East Tennessee/Tri-Cities

I did two mandolin lessons last Thursday morning and headed up to East Tennessee about 1:30p to Johnson City. I had not been on any kind of road trip longer than back and forth to Nashville (16 miles) since last March or so, save one trip to Acworth, GA to say goodbye to my Momma the second day of this year due to the effects of COVID19 and dementia. Needless to say that was a trip I would have rather not had to take. The trip to Johnson City was a lot more enjoyable.

I got into three traffic jams on the way up due in no small part to “rolling roadblocks”. The ones I encountered were absolutely NOT rolling. I noticed a massive jam on the other side of the freeway that went on for a few miles after I had only been on the road about an hour and I thought how glad I was to be avoiding that one but it wasn’t long before I got into the first slow down on my side. The day was really gorgeous out though and it’s been a long time since I’ve been on the road so it didn’t seem to phase me much. I never did see what it was that we were all slowing down/stopped for any of the three times.

I drove along blissed out for the most part that the sun was finally out and the temperature was high enough that I didn’t have to sit with my shoulders up around my ears trying to stay warm. Finally. And the scenery was great with the golden light on it. The dogwoods and locust trees were in full bloom and appeared to be a week behind Mount Juliet but there was only a tinge of purple on the redbuds in the transition from flower to leaf (who named these “redbuds” anyway?) but that just added a mystical feel to the whole scene. I started to realize about the time I had been driving for four hours that it’s been so long since I’ve traveled that I didn’t remember some of the roadside scenes. Amazing considering I’ve went up and down I40 and I81 at least a thousand times over the years seems like. Another thing I noticed, I have lost all of my butt callouses for riding long distance. I know, I know, not a pretty picture but you get the idea. I guess I know what to do to get that remedied.

I got to the Carnegie in Johnson City at about 6:30p EST and started looking for supper. Nice older hotel with a mix of old feel and modern updates. Would stay here again. Beings I didn’t feel like going out and riding around any more I just did the room service thing and bought a cheese burger with two orders of fries and tatered out. A bit too heavy on the seasoning for me, lots of salt in whatever seasoning mix they rubbed the meat with but was glad to get it. I didn’t stay up late so I could get up at 6a and settle into a good frame of mind for the full day of interviewing coming up on Friday.

Friday morning came gracefully enough and got up and put on the Alicia and made a strong cup of coffee. After I got my wits about me I went down to the restaurant for a quick breakfast. The restaurant was very sparsely seated with mostly one elderly woman in a booth and a few tables across the room near the bar all sitting without masks (oh yeah, THAT). I found a booth behind the older lady and ordered the only thing on the menu that contained a few of the same components as Eggs Benedict. Let me encourage you to not try the Carnegie’s version of Croque Madame. It was very dry and due to the cold temperature of the restaurant itself the food got equally cold very fast. So then, dry and cold. Not much fun eating a dry English muffin covered in cold white sauce, cold egg, etc. Oh well. I just disassembled it and made my own thing without the bread. Will have to do until lunch! I met Dan Boner at the front door and we went over to the ETSU campus right across the street and met the rest of the faculty on hand, those being Roy Andrade, Jane MacMorran, and Nate Olson. After exchanging pleasantries we headed over to the archives where they keep about 90K recordings plus thousands of books and periodicals relating to music and life in the Appalachian region and other related subject matter. After about an hour of touring the archive we moved on to another location. Here I was introduced to a couple young men who had given away their Friday mornings to take a mandolin lesson with me while the faculty panel looked on. Both guys were good players and distinctly different personalities. It was good to feel their energy and watch their enthusiasm for the music. I felt satisfied that we got some work done.

We left the room after 2 hours and moved on to the next item on the itinerary, a ZOOM seminar on the subject of my choosing with staff present. I chose to talk about the role of rhythm in reinforcing the melody and illustrate a few examples on the mandolin using the music of Enos Canoy, Ella Haley and Bill Monroe. This segment turned out to be the most/only challenging bit the whole day as I sat in front of a computer (as you do when using ZOOM…duh) talking to a few dozen folks who just stared at me for the most part or looked off camera at things in the room and didn’t say anything. Only young Mr. Josh Gooding whom I recognized from the MonManCamp some years past spoke up a time or two. But other than that it was just me out there in the wind. When the time was done I said thanks and shut ‘er down, took a few deep breaths and relaxed. I couldn’t really tell whether I had made a dent because there wasn’t much in the way of reactions from the attendees but I met a few people in the hallway afterward that said they enjoyed the seminar so I guess it did some good.

Lunchtime. Dan, Jane, Nate, Roy and myself were treated to either a garden salad, chips and chocolate chip cookie or turkey wrap, chips and apple. The salad dressing made a late arrival and came in the form of envelopes filled with Newman’s Own Ceasar or Ranch. Masks off for everybody. I was hesitant I must say but we were all spread apart reasonably well. Leisurely conversation ensued amongst the chewing. After about an hour Roy and I left to go get a couple cups of coffee and he took me over to see the recording studio setup they use. Looks like a nice little studio. On the way back we stopped by Ron Roach’s office and Roy went back to join the others. I stayed and chatted with Mr. Roach for a bit about…you guessed it…ETSU and the Appalachian Studies program. Then we went back over the room where the mandolins lessons had taken place and I was asked to coach a group of 4 students in an ensemble for an hour, again in front of the faculty/panel. Dan Boner joined them on his fiddle because they were missing a member and I played mandolin off and on for support. The banjo player came in a little late and was wearing shorts so he was fair game for a few pokes. I told him that apparently he didn’t know the rule about wearing shorts on stage and that is “Half pants, half pay”. The group had a very nice blend and we worked on a couple songs they were thinking of doing. One was a song they’d heard Daley & Vincent do and the other was “When You Say Nothing at All” by Keith Whitley. Time for another poke at the banjo player. I told him to play some touchy feely stuff, to think Sonny Osborne licks. He didn’t quite get it so I told him to think about how he’d just bought a brand new pickup truck or a bass boat and how much he loved it. He replied, “Why not both?” Touche’. The experience was positive and again, I enjoyed their energy. I think they will do well. That was pretty much the last obligation for me on my interview. Once the student band had left I talked with the faculty for another hour or thereabouts and then waited for them to compare notes of the days’ events before going back to my car.

