Marc Pruett Interview

Partial Transcript: list of about 30 or 31 people and he was an old man named Albert Burnette(?) and, a, being from the country they called it “Burn-it.” And, a, he, a, but we called it, I called it “Stories of Uncle Albert Burnettr, The Spirit of the Mountains.” He was 92 years old and a real fox hunter, liked the banjo and just laughed and cut up, but (laughs).

Interviewer

When did you interview him?

Marc Pruett

Ah…I think we interviewed him in 2003 or 2004, and, a, it was just a wonderful time. I had known him for many, many long years and, a, when I was in high school I played at his house one time with a band that we had in, in high school called The Highland Minstrels, and, a, that’s the coldest I’ve ever been trying to play, and it was for what he called The Haywood County Fox Hunters Association. And Uncle Albert Burnette had herds of dogs. There were times that he had over a hundred dogs at a time. And Albert told me one time, he said that they had a mule die on the farm and he said they just tied it up by the feet and hauled it up a tree and whenever those dogs got hungry, he let it down to chew on it and hauled it back up the tree. (Laughter)

Interviewer

A movable feast, huh?

Marc Pruett
(01:25)
I guess; I don’t know. He told that for the truth, but…his son’s still alive and my wife and I played for a benefit for the…the Dutch Cove Methodist Cemetery Fund about a month ago, and he got up and came down and played a few songs with us. It was very good.

Interviewer

I’d love to see a copy of that interview.

Marc Pruett

I wish I’d a brought it to you, but, a, I, I’ve heard Wayne Martin—you know Wayne Martin with the cultural folks down there?

Interviewer

Um-hum.

Marc Pruett
(01:58)
He had told me that a lot of, a, projects that are funded, a, a, wind up sittin’ on shelves. But, a, I had a partner and it, a, my friend, Ted White, and we, we, did…

Interviewer

I know Ted.

Marc Pruett

Yeah, we just put it out as a, a, as a commercial project and sold it on the, on the shows for a while. I still need to have it out because it’s, it’s just a wonderful walk through mountain history and, a, but, but…

Interviewer

I’m trying to find collect little snippets of history _______ all over the region. This project, The Mountain Elder Wisdom Project, covers 12 counties in Western North Carolina, including Haywood County, a, so…

Marc Pruett

A, I, I think I may have a copy I could send you. A, before we leave today, make sure I get your card and I’ll get you one.

Interviewer

Okay. That’s okay.

Marc Pruett

That’d be great. Wayne Martin said they’s a lot of stuff sittin’ on shelves that were documented well that people never see just because they weren’t followed up with a commercial production that… But I guess there’s value in the documentation part of it.

Interviewer

Absolutely. As long as people can see it. And what we’re trying to do is get snippets of all oral histories up on our web site. There’s about a dozen up there now. And then create repositories all over the region such as libraries, social centers, so people can come in and watch it. All of them get transcribed so people can come in read the text if they want; they can listen to it or they can watch it.

Marc Pruett
(03:39)
Where is that repository?

Interviewer

Well, right now we’re establishing relationships with different counties and, here, it’s the Historical and Genealogical Center of Henderson Country, a Madison County Arts Council, is the repository there, a, then we’ve got Western Carolina’s Cultural Center, a, there’s a repository there, we’re looking at the a, Mars Hill, a…

Marc Pruett

Well, if there’s a chance, you might wanna talk to the people in the Town of Canton. They, for years, had a real nice, a, Canton museum, you know, cause the paper mill, a, in my…the way I feel about it, it was like a community college for the mountain community for many, many years. Guys would go to school and some of ‘em might graduate from high school, some of ‘em might not, but once they got to the mill and got to work they learned a skill, you know, so it was like a big old community college and there were a lot of, a, at that, you know, before TV and the big roads came through, a, a lot of people back then they had ball teams and clogging teams and bands; there were a lot of community involvement things that happened back then, and I heard just recently that the Canton Museum has had to close because of, I don’t know if it was for funding or they didn’t have somebody to run it, but I, I know all that stuff is sittin’ there and I think that might be the old, the old Canton Library. A, but, but my friend, Mike Ray, who’s the mayor could tell you about that. And, a, now I would bet that they have a pretty good historical collection. Haywood County did a story telling record that was on vinyl, I want to say 30 or 35 years ago, and they had people tell stories and play music and people, old folks and young people and all at that time, and, a, I know Albert Burnette was on it then, but he was much younger at that point in time. But I bet they’ve got a copy of that there, you know.

Do you know, a, a, William Ferris at the University for Southern Culture at Chapel Hill?

Interviewer

No.

Marc Pruett
(06:05)
They, Doctor Ferris is a, a nationally known history man, a scholar, William Ferris, and when he was at the University of Mississippi, he had, for many years they had the Museum of Southern Culture there. And, about ten years ago, maybe 11 or 12, he moved from Oxford, Mississippi, to Chapel Hill and they have all that there now. And they have all kind of transcription machines. A, I’ve seen it and it’s just fabulous and it’s like one of those things you walk into it and it’s like, “Whoa, this is kinda like the Smithsonian.” He’s got old Edison record players and 78 record players and wire tape recording machines and all these things. I’ve, I’ve thought about a trying to do more with it, but I bet he would have some things that, that would apply to…

Interviewer

What’s the name of the organization?

