Date: November 4th 2008

(You have received this message as you have previously joined or requested to join our mailing list. Information, including unsubscription instructions and our physical mailing address and phone number are located at the bottom of this message) My friends, who help, aid, assist, and encourage, about the only words I can say are thank you. Hundreds of you have helped in small and great ways over the past forty years. I have been given a couple gifts of teaching and having a grasp of the old music from these east central WVa mountains. But that would have meant nothing if it hadn’t been for you who care. In order to give you fair warning, there is a bunch of chit-chat in here. You might want to just punt right now. If you don’t, don’t blame me; you have been forewarned. [This is a “Word” document and Word drives me up a wall. But here goes.] Tuesday November 4th, Dave Bing & I head out for our annual trip to England to teach those students, many of whom have become our extra good friends over the years. 1998 was my first trip over and I taught many of these students - 24 in one class – then afterwards attended the festival headed up by FOAOTMAD [Friends of American old time music and dance]. Then on Sunday afternoon, Phil Tyler, who had just gotten his drivers license two days before – on Friday, took me on a wild and woolly trip to play music at many folk clubs crossing back and forth across England several times. We returned safely. Sometimes there was a question. Just like here in the states, though I only see these folks maybe once a year, it is like a family reunion without the knives or fisticuffs Somehow I was able to pick the week of the major fall colors in October this year. In some places in the mountains, it looked like the trees were on fire. This time there were, besides me, four on staff including my son, Caleb. He is really coming on strong as a player and teacher. At age 24, he has made a decision to go after the bottom line, and with his talent and ability, he is going to be as good as it gets one of these days. Folks will say, well he heard you around the house, but I maybe pulled out my banjo at the house not over 30 times between 1974 and now. So that doesn’t wash. And he knows the good stuff from what is a fake and fraud [as my daughter does also]. Just one more and then I will shut up: if it takes him longer than 12-13 minutes to catch a tune, he is put out by it. It took me from 1968 until 1970 just to catch on to the clawhammer style; it took him about 6 minutes. I have very little musical talent, but the mountains do play tunes that sidewalks cannot. They play in my heart right often. Starting last spring, the classes began running with approximately one each month. However, because of my fatigue problems, I have to keep the classes really small. What I mean is two to four; once in awhile I will go ahead with only one student though that doesn’t maximize my time. BUT I remember wanting the music so badly that I could taste it. The old people did what they could; it is up to me to do what I can. First was Michigan in march, then here on Knave’s Run/Brown’s Creek, May, June, July, August, September, and October. I fulfill my scheduled visit to Pittsburgh for my annual pilgrimage to teach the first weekend in December. Btw, that same class is on the books again this December, same time. Anyone interested can email Cindy Harris at cah@lonewolf.com. Seems the class is already filling. I think Caleb will be able to ride with me to teach also. It works out that there generally is some instruction Friday evening, Saturday morn and afternoon, a small concert on Saturday night and then instruction from 10am until about 12:30 –1:30pm on Sunday. Just depends on just how much the students have started to ‘white eye’. That is when their noggins are on overload, and their “eyes start to roll back in their head like a dying calf”, as is said around here in WVa where rules is different. These are my recordings which are in short supply: ‘Harvest’, ‘Just Banjo 99’, the new ‘Mountain Voice’. At the moment , ‘Hold On’, ‘Red Rooster’, ‘Oh Death’, ‘Piney Woods’, ‘Papa’, ‘Just Banjo 96’ are still available in small numbers. My friends, Jerry and Russ, were the ones who switched my cassettes over to cds and ran off large numbers of those for me over the past few years. As a new project, I I have recently considered sifting thru the approximately fifteen recordings and picking out some “best of”, maybe using some theme or another. The ‘In England’ cds are also gone. There are still plenty of ‘Trouble on Spring Creek’, ‘Festival Favorites’, but I don’t know what happened to the ‘New Plowed Ground’. Sometimes it seems that “things that go bump in the night” pack them off somewhere like rats and mice do. While trying to get packed today, avoiding cleaning the mess in the kitchen sink, draining the water tank in the lodge and on and on and on, suddenly reality rolled in: my passport was no where to be found. I had just had it two days ago. Duh, one of my daily senior moments had rolled in. I keep telling myself if I had more order around here, “things would not get lost”. I will say no more except after several hours, it did show itself with some help from my Friend and friend. The massive “Audio-Visual” project is moving forward. Still very, very slowly, but not like the previous 40yrs [May/June 1968 to June 2008]. Presently we are waiting to hear from the WVa Humanities Foundation about a large grant. It is going to take a bunch of bucks $’s to sustain this. I figger out of that $700B that is being passed out to special interest groups as well as other notable worthies, that ship will come in for us also. Again, for any of you who are not familiar with what is taking place, we have all the recordings that I made back in 1969-’71 of the Hammons’ folks which include hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tracks. They were all salvaged by David Nemec, my savvy flatlander originally of CN and then arranged in a great data base by Russ Hatton who is a part of the WVa diaspora. Between those two, hundreds and hundreds of critical hours were spent bringing that material to the true light of day. And the approximately 700+ B&W photos which I took in 2nd & 3rd weekends of October 1970 to choose from, are in the plans. As I have said before, my vision has been to put them all together for the public. However, over the decades there was no technology possibly available to me to put the transcribed stories