Picking Time

I love it when it comes back to picking time. There are times of the year when you just feel like you need to be picking, probably because it is the time you have historically done a lot of picking, or maybe the time you were first learning. Both those are usually the same times for me. Spring through Fall is the normal times. Spring and Fall are my favorites as the temperatures are more moderate, and the cool evenings just feel good for sitting around a picking.

Lately, I have been doing a lot more banjo picking. When I first started in 1972, I started on guitar. Then about a year later, I got my first banjo. I worked a lot on banjo and became the banjo player for our first group, The Blood Mountain Boys. For a few years, I played mostly banjo, though still did some rhythm guitar practice. Then in the early 1980's as we got down to three in our group, and especially when we went to the duo we still are, I played more guitar than Banjo. Now I have gotten the banjo bug again, and am working on some new and some different banjo tunes and songs. Even got a couple of new DVD's to help, including John Hartford - makes me miss his musical presense and spirit even more.

Just like my guitar picking, I have a long way to go to where I want to be, but I am enjoying the journey and will try to share some of that as we perform. I don't have quite as many programs set up this year as I have the last couple of years, but may add more as time goes on.

The end of April, first of May, we played for the BMW Motorcycle Owners of Georgia's Mountain Rally in Hiawassee. Then we Played Unicoi on June 5th and had a great time. This Friday, June 25th we are at the Old Union County Courthouse at 7:00 pm. We always look forward to our concert at the old courthouse. The rest of our schedule is on our website, www.buckandnelson.com , though I may need to update it a little bit.

As always, we hope to see some of you at our shows. We have a good time and hope you will also. But at least if we have a good time, then we know 2 people will.

See you down the trail.

Nelson

Shining Times

The old time mountain men of the Rocky Mountains had a saying for good times. They would refer to them as shining times. I have had some shining times in my life and look forward to more days that will shine in my memory once they are over.

I have decided that while our lives are measured in years, we remember them in moments. I remember moments of great joy, moments of great sadness, moments of embarrassment, and moments of stupidity. I can remember how I felt in those moments and in many cases the words I said or that were said to me. However, I cannot recall what happened just before or after those moments. I guess I don't have enough gigs in my memory to remember everything, just those that deeply impress me in some way.

Those that do come back may times involve close friends, girlfriend(s) or wish were girlfriend(s), my wife, my children, my pets, my family (parents, grandparents, cousins), hiking, camping, skiing, canoing, riding motorcycles, driving, and more. I guess they are just things that happened in my life and effected me more deeply than I may have thought at the time.

I also remember missed chances to tell someone how important they were to me. Sometimes it may have been the last chance to do so, and I missed it. We all should be careful to avoid that.

In every part of my life, friendships, business, jobs, activities, music, theater, travel, politics, etc., it seems there are people that stand out and touch me more than the average person I meet in any of those endeavors. While I cannot name each one here, I am enormously appreciative of their being a part of my life, whether for a short time or for a long time.

My best friend all through grammar school, now called elementary and middle school, was Alan Tipton. He died while I was in college and I still miss him. I did go see him in the hospital a short time before he died and his mother said it was a good day for him. He knew me and we talked about school. After that they said he went downhill quickly and seldom knew much of what was going on. When I heard he had died, I felt bad that I had not gone back one more time. After much prayer, I decided it was not meant to be. I still think of him and appreciate the times we had growing up together.

Today I was practicing my guitar. Picking and singing and getting ready to record. While singing I was looking out the window in my guest bedroom/office/recording studio and saw a deer browsing on the hillside across the road. I may not remember that for a long time, but I am thankful that it happened all the same.

Playing a performing music has been one of the shining events in my life. It has been a pleasure to spend years picking with David, as we have complemented one another in our styles and attitudes. I hope we have many more years of performing together. We recently went once again to see Doc Watson perform. Many times we have driven to a Doc Watson Concert since around 1977, usually about 100 miles one way. Doc is great no matter who he is performing with. For my tastes, I think his very best music was the years we first started seeing him in person, as he was performing with Merle Watson (his son), and T. Michael Coleman on bass and harmony vocals. I know he still misses Merle and we do too. Doc recently (March 3rd) turned 87 years old. I commented to David that for us to keep up with Doc we would be playing at least another 31 years. I think I may have been more enthusiastic in this possibility than David was.