Marc Pruett
(07:07)
I think it’s the Museum of Southern Culture at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Interviewer

I’ll check it out…

Marc Pruett

Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer

All right, so let’s get started, so a couple of things, look at me or the camera, a. It’s important that my questions will not be in the film, so it’s important that your answers stand alone.

Marc Pruett

Okay.

Interviewer

Okay. So that if when I ask something, if it’s possible for you to kind of give some context in the answer.

Marc Pruett

I can do that.

Interviewer

So, if I’m asking you what do you think about Syd’s deerskins(?), you don’t wanna say, “Oh, they’re pretty good.” You wanna kinda, “The deerskins are pretty good at Syds, especially the ones with the big…” (Laughter) …can’t stop eatin’ ‘em.

Marc Pruett
(08:00)
Just speak slowly and loudly because I, I am hearing challenged and, a, so I’ll take it from there.

Interviewer

If you can just introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about who you are.

Partial Transcript: Well, my name is Marc Pruett and I was born and raised in Haywood County; born in Waynesville, North Carolina, on August 19 of 1951, and, a, I was born in the time when the mountains were big, before the big roads came through and, a, a, as a boy growing up, a, we could get one TV channel real good on the black and white TV. (Laughs.) But I, a, went to high school in Canton and a…after having gone to the old Bethyl school in Haywood County and I finished high school in Canton in 1969 and went to Western Carolina University. And my dad, a, is, was an old mountain rock hound. I never saw him watch a ball game, but he took us boys all around through the mountains hunting for sapphires and rubies and emeralds and so, a, my interest went toward geology so that’s what my BS Degree went to, Geology and Biology, and I feel like I was raised at the sapphire mine in Haywood County.

Partial Transcript: Well, my dad a is Ray Pruett and, as of this recording, my dad became 90 years old on July 15, and this is the year 2014. And he was born in Haywood County in 1924 and his dad, a, Lloyd Grady Pruett, was a carpenter for the old Sun Crest Lumber Company that helped build the Canton paper mill. My grandfather, Lloyd Pruett, was born in a, a, Robbinsville in 1888; and, before that, his father was born in Burke County, North Carolina, in 1850, and, a, it… Kind of a funny thing, talking about family stuff, all my life I’ve heard and played an old song called Cumberland Gap, and I didn’t realize until about a year ago that my great grandfather, William Andrew Marcus Pruett, a, was a boy 12 years old at Cumberland Gap during The War Between the States; and I think it was maybe in 1863 they had two or three big battles, a, because that was one of the big pathways for the troops, either from, a, the Union to come south or from the South to go north, so they fought over it and the South won the first couple of battles but the Union prevailed in the end. But my great grandfather watched, a, some of those battles from a hilltop, a 12-year-old boy, and he had an uncle that was wounded there and one of the stories I can remember that I saw in print that my, a, great aunt Callie had written down in 1956 said that my great grandpa had seen one of the Civil War soldiers on a big white horse just running over men down a line. Man, you think about, gosh, the stuff that the old-timers saw, but, anyway, back to the question about my dad. My dad played a little bit of music, Ray Pruett, and, a, he worked for the old Southern Bell Telephone Company all his life, and. a, my parents, when they saw that I was interested in playing music at a young age, they were not encouraging at first because they knew that, that music has certain traps that they didn’t want their son pulled into. And, a, I, from this perspective I can certainly understand and, the things that I’ve seen, and, a, you learn what not to do over a lifetime. (Laughs.)


But, a, once my parents saw that I was going to take to music they encouraged me and tried to guide me in the best way that they could to, to the good, to the good side of it. My mother was a, she is still alive although she had a stroke in February this year. A, she was a great singer and dancer and the first song that I ever learned to play on the banjo was a Stephen Foster song called Way Down upon the Suwanee River, and my mother would hum it to me and I would pick it out with one finger, you know, dung dung dung dung dung dung dung dung dung, and, a, that’s all I could do for the first couple of years until I ran into some kids that played for square dances and older people that… And, a, you know, here it seems like when we wee growing up Haywood County is, was, was as big as the Eastern United States . (Laughs.)

Partial Transcript: Well, as far as I can tell music goes back in my family, a, as, gosh, as far as I know, a, my dad played the guitar some, and World War II, right after the war he bought a, a K(?) base, I think in 1946. I’ve seen pictures of it, and I’d love to have it now. It was a big blond K(?) base, but, a, my grandpa Lloyd Pruett played the fiddle a little bit, and, a, the fella that I talked about earlier, my great grandfather, a, it was widely documented before he went into the ministry that he was a real good fiddle player. But when he gave himself to his religion, he put the fiddle aside.

And on my maternal side, the only thing that I know is my mom’s dad, a, his name was Halbert Reiley Farmer (?), Hal Farmer was a trumpet player and played in a community band in Haywood County. But he died in 1935 and I, I never got to know him, but there was music and rhythm I think on both sides of my family. A, but, a it’s been an adventure.

