FBC Waco Valentine Banquet

It was six in the morning and still in darkness as the white pickup and trailer rolled to a stop in front of our house. Anna and I were standing in the driveway waiting with a bass fiddle, mandolin and our clothes anticipating a great day of friends, food and bluegrass music. Sam and Reva were in their traveling positions in the truck with fresh donuts on the dash. As we pulled away we wondered about Stuart who was in Grapeland and Boyd and Debbie who had gone ahead to spend the night somewhere between Dallas and Waco. We were on our way to the First Baptist Church in Waco where our former pastor and friend Dr. Randall Perry had invited the Hard 2 Git Bluegrass Band to perform for their senior adult valentine banquet. Dr. Randall is the father of Jonathan Perry who was with the H2G band during its first five years.

As we rolled on toward Dallas the sky was clear and we discussed how we must have missed the fog that had been predicted by the weather people on television and on the computers. As the first hint of daylight became evident in the eastern sky and we were into in to our favorite time to travel, eating donuts, drinking coffee and cokes and having a good time in general we noticed something like fog setting in. We should have known those weather men don’t miss and by the time we passed over the high rise overpass just this side of Dallas we could hardly see the front of our truck. Sam kept peddling, Reva kept praying and Anna and I were just glad to be alive and going somewhere. Before long we found ourselves traveling down interstate 35 with the sun shining and wondering if we were nearly there.

As we exited on 4^th street with instructions to travel down frontage road to 6^th street and turn right we made contact with Boyd and Debbie. They were in the area and had made contact with Stuart. Stuart had played the night before in Trinity with Tammy Huff and Highway 19. He was on the way and would be there soon. As we pulled up to the fellowship hall building and was removing the cones that was holding our parking place for the truck and trailer we were getting a call from Dr. Perry, checking on our whereabouts. As he came out the door to greet us it was so good to see our good friend again as we eagerly anticipated the arrival of his wife Debbie, son Jonathan and wife Lindsey, daughter Emily and husband Jeremy and their sons Hogan and Miller. It was to be not unlike a family reunion as they have become like a family to the Hard 2 Git members. We soon had our sound system in place and were amazed at the size of the room . all the tables, chairs, and people filing in as they came from the church service that Sunday morning. It was considered a sell out for there was hardly an empty chair.

As we made ready to eat we were told that Dr. Perry had prepared the meat for the banquet. That piece of information excited us for we had memories of eating his cooking on the smoker at our church and at his home in the past. He is a pro at cooking and the meal was just as we expected. ( Slap Yo Mama ) It was so much fun to see Debbie and all again and it reminded us of all the H2G shows they attended through the years. It brought back so many good memories.

During our performance that day we invited Jonathan to come up and do a couple of songs with us. He did The Red Clay Halo and The Orphan Boy and it was just like old times. Boyd and Stuart were firing on all cylinders, Anna was striking on the Bass and Sam and Reva were singing like canaries. The people were a great audience and expressed their approval with a standing ovation and wanted another song. It was a special time for H2G and we became friends of the people of First Baptist Waco right there. We parted with more CD’s than we had in some time and it is good to know that someone in the Waco area might be listening to our music as I write this message.

After much visiting and many hugs we departed and as we traveled along in three different vehicles we were wondering how we were blessed with such good friends and how lucky we were to be able to do what we do with our music. When we approached Greenville on the way home someone suggested that we stop, not just to eat again but to share all the good things we had experienced and it was decided by all that God is Great.

James Martin

Recording Bluegrass Music

Here’s a great tip! I used to carry a battery powered cassette recorder to festivals and music conventions. I also had to carry spare batteries and a bag of blank cassette tapes to capture all of the music I heard. Man, was this a hassle! Modern technology to the rescue! Nowadays, you can buy a small digital recorder that will fit in your shirt pocket, run on one AAA battery, and record HOURS of music. Recording time varies with mode (high vs. low quality), (stereo vs. monophonic), and the amount of memory in the device. The WS-321 is spec’ed to record 277 hours of voice and up to 70 hours of high quality stereo music!