Playing with Doc this time was David Holt. We have followed David almost as long as we have Doc, beginning with his show on The Nashville Network, Fire on the Mountain. Then through recordings, concerts, radio and TV shows that he has done. David is an excellent musician and entertainer and we have tried to emulate parts of his performance techniques, believing that entertaining is important along with the music.

Raising my children was shining times also. I loved having small children and babies. I miss them being small, though I enjoy the people they have become. Someday I may have grandchildren to spoil, but not yet, and I am in no particular hurry. Those will be shining times too, I just know it.

I have great memories, a good life, and lots of dreams. I have not made a Bucket or Life list, though there are things that I hope to accomplish and am working toward several of them. Whatever it is that makes your life more enjoyable, I hope you are able to find it, to do it, to accomplish it. May you have shining memories, days, and dreams.

See you down the road.

Nelson

Getting back on track/trail

October and November I was doing very well. I was walking every day and was also increasing the length of my walks as well as the amount of weight in my packs. I was also watching my diet much better to make sure my blood sugar stayed low.

Since Christmas I have not done as well, unfortunately. I have not eaten as healthy as I know I should, though I have managed to keep my blood sugar in check. The worst part is that I have not been walking regularly, and that has been the result of several factors. First is by not eating as well, I did not feel as well. Second, after being so hot natured for most of my life, I found myself feeling cold in December. My daughter reminded me that it was likely a result of the blood thinning medicine I was having to take. She is probably right, but I still did not like it. Then the first 2 weeks of January were bitterly cold, with nights in the single digits and several days that did not get above freezing. I stopped walking during this time, other than some short walks on the treadmill in the house. As I have said before, it is much harder to walk on the treadmill, and I do not have a lot of patience for it.

With this change, my weight goals have been affected. When I started I was at 234 pounds, the highest of my life - though I was weighed at the doctors office at 242, but that was fully clothed, with boots and jacket on. That was when I bought the new scales for the house to allow me to keep up with just my weight, not the weight of my clothes.

I had gotten down to 227. This morning I was at 231.2, below my high point, but farther away from my target weight of 185. Time to get back on my 5 word diet - eat less and exercise more. Part of the eating problem was all the nice folks at Branan Lodge that kept bringing me goodies to eat, along with rich foods for the staff during the holidays. While I have good will power, there are times that I do not adequately exercise it, especially when it concerns food.

My goal of hiking all of the AT in Georgia before June is in jeopardy if I don't get back on track very soon. I was disappointed with how tired I got on our short 5.2 mile hike for my birthday. So now I am even worse than I was then. I have started back though and am already feeling more energy.

Part of this is physical and part is psychological. Thinking you can and being enthusiastic about doing it, makes up for a lot of physical unpreparedness, but not all of it. The psychological will help push me to get ready physically though. I am not as thrilled about the prospect of backpacking when the weather is in the teens and twenties right now. So I may be doing more of the day hikes for the next month and a half or two months, then getting going on the overnights. Though we are about to run into Vincent's soccer season. They are doing conditioning this week and tryouts are next week. The first game is Feb. 22.

I do have his game schedule though and can start to plan for weekends around all our schedules now. I guess we need to adopt trail names to use while on the AT (Appalachian Trail). BTW, I shared on Facebook about 2 shirts that I found on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website and liked. Need to let you know too. One said "Allergic to cities". I love that. The other was really good for hiking, "Same shirt, different day". Been there, done that.

Hiking and backpacking is a real help in the exercise area and for keeping blood sugar low. I also love eating what is cooked outdoors. The flavor is always so good, and after a big day of hiking, the stomach is very much ready for some nourishment. Talking about it is getting me to wanting to hit the trail. Gotta keep that frame of mind.

