Murphy Henry

First of all, thank you all for the expressions of sympathy you have offered to me since Mama died. I can’t tell you how much it meant when you were placing orders by phone just to have you say, “I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”  And the cards and the emails have all meant so much. I hope to be back to regular blogging before long, but I still need to share some more thoughts about Mama. Losing her has been so hard. Thanks for your understanding.

The following is an essay my niece Caroline, daughter of my sister Nancy, wrote about Mama, her grandmother. She wrote it last year, her senior year in high school. It was so poignant we asked her to read it at Mama’s funeral, and she did. I thought it captured a lot about Mama and about our family. And also says a lot about the wonderful young woman Caroline is growing up to be.

My Grandmother

By Caroline Pate

My grandmother is one of the sweetest people I know. So when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, it came as a great shock to me. I found myself pushing away my extended family that I was once so close to. But it took my grandmother’s wise words to show me that even if the disease had changed our family, we needed to stick together for better or worse.

My grandmother- known as “Gaga” by my family- is like a storybook grandmother, a living reproduction of Mrs. Santa Claus. When I was young, my sister and I would stay at her house every other few weekends, and those visits were a treat. When we first arrived, we would rush to our beds to find the “bed presents” Gaga had left us. Priceless dollar store toys nestled under our pillows, a magnificent surprise. Then we would come to the dinner table to have the finest cuisine in the North Georgia Mountains laid before us. We would feast upon friend chicken and okra, corn pudding, and for desert, Gaga’s famous pound cake- all homemade. The next morning, we would wake up early to cruise yard sales and spoiled by my grandmother with previously owned treasures.

But my favorite memories are when my mother’s tight knit family was together. With my grandmother’s five daughters and seven grandchildren, the house was a bustling, happy mess. Gaga would be in the kitchen, while my mom and aunts would be playing bluegrass in the living room. My cousins and I were left to play. When we got older some of us went to play music and sing with our aunts. I loved watching my grandma close her eyes, the corners crinkling into a smile, and hearing her contented little chuckle when I would sing with my mother and sister. Eventually, all of us would sit down at the table to a big meal. Afterwards, the younger cousins would cajole some of our relatives into playing pinochle, the card game that our family had manipulated the rules for our own use and passed down for generations.

When Gaga was diagnosed, everything changed. We could no longer go on our family beach trips, because she would forget where she was. My mother had to take her keys away, which was an ordeal in itself.  But with Alzheimer’s, every thing is déjà vu. My grandmother would forget her keys were taken away and think she had lost them. Someone would tell her she could not drive anymore and she would call my mother, angry. She could no longer even cook- she would forget her dishes were in the oven and they would burn. She even forgot how to play pinochle. Eventually, visiting became less of a vacation and more of a chore. My grandparent’s activities were deduced to watching television and napping. It scared me to watch them become shells of the people they had once been, and it scared me even more to know that all of our memories would be forgotten, that even I would be forgotten. I hated that weren’t even family anymore- we were “caretakers”.

One night when I was in my room, the book I was reading suddenly reminded me of my grandmother. From the shelf above my bed, I pulled down a small wooden frame that my grandmother had given me one Christmas. I had almost forgotten about it. I opened up the back, and inside was a note that read:

Caroline,

When I was a girl in the Mt. Creek Baptist Church, I heard a preacher pray this prayer. I thought it was beautiful. It inspired me. I appropriated it for my own. I began praying it for myself…every day.

When the girls came along, I began praying it for them, and when you came along, I began praying it for you.

I may have missed a day or two praying this prayer, but some days I prayed it for you many times. I’m sure I’ve averaged praying this prayer for you once a day for all of your life.

And. I’ll continue to pray it for you every day for as long as I can pray…because I love you. Gaga

I then realized that because she had forgotten, I had to remember. Because our family could never be the same, now we needed to be together more than ever- just in a different way. Our family had gone through many hard times, but we needed to still be there for each other, like she was for us, every day. Pray for each other like she did for us, every day. Because she may have forgotten the prayer now, but I will never forget those words she framed for me:

Dear Father,

Help Caroline in the early morning of her life to catch hold of the things that of true and lasting value and pursue those things with great joy and enthusiasm.

Create the mix of circumstances that will bring about Your perfect will in her life.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen.

(Mama gave a framed copy of the prayer Caroline talks about to each of her grandchildren. She was truly, as her preacher said at her service, a prayer warrior.)

Casey Henry

. . . actually, two funny things happened yesterday. Only the first is topical for this blog, but I’m going to tell you about both of them anyway.