Partial Transcript: Well, my maternal grandfather, Hal Farmer, was a mechanic. And, a, I have got a copy of and have seen the Farmer lineage all the way back to sixteen hundred and something. I can remember going to Murphy in 1960 when I was a kid, and there was a guy named, a, Robert R. Farmer from Dallas, Texas, who did the Farmer genealogy but that side of the family came over from England in the 1600s. But beyond Hal Farmer being a mechanic, I don’t know what the family did back of that.


But, now, my dad retired from the Southern Bell Telephone Company.
He was a telephone man all his life, and my grandfather, Lloyd Pruett, was a carpenter all his life. And I’ll tell a little quick, funny story about him. He and a man named O. L. Smathers, a, worked together building houses in Haywood County, and many of whom you can still drive by and see, fine houses, but there was a point in time when contracting came into vogue. People would say, “Well, I want a contract price on that house.” They wouldn’t just let you work by the hour, and I can remember my grandpa, we called him Daddy Lloyd, I remember Daddy Lloyd saying, “Well, that first house that me and O. L. Smathers contracted, after we tallied everything up we figured we made a nickel apiece.” (Laughs.)


But he was a carpenter all his life, and I’ve seen pictures of him –they’re actually on the Internet on my brother’s Facebook page—a, he did things for the old Sun Crest Lumber Company in the teens and twenties, a, he built cabs for the old logging train engines, the Shay engines, and, I think, it’s that engine…one of the main engines that they used is at the Cradle of Forestry now in Pisgah Forest, you may have seen the old Shay (S-H-A-Y) engine. That was one of the ones that he worked on.


And back of that, a, his father, a, William Andrew Marcus Pruett,, the one that I mentioned that saw the battles at the Cumberland Gap, after…I think he was maybe in his late teens, he was converted to the ministry, and he was a Baptist minister and circuit-riding preacher all his life. And he lived to be, a, way up in his 90s. So he was born in 1850 and died in 1947, so he was, what would that be, 97 maybe, something like that. And he’s buried in Greenville Cemetery above Bogart’s in Waynesville. But, a, that was just a few years before I was born, so I never met him, but I heard a lot of funny stories about him. They said he was quite a character and a, a, but that a, a…

Something that I’ve got that I could share with you from the Pruett side of the family: About a year ago, one of our cousins sent me what she called, “Aunt Callie’s Memories, or Memoire,” and it’s stories that my old Aunt Callie remembered from Old Preacher Bill telling of his life, you know, from seeing the Civil War battle and on down, things that happened to him and it’s fun, it’s a fun read-through to see, you know, that side of someone’s individual human history. And I’ve often thought that individual human history is so important, but so much of it is so subjective it gets lost.

Partial Transcript: Well, my, my reflections of growing up in Haywood County, a… I’ve said before the big roads, before, meaning the Interstates, Haywood County was a pretty remote place. You know, they’re only four little towns. It’s one of the most mountainous counties around. I feel like we had a good sense of community, but my family only had one car and, a, my mother was a homemaker. And, a, so we didn’t really go a lot of places, but my brother and I had bicycles and we would ride to town. We lived about four or five miles out of town and we would ride our bikes up and down the road. Gosh, the old road where we grew up, the old house,, the old house is long, long been tore down, but I was by there not long ago and the sidewalk is still, and the grass strip that leads off down toward the creek. (Laughs.)

But, a, it was a great time growing up. It seems like, you know, kids enjoyed being outside then. We did a lot of playing. When I was growing up, it seemed, you know, it wasn’t long after World War II so there were a lot of war stories and, at that time, you could go to the, what they call the Army-Navy store in Canton and buy all kinds of stuff that were real World War II mementos. Now if you go to Old Grouch’s (?) in Clyde, you’re getting something from the Czech Republic, you know, from the late 1980s. (Laughs.) But back then, we, we, we played a, we played war, we, a, would go out and hunt and fish and, a, you know, a, gosh, my brother and I did a lot of camping. We loved that. And we played out, it was outside. I loved, a…

I loved aviation when I was growing up. (Clears throat.) If music hadn’t a pulled me, I probably woulda done something with that because, a, we had a friend whose name was Bob Bagley, who was a , a jet pilot in Viet Nam, and every now and then he would fly over from Shaw Air Force Base and he wound up, I think he was a prisoner of war in Viet Nam for fivie or six years. But he was a big inspiration to us from the aviation standpoint.