It would be nice to upgrade my camera also. The one I have takes pretty good pictures, but not the kind of photography my old Minolta SLR would take. Maybe I will use the old Minolta some until I can upgrade my digital.

The other thing I am doing is regrowing my beard, which feels better in the cold weather and in the woods. I got a wild hair and shaved it off about a week and half ago. Why I would do that in the middle of January is a mystery. I immediately wished I had left it on and have now started the regrowth. The worst part of it is having about 3 weeks of looking grubby and unkempt.

I love the winter woods, however I am looking forward to spring and seeing the new growth and to watch the wildlife become more abundant.

Music - Pursuing and Pursued

After a show a couple of years ago, a gentleman asked David and I if we did this for a living. My answer was that we had to work for a living and we did this for a life.
Music has been around me all my life. My dad's family all played music. He was the only one that did not play an instrument. My Grandpa Thomas would teach gospel singing in the area, one uncle played with a bluegrass group, another uncle had a gospel quartet, and still another had a natural talent for music and was always singing or playing something, though he was not in a group as such. When he was working on the fiddle, he borrowed the bow from my fiddle for a time until he got one to go with his fiddle. He lived directly across the road from us and I remember summer nights hearing him on his front porch playing. No lights on, just enjoying the night and playing on his porch.
Several cousins also played music. Several were piano players and others with guitars or such. One has played with several professional groups over the years. Another helped get money during college by playing at coffeehouses and such.
I remember even when I was small singing and making up songs as I played. My older sister once made a comment to me about that, which I always remembered as I had not noticed it as much as she had. When I was really small, I am told that I would play my toy banjo and sing for everyone that came in. Guess I am just continuing that natural tendency.
As I said in an earlier post, I was always drawn to music and planned to play something. I put that on a back burner until getting the guitar in 1972. Then I went full blast and spent hours a day working on the instrument. After a couple of years on the guitar, I became interested in the banjo. Back to see Cecil Lance an buy and little $80 banjo he had at his store. I also got an instruction book and tapes to get started. I remember a few times going to sleep as I lay on bed doing banjo rolls.
I then played mostly banjo for a few years as we formed a band and we had 3 other guitar players already. Those were fun years and I was able to learn a lot as I listened to different people and also played with these other musicians.
But it is hard to keep a band together and we began to drift on to other things. Next we played as a trio with Jimmy Waters, David, and myself. I still played a good bit of banjo, but began to drift back to more guitar as well. We also traded off playing the upright bass during those years as well. This is the time I began to sing too. Jimmy was an outstanding vocalist and helped me fnd my voice and stay in key. I am so happy this happened as I love to sing. I don't think I am a great singer still, but am much better and truly enjoy singing. The music is great, but it is the songs that covey the message.
As Jimmy moved to other areas, David and I began our career as a duo. There are great things about playing in a full band, though I have found I enjoy playing as a duo or trio most. There are things you can do as a duo that you can't as a band, and vice versa. I enjoy listening to other duos and trios as well. I think it is a more intimate feel to the music, and brings out a little of the personal side of playing music.
It just struck me that I may want to start taking more time with these posts and rereading them to make sure they flow well and are readable. With this I am simply recounting some general things that happened.
The title of this post explains a little of my, and David's, relationship with music. It has pursued us and we have pursued it. When I don't play, there is something missing in my life and I do not feel right until I begin to play again. There is always another song I want to learn, another lick I need to add to my picking, and sometimes another instrument that catches my ear and says, don't you want to play me too.
While I have had to work for a living, I have also worked hard to make sure my schedule allowed me to still play music.
A cap I got from Cecil Lance says "Born to pick, forced to work".
See you down the road.

