Ed Henry's Bluegrass Portrait Collection

 Maryland

The  Bluegrass Photo collection of  Ed Henry is available for sharing, as long as I'm credited by name if any of these photos go into hard-copy print or any social media outlet.  By copyright law  they're mine and each has been marked either secretly or blatantly. I have all the originals. If a photo is not mine I will give credit where credit is due. The collection began in Maryland and I try to focus my photo-shooting on Maryland musicians who are actively contributing to the Maryland bluegrass scene. If an artist is from another State I will make note of it. I focus my time on Maryland Bluegrass because I think Maryland has in the past, and continues today  to make a large contribution to the history of  bluegrass music nationally. This collection is for all those who through their talent and creativity bring joy and pleasure into the lives of their listeners and followers. Many of the non-marylanders shown, play regularly in Maryland-based bands.

Virginia

Virginia

 Virginia

 Maryland

 West Virginia

Marv Ashby  -  Beardie Bassman  -  West Virginia

Maryland

 

Maryland

West Virginia

West Virginia

Maryland

Darren Beachley  (Maryland)  -  Terry Wittenberg (Maryland)  -  Dave Propst (West Virginia)

Darren Beachley  and Ethan Hughes   (Maryland)

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

 

Maryland 

Warren Blair - Maryland

Bobby Lundy and Warren Blair       Maryland

 West Virginia

 Virginia

West Virginia

Scott Brannon  -  West Virginia

New Jersey

Virginia

 Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Pennsylvania

 Maryland

Virginia

 West Virginia

Jim Williams - Rick Jones - Martha McEvoy - Doug Kreiss - Steve Sadler

 Maryland

 Ira Gitlin  (Maryland)          Bruce Day  (Virginia)

Maryland

Tom Gray and Gary Cole  -  Virginia

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Dee Gunter - with Mark Seitz and Steve Streett    (Maryland)

Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Darlene Harris  -  Martha McEvoy  -  Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland 

 Maryland

 Maryland

Pennsylvania

Virginia

 Virginia

Dave Hurt - Winchester, Virginia

Maryland

West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia

Maryland

 James King - Photo by Ed Henry - Maryland

Maryland 

Virginia

Linda Lay  -  Virginia

Linda Lay  and  Kathy Davis   - Virginia

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Virginia

Patrick McAvinue (Maryland)  and Seam Loomis (Virginia)

Virginia

Virginia

Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Virginia

 Virginia

West Virginia

 Maryland

 Clayton Martin - Aaron Martin -  Herb Martin, III    Maryland

Clayton Martin - Aaron Martin      Maryland

Maryland

Pennsylvania

 The Meek Family   -   Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Maryland

 Maryland

 Virginia

Virginia

Joyce Miller and T.J. Lundy    -    Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

 Maryland

 Maryland

 Bobby Joe Owens and Evan Clark        Maryland

Delaware

Pennsylvania

Maryland

West Virginia

West Virginia

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Pennsylvania

West Virginia

Virginia

 Virginia

Virginia

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Virginia

Maryland

 Frankie Short and Bobby Lundy     -      Maryland

Virginia

 West Virginia

Yvonne and Rex Smith      Maryland

Maryland

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

John Streett   and  Steve Streett          Maryland

 Maryland

Pennsylvania

 Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Harold Tipton and Frankie Short

 Harold Tipton          Brian Eldreth     Mike Hartnett        (Maryland)

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Maryland

Pennsylvania

 New Jersey

Virginia

Gaven Largent and Marshall Wilborn     Virginia

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Maryland

 Virginia

This site will be constantly updated in the coming months.

Springfield Exit in Winchester

Springfield Exit performing at the George Washington Hotel in Winchester, 20 November 2014 (with Tracey Rohrbaugh and Scott Brannon)

20 November 2014: Winchester, Virginia


      Sometimes last minute decisions are the best decisions. It was one of those afternoons where I was itching to hear some good bluegrass. David Lay left me a message earlier in the week that Springfield Exit would be playing in Winchester at the George Washington Hotel. They've been playing there regularly for almost a year, monthly, but something would always come up and I'd have to miss it. And besides, it's hard to get out on a Thursday night and extremely difficult to get to Winchester from my Vienna, Virginia location considering the traffic insanity of  having to traverse Loudoun County at evening rush hour. I love Vienna. A good place to hunker down while the rest of the world goes berserk all around us. I hope the day will come when the Mayor and Town Council finally vote to build a Chinese-style, 30-meter high brick wall around our town borders. There would be guard towers on each end of  Maple Avenue (Rt. 123) and everyone cutting through our town to get home (or try to escape parts of Rt. 66) would be charged a Viet Cong road tax. I'll have to bring up my plan for public debate at the next Town Council meeting.