in hard copy form accompanied with audio of the talking so folks could listen and read along. Well what is available now is to use my little camcorder to get some footage of the mountains where the Hammons’ first settled about the time of the War of the Rebellion in 1861. Use it for back ground scenery, put appropriate photos in, and have the voice over of the Hammons’ telling the actual story so folks can read the hard copy and follow along. They had come from Kentucky in a round about way. Like many others who settled in the central and east central region of what is now WVa hills and mountains CAME FROM THE FRONTIER WEST, TRAVELING EAST/NORTH EAST. That land was to hard to penetrate from where I live going into the ‘Back Allagheny Mountains’ to my west. The Hammons were living here in the same community where I grew up – Pocahontas County. They had carried the old stories in their hearts and minds from childhood and were in their very late 60s and in their 70s by then, but their minds were still very sharp and clear. The stories dated back as far as the frontier in possibly mid-1700s. Maybe around or just after what was called the French and Indian war. So these stories AND songs and tunes are a powerful legacy which they gave to me as I visited them. I just knew that I liked the old stories and music, but was in no way one of those “folklore people”. People keep saying I “studied” with the Hammons’. As the Hammons’ often said, “that is fool’s talk”. So the decision from ‘WVa Humanities’ should be forthcoming before long. Of course there is always a bunch of politics involved, but this thing has to get done somehow, even if I have to finally put it on a dvd and issue it that way. Mr Lee Hammons [no kin; born 1883] said, in amongst all the other things, “you don’t have to always choke a cat on butter to kill it”. Trying to deal with government and councils when money is involved, most generally is not a good thing to do. Often too many strings attached. Jimmy Costa told a story about an incident back when FDR was elected and took office and there was the idea he was going to fix everything which is something you might have heard before. Anyway, someone asked an old woman in the maybe Talcot area what she thought about the new group who had been elected and were on their way to Washington? Her answer was “ Same old pile of ‘s__t’; just a new set of flies!”. Hmmm……. She obviously had been aware of politicks as usual maybe since the late ‘70s or 1880s. Hmmm…… I don’t have a calendar at the moment, but I do plan to have maybe a Michigan trip in March, then maybe a late March/early April class; a 4 day class the week before memorial day with the class ending on Friday morn; a 4 day class probably before the 3rd weekend [close to June 20th ] since June 20th 1863 was the day WVa became a state illegally; then I plan to have a class sometime in July [I will need to hear from a few students when they would like to have a class around that time]; There is an offer to travel to England in early August for a few days, as Elmer Fudd said “West ‘n WeWaxashen @ Wass”. Then a 4 day class ending on Friday of the Labor Day weekend. Memorial Day, WVa Day and Labor Day each have a WVa festival which is worthwhile attending. This year I had a class in mid-September weekend and then the longer full week class sometime around the first full week in October. Again, except for any trip to England in the summer, I am planning to have classes so students can hit the good WVa festivals if at all possible. Note that I did NOT mention clifftop. But surely that was just faux pas up that can be overlooked. [There are lot of my student friends who I would like to see who attend clifftop, but…] Well, it’s past midnight and I have managed to put those dishes off for a few weeks now. At the moment I still don’t have any vermin; my cat, Ms Roxie, stays on patrol. However, if I keep feeding them, she may not be able to hold her own down here where it is hard scrabble in the poverty belt. Presses Kennedy and Johnson swore they would wage war agin it; then come that J.D. Rocky IV fellar, on his way to u.s. senate, stopped by to also save us from ourselves, but here we still sit after his two terms. But, one thing was/is for sure, Gov Rocky had no need of stealing funds which is just accepted as normal practice of ours; how many millions did uncle Nelson leave him while he was here? My old friend Len Reiss said “WVa should automatically send their governors, for their second term, directly to jail; ‘Do not pass Go’.” [Len was originally from N.J.]. Thus, in keeping with that word of wisdom, right often we send our governors to the pokey. The Honorable Wally Barron in the ‘60s represented us at one of the federal resorts. Then we had the Honorable Gov Arch Moore whose desk drawer held $200,000 in cash smackers. Well, HE did NOT know where it had come from and there it set/sat, so obviously HE was not using it!! “MOI??” So when our Honorable Gov Moore paid his debt to WVa society, he ran for the governor’s position again. My Friends, never let anyone try to convince you that the roads, the music, the pollyticks in WVa is not crooked. Nor should you ever consider for one moment that there could possibly be a need for “tall tales from the Legendary Past”. Known to handle our Truth very carefully, we have no need whatsoever of those stupid “Jack Tales”. Remember, “rules is different in WVa”. And to all “Good Night”, Ho, Ho, Ho. -- The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following: Yew Pine Mountain Music / Dwight Diller Email Newsletter Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by clicking on the following link (URL): DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW UNLESS YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE http://www.dwightdiller.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=u&l=newsletter&e=example@example.com&p=1234 DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE UNLESS YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE If the above link (URL) is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long link (URL) and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism into two lines which may not work. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: http://www.dwightdiller.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=list&l=newsletter If you're still having trouble, please contact us: mailto:ediller@gmail.com Yew Pine Mountain Music PO Box 376 Marlinton, WV 24954 304-799-4965