A, but I’ll tell this story quickly. This kinda how I came to my music. I used to ride the school bus home and I would get home at 3:30 in the afternoon. And, a, there was a local radio station in Waynesville, North Carolina, whose call letters at that time was WHCC. And from the time I would get home from school, from 3:30 to 4 o’clock, they had a radio program on called The Cornbread Matinee, and they would play country music. And I loved, you know, they played a lot of the old Grand Ole Opry stars and a, a, my mother would let me have snack and listen to country music for 30 minutes and then at four o’clock I’d have to start my homework; and then my dad would get home after work, and then we’d have supper and whatever (clears throat), but one day I came in, a

I was probably ten or, uh, a young eleven years old. And on The Cornbread Matinee, they were – they played different things and all of a sudden, they played Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys and I heard him play – “him” being the great Earl Scruggs play – “Earl’s Breakdown,” “Flint Hill Special,” they did “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke.” And I asked my mother, I said – It’s funny. Here I am, sixty-three years old getting chills thinking about that moment. But, uh, I asked my mother, I said, “What’s that instrument that man’s playing?” And she said, “Well honey, that’s a banjo.” And I said, “I want one.” So my parent got me one for Christmas and, um, I couldn’t do much with it for the first couple of years, but, um, I met a boy that played some at my high school, Mike Presley, and I met another – another Haywood County man Roy Kirkpatrick. And, uh, you know, once you get on that pathway, if you love it, you go as far as your love will take you.


And, um, if my children were here today, they would know what I would say to you by saying this, and I think it’s liquid power if young people today can understand this: that it’s a simple thing that Leonardo da Vinci said that, “Exposure to a discipline can lead to interest. Interest can lead to involvement. Involvement can lead to knowledge. Knowledge can lead to love of the discipline, with that love growing exponentially as more knowledge is gained.” Now, I don’t mean that to sound too heady or too philosophical, but it’s a wonderful direction for anyone in their life. And if you – If I had one thing to it, again, if my children were here and they saw me doing this, they’d know what I wanna say, that where love ends is where progress ends. And that’s not always a bad thing because if, uh, if you have an aptitude to play basketball and you do good in high school, that may be as far as you’re meant to go. Some kids, you know, go all the way through college and on to the NBA, but, uh, if you – if I could have any one desire for my children, it would be that they have passion for what they do, for what their aptitude is and compassion for other people. If you’ve got those two things, you can do pretty good in life.


But – but I had a passion for music. And, uh, when I heard Earl Scruggs play, it was as if something jumped in my heart and said, “That’s part of who you are too.” And, uh, so I don’t know that I would wish it on anybody, looking back on it. I’ve – I’ve been a long road with it and it’s not always been fun. A lot of it’s been hard, it’s – a lot of it’s been an unbelievable sacrifice. But, uh, it’s like anything. You learn and been a lot of good to it. It’s like the old song that Lester Flatt sang, that his preacher, (28:25 indecipherable), wrote: “The Good Things (Outweigh The Bad).” So I would equate it that way, that my involvement with music: the good things have outweighed the bad.

Partial Transcript: Well, uh, I think, uh, one thing that keeps me going that – that I think it’s important to stay motivated and I enjoy being interested in things. Uh, you know, you really can’t get to the end of any discipline, but I’ve found that my love for the banjo does have an end. That was hard for me to grapple with because when I think back on it, I didn’t move to Nashville and give it all up here. I had a good job here. I could’ve – You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve turned down, the opportunities that I’ve turned down. But with a college degree in geology, here’s the story about that.

When I was at Bill Stanley’s Barbeque, my full-time music career coming to an end in Asheville, my dad came to over there one night with a little brown paper bag rolled up and he said, “Marc, I was going through some of your stuff at home and I’ve found something you might wanna hang on to.” Here I am, forty-one years old and my music career coming to an end, and I unrolled this little brown paper bag and looked in there and it was my college diploma. I said, “I take the hint.” So I’ve been able to have a good professional career, uh, in engineering technology and erosion and sediment control, which I’m the director for the erosion control program for Haywood County. We protect, you know, the water quality, and it’s a safety issue for mud on the road from developments and that type thing.


But I don’t wanna say that that’s been the means to an end, but to a large extent, I think most jobs are. Uh, I don’t know that anybody – Not many people have jobs that they totally love. But having that job has enabled me to continue what I do with music. And, uh, about twenty years ago, uh, I was talking to my wife one day and I – I’ve always been fascinated by what people see and I ask her, I said, “I wonder how artists see the world.” She said, “Well, go buy you a book.” And after many years I think I have more books than the Asheville Public Library on art technique. And I’ve – The thing that fascinated me with that was – and this is really strange, but I don’t think it is in a way to admit something so personal – but when I was a boy, my dad took me fishing one time. And I was just a little kid, standing on the banks of the creek and looking up, and it was on West Buffalo Creek in Graham County. And I can remember looking way up the creek early morning and the sun just – shards of sunlight coming through the trees and my dad hooking a big fish and it came up and as it wiggled up out of the water, there was a bright red spec just hit me in the face. And that led me to think how beautiful the colors are in live fish.

32:17

And so, with my watercolor paints, I – I’ve painted, uh, I’ve painted fish for two years. They all look tropical until I finally kinda got that down. But it’s one of those things that if you push yourself to do it, failure is a stimulus. We have to fail to succeed. Uh, failure is a stimulus because if you can just stay after it and learn from your mistakes, uh, I would say this about that: there’s a priceless quality of ease that is ours only when we know we know. And that comes from much failure. One of my teachers, one of my watercolor teachers, said, “You’ll have to waste acres of paper.” And I would say to any perspective banjo student, “You will waste miles of strings.” But, uh, I love the steel guitar, uh, the first instrument that I ever touched was an old lap steel guitar that my uncle Bob had when we were boys. My dad had it for some reason and I can still remember big, green striped thumb pick with a white and red ending. And I was at their house about five years ago and my aunt Passie said, “Would you want that guitar?” Whoa.