When I sat down Sunday morning to check my email, I thought it was going to be quick: in and out and I’d be on my way to Kroger to get jar lids so I could make apple jelly (Murphy’s favorite!). But I’d been getting some comments lately from people who said “I tried to email you,” whose messages I’d never received. Usually all my email from my five different addresses lands in one Gmail account so I can check it all in one place. I don’t know what it was this particular morning that made me think to log in to my Murphy Method email account separately and see what was there.

When I did, to my extreme surprise, I found two months worth of mail that had not been forwarded to my regular account. The last message I’d seen from that address had been on June 21^st. And I NEVER NOTICED! I just kept wondering why nobody was answering my emails. They were—I just wasn’t getting it! Included in all these emails, of course, were all the custom lesson sale orders, so instead of my planned grocery store trip and jelly making I spent three hours answering hundreds of messages and sending many very apologetic emails.

Most people were very understanding and I think I’ve almost caught up. So, if you sent me a message in the last couple of months and haven’t received a reply, please resend!

The evening held a hot dog roast at Kelley and Ned Luberecki’s house. I swung by Kroger on the way for the aforementioned jar lids. When I got in my car I smelled gas, but I didn’t give it too much thought since I sometimes fill gas cans for my lawn mower and usually the smell goes away shortly. I began to get concerned when the smell did not start going away and had reached a peak when my car stalled at a four-way stop in Kelley and Ned’s neighborhood.

A nice old man in the car behind me got out and looked under the hood. Even I could see the gaping hole in the hose that was running gasoline. He would have helped me push my car out of the intersection, but, he said, he’d just gotten out of the hospital with a heart condition! I called Kelley and Ned who sent someone down to pick me up (I was only about three blocks from their house), but before he got there a nice younger man drove up and did push me onto the shoulder. A very speedy tow from AAA (typical, since I was in no hurry and had nowhere I needed to be…) rescued the car and hopefully it won’t take too long for my garage to fix.

I’m thankful that my car didn’t catch on fire, and thankful to Ben Surratt and Missy Raines for giving me a ride home after we were all stuffed full of hot dogs and s’mores. The general consensus seems to be that a squirrel chewed through the fuel line and I totally believe that because the squirrels I have in my yard are greedy, aggressive little buggers. But since I don’t have a way to get to work today, I’ll have plenty of time at home to finish catching up on all those emails!

Casey Henry

I wanted to give y’all an update on the new additions to the custom lesson catalog.

Just today I’ve recorded a lesson on the high break to “Fireball Mail.” I think this one used to be on the old TMM cassettes; I think that’s where I learned it. But it never made it onto video. Now it’s available again!

Last week I completed lessons on “Banjo Pickin’ Girl” in the key of C (which is where I sing it), and “Me and My Old Banjo” — the Osborne Brothers classic.

Other recent additions include “Dooley” (a Dillards original). The break I teach is not exactly what Doug Dillard played but is definitely inspired by it. And “Pig in a Pen,” the Stanley Brothers song that many people are familiar with because Ricky Skaggs recorded it.

They are all normally priced at $30 each, but from now until tomorrow at midnight (that’s Friday, August 27th at 11:59 p.m.) they’re all half price. Just email me if you’re interested!

Casey Henry

Yesterday the Henrys popped up in a couple of other places around the internet:

First, Ted Lehmann, photographer and blogger, posted an illustrated account of his visit to the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. He talks about the Dixie Bee-Liners about three-quarters of the way down the page and there are a couple pictures of yours truly.

That’s it for today. Our half-price sale is really keeping us hopping. It ends Friday at midnight, so order now if you haven’t already!

(edited 8/27/2010)

Casey Henry

Last weekend the Dixie Bee-Liners played at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival in Pennsylvania. It’s only a couple of hours from my parents’ house, so I drove up the day before and spent the night with them. We were minus our fiddler for this gig, because her Army-officer boyfriend was home on leave from Afghanistan for two weeks, so we instead had a dobro player in the form of Matt Ledbetter, who has played with the band before and already knew most of the material.  We did, however, need to practice all the songs on the set list so we met early in the day for a run-through.

Stuffed into a room at the Red Carpet Inn in Chambersburg we breezed through our standards: “Crooked Road,” “Bugs in the Basement,” “Ball and Chain,” “Yellow-Haired Girl”. The only different songs were, of course, the dobro tunes. Matt played “Fireball,” a tune that I love. J.D. Crowe played it when I saw him at the Ryman last month and when I took my break I tried to play my absolute Croweiest.

Matt also played “Reuben,” which is typically a no-brainer. In D tuning it uses the same-old rolls you use all the time in standard tuning. However. We started off the second set with “Reuben” and the next song was “Walls of Time” also in D, but one that I play in regular tuning out of D position. Clearly there would be no time to re-tune. That meant I had to play “Reuben” also in standard tuning out of D position. That makes it COMPLETELY different! The rolls are entirely different and, may I say, just a little challenging. Thank goodness, then, that the tune came in the second set so I had about ten hours to think about it and practice it before debuting this new arrangement on stage.