The picture above shows an Olympus WS-321M digital recorder. All of the H2G band members own one of these recorders and we use them to record our rehearsals, bluegrass shows, music we want to learn, silly jokes, and more! You can even slow down music and learn how to play all of those hot licks Dr. Anderson plays on his banjo! This recorder will plug right into a USB port on your computer and you can transfer all of its music files to your computer for listening to, editing, emailing, or burning to CDs. It also doubles as a portable MP3 player and you can load it full of music to enjoy. Just plug earphones into it or connect it to your car radio’s AUX IN jack (if it has one). It has a built-in speaker, but the volume is low and the bass response suffers. (The full frequency range of the recorder is available through headphones and patching into your car or home stereo system.)

To learn more about this nifty digital recorder/player, click on this link-> http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1309 . You can find these types of recorders at stores like Office Max, Frys, and many other electronics dealers.

Boyd

October Update

Well, it’s been over a month since we’ve blogged about anything. Maybe that’s because we’ve been too busy making music! If you’ve looked at our website every now and then, you’ve noticed that we’ve had five shows since our last blog. Here’s a little bit about those.

H2G was at the Lake Bonham Hoedown on September 26^th. We always have a great time at Joan and Lee Kelton’s place. I (Boyd) get to play banjo with Joan and her band…and I can always use a little practice on the “five”! Glen Clark (mandolin) and I always have fun with humorous stories and jokes. Joan always insists that I do the “Hee Haw Pickin & Grinnin” bit. Other regulars in Joan’s band are Mickey Workman (guitar), Bill Ogden (bass), Jack Marshall (fiddle), and Randy Kiester (dobro).

On October 2^nd, H2G played at the Red River Valley Fair and Exposition. The temperature was pretty cool that evening, but our fans hung around for the show. Musician’s fingers don’t always work very good in cold weather, but the stage lights helped warm us up a bit. On these last two shows (Lake Bonham and the fair) H2G had two very special guests. If you haven’t been to a H2G show lately, you really need to come hear “Luther and Smoothie” play the blues!

The very next day, H2G played for the Powderly United Methodist Church at their camp near Pat Mayse lake. The church had a BBQ dinner that was probably the best we’ve ever eaten! If you ever need an event catered, you really need to find out who cooked that mouth watering BBQ! Speaking of eating, H2G really likes to do that. You MIGHT even catch us at the Roxton Café on Wednesday nights! We sure enjoy visiting with you folks in public!

More recently, H2G played even more gospel music at The Cowboy Church’s Camp Meeting last Friday night in Reno. Once again the weather was kinda on the cool side, but the camp fires and fellowship was definitely warm! I can’t begin to mention all of the old friends I got to see that night…well, maybe I can…William and Pat Rogers, Wade White, Mike and Doris Merritt, Jack Nelson, Duane and Jan Hamil… That WAS just a beginning! There were many others. Speaking of Mike and Doris, they just recently got married! Congratulations to them! Mike, a great bass player, has been preaching at the Cowboy Crossing Church near Hugo and Doris is a wonderful singer. I first met Doris several years ago when she was the music minister at FBC Hugo. Mike delivered a great message for the camp meeting. You should’ve been there!

And last, but not least, H2G put on their own bluegrass show at the fairgrounds last Saturday night. The attendance was slightly low, but there were so many other things going on in Paris that day. The annual Pumpkin Festival probably kept a lot of folks busy. The band, “Highway 19”, started the show off with some great singing by Tammy Huff. Tammy was accompanied by Stuart Anderson on banjo, and Kelly Connell on bass. You REALLY missed some fine music if you weren’t there to hear these three work together! Afterwards, H2G did their thang and was once again visited by Luther and Smoothie. (I really don’t know if it’s Smoothie or Smoothy! I’ll have to ask him next time he shows up…and you never know when that’ll be.) Thanks to everyone who came out for our show, and especially for the food and snacks you brought! We hope to see each and every one of you again soon! Be sure to check out our website for upcoming shows. –H2G

Mountain View - Friday/Saturday

Friday evening, after shopping downtown, some of us went to eat ribs at Bar None BBQ. While we were looking at the menu, I could hear a Hard 2 Git CD playing on the sound system! Did they see us coming?! After dinner we gathered on the porch to do some more picking and singing.