So I wound up getting that. It was a neat thing to see it again but I always loved Hawaiian music and especially western swing. Uh, and so the stuff that my wife and I do outside of Balsam Range – We do a little western swing and a few old Hawaiian tunes and people would, not knowing about it, might brush off Hawaiian music. But I’ll say this about that: anything that somebody spends a lifetime doing is worth consideration because in 1895, there was a young man near Honolulu, Hawaii named Joseph Kekuku who worked on a pineapple plantation. And he was walking down the railroad track one day, and he had a Spanish guitar under his arm. He was a teenager walking home from the pineapple plantation and he happened to see a bolt lying on by the railroad track. He just picked it up and somehow or other, it just brushed one of the strings on the guitar and it made that “woo.” And that struck his ear, and he did it again and fooled with it and went home.


And Joseph Kekuku, if you look it up, it’s a valid point. He was the father of Hawaiian-style guitar and, uh, they played it acoustic for many years. He played all over the world and gosh, he’s buried somewhere like in Massachusetts or something. But he toured the world and – and when you think Hawaiian guitar, in the first half of the twentieth century, they had schools for Hawaiian guitar all over the country. They would have fifty people at a time come and try to learn how to play it. It was fabulously famous.

You know, and if you think about the banjo, which is the reason I’m here today, the bluegrass banjo styles that I play were – became prominent in 1945. That only predates rock ‘n roll by ten years. So – you know, when somebody spends a lifetime doing something, it’s an interesting thing to think, “How did they start? What goes back to that?” But you’ve asked me a lot of questions and I don’t know if I’ve answered anything very well, but – But I’m just interested in a lot of things. Those things keep me going.

The color in live fish that leads me to watercolor paint for about three months. It’s just all I can do. The sound in Earl Scruggs’s banjo – I lay the paints down and it’s all I – I just go wild with the banjo for three or four months. And then I’ll think of Jerry Byrd and the Hawaiian steel guitar. And, uh, the great Joaquin Murphey and the Spade Cooley band and then it’s steel guitar, wide open for three or four months. And so these things just go in circles for me and it’s a wonderful life of, uh, beautiful things, you know, with music and paint. And that doesn’t even take into account the songwriting. I’ve been a student of songwriting all my life.


My mother had a fellow that she graduated from high school with named Heward Phillips. And Heward Phillips had a brother named Bill Phillips, and everybody called him Tater, Bill “Tater” Phillips, and he was from Bethel in my home county of Haywood County. And I can remember seeing Tater Phillips come into the Bethel school lunchroom where his mother worked in his Grand Ole Opry suit, and it was like all the kids, “There’s Bill Phillps,” you know. But he was the front man for Kitty Wells and, um, Johnnie and Jack for many years on the Grand Ole Opry and toured with them.

But my interest in songwriting goes back to his brother Hilliard because I can remember he came to our house one time and said, “If I can just find the right song for my brother Bill, he can make it.” And I can remember that day just being a kid. I was probably mid-teens. I could think, “Boy, I wish I could write that song for him.” And that led me to think about it. And so I’ve had that interest for a lifetime as well, although I’ve not had a lot of luck with it, I have had some. Um, I’ve got to write songs with some fabulous people. Uh, Billy Edd Wheeler is one from Swannanoa. Billy Edd, uh, you know, he’s written some songs, fabulous songs like “Jackson” for Johnny Cash and, uh, “Coward of the County” for Kenny Rogers.

But the song, uh, that did the best that I wrote with Billy Edd Wheeler was a song that was an instrumental called “Tin Lizzy” that he used on a National Geographic Society album about the life and times of Daniel Boone called “Songs of Cumberland Gap.” So my life’s taken a lot of circles with stuff like that but, uh, I love songwriting and, uh, I had a title in my mind for a long time called “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” And, uh, I mentioned that to our producer when we were getting ready to do the first album eight years ago with Balsam Range, and he said, “Man, we need to write that.” And it took us five years to write that song. I’d send him something and then he’d send me something. We’d swap back and forth. I’d not like what he had. He’d not like what I had. Then we come up with something decent, and I finally came up with a – a general direction and he brought a friend in, Carl Jackson, who I think he has something like nineteen Grammys or something like that. And so we were able to pull a song together and it was a contender for, um, song of the year last year in International Bluegrass Music Association. And I think it would have had a good chance, but in the final five, Balsam Range had two, and it split the vote. But songwriting keeps me going.

To anyone who’s interested in that aspect: you’ll be lucky in your lifetime if you find a teacher or a book that is like liquid light pouring knowledge into your head. The book that I would send anyone to for lyric writing is a gold lyricist from New York named Sheila Davis. She had a book called “The Craft of Lyric Writing,” and it’s the most heady thing I’ve ever in my life seen. It’s like you can’t read it. You can read one sentence and have to stop for a day and think about it. It’s thick – I mean – and as far for that, go to the – Sheila Davis wrote three books, but that was the first one, “The Craft of Lyric Writing.” It will stop you in your tracks and make you think. It’s wonderful and if I could take one watercolor instruction book with me to, uh, the desert island, if I had to live no more but there, it would be by an artist named Tony Couch called “Watercolor, You Can Do It!” And he lays out the elements and principles of design in the most understandable way that it’s like art is rational. It’s not the big mystery that people think it is. If you take it and dissect it one piece at a time, you can figure it out.