      You always hear about these people who make a last-minute decision not to get on an airplane or they make a wrong turn in the road and it saves their lives. Life is like that. It might be a stretch to talk about bluegrass music in the same fashion. But back to last-minute decisions. I've been to too many bluegrass events to realize that being there was one of the best things I could have done that afternoon or evening. Old saws come to mind such as "You only go round once in life" or "I was there" as in seeing the Rolling Stones or Luciano Pavarotti. I love to get involved in conversations with the bluegrass crowd. The talk usually revolves around past performances, seeing something happen, or old memories. It's great to be able to sit there and say, "Yeah. I was there!" My basic bluegrass addiction problem is hating to miss something. That's why I have to keep going back to the Source for the constant medication. When I got back into bluegrass after years of ignoring it, one of those first authentic doses of realism came to me in the form of experiencing Scott Brannon and the Scott Brannon Band one Saturday night out at the Lucketts Old School House in the tiny village of Lucketts, Virginia. And then later on at the annual Lucketts Fair I ran into Springfield Exit. Linda Lay sang a Patsy Cline-channeled version of "Sweet Dreams." I was hooked. The bluegrass needle was in my arm and I was off to the land of  Jimmy Martin and Don Reno. Lately the addiction has also taken me back to classic country; something I never paid much attention to.

      The late afternoon traffic isn't all that bad once you pass Purcellville going west on Route 7 toward Winchester. Amazing how the bedroom-commuter housing developments end once you get to the top of the hills overlooking the expansive beauty of the Shenandoah Valley. And you want it to cease. Stop right there. No more housing developments beyond this beautiful Virginian vantage point. I'm reminded to slow down on Rt. 7 with all the flashing blue lights of cop cars catching the non-vigilant. An easy ride into Winchester and easy parking on the street along side the old George Washington Hotel on Piccadilly Street. It's a cold late Autumn evening and dark already at 5:00 pm. The pedestrian-thoroughfare re-designed downtown area of Winchester is deserted, cold and bleak. The surprise was yet to come as I surveyed my location; that moment of serendipity that I'm attempting to explain; my ultimate bluegrass high. I got to Winchester in better time than I expected so I grabbed a bite to eat at a little cafe near the Hotel. That was a mistake. There was plenty of food offered buffet-style as part of the admission price at the bluegrass performance but I didn't know that beforehand. I'll know it the next time I go out to the George Washington Hotel. At 6:00 I ambled over to the hotel and went into the bar-entrance figuring well, if it's bluegrass it'll probably be in the local saloon. After all, I hang out in enough smelly beer-joints in Maryland to know that there's never anything elegant about the bluegrass scene. The bar was empty (a nice looking bar!). The wait-staff told me "Oh no. Go upstairs to the Grand Ballroom!" and gave me directions to reach it. I passed glass cases full of old, historic stuff reminding the customers of  faded glory days for the hotel. Everyone in the hotel seemed eager to please.

      People were coming and going and trying to pay the entree fee. I saw flannel shirts and cowboy boots so I knew I was at the right place. Twelve-seat round banquet tables were the setting underneath extraordinary chandeliers that threw a nice lighting effect on the French-draped windows. By ballroom standards the venue is not large, but large enough to know that it would take a lot of people to fill it. It was filled as the evening progressed and after the first break most of the food and coffee was gone too. Wait staff stood by to help the crowd dip into the fancy line of hot chafing pans. David Lay came up to greet me as I stood there with what must have seemed a dumb-founded look on my face. I'm thinking, I should have worn a tie instead of my First Marine Division field jacket and Levi's. I don't like to bother the entertainment when I know they've got a thousand things on their mind before the fun begins,  but I wanted to know the full story behind acquiring such a neat venue and like, what does this place cost for instance? I kept my questions to myself. In the end, when Dave had more time to talk, I discovered all that. Now it was time to settle in for the music.