Saturday morning the whole crew met for breakfast at the Folk Center restaurant, or “The Skillet” as some call it. Sam sure has a lot of fans in Mountain View! The waitress at the rib place had asked us Friday night where Sam was. Then, at the Folk Center, a waitress there gave Sam special treatment by replacing his cold pancakes with fresh ones. Sam mentioned something about his cold syrup and she came back shortly with a cup of hot pancake syrup! After leaving the “Skillet”, Tammy, Stuart, Boyd and Debbie made a stop by the old rock amphitheatre where a wedding had just taken place. I think the rain had dampened the ceremony a bit.

Back in town, we wondered around until we couldn’t stand it any longer… Tammy, Stuart, Boyd and Andy Nichols went back for instruments and soon they were picking under a shade tree down town. Before long, all of Hard 2 Git and a pretty big crowd filled the yard. We finally broke up in time to make our dinner engagement at Country Time restaurant, which was also a surprise birthday party for Debbie Nichols and Abby Hayes. After dinner we returned to the town courthouse yard and listened to the Nichols family put on an excellent show. Stuart and Boyd joined the Nichol’s for a few songs before they concluded and then Hard 2 Git took the grassy stage. There was a LARGE crowd gathered to hear both groups. We all went back to the cabins afterward and…I don’t remember for sure, but...we probably played more music!

(Thanks to Debbie Hudgens for helping me remember all of these details! -Boyd)

To be continued…

Mountain View - Labor Day Weekend, 2009

Hello bluegrass lovers! Hard 2 Git spent the Labor Day weekend in Mountain View Arkansas this year. We arrived in three different automobiles at different times of the day. Some are early birds, some are not! Maybe we’ll “git” a bus someday and travel together. That way, those of us who tend to sleep later could climb in a bunk and let the early birds do the driving. Once again, it rained while we were there. Sam says it never rained while Hard 2 Git was in Mountain View until Debbie and I started going with the group. Friday evening we were sitting on the cabin porch and lightning struck in the downtown area about 500 yards from us. In a few minutes we heard sirens headed towards town. Reva said we should put the instruments up and take cover, but we continued to pick and sing anyway. The Hard 2 Git band wasn’t the only Paris folks in Mountain View that weekend. Others joining us were Tammy Huff, Jim and Sandy Lassiter, Ruth and Byron Dennis, Danny and Donna Taylor, Betty Sisson, Kay and Ronald Hays, Abbie Hayes, Brittany Birch, Marilyn and Norris Bolton, Tony and Leslie Cunningham, Jeff and RaeJean Bolton, Joshua Bolton, Arthur and Dorothy Brown, Arthur’s brother and his wife, and Arthur’s sister and her husband.

Boyd

To be continued…

Wikipedia

When I was a child, I remember sitting in my grandparent’s living room looking through their set of encyclopedia. I was fascinated that I could find information on so many subjects that interested me. (I did this when I wasn’t listening to Grandaddy’s bluegrass albums!) We didn’t have encyclopedia in our own home until several years later. “What does this have to do with Hard 2 Git?”, you might ask. Well, after having a great time this past Sunday playing gospel bluegrass with the rest of the band at First Baptist Church in Detroit, I was thinking about “bluegrass” on my way to work this morning. I couldn’t remember exactly why this form of music I love so much was called “bluegrass”. So, I thought…when I get to work, I’ll look it up on Wikipedia! Sure enough…the answer was there…along with a lot more interesting reading.