And, uh, banjo is like that as well. Um, I would probably point to Earl Scruggs’s book, although that book has a lot of extraneous information in it for teaching someone at a basic level. And all the arrangements in that book are extremely – most of them pretty complicated because they’re tablatures of, uh, Earl Scruggs at the height of his power and fame and command, you know. But, there are a lot of good stuff on banjos out there but I think that Scruggs’s book would be a great one to get for Hawaiian steel guitar. You’re on your own with that one. There’s a lot of good people out there, uh, the good sites. The best site that I could think of on the Internet, if anybody interested in that, would be, uh, Brad’s Page of Steel. And it’s – it’s a load of information about old steel guitar, new steel guitar. You can get on there and see a hundred different ways to tune a steel guitar or a – a lap steel guitar. But, um, finding knowledge, finding out where to learn something is a big part of it, you know. You could be interested in it, but finding out where to go is an important thing.

Partial Transcript: Am I telling you anything at all that’s – Sir? I don’t know if it is or not. I feel so incompetent. I mean, I feel like nobody. Really, I’m not fishing for complimenting, but I’m just a guy that enjoys keeping going. I tell you what I’ve started on. My dad – my dad had about five years ago, he was drying some beans on his front porch on a big sheet, and they were just beautiful. My dad always grew what they call, uh, greasy cut shorts. You know, people call them greasy beans, but simply because they had a real big bean inside. And he was drying them on the front porch and they had the most beautiful greens and browns and russets and tans and ochres. So I started to paint that. Just a, uh, a beautiful picture of – of beans.


Interviewer


I don’t do enough of it to sell. I would if I could. I – my wife keeps all the good ones. I’ve given away most of the rest of them though. I – I would like to do enough one time in my life to maybe have some kind of little event with it, you know. And, uh, I – That’s in my mind now because I mean, let’s face it. I’m on the back nine, so if I want to do it, I need to do it.

Partial Transcript: Well, um, the folks who helped me with music, uh, when I was trying to learn the banjo, uh, were many. And I’ve told a lot of folks I never paid for a lesson but I had a lot of good people give me lessons. And that’s one of the wonderful things about – about music in the mountains. The way that we grew up, you know, you didn’t have people that gave music lessons. You just go over to somebody’s house on a Friday night and take a pound of coffee and sit there and make coffee and listen to records and – and play. Maybe they’d show you something, maybe they wouldn’t, maybe the next week you’d learn two songs, you know.

But – but the first guy that, u, that really helped me was a fella named Mike Presley. Mike Presley was a young man. He’s probably two or three years older than me, but he learned to play young and got it quick. And as we speak today, he is the maintenance guy at Wal-Mart in Spruce Pine and still a great banjo player. Haywood County guy, he’s one of those “salt of the earth” people, don’t say much, you know, but when he does, it means something. But Mike Presley showed me how to play “Earl’s Breakdown” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” in the same day. And, um, another man that was very helpful to me in Haywood County was Roy Kirkpatrick. And, uh, I think his middle name might be French because a lot of people call him French. And that was how I knew him, uh, but my dad would take me down there. My dad had an old ’52 Plymouth coupe and we’d ride down to Cove Creek and, uh, every so often, make coffee and – and French would show me stuff.

And, uh, there was another banjo player in Haywood County that really took me to a level – I don’t mean this to sound presumptuous or haughty, but it’s just a simple style of playing, um, some people would call it power picking. But his name was Shorty Eager, E-A-G-E-R, I believe his name was Edward. Shorty Eager played for a group called The Log Cabin Boys and, um, he had played some with the great Jimmy Martin. Shorty Eager was the first guy that I ever heard play “You Don’t Know My Mind” (49:00 indecipherable) love. That was like a whole new thing. That’s where all – and Short Eager knew who J.D. Crowe was, so I got J.D. Crowe, threw that out right there.

And, um, then another fella that was great, uh, who still plays – Shorty’s gone, uh, but another fella who plays still that – that was, uh, fun to hang out with was, uh, Smiley Burnette from Clyde. Um, Lord have mercy, I can’t call his first name now. Everybody in the world knows him as Smiley. Smiley was great and still plays. Don’t see him very much but, um, probably the one man that really changed the course of my life with banjo that took me from this little melting pot of Haywood County to something that went to a national exposure was a man named Tom McKinney in Asheville. And Tom was a mover and shaker in the banjo world and still is, in a way – has been forever. I met him at the (50:20 indecipherable) for folk festivals in Asheville in August of 1967. And, uh, I knew who he was at that time and he was – took me under his wing. Why, gosh, I’d go over there and spend the weekend, he would show me stuff.