I had checked out of the Carnegie in the morning before going over to the ETSU campus so I left and went over to Kingsport to check into my room at the Red Roof Inn. When I got there all the office staff and a couple chambermaids were hanging around outside smoking and looking over a BMW that one of them had bought. The lady that checked me in at the desk came in with two of her fingertips black with soot. I don’t remember what exactly I said to her but she took it as an invitation to tell me a rambling story about how her mother had told her if she ever bought a car to run her finger around the insdie of the tailpipe and check to see if there was any soot. Well, she got a good dose of it this time. The guy that was hanging out with them outside had just paid good money for a BMW sedan that was burning oil. She kept going on about that while she handed me the room key and I thanked her and walked out of the office. I found the room to be surprisingly clean and straight, checked in and ordered three carnitas tacos, rice, beans from a local Mexican food establishment that turned out to be rather good. So I didn’t do much more of anything Friday after that. No agenda on Saturday early so I just sat on the couch and watched a couple Avengers movies I had seen before.

I got up Saturday a little later than 6a beings I didn’t have to be anyplace until the afternoon. Coffee, breakfast, played some tunes, etc. The usual. Mainly I didn’t get in a hurry. It was funky outside anyway, rainy and some cold. I got out a bit later and road out towards Unicoi to look at the countryside because Roy said he lived out that way and said it was nice. Indeed it was, but not the best day for scenic driving so I went out and drove on down to Edwin area and turned around. There’s a business along the highway there that makes sheds. Looks like that’s where a lot of tool sheds come from, you know, the kind they have at Lowe’s and Home Depot. I had planned on going up to Bristol, TN and going by the Birthplace of Country Music Museum to see Kris Truelson but he wasn’t working Saturday so I just took it easy when I got back until about 3p and then went off to Abingdon to meet up with a young lady named Hannah Hietala who works at the showed me around the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center located on the Virginia Highlands Community College campus. The MonManCamp is looking to possibly use their facility for the 2022 edition and I wanted to see the place. I met Hannah at 4p and she showed me around for a bit, looked in all the rooms and showed me the general layout of the place and afterwards I drove back to Kingsport with pizza on my mind. I found another local place that had pretty good pizza fortunately. The reviews on Yelp didn’t give much hope for a decent product in the area but this was pretty good. While I was waiting for my pie I asked the manager when things would “get back to normal” just to pass the time. He launched right in to talking about how nobody wants to work anymore because they’re all at home collecting unemployment checks and he can’t get anybody to work anymore. This was of course more of an answer than I was planning on fielding but it was an interesting perspective. My little bit of unemployment stopped last October seems like. The State of TN has no real interest much in self-employed persons at the “JOBS4TN” site. Nothing on the website even set up to cater to musicians much so I didn’t get much out of it. But I digress…I went back and dove into the pizza because I was starving at this point. More wasted time watching television movies and then dozing in front of the television and then television off and bed so I could get out early next morning and drive back to Mount Juliet, TN.

The alarm went off at 6:30a on Sunday morning and I was gone by 7a. I didn’t use the GPS but about 10 minutes to make sure I was headed out the right direction and then off the rest of the way home. Lord knows I’ve driven this stretch of road for decades. More slate gray and drizzly skies for quite a ways. Seems like after about 30 minutes of driving or so the sun shone through the clouds struck the top of the long ridges that lay to the north of Interstate 81 and the whole ridge lit up in a golden yellow green color in quite a contrast to the dark gray sky in the background. It cheered me right up and I amused myself by humming parts of tunes I’ve been mulling over in my head into my iPhone voice notes so they wouldn’t get away. The weather cleared up from there on back and the morning was pleasant, the roads reasonably clear and I drove about 78 mph all the way home getting to Mount Juliet at about 10:30a with only one stop in Cookeville to buy some gas for Gertrude the Wondercar. I got back just in time to say goodbye to Heidi as she went off on a 2 day camping trip back up towards Cookeville.

All in all the trip up to East Tennessee was good. I suppose that if you’ve read this far then you know I was applying for a job at ETSU, the Artist in Residence position which is a brand new program they have created. It was good to finally be out of the house and doing something to try and further my status in the musical community and to just be out moving up and down the road some again. It’s been a long time. The most frequently asked questions I’ve been asked by the ETSU staff are 1) Why do I want to teach at ETSU and 2) What can I do to bring interest/students to their program. I’m still making up my mind how I feel about that one because that’s not what a lot of this tradition and study of the culture is about to me. But I suppose they have to ask the question.

Ya’ll stay safe. We’re getting a lot closer to being out of this COVID foolishness.

Life is good yet. MC