard tube and hit it with the flip-flop, and it makes a pitch. I was experimenting and practicing some measurements, and I started whacking on that thing, listening to what kind of sound it would make. I got this doot, doot, doot sound. And I said, “Wait, what’s going on here?” All of a sudden, one night, it just sort of came to me; there’s this song that I learned when I was a kid called “Pipeline” where one of the guitars is going doo, doo, doo, doo, and the other guitar was going doo, doo, doo, doo in a different pitch. The whole thing shifted to another chord doo, doo, doo, doo, so we decided we were gonna play “Pipeline” on cardboard tubes. We found some leftover electrical conduit in the hallway. I took them back to the room, and we cut it into two lengths. I don’t know if you’ve ever tapped on a piece of steel conduit pipe, but it rings like a bell. So we made this metal tone out of electrical conduit. We did doo, doo, doo on the cardboard tubes, and we had ourselves a song!
“Kickin’ Around with The Foxfire Boys”
Entering my senior year as an editor for The Foxfire Magazine, I wanted my last article to be special. I wanted to go out with a bang, not a whimper. I met with a fellow senior editor, Austin Bauman, and we came up with an idea of doing an article together. We looked over previously attempted interviews and decided to interview all six of The Foxfire Boys and compile their stories in a larger article. [Only partial articles are included here. The complete interviews can be found in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of The Foxfire Magazine.] The members of the band had some wonderful stories about their beginnings and their rise to stardom. All of them credited George Reynolds, high school Foxfire music teacher, as having inspired them. Just ask Dean, Mike, Filmer, Tom, Steve, or Wayne, and I’ll bet they’ll tell you how much they love playing the music of Appalachia.
—Jared Weber
Getting to know The Foxfire Boys was quite an experience. I was inspired by their musical talent, as well as their outlook on life. They were some of the most enjoyable people that I have ever met. I was amazed by their stories of playing at the Olympics, at the Grand Ole Opry, and with John Denver, and my face was sore from laughing at their stories of practical jokes and pranks. For me it was an adventure, and for them, like everything else, it was a lot of fun.
—Austin Bauman
Filmer Kilby
The Foxfire program was at Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School when I was in school, and that’s the first time that I became acquainted with George Reynolds. He had started a folklore class. It wasn’t really a music class, but it had a lot of musical background with it. He was a real good musician on all different types of instruments. He was playing a mouth harp [harmonica], too, and that was right down my alley. I started building a bigger repertoire of different styles and types of music. I was learning more new songs and a lot of different types of hot licks on the guitar. It was just an all-out learning experience for me—a lot of fun. George was just a real open-minded fella. He helped just about anybody with whatever type of music they wanted to pursue or any kind of instrument they wanted to try to learn on. If he knew somethin’, he’d show you. He’d help you along and get you started. When I met George, he was just influencing to the third power. He kept me interested in it.
In the Foxfire class, we would usually just get in a little circle and play our music. We’d accompany each other, and if somebody had a song they wanted to work or somethin’, we’d help ’em with it. It was kind of like a group effort. We probably started our first band in about ’78. It was me and George, Scott Stewart played the banjo, and Clinton Kilby played kinda like a rhythm guitar. I played the mouth harp mostly. I guess that was the first Foxfire band. We started it off, and then Tom and Wayne and Dean and The Foxfire Boys came along a couple years after that.
I know all the guys in the band today. We was always just a big circle of friends. We were always playing music together and stuff. Lots of times, we’d be gathered at the same place playing music. Course, everybody usually practiced at George’s. We were constantly running into each other up there. We became friends, and we played music together for years. I usually filled in when somebody was out, and I knew George real well. Then he gave me an opportunity to step in when he had to move on, but there’ll always be a spot for George anytime he wants to come play with us. That’s the way it all came down. We were just all pickin’ buddies.