      'All that' really doesn't matter. Not when you're going to spend an evening with history. That Springfield Exit is the last vestiges of  the Johnson Mountain Boys is known in the annals of those who keep track of such bluegrass music historical information. So are the accomplishments of Scott Brannon. The living history surprise of the evening was Bill Yates, who I didn't recognize at first because he had recently had major surgery on his jaw and his face was badly swollen on the left side. Tracey Rohrbaugh was there too, another key member of Scott Brannon's band. It was going to be an interesting evening, especially after David Lay announced that Springfield Exit member Linda Lay was at home with the Flu (the main reason for recruiting Scott Brannon for reinforcement). The show must go on as they say. You can view it as a disaster of bad circumstances or call forth your professional worth. It came forth in spades when Scott Brannon launched into the song "Lorena." The crowd went wild and it was all uphill from there. Special recognition is warranted for Tom Adams (banjo) who guided the evening in his role as master of ceremonies and spokesman for such an illustrious gathering. It's refreshing to hear someone who can actually enunciate and clearly name names and song titles - and do it with a sense of humor. The old language teacher is coming out of me. The evening progressed. The evening was as defined and refined as the room in which it took place. Scott Brannon took the lead and after a few numbers started bringing in the guests in the room. There was authoritative definition and strength given to the old chestnuts, such as "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke" broken up with songs by Dylan and Johnny Cash. Marshall Wilborn (what can you say about Marshall that hasn't already been said?) was introduced to do "Freight Train Blues" and got a rousing round of applause.

      The second set brought on Tracey Rohrbaugh, Bill Yates, and a young Dobro-player from Winchester by the name of Gaven Largent. From what I heard he's only 18 years. He's good. The test of a new recruit is to see if they're good enough to pick with the Big Boys; be able to keep up and not stumble on a harmony line. The Dobro is a god-awful instrument that can be annoying in the wrong hands. The proof of the pudding is the facial gestures and body language you get from the older guys when a younger man or woman is on-stage. The gestures tell you everything you need to know about a right or wrong fit. The boys were broadly smiling this evening when Gaven played, and that's a lot of positive recognition between musicians.Gaven's contribution to the evening was honestly worth the whole trip to Winchester. Other highlights were Marshall's "Sittin' On Top of The World," done exquisitely slow and deliberate, and yes, Bill Yates joining in to sing "I'll break out Tonight." That he could do it with the recent jaw surgery and do it well, was nothing less than amazing. One of the biggest responses was when Tracey and Scott joined in on their signature duet "Emotion."

      Two rousing encores and two standing ovations and everyone packed up. Another night of precision bluegrass and a full house underneath the fancy chandeliers. Springfield Exit will return to the ballroom December 18th and several more times until the final show on April 9th, 2015. I asked David Lay if this was the usual crowd and he said "Yep." Most bluegrass bands would fight tooth and nail to get this kind of audience participation - any night or day of the week. It's proof of the total package of talent that is Springfield Exit.

Springfield Exit: David Lay, Linda Lay, David McLaughlin, Tom Adams, and Marshall Wilborn.

The George Washington Hotel ( a Wyndham Hotel) is at:
103 East Piccadilly Street, Winchester, Virginia.

The doors open at 6:00 with an optional dinner and the show starts at 7:00.

 

Dave McLaughlin, David Lay, Marshall Wilborn, and Scott Brannon

Gaven Largent and Marshall Wilborn

           

Would You Turn Away a Beautiful Gift?

11 November 2014

   God knows we've got enough ugliness and trouble in the world. We humans are such curious creatures. We live in an age of greed and self-indulgence and an encroaching technology that seems to want to bleed us of our treasure and personal privacy. And then something like this comes along: an artist who's willing to give all his talent away for nothing in return, except to offer an opportunity to hear his artistic voice. What an interesting conversation I've had with this young man who recently arrived from Italy; guitar in hand and enough extraordinary talent to make your head spin. After he explained his latest project to me, as an American capitalist consumer, used to getting rooked on every investment and being shoved around by charlatans, I asked the inevitable American question: "How much is this deal going to cost me?" "Nothing" he replied, "It's a free gift." he said with a straight face. Further explanation told me how it would work: click on to his website, sign up, and every month or so through internet magic a piece of music arrives. You'll get a full introduction to the voluminous recordings of  Flavio Sala, which he's been working on since he arrived in Maryland in April. And like he said, it's all fully explained on www.flaviosala.com. No tricks. No catches. No scams. I've already had the Flavio Sala Experience, so I know what's waiting for the new initiate. Quite a few of my close friends have also had the Flavio Sala Experience, so you can help too. You can share this little vignette with all your friends.