I did not, of course, spend the entire ten hours practicing it. We had to play our first set, after all, and there were friends to visit (the Steep Canyon Rangers, the Seldom Scene), and a workshop to do, and supper to eat (many thanks to Mary Jo and Charlie Leet, Mike and Gay Henderson, et al, for the high-class fare!).  I did devote a few minutes to it, though, on three separate occasions throughout the day and had a respectable break worked up by the time we hit the stage at 11:30 p.m. – long after my bedtime.

So that is my challenge to you this week. Take a song and play it in an entirely new way. That may just mean capoing up and playing it in a new key. Or taking a song you play in G and trying to play it in C position, or in D tuning (that would really be a challenge!).  Or trying a high break to a song that you’ve never played up the neck. It will make you see that tune in a whole different light!

Red Henry

Yesterday evening I went out to a local weekly jam session. This event started a couple of years ago and has turned into an informal outdoor concert, with a dozen or more pickers and a hundred or so listeners every week. The players are all local folks, and I enjoy playing music with them. But every so often something will happen to make the music hard to play.

When I arrived and joined the session yesterday evening, a person was playing bass and doing well with it. She knew all the songs, and played solidly on the beat. This really helped the jam session hold together.

After about an hour, though, she needed a break, and was replaced by another player. He got through the first number, though a little shakily. Then when a fiddle player kicked off the next tune (Golden Slippers, in G), the bass player started playing his notes on the off-beat, and stayed there.

Now, bass players play their notes on the ON-beat, not the OFF-beat. When a bass player is playing on the off-beat instead (like a mandolin’s rhythm), it makes the music sound pretty weird. This time, it seemed as if half the players stayed with the fiddler’s rhythm, and the others were wandering a bit between the fiddle and the bass. It was a pretty diffuse sound. I stopped playing after the first few beats of the tune, and decided it was time to pack up and go home.

I applaud all the folks who want to come out and play, but it’s better when the bass player just plays on the beat. It’s easier for everybody!

Casey Henry

I made it to England and back in one piece. The big festival we played there was really wonderful, and the little mini-festival was fun in a more low-key sort of way. Here are some pictures to illustrate the experience.

We flew out of Dulles Airport, which required a six-hour drive from our meeting place in Abingdon, Va. We took off Wednesday night, arriving in London at 10 a.m. the next morning. We had some trouble locating our driver, who was to take us to the hotel, so for a couple hours we made ourselves at home in the middle of the floor in Heathrow’s terminal one.

Buddy Woodward, Casey Henry, Rachel Renee Johnson, Todd Livingston and luggage.

As soon as we got to the hotel, Rachel and I headed straight to the bar to get some lunch. There I enjoyed my very first Guinness of the trip. So what if it was only 9 a.m. in Nashville??

Casey with the first Guinness of the trip.

It’s often the little differences that delight me the most when traveling abroad. This trip it was the milk that accompanied the tea/coffee tray in the hotel room. Instead of being powdered creamer like in the U.S., or even liquid milk in a little round foil-topped container, it was liquid milk in a tube. How cool!

Milk in a tube.

Friday we played at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention. Our driver, Martin Driver, picked us up and took us to the festival. Here we all are:

Martin Driver, Rachel Renee Johnson, Sav Sankaran, Todd Livingston, Buddy Woodward, Brandi Hart, Casey Henry

The stage was, I swear, like four stories tall. Just look at how Buddy and Rachel are dwarfed by it in the picture below. It was closed on three sides, so it was almost like playing indoors.

Rachel and Buddy next to the really huge stage.

This was our view from the stage. I think there were about 20,000 people in the audience. I really would have needed a wide-angle lens to capture the whole thing. This is about a quarter of the crowd.

The crowd at Cropredy.

After our set we signed autographs for nearly an hour. In addition to CDs and programs we got to sign funny hats, a pair of rain boots (still on the girl’s feet), the playing side of a CD, a beach ball that we had thrown into the crowd, the front of someone’s jacket while he was still wearing it, and a twenty pound note (which felt really weird. Is that even legal??) Here’s us after the signing in our stage duds:

The Dixie Bee-Liners.