When we formed that first band, our first performance might have been for the faculty and the school. I was real nervous—like a long-tailed cat. My knees were shaking. I was playing that harp, and it’s a wonder I didn’t swaller [swallow] it. Getting in front of a crowd is part of the learning process. I play the bass now, and I’m kind of in behind ’em. I can hide out right there. That’s not too bad. You get over that nervousness the more you play. It gets to where you can handle it. We’ve done some pretty big gigs; we played down at Warner Robins in a big festival. There was quite a few people in on that deal. Another big place is at Stone Mountain. We get invited down there ever’ so often to play at some of their festivals. There’s usually a pretty huge crowd at those festivals. I didn’t get to play with John Denver. I was kind of substituting in between when all that was goin’ on. I didn’t go with ’em to the Grand Ole Opry either, but I listened to ’em play on the radio.
PLATE 82 Steve, Dean, Tom, Filmer, and Mike performing at a 2004 event held at The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center
You have the same professional composure when you play outside of Rabun County as when you play at local places. The sound has a lot to do with how smooth everything goes, when you get everything sounding good and you get into the groove. That’s where the last song made you feel real good, and the next song makes you feel even better. You get your adrenaline pumping, and it really don’t matter where you’re at then. That’s a good feeling.
I’m a better musician now than I was when I started. I know about twice as much as I knew then, and I didn’t know nothin’ to begin with. Now I can play all different instruments: banjo, Dobro, and a
little bit on the mandolin. When I was in high school, I couldn’t play much on any of those instruments. George has helped me tremendously, I’d say. He’s a highly intelligent guy. He kept me interested, and he’s responsible for me being where I am with these guys. I hated to see ’im go. I had a lot of good times with ’im. We went to a lot of interesting places in the musical arena. We met a lot of folks, from West Virginia coal miners to guys like Doc Watson. Some of the folks are pretty old to still be playing music. It’s fantastic!
I’ve wrote a few songs, too. When I’m writin’ a song, I pick the tune out first. Sometimes I’ll think of some verse or idea in my head, or maybe I’m humming along and I sing a few words with it, and it sounds good. Then I’ll come home and put that with some music. The majority of the time, though, I guess I pick the melody out first and then put the words with it later.
Bein’ a big star like Garth Brooks or John Denver never really appealed to me. That’s not my bag. I’d rather be a songwriter. If it were somethin’ like “Achy Breaky Heart” and it was a success overnight, I’d be pretty happy with that, too. One song’s all it takes if you get it into the right hands, but if I can just get the message across or the sound that I’m trying to achieve, that’s good. I just do it for entertainment mostly—I entertain myself mostly. I like music. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t even fool with any of it.
I love to play with these guys. It’s great to just watch ’em perform on the stage. Watching Mike’s face is pretty good entertainment itself ’cause he really gets into it. He gets in the groove, and then I get in the groove. Watchin’ the expressions on these guys’ faces is somethin’ else. You can tell they like it. If you ever watch ’em, you can tell how much feeling they put into their music. The whole thing’s been a good experience. It’s been a lot of fun. If it wasn’t for the fun part, I probably wouldn’t have fooled with it. Speaking for me, I love music, and I know they all do, too, so we’re just doin’ somethin’ that we enjoy. We’re all buddies. We usually go on fishing trips and huntin’ trips. We’ve got a lot of stuff in common, and we’ve always got along real well.
Mike Hamilton
My first performance with The Foxfire Boys was in a talent show, and I played guitar. Dean played banjo, and Steven was the only one that would open his mouth and sing. I think Richard Hembree [an original member of the band] played bass, and we entered the talent show. We did two songs, “Blackberry Blossom” and “Cripple Creek,” so we did two or three songs in the talent show. I said, “Well, let’s put together something.” So me and Dean and Steve were kind of founding members, you know, a little bit older than the rest of those guys. Wayne’s the same age, but Wayne and Tom kinda came into the picture later. George kind of coached us along and helped us with our approach and how to get from the beginning to the ending of a song and actually play a song all the way through. He was encouraging right there from the very beginning.
They got the band name from the Foxfire music class. It wasn’t a real big creative thing. It started out The Foxfire String Band, then the “Boys” thing kind of got thrown into there when Roy Acuff introduced us at the Opry as “The Foxfire Boys.”