He's Here at a Simple Click

Flavio Sala at the Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies

"An Alien With Extraordinary Ability"

6 November 2014 - Timonium, Maryland

      Flavio Sala greeted me at the door in a bathrobe. I wasn't expecting that. He had that signature Flavio smile that I did expect and he gave me a big Italiano hug that was a bit disconcerting. In my world it's OK for two combat Marines to hug each other; maybe I'll hug my wife and old girl-friends, but I'm still a little put off by the ubiquitous American habit of hugging each other. The same way I'm disconcerted and put off right now by the American fad-habit of everybody calling everybody else "Guys." Deep down I'm trying to express that I'm disconcerted and put off by insincerity and a creeping disease of bad manners among the American people. At the gate recently at Dulles Airport, getting ready to fly to California, the young woman representing Virgin America Airlines at Gate 63 got on the speaker and said, "Hi. We'll be lining up soon. If you guys could look at your boarding passes and see your Group Letter . . ." I noticed lots of people just staring at her. I wondered whatever happened to "Ladies and Gentlemen" as a way to greet people or make a general announcement. I blame it all on the TV show "Friends." (which I never watched, by the way, because it  and that era of television is the current source of all the snide and smarm that infects our current bad manners and bad speech patterns). It irritates me. But then I'm old and of another generation. And I'll continue to fight the slide into the abyss of bad manners and bad speech patterns because I and others with degrees in English know that it inevitably leads to the destruction of civilizations.

      I excused Flavio's enthusiasm. After all, he's Italian, and recently transplanted to our great nation. I returned his hug with a strong male handshake that tried to impart a message to him. American male friends shake hands like in the old days when two mountain men who hadn't seen each other in a year or two of trapping beaver in the Rocky Mountains would suddenly meet up at the same time near a mountain stream. They would shake hands, maybe trade knives or hatchets, and then ask each other if they had any coffee or beans. It was about survival in a harsh landscape and communion with another human being. It went deeper than addressing the world with "You Guys" and realizing that bad manners with another human being might get you killed. I tried to impart in the male handshake with Flavio that I took this stuff seriously. And after that greeting I felt badly that I had gripped his right hand so tightly. I've got a strong grip even though I'm old. Flavio is only 31 years old and has his whole life ahead of him as a classical guitarist. Those hands are golden and need protected like a beautiful rare butterfly you discover in your garden. The true beauty of the hands is the reality that he hopes those hands will carry him into the future of a career here in the U.S. music business. It's an immigrant dream as old as our country; a familiar story. But there is always a new twist in America. What's fascinating to me is the combination of parts that have been conjured together in this latest episode of an immigrant landing on America's shores.

      Ruth Perella Barker came into the room in the midst of greeting Flavio again after a month or two of  not seeing him. Ruth has family connections with Flavio's family back in Italy. Dealing in boring conversations has never been a part of my lifestyle. I've never had a boring conversation around Ruth and Flavio. I met Ruth and Flavio in the most crazy circumstances you could ever imagine. In the midst of  last summer Ruth sent out an e-mail for help to a community of friends of  Italian descent in suburban Baltimore. A young Italian was coming to the U.S. and needed help obtaining a long-term visa. He was a guitarist; a classical guitarist, and very good, according to the original e-mail. Could anyone out there get him a gig so he could prove to the U.S. Immigration officials that he was serious about staying here for a while? Robert Miller and a group of  hard-core bluegrass music fans provided him with that opportunity. I was there the night it happened. In front of an audience that is used to hearing "Three Chords and the Truth" Flavio Sala stunned everyone with the Truth. To say that bluegrass music is the lesser of all genres of music and has no importance except to a bunch of Appalachian provincials is to proclaim your royal snobbery to the coterie of the Philistines you hang out with. In the audience were some of  Maryland's best guitar-players and banjo-pickers and it was they who immediately identified with what was happening before them. Flavio bent the rules, mesmerized, went from Venezuelan and Russian classical composers then blew everyone away by finishing up with Carlos Santana. Everyone agreed with two factors: the program wasn't long enough and they'd never heard anything like that before. The real musicians who were on board recognized the most important musical factor that evening and the discussions were fascinating. In music all things are possible, and there's always a new way to look at things.