If you’ve never used Wikipedia, The Free (online) Encyclopedia, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/ and look up something! (Find the search box in the left-hand column and start typing in something. It may quickly auto-complete the word you’re typing and suggest what you’re possibly looking for. If so, just click on the subject you want. If not, just type something and click the SEARCH button.) You can probably even look up some of your favorite bluegrass musicians and read about them. You may even want to read about Wikipedia itself! You’ll find out that it’s content is continuously being updated and added to by people just like us. (That’s a scary thought!)

Here’s a link that will take you directly to the article I’m reading-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluegrass_music . When you see words or phrases that are highlighted in the articles, click on them and you will be transported directly to the wiki article for that subject. After reading about THAT subject, click you browser's "back" arrow or button to return to your original article. You can literally get lost and spend hours learning with Wikipedia.

If you’ve never used Wikipedia, I hope you’ll find a greater fascination with it than I did with that set of old encyclopedia my grandparents had!

Boyd

Bluegrass in Hugo

When I first started playing banjo in…1970…I think..., my only experience with bluegrass music was listening to it on 33 RPM records, 8-track, and cassette tapes. I don’t think there was very much bluegrass on the radio then. Oh, you might hear Foggy Mountain Breakdown or Dueling Banjos (1972) on the Ft. Worth station, WBAP. I’ll bet there was some bluegrass played on local radio stations in Paris and Bonham, but I don’t remember listening to that much radio in my high school days.

My first exposure to real, live bluegrass music probably came somewhere around 1975. I had previously bounced around north Texas with J.T. Bryan, Joe Julian and Ross Whit, attending Texas Fiddle contests in different cities. I enrolled at Paris Junior College after I graduated from high school in 1975. There, I met Bennie Tschoerner, who taught several of my electronics classes. I think Bennie was the one who first took me to Salt Creek Park in Hugo Oklahoma. Bennie had heard “Little” Jimmy Hendley play banjo at Bill Grant’s festival in Hugo and thought, “If that little kid can play banjo, surely I can too.” So, Bennie bought an Alvarez banjo…that eventually became mine…after Bennie gave up on banjo pickin’!

The Hugo Bluegrass Festival at Salt Creek Park, as I always heard, was “the biggest festival west of the Mississippi”. I have never attended any other festival in the states surrounding Texas that was as big as Bill Grant’s. Bill’s festival always started on the first Wednesday in August and went through Sunday. Many attendees would set up camp in Salt Creek Park as much as a week before the festival officially started. And Bill had some of the biggest bluegrass bands in the country. I seem to remember the likes of Lester Flat, Bill Monroe, Rick Skaggs, Mac Wiseman and many more being there over the years.

Bennie and I usually hung out at a camp not too far from the “foot of the hill”, that was set up every year by the same group of guys. I’m not sure I can remember everyone’s name that was usually there. I know that Stuart Anderson and Steve Annis was there…a fellow they called “Five String”, and some others. We mostly sat around the camp jamming and sharing new licks we had learned, but we would often go walking through the woods, stopping to jam with other groups of musicians. Of course, we kept a close eye on the official schedule and would go back up the hill to see our favorite performers.

I remember spending a lot of time visiting the vendors that were always there. It was better than any music stores in Fannin and Lamar counties. You could find all kinds of bluegrass instruments, records and tapes. There was also plenty of places to buy food and drink.

I always looked forward to going to this festival each year, but it was awful hot in August. I remember strapping my banjo to the sissy bar of my 1979 Yamaha motorcycle and driving from Greenville to Hugo in the later years. When the festival was over and I returned home, I could still hear music ringing in my ears for at least a day or two…literally!!! I don’t remember the last year I attended the festival before it shut down. Debbie and I married in 1984 and we both attended at least one or two festivals after that. I was pretty much wrapped up in the Country Music scene during the 80’s and didn’t go to Salt Creek anymore.

Steve Annis has been converting some old photos to digital format recently. Here is one he sent yesterday. See more of the pictures on my website, http://www.banjoboyd.com/ , in the PHOTO GALLERY. Maybe some of my fellow Hard 2 Git band members will blog more about the great times at Salt Creek Park. Ah, the memories!

Boyd