Issue 40: Various and Sundry
By Amdnarg Toh

Home-Brew Folk

Ok… since I’ve now embraced this bluegrass “funk” in which I find myself, I thought I’d elaborate on some of the more interesting musical experiences of my youth. If you didn’t grow up in the south with parents that had a penchant for southern gospel music, then you may not even have heard of these, much less seen them played live. I’ve seen ‘em all.

My parents attended a small Freewill Baptist church in Arkansas when I was in the first and second grade. Usually, one Sunday out of the month was “Singspiration Sunday”. This was basically an excuse to have a chaotic musical free for all, with the intent of somehow lifting us all from our spiritual complacency into heavenly bliss. Often it was a chore to endure to the end – now that I think about it, I did become more patient. Maybe that’s the enlightenment I was supposed to get. Anyway, I about flipped out when I saw a guy bust out a hammer and hand saw. By placing one end of the saw in his lap, and holding the other end in his hand, he was able to hammer out a tune, accompanied by the church pianist.

My next introduction to homegrown music was at Silver Dollar City in good ole’ Branson Missouri. Often, the park would invite local musicians to play at various venues to entertain the visitors. I was sitting listening to two guys, one with a guitar and one with a banjo, strumming and picking along just fine. Then a guy walks up in overalls. He must have been around 70 or so. He donned some of the old strap-on roller skates with metal wheels. I thought – “What’s he up to?” He proceeded to do a kind of sliding/rolling tap dance as a percussion back-beat to the bluegrass the two other guys were playing. It wasn’t bad percussion, mind you, just atypical. In fact, I was more interested in whether he was going to fall and break a hip than I was about the quality of the beat he was a’ layin’ down.

The most recent example was of someone “Playing the Bones”. No – that’s not some sort of tawdry euphemism. Playing the bones is another percussive technique that involves the use of rib bones or wood carved in the shape of rib bones. The bones are held between the fingers, and a technique used to flop the arms and wrists in the air and against the chest to create a clickety-clack kind of percussion, in time with the music. Two of the most popular techniques are called the “full upper body dry heave” and the “epilepsy in A minor.”

Another back-woods folk instrument worth mentioning is the jug. Most kids have at one time or another made a soda bottle whistle by blowing across the opening. Some have even noticed the differing pitch as the bottle is emptied, and have set up multiple bottles with differing levels of fluid in them to produce multiple notes. But the standard is to use empty ceramic moonshine, or corn mash jugs, sans alcohol. Some say that the enlightenment to play the jug comes during the emptying process. Anyway, large jugs such as the kind that are typically portrayed in bluegrass settings, are used as a droning bass percussion. However, I once saw a group of about ten people, each with 3-4 soda bottles, play a fairly complicated multi-part musical number, handbell style. It was in Mexico, on a work and witness trip, so I’m not sure it counts in my litany of southern culture home brew instruments, but hey – this is my story.