The next day’s gig was at the Face Bar in Reading. A van came and picked us up for the two-hour drive. The mini-festival, called Cold Dog Soup, had five bands. The banjo player from Amy Harrison and the Secondhand Stringband interviewed me for his website. He also brought me beer. (He clearly did his research about how to get on my good side!) I was a bit nervous about getting the beer back home, since I had to check it and it was in glass bottles, but I carefully packed each bottle in a sock and wrapped up the cardboard bottle carrier in a bunch of t-shirts that we’d brought to sell but didn’t. All arrived home completely intact, to be enjoyed in the near future.

Harvey's beer sampler.

I met a couple Murphy Method students while there, which was cool. Overall the trip was too short and too busy. We didn’t get a chance to see anything but the roads between the airport, hotels, and gigs. I take that back. Rachel and I did walk around Banbury one evening, and we went to see the movie Inception. (Wow.) Hopefully the next trip (whenever that might be) will be at a more leisurely pace. But we met some really nice people and got to play a huge festival, so overall: a success.

Red Henry

Well, most of you have already found out that practicing your instrument helps your playing. Practicing may not make your playing perfect (the old saw is not literally true for anybody, in fact) but time spent playing your banjo, mandolin, guitar, bass, or other instrument does usually pay off in your ability to play better music.

But I’m also talking about the instrument itself. Except for banjos, the instruments we play are primarily delicate, precision wooden boxes designed to produce sound. This means that if they’re not played, they stiffen up and don’t sound as good. But if they’re played at least a few times a week, they’ll give their best and sound as good as they can!

This works two ways. If you don’t play very much, your mandolin or guitar may sound pretty dull when you pick it up, and you might not feel like playing it at all. But if you keep the instrument “played in,” it sounds really good when you play the first few notes, and those encourage you to play more. Much more.

It doesn’t take a lot of playing to keep your instrument loose and sounding good. Just as with your own practicing, even 15 minutes a day will be enough to do some good and help the instrument stay in good sound. So don’t spend a lot of time analyzing your playing or your instrument. Just play!

Red

Red Henry

In years past, recording yourself was very easy and cheap to do, with the inexpensive cassette recorders that a lot of folks had. Modern technology makes recording almost as easy (but not cheap) by using video cameras or small high-tech audio recorders. Even most digital cameras can take a movie–with sound– of your playing. But whatever your favorite device is, just record yourself playing a couple of tunes. Then play them back and see what you sound like.

When you hear your music played back, it might not sound quite as good as you thought it was going to. (My band-leading, banjo-playing brother-in-law Mike says that for him, recording music– and listening to it afterward– is as pleasant as having teeth pulled. But that’s just his opinion.) Now, I’m not saying this trying to discourage anybody from playing. If in the playback, you don’t sound like Earl, or Ralph, or J.D., or Murphy, that’s not a reason to give up playing, or even recording. The point is that you can really hear what your playing sounds like. You can hear all your notes, and your timing, and your rhythm. And if you are playing steadily enough on the tape to play along with yourself during the playback, that’s excellent! You’ve come a long way, and are ready to play with other people, whether you feel like it or not!

Sometimes when you hear yourself for the first time, you might be discouraged. But this doesn’t mean that your playing normally sounds the way it does on the tape. Any time the tape is rolling (or any other recording is going on), you’re going to have it on your mind, either consciously or unconsciously. And it might affect your playing. But the more practice you get recording, the better you’ll play each time you record, and when it comes time to listen back to the tune, the better you’ll sound. Recording and listening is great practice, and can sure help a person’s playing!

Record yourself!

Red.

Casey Henry

Today the Dixie Bee-Liners take off for England where we’ll play two days: Friday at a big folk festival in Cropredy put on by the Fairport Convention, Saturday at a mini-festival called Cold Dog Soup, held at the Face Bar in Reading. It’s great to have the opportunity to play in the UK, but a bummer our trip is so short. We come back Sunday morning.

I’m taking CDs with me (duh), packed in my checked luggage, as well as a few DVDs. It was hard to decide which DVDs to bring, since we have so many. I settled on ten, which was all that would fit in my suitcase and still leave room for clothes. Two each of: Beyond Vamping, Easy Songs, Slow Jam, Picking up the Pace, and Beginning Banjo Vol 1. I know it’s sometimes challenging for UK customers to get our products, and I don’t even know if I’ll see any of our students while I’m there, but if I don’t sell all the CDs and DVDs the people at the end of the night on Saturday are going to get some extremely good deals!

My plane reading material (because I know your’re curious) will be Barbara Kingsolver The Lacuna and Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds, both of which have been sitting on my unread shelf a long time.

I’d better go change my strings, so that I can take my wire cutters out of my case. They don’t like them in carry-on luggage. I once had my bracket wrench almost confiscated and I had to mail it back to myself from the airport. If ever there was a more innocuous piece of metal than a bracket wrench I don’t know what it would be! But it’s now worth $5.95 more to me than it was before.