Tom McKinney had Earl Scruggs, good as anybody I ever heard, and I wanted that. And I was like a sponge in hot water around him. I soaked up everything I could get. Not only did he have the music, he had connections of people to play with and he put me with people that I jammed with from Atlanta. I can remember being in – in the, uh, West Gate Center parking lot until the sun came up one time after the old Asheville folk festival. All the pickers would go over there to the West Gate parking lot and jam all night long. I’ve seen the sun come up there. And, uh – But Tom McKinney was instrumental in that. In – in two different ways, I would say, in giving me a deeper knowledge of how to play and do the – the Scruggs style and Tom McKinney put me in touch with James Monroe. James Monroe is the son of Bill Monroe, who is credited as the father of bluegrass music. My first national professional job was a job Tom McKinney turned down, but passed James Monroe to me. And, uh, so in 1973 I played that season with James Monroe, traveled all over the Eastern United States and traveled – got to be on shows with Lester Flatt, Ralph Stanley, Jim and Jesse, Bill Monroe, standing there side by side and, you know, I was the new kid, but I was there. And I was with people that had been heroes to me. Lester Flatt – to be on the same show with Lester Flatt and be one of the bands that played with them, you know. It was big for me, it was big.

And I had one really cool thing happen that year. Uh, I was in the geology field camp at the University of Tennessee down in Dayton, Tennessee. I drove from Dayton to Brown County, Indiana one weekend and Bill Monroe recorded the first Bean Blossom album and what the Bean Blossom album was – Decker Records at that time did a two-vinyl record set for Bill Monroe that was, in essence, Bill Monroe’s answer to the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. It was widely popular. The Will the Circle Be Unbroken album took the world by storm. It’s still huge. It had all the wonderful Nashville (53:48 indecipherable) on it. Bill Monroe turned it down because, uh – now I got this secondhand, but I’ll – I’ve heard from numerous sources, Bill Monroe said, “I don’t want to play on there with none of them long haired hippie boys.” You know, so he turned down being on the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album and did his own thing. But I got to be on it. And, uh, on that record I played a song called “Train Forty-Five” and James Monroe introduced me. And, you know, you have just a few things happen to your – in your life to have your name announced on an album like that. I still have – I’m sixty-three years old and I still have people say, “Well, the first time I ever heard of you was on that Bean Blossom album when James introduced you on there. It’s still happening, you know, and that was in 1973. What’s that, forty-one years ago?


And, uh, but Tom McKinney put me with – with, uh – in touch with James Monroe, uh, I’ll have to say also with Jimmy Martin. Uh, I never really was a full-time member in the Jimmy Martin band, but the first time I ever played on the Grand Old Opry when it was still at the Ryman was with Jimmy Martin in October of, I think, ‘73, right before the Opry went to the new place it’s in now, the Grand Old Opry House now. But, it was just fabulous. I played in – all over the country with him in old coal mining towns and little high schools. We went to Webster Springs, West Virginia one time and it was a hundred miles from nowhere. And we got up there and it was this beautiful valley of just country people. And we got up to the Webster Springs, West Virginia schoolhouse – no P.A. And Jimmy said, “Boys, what are we gonna do for a P.A? How are we gonna get to these people?” And, evidently, somebody in the library had a little record player that had two fold-out speakers on it and one microphone and we did a show on that setup. Oh, man, at the things I’ve seen like that. It’s just stunning.


But, uh, one other thing that I should mention that was really big for me when I was young – when I was playing good, when I was fifteen, I met a man named Carl Garrison who was a great bass player. And Carl Garrison had been with, uh, he had played some with Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys, which was – they were a national band. But Carl and his wife lived in a trailer park down below my daddy’s house. And he knew a man named Panhandle Pete, whose real name was James Howard Nash. And James Howard Nash, Panhandle Pete, was the old original man with a one-man band theme. He’s the guy that had the music, uh, monopoly at Ghost Town all those years. Uh, (57:19 indecipherable) tapped Panhandle Pete at the Red Barn Playhouse to bring the bands in. And, uh, Ghost Town was like the community college for musicians and kids like me. I was – I went there in 1967. When I was fifteen years old, I had to get a work permit because I was too young to work full time. And I made seventy dollars a week and I think I cleared fifty-four dollars in change. And we played six and seven forty-five minute shows a day, six days a week. And I played the banjo and the old bass fiddle, and back then the bass fiddle – it was all gut strings. And he would keep those gut strings on there and they would unravel and get hard places on them and it would scrape my fingers. And when I would go to put my banjo picks on, there were times that I’d have (58:19 indecipherable) chrome on all three of these fingers and a band-aid on my thumb from slapping that bass. So I played the banjo and the bass in the country show at the Red Barn Playhouse at Ghost Town in 1967, ’68, and ’69. And I saved my money and that helped put me through college. If it hadn’t had been for the music and a scholarship and my – my good parents helping me I wouldn’t have been able to get a college education.