      Ruth and Flavio and I had business to attend to and I wanted to quickly get that out of the way. I had one more opportunity to talk to Flavio previous to today and it only spurred more personal interest on my part, to talk to Flavio. He loves to talk. He's personable and easy to talk to. And he's young. To me, he's just a kid with a whole life ahead of him. When you're 70 years old you experience this sudden life-change. Everyone else in the world looks like a punk-kid! It becomes easier, too, to separate the serious ones from the non-serious. Some burn with a bright fire. Others wait for everything to be handed to them on a plate; like the 30-year old kid who explained to me one time on an air flight that since he worked for the government he could expect a good salary and a good retirement someday and not have to worry about anything. Everything he said told me everything I needed to know about who he was. I wasn't interested in his conversation. I wanted to chuckle to myself and say something obnoxious like "Since I'm Catholic, I'll pray for you" but that would have been cruel to someone so youthful. Ruth said "let me show you something." She pulled up a video on her iPad. It's a grainy video of a family dinner party in Italy that she attended. A scrawny 13-year old is unconcerned and uninterested, like most 13-year olds, and he's isolated himself in a corner with a guitar that looks as old and as worn as the hills. The kid doesn't seem to care about what's going on around him. You only notice his connectivity to the guitar, and the beauty of the sounds he's producing on that old instrument. Having been born into a recognized family of musicians in rural Italy you can understand that he's a prodigy destined for a career of classical training. Today, a conversation with Flavio reveals a fire way beyond the confining box of Italian 'classical' training that had as its main desire, to confine the spark

      Flavio entered into the classical training that he seemed destined for and of course, he did well. His degrees, pedigrees, resume, his performance appearances and accomplishments, his Curriculum Vitae all suggested success or future success at an early age, as long as his thinking remained cubical. My conversations with him kept summoning to mind images of boxes and how a young artist never wanted to be confined to a cage or a box (like the young bureaucrat who had already decided his retirement plans - locked up in a box). When we first met I asked him the pointed and blunt question as to why he was here. His answered was just as blunt. He wanted out of Italy and wanted out of  Europe. The next set of statements from one so youthful also intrigued me. "It's just me, my guitar, and the internet" came out of his mouth as quickly and as easily as the young bureaucrat's vapid argument for wasting away his life in non-creativity. It's not all one-way. He's deeply grateful to his mentors, his old teachers, and the Italian classical music 'system' that nurtured him and launched him. But as Flavio points out, the world of  the music business is changing rapidly, ever more so in the U.S.  After spending some years in South America, Flavio set his sights on the United States as the natural place to expand his career and rather than fight it, as the cubical thinker would, become a part of the internet revolution that is changing art and especially changing music and the way it's purchased and appreciated.

      Dreams are great things to spur one on to greater actions - or maybe great disasters. We grow older, more cautionary, and even worse,  maybe less creative. It was all well and good to hear a young man talk about his dreams, but I'm more interested in hearing about the Game Plan. Age also endows you with a sense of the practical - or is supposed to. I know a lot of old fools. And I'm certainly not the brightest man in my world. Today was an opportunity to gain more insight (I hope) into Flavio's game plan for winning hearts and minds. It sounds fantastically simple and I'll express it in his words: "I want people to hear what I have to offer - and it would be great to connect to those who hear it, appreciate it, and maybe meet them some day at one of my concerts." CD sales and internet downloads aren't even a piece of  his game-plan right now. As far as he's concerned they're a dead issue. "Everything will come from a public's recognition that I exist and can be accessed on the Internet." You could easily box that up as the talk of fools too, but a two-hour conversation with a young Italian immigrant ( who does need to be heard and does need to be accessed on the internet) convinced me,  the Old Gentleman,  (I refuse to use the word "Guy") that I need to change my way of thinking about what's on the horizon of the American and World music business.

     Ruth Perella Barker walked me out to my car and thanked me for visiting. I told her I would see her and Flavio at some future concerts that were coming up fast during the holidays. "He's doing well." I said. "How's the visa-thing working out?" "Better than expected." she replied, and then she continued,
"You know what his classification status says on the visa?"
"No." I said.
" An Alien With Extraordinary Ability."
We both laughed. Ruth gave me a big hug. It's OK for Ruth to hug me. For once maybe our government speaks the truth. Maybe it was issued by that same rubber-stamp bureaucrat I met on the airplane.

 

Flavio Sala and Ruth Perella Barker, Flavio's U.S. Manager.

         
Contact: flaviosala.com
Latest Discographical Project: Mi Guitarra y Mis Amores
Concert opportunity:  Concert at Temple Emanuel, Reisterstown, Maryland, December 13th, 2014 at 7:30.