It’s a pleasure to know performers live and work in the community
It wasn’t the Mardi Gras, nor was it a Woodstock Festival for Bluegrass music.
However, it did turn out to be a down-home, foot-stomping rumble on Main Street enjoyed by newcomers, visitors, and the local citizenry alike May 9.
Main Street Mania, as experienced through the eyes and ears of a virtual newcomer to Pickens County, was a relaxing venue of easy-listening music accentuated by the delightful hollering and squeals of happy children playing in a temporary inflatable playground set up one intersection down from the bandstand.
Young romance flourished with an occasional kiss stolen from atop a hay bale, and a few from the Woodstock generation danced a calmer albeit no less passionate jig, swaying and twirling in a sort of slow jitterbug between the curbs and white lines of Main Street.
Anyone who kept their foot still with Yeller Cat Tony Young hammering his banjo while John White fiddled around and David Key strummed a rhythm on his guitar needs to visit Progressive Audiologist Center, Incorporated on Main Street for a hearing test. It wasn’t that the Kingston Trio of Bluegrass played too loud, but when they broke into a tune like Sweet Little Julie or The Johnson Boys, it instantly altered one’s mood and caused one to involuntarily slap their knees and pat the road with at least one foot.
Tony Young’s Claw Hammer style of banjo picking was a lesson in old-time Appalachian music, and John White rosined up his bow as David strummed a steady chorus for their musical foundation.
Being from the Tampa Bay area where it is easy to find a concert, but difficult to find one featuring people from the community, it was a pleasure to know that these folks are from the area and have local phone numbers and day jobs in our general vicinity.
Bigger cities tend to lose their culture to regional or national acts. Besides, Jose Gaspar and his Gasparilla Pirate Krewe may be the only Tampa group that would be safe from muggings or loitering arrests on Main Street in Tampa after 7 p.m., and they just invade the city once a year.
Jasper businesses that remained open seemed to do well during Main Street Mania, particularly restaurants. Toward the end of Yeller Cat’s gig, we strolled over to the Savor Grille for dinner. Again, culture was on full display. Seated behind us speaking and laughing in a gregarious tone obviously enhanced by the former contents of two empty wine bottles at their table, was a couple from Florida, and one from Ohio. I learned that the eatery owners were Peruvian, and the CD of music playing was as Irish as River Dancing.
A Jasper man was chatting about the new business he just started, and so it went. The mania outside on the street was filtering in through Main Street store-fronts in dollars spent and spirits ingested, however, no one was out of line, and the food was good.
We exited the Savor Grille, and miraculously, our original hay bale was not taken, so we sat down to enjoy the Hoyles, a wholesome, talented quartet featuring two brothers, their sister, and a fiddle-playing friend. There was some sound-trouble at the beginning, but then, Al Hoyle, whose day job is Mayor of Ellijay and is a guitar player since eight years of age, told his sister to double up with him on the front mike and the audience to serve all complaints with sound to their sound guy who was feverishly tweaking the amps. This got a big laugh from the audience and the show was off and running.
Eddie, the older Hoyle brother, didn’t claw-hammer his banjo in old-time Appalachian style, but picked those four strings so fast that at times it seemed they would start smoking. Lisa Hoyle, the Janis Joplin of Bluegrass, delivered melodic old bluegrass tunes like Whiskey Before Breakfast and Life’s Too Short, while Mark Squire bowed his fiddle down the middle of every tune. Near dark, the mood had shifted from knee-slapping fun to dance. A young man rose from a hay bale, kicked off his shoes, and did an original foot-stomping solo jig that had people clapping and yapping about his passion and style. Even singer/guitarist Al Hoyle was impressed enough to comment, “He must have steel feet, the hide would be wore off mine,”
The 2008 Main Street Mania was a success from the perspective of just about everyone I observed and talked to. Some said as much, others, well… you could tell.
[Clifton, and wife Leigh, recently relocated to Burnt Mountain from the Tampa Bay area where he spent 25 years selling building materials to major accounts. Throughout this year, he will be sharing his experience as a newcomer with Progress readers.]
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| The local band, the Yeller Cats. Our newcomer said knowing that all the performers could be found in the Pickens phone book makes these events unique. |
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