All this jam was posted bye for fellows that play together a lot each week a different band hosts the jam again very welcoming high quality music really fast music all the time great singing I think John Luna knows some of these fellows they know him John used to teach at this university
Well Dakine is up on the rack getting the transmission fluid changed as preventive maintenance found a very wonderful transmission place that gave us all kinds of reasons to trust them and appreciate them AA automatic transmissions Blacksburg Virginia the pictures of the winds shield are a little cloud burst that amazed us buckets and buckets of rain fell for about 15 minutes
We also took a nice bike ride that day on the huckleberry rail to trail in Blacksburg and we had a nice tour of Virginia Tech pretty spiffy college they seem to like sports:-)
The gentleman in the picture with Clyde spearheaded the movement to get Clyde his own real violin as a going away present you can see Clyde showing it off it took him about 5 minutes and a little bit of help from his mother and he was bowing it like a pro what a wonderful scene he played for about an hour sadly I missed the picture of Clyde going up 2 Danny the person in the picture with him and giving him a big thank you hug
What is not to love about this situation I was completely taken aback and felt so lucky to be involved in this jam thanks to Bob our new friend from Radford
The two people in these pictures are Clyde and Charlie clyde is the youngest member playing and Charlie is the oldest he's played for ever and he's a great fiddler he also has an interesting relationship with Clyde notice that Clyde is playing a little plastic fiddle with a stick much like a pencil Clyde has perfect rhythm learns the words plays and sings along wonderfully he is 3 and this was his going away party his parents have graduated from college and are moving to another state people have watched Clyde for about a year and a half play along with the fiddlers the banjo players and the guitar players he is truely adored by this crew
On Sunday there was a nice jam at the Floyd Country Store hosted by a gentleman named Mac great fiddle player from the Floyd area about 12 people in the jam very welcoming we sent the tune choice around the circle ironically I had been with with Sarah who is mac's daughter she had attended the Conor Byrne Jam in Seattle and I remember her being introduced by Tony mates the other ironic part was a mandolin guitar couple from Florida who we jammed with in March down by Miami Jamming in Floyd was lots of fun and Bob was sitting next to me playing the mandolin bob was from a town near Floyd also near Blacksburg called Radford and he told me about the Monday night jam in Radford the Tuesday night jam in Radford and Wednesday night jam in Blacksburg the pictures in this set are off the Monday night jam at the River City Cafe in Radford a wonderful Lively talented welcoming Jam of old time and bluegrass
Idaho seemed like a long ways until Russia Indonesia Austrailia all started popping up they had to pull down the map and it turned into a contest of inches pretty fun
The Farm Museum was pretty empty and actually not open but we were told we could walk around and see the outsides of the buildings since it was empty and such a great setting I played music for about an hour Martha happened by to catch the moment
We left Floyd this morning to drive to Ferrum and we were amazed at the difficulty of the crooked road we dropped about 2,000 feet elevation on a road that didn't seem like you could pass another car on right next to a dark Little Creek didn't see the sunshine for an hour and a half really an amazing experience.
The photos are from inside the museum at Ferrum College we spent the day here just taking our time reading up on the history of this musical area mostly the Stoneman family the Carters the Stanley Brothers Jim and Jesse Wayne Henderson Eddie bond white Top Mountain band lots of great information
David S supposedly is staying home being a house husband while his wife is in nursing school we saw the freight hoppers in Asheville but David wasn't with them it's nice that he had a chance to come to Mount Airy in tear it up with Logan County blues
They have a contest for old time banjo bluegrass banjo old time guitar bluegrass guitar old time fiddle bluegrass fiddle old time band bluegrass band and other stuff as well all dancing as well all you had to do was get in line beside the stage and when you came on stage you told him what category you wanted to compete in and they judge you uh no big problem with being at the stage at the right time and if you hadn't signed up you could sign up at the stage pretty cool contest
We took a tour bus that showed us some interesting parts of Asheville that we hadn't discovered yet the big stone building you see was constructed by a fellow name Grove . he rivals the Vanderbilts for money and was a great architect he actually designed the city of Asheville after New York City type: architecture 1 building was even scheduled to look like a small Empire State Building the Stonewall my bicycle is it in front of is the wall of The Grove Park Inn my bike is actually one foot from the entrance yet it looks like it's up on the Grand Teton mountain he made it out of natural stone so that the building would look like it raised right up out of the mountain its way up high with a great view the pig and the turkey our little statues to remind people that Asheville was a trade route and many animals passed through it historically from Greeneville Tennessee to Greenville South Carolina the trade route passed around and through the easiest parts of the mountains it could find this was also the land of the Cherokee and Asheville was close to the beginning of the Trail of Tears
I'm not sure who the folks are playing with James Bryant but the camp was about 20 feet from our van so I had to make a record of it
The fellow that starts the video is Charlie and he has a really cool old time bowing stroke great player and won the fiddle division at a contest near Mount Airy last year the rest of the folks are from North Carolina and from Toronto Canada
This seemed interesting to me because it rained all night and the fellow wearing them big boots and singing the song was forced to move his camp site since his tent was standing in 4 inches of water those rubber boots that he's wearing were Worn by probably half of the people at Mount Airy you were either in really wet grass 4 inches of water or 6 inches of mud very interesting
The guitar player off to the left is a chance and his wife is Suzette they are from Asheville and were the folks who invited us to the party first thing when we came to Asheville very welcoming people
Just a few more pictures of how life was with the Asheville musicians we saw that they were famous and had received the good tarp keeping seal of approval
These are our new friends Charlie and Marty who have come from Arizona to play music in the east they travel in a van similar to ours play cribbage and are quite like minded we started the festival with them and we pulled away with them being the very last campers to leave Mount Airy great time
Mount Airy was all we could have ever hoped for some of these pictures show the camping as things started we camped next to lots of friends from Asheville that we had met jamming at Jack in the woods the picture of the guitar body shows the reflection of Jim Blose who was playing the guitar at the time jim has helped us a lot in Asheville. We arrived Sunday mid day and there were probably 40 camp spots taken it grew too maybe a thousand camp spots and we left mid day on Monday a week later