Looking back on it, you know, music helped me with that. Ghost Town provided a way for me to do that. And we are here in Hendersonville, North Carolina today and I learned to teach music at a place in Hendersonville. I would come out here every Sunday when I was in college for several years and teach at the – It was the old county home on Stony Mountain Road for many years was owned by a family named Kesterson. James Kesterson was the man’s name and he was a great clogger, still here. James and Arlene Kesterson had – that facility was called the Mountain Folkways Center, and they had a big national influence. The first time I ever played at the National Folk Festival in Vienna, Virginia was with them. And – But they said, “Marc, we need – we’ve opened up this folkways center. We need somebody to teach banjo. Can you come?” I had no idea how to do it. They put me in a room with twenty kids and I just figured it out, you know. I’d come over here and – I would go as hard as I could do, go all day long. And drinking those Coke’s – Coca-Cola’s in little bottles – I’d come out of there cotton-mouthed and dry-mouthed from so much caffeine all day long trying to teach these kids how to play banjo. But, uh, I met so many friends and people that I’ve known through the years, but the Mountain Folkways Center was big for me. It helped me network, learn how to teach. Ghost Town was great for me, ’67, ’68, and ’69.


I met so many people at Western Carolina University. My years there were ’69, ’70, ’71, ’72, uh, ’73. And, uh, I later went to Gold City after Ghost Town in Franklin, North Carolina because back then, the Western-themed parks in Western North Carolina – Uh, although now we think no kids watch Gunsmoke or Bonanza now, you know, but back then it was a big deal. But they had a saloon show and a – a band and I played there and lived on the mountain and met so many people, oh my gosh. There’s so many talented people that I picked with in Franklin, North Carolina. The great Earl Cowart, Boy Dills – We had a band for several years called the New Day Country Band and in 1976, Earl Cowart, Boy Dills, myself, and Sam Parker went with – on a cultural tour for two weeks, of all places, the country of Poland as a cultural exchange tour. Poland sent a soccer team to the United States, and the United States, through the people who were the founders of Folkmoot, Doctor Clinton Border took me and the band to Poland for two weeks and played in front of old castles and – and, uh, I can remember being on the Baltic sea coast in Gdańsk before Gdańsk was even a national word that was before, um, I can’t think of the fellow’s name now that was the Labor Union leader that later became president.

Partial Transcript: Well, I – I think if there is a common theme, uh, with my life and conservation of natural resources through my interest in geology and biology, music, heritage, culture, it’s – It just has a feeling to do with a positive life. Um, I don’t know that I think deeply enough to even believe in karma or whatever that is, karma or dogma. But, uh, if you choose to be interested, and you can be – I had a friend of mine I – told me one time, he said, “Well, the way to be happy is if you’re not sick, you got a place to stay, and something to eat, you decide to be happy and we decide to be involved.” And there’s a – there’s a sacrifice for that, you know, because the time that you give something that you love is time that you’re not doing something else that you might love. But the common theme would just be, uh, passion for what you do and compassion for what you may leave others. Uh, if I leave someone a nicer pristine trout stream by my environmental work that I do by prevention of a sediment plume, or if I’ve written a song about an area that I love in the mountains that might be a historical thing about somebody that I knew when I was a kid, uh, that’s part of an individual human history that’s mine that might inspire somebody in a way, not that it’s my goal – it’s not necessarily my goal to inspire somebody, but the common thing is to – It can be many things. Live a productive life, be positive, uh, have compassion, and have passion for what you do.

Partial Transcript: Well, the importance of keeping our mountain heritage alive is, um, it’s important to know where society has come from. Um, it’s important to know why the topography is what it is, why the places are named, uh, the way they are. It’s sad to me to think why the Pigeon River is named the Pigeon River and there are no pigeons. There were all killed and made extinct over a hundred years ago, not that that matters. Maybe it does, but to me, it matters. I think Native Americans – the first nation that came into this – into this part of the country – they had ten thousand years of native American settlements right there in Garden Creek. I was raised on Garden Creek and we don’t even know the name that they had for the Pigeon River. Ten thousand years they lived there, and I just think that it’s interesting to – to think about our places, our resources, resource conservation, heritage preservation. It’s just – it’s positive. It’s just part of a positive life for me, I guess.

Partial Transcript: Well, from the standpoint of young people connecting with history, it’s – it’s a common saying that history repeats itself, and to that, I would say this. My son made the statement to me one time, he said, “Dad, we’re only one generation away from losing all history.” And I thought, he’s got a point there, you know. And we see it today with, uh, the rise of extremism in different directions and I – I’m not gonna go political or religious on you, but, um, any time that you have polarized positions that someone is vehement about, it could be because they don’t know the history of the opposing side of the issue or the historical, uh, component. Um, I’m not saying that the middle is always the best place to be, but young people, uh, before they say they stand for something, they need to know why they stand for it, you know. And, um, I just think before someone makes a position on – takes a position on any issue, it’s good to have a broad, uh, three hundred and sixty degree, uh, good general feeling. I won’t say education, but understand why something is the way it is before you jump to conclusions. I think we see a lot of that today.

Partial Transcript: I’ve thought, you know, later. The older I get, the more I feel my mortality, the more that I think, you know. And this is not from any kind of haughty or high-minded place for whatever I can be, I want to live it. I want to be it. I want to be the animal and I think I have been. Thank you. Oh my gosh.