Ruralite Cafe: Published 03/29/01

By Lynn Hotaling Associate Editor

Music is one way to mark passage of time

As I've written before, I get attached to certain singers. For the past 25 years it's been Emmylou Harris. When it comes to music, I generally listen to Emmylou or Emmylou.

My favorite singer will turn 54 on Monday. Given the fact that she is still touring (she's about to head to Australia to showcase her recent album of mostly self-penned songs to the mates Down Under) and just won her 10th Grammy (the most by any country artist), Emmylou seemed worthy of this week's column.

But then I heard a previous favorite singer was coming to Cullowhee March 25 - one I was fanatical about before I ever even heard of Emmylou Harris.

Ed Kilbourne hasn't won any Grammys that I know of, and his name isn't a household word. But there are those who will remember an earnest young folk singer who played churches all over the South during the late 1960s. With his great voice and cool message, he kept a lot of us suburban Atlanta teens off the freeway and in the fellowship halls.

So I thought I'd be writing about two professional musicians who had made music that seemed to speak directly to me.

But a funny thing happened on the way to that column - I went to hear the Pirates of the Tuckaseigee. The Pirates have provided the soundtrack for several Mountain Heritage Days and a downtown festival or two, and it seemed fitting Saturday to go and hear the Rev. Ed Beddingfield's farewell gig with the group he and Jay Coward founded a dozen or so years ago. While enjoying the melodious strains, I started thinking of other local music and what it's meant through the years.

Sitting in the Music-English (now Coulter Building) Recital Hall, I couldn't help but remember other performances I'd seen there. And Saturday's show suddenly expanded to include echoes of performances past.

I've heard a lot of music there. Back before there was a Cullowhee Valley, which was the first eight years of my children's public school careers, all of Camp Lab's musical events were held there. We parents trooped in and out for performances that covered the spectrum from talent shows and band concerts to eighth-grade graduations.

Two of the Pirates are a father-son act. Jim Fisher and son Jared play bass fiddle and mandolin, respectively, and occasionally add vocals. It was good to see Jared perform. Through years of talent shows held in that auditorium, he mostly provided technical assistance for his mom, Diana, who has been the Camp Lab/Cullowhee Valley music teacher for more than 25 years.

Then Jim's wife and Jared's mother joined the Pirates for several numbers. Seeing Diana singing and enjoying herself was welcome, too, because generally when she's been on that stage she's looked slightly frazzled from the effort required to organize legions of children into a coordinated program.

And then there were the Pirates' other guests.

Jared's Smoky Mountain High (and Camp Lab) classmate Amanda Dills looked and sounded great as she fiddled her way through several numbers. But right up there next to the grown-up, confident, virtuoso Amanda I could see the shy 6-year-old who had once stolen the hearts of a talent-show crowd with her tentative rendition of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."

When Bob Holquist, director of Western Carolina University's Concert Choir, was onstage Saturday night, he sang a far different tune than when I'd seen him last. Turns out he can do a pretty good Elvis, and he proved it by rocking his way through "Hound Dog" and "I'm All Shook Up" before turning tender for "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You."

Interestingly enough, Diana, Jay and Amanda were also on the Recital Hall stage when I saw Bob there back in December. It was during a first-rate performance of Handel's Messiah: Bob was conducting, Jay and Diana were singing in the chorus and Amanda was playing her violin in the orchestra along with her music teachers, Cathy Arps and Cathy's dad, Western Carolina Civic Orchestra conductor William Henigbaum.

And as for the Pirates, the ones responsible for bringing all those people back to that stage, they raised money for two worthy causes - Sylva First Baptist and Pinnacle Park - and sounded great while doing so.

Here at the newspaper we usually mark time with words and photographs. But it occurred to me Saturday night that a community's music can provide another link to its past.

Back to Archive: 03/29/01.