George was just really, really some extra-special teacher. He helped and encouraged us to get started. He made me get up in front of the school in the ninth grade and play. I was playing banjo at the time. I played guitar, but I was picking up the banjo, too. I learned about three or four songs on the banjo. Dean, our banjo player, was out in the audience. He heard me playing the banjo, and he said, “Well shoot, I ought to be able to do that.” He went that summer and took banjo lessons from Freddie Webb. He came back in the fall of the following year, and he knew about four or five more songs than I did. He was really just primarily staying on banjo, and I said, “Well, shoot, you know these songs. I’ll just play guitar. You play banjo, and we’ll get a band together. Steve will sing. We’ll get Richard Hembree to thump on the bass, and we’ll go from there.” So we kind of got it together, and George would coax us in the right direction. He wouldn’t jump in and direct everything. He would help us if we’d ask for help, but he was good about lettin’ us do our own thing.
When we played at the Grand Ole Opry, we were nervous, but we pulled it off good. Roy Acuff got us back in his dressing room and took up time with us. Everybody was like, “Mr. Acuff, we need to do this and do that,” and he was like, “Y’all go on. I’m talking to my boys back here.” He was saying, “Son, when I was your age, I was so scared I was playing more behind the bridge of the fiddle than in front of it. Don’t worry, y’all. Y’all will do fine. Get out there and be comfortable and have a good time.” He really made us feel at home, just like we were sittin’ in his living room. He took up a lot of time with us and bragged on us. We were nervous ’cause it was live radio. My brother, Dave Hamilton, was on a boat out in the middle of the Gulf, off the coast of Mobile, Alabama, and he heard it on the radio. They called ’im out there and said, “Your little brother’s fixing to be on the Grand Ole Opry.” They had like a live Saturday night radio show, and just knowing that you’re gonna be nationwide on the radio, you’re thinking, oh Lord, don’t let me mess up. We squeezed it off. It was really somethin’ because I’d been there with my dad, William Hamilton, two times before that, seein’ other people on stage. I made the comment to my parents at the time, “You know, next time I come up here, I’m gonna be on that side of the stage,” kind of halfway joking, you know. Then he looked up, and I could see ’em back there, and I was up there on stage. That was pretty awesome ’cause a lot of people that are really good musicians never get that kind of opportunity. I think we got a lot of opportunities that we normally wouldn’t have by being associated with Foxfire and having a nationally known name. Gosh, that’s a long time ago, ’84. We got several calls like that from the governor’s office to the National Endowment for the Arts, several pretty high-profile gigs.
When we did that, I guess I was out of school a couple of years. Tom and them were, I think, still in school. I was in college. One of our most memorable performances was the first paid gig we had over in Canton, North Carolina, over at this place. We did a little Saturday night show, and I remember it got us a hundred bucks. That ’as the first one. That was memorable and so was the Grand Ole Opry, and the music we performed in Norway when we got to go to Lillehammer in ’94 for the Winter Games.
We got to play with John Denver at the high school. We didn’t know that we were gonna play with him, but he did a few songs, and then there was a rock band. They played their act, and we played our gig. Then we went back out again and sat in the audience. Then I see George going across the football field with a big giant bass on his shoulder, walking over there, and I saw this limo pulling up on the visitor’s side and John Denver getting out. They paged us over the microphones. So we go over there, and he wanted us to do backup with ’im. He had seen us at Ed West’s, who was having a reception for all the movie people that were in town—Hallmark Hall of Fame was filming Foxfire. We did like a little private party for ’im, and he was watching and said, “Dang, where are y’all playing?” Tom said, “We’re playing for this kid that needs an organ transplant, and you really ought to try and come.” He really kind of puts the guy on the spot. He says, “Well, heck, I’ll try to be there.” And you know, word gets out that he might be there, and the next thing you know, there’s four thousand people at the high school. That was pretty memorable. We did a jam session with ’im; we grew up playing “Grandma’s Feather Bed” and then “Country Roads” and all that. We’d go through it, and everybody’d come in on the harmonies. Then he’d go, “Gee, we got that one, let’s go to the next one” and “Okay, the bridge goes up to B,” and everybody would come in and they already pretty much knew the songs. I remember Dean English onstage leaning over to me going, “Do you believe this? John Denver at our high school, four thousand people here; we’re playing onstage with John Denver. Do you believe this?” I said, “Heck, no, I ain’t believing this.”
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 34