Getting Started

The summer of 1971 I had just graduated high school. A family friend, and man who had bought some properties from my dad, had asked me to check on his two cabins periodically through the summer. The reason for this is that a year before, someone had taken a truck to one of them and taken almost all his furniture and other items from the fairly secluded cabin. In the fall he paid me an amount for the summer. From this pay I kept out about $90 to be used to buy a guitar.
I added another $10.00 in the spring and went to see Cecil Lance at Lance Dry Goods and Music Store. He had a nice little Yamaha FG180, but wanted to get $130 for it and the chipboard case. I went to my dad to see about getting the difference from him. He called Cecil and negotiated it down to $110 and I went to pick up my new guitar.
So the spring quarter of my freshman year at UGA, I began my road to playing music. I listened especially to everything John Denver came out with and tried my best to learn some of his music. Vocally it was way beyond me, and instrumentally was also beyond my abilities at the time. Still I worked on songs such as House of Rising Sun, Blowing in the Wind, Proud Mary, and some folk songs. Some friends would kid me about the 3 songs I knew. This did not bother me as I was working on more songs, was proud to know at least three, and knew that was more than they could do.
For most of my life I had been drawn to music for reasons that I did not understand. But it was pursuing me and now I was pursuing it. My dad had bought a fiddle for me before I started to school. I still have that fiddle and will tell you more about it later. I also had an old Stella guitar. Unfortunately, it had a warped neck and was almost impossible to fret. My new Yamaha allowed me to really start trying to play music.
David Buchanan and I were already friends from high school and our parents house was about 200 yards apart. David worked as a lifeguard at Vogel in the summers. My family put in a swimming pool at our house, mainly for my younger sister. She and her friends would use the pool during the day. I and my friends would use the pool at night, often at 11:00 pm, midnight and even later. The pool was heated, which helped, since the night air was usually around 60 degrees or cooler.
David already new some guitar and had been playing some around church, and school chorus. At that time we decided to work some together on music. This started a musical partnership that has lasted ever since, with several different incarnations, and a few times performing apart as well.
The first incarnation of performing with David came as the Blood Mountain Boys. That began after I had taken up the banjo and he had begun to play the mandolin. We picked up Mike Toms of Warner Robins on guitar and lead vocals, as well as another Blairsville friend Rusty McClure on bass and bass vocals, as well as being all our entertainment with his humor and funny stunts. Later we added Steve Colwell on guitar and vocals, and even later Mike's friend Jay Bryant joined us.
Over the years I have mentally beat myself up for all the time I spent on music, instead of concentrating on working to make more money. The bottom line is that the music has been at least as important to my life as money could ever have been. It would be hard to imagine my life without the music in it. I have been happiest on stage, though I still get a little nervous before going on. Once started, I feel at home.
I have now gone through several instruments and have the best guitar I have ever owned and the one that fits me completely, my Gallagher Doc Watson. I also have a banjo that I expect to stay with from now on as well, a GTR copy of a pre-war Gibson Mastertone. It is wonderful to play on these outstanding instruments. It is like that feeling I got when I first played on that Yamaha and realized a dream to play a guitar. I am a long way from playing as well as I want to still, but a long way from that beginning. If I could have heard how I play now when I started, I would have thought "If I could only play that well, I would be happy". Satisfaction with how you play is a moving line. I am happy to be where I am, but feel a strong desire to continue to improve.

Welcome to Nelson's Notes

In the fall of 1998, David "Buck" Buchanan decided he did not want to perform music for a while. We had been performing together as a duo for around 16 years at that time. David is the better musician, but I am a bit more of a ham. So I decided that I would continue to perform as a solo act.

David has periodically taken time off from performing. Each time he has spent the time learning more and has always come back stronger than before. This was no different. Many of my solo show, I would look up and see David in the audience. Then we would take time after the show to do some picking together.

As another outlet for me during this time, I started a newsletter called Nelson's Notes. This was a play on musical notes as well as written notes, and flowed well with my name. I mailed several of these newsletters between May of 1999 and Summer of 2005. I had been working on another, that never quite got finished. Yesterday, I decided that I could do a blog to replace that newsletter, and use the same name. There are things I did on the newsletter, that I cannot here, such as various columns and themes. I did have a performance calendar that won't be here, but you can find that at http://www.buckandnelson.com/ There are also things I can do here that I could not on the newsletter, such as photos.

The newsletter had stories, jokes, quotes I liked, copies of e-mails I enjoyed, and some writings I had on things that were on my mind. When I started the newsletter it had several ideas in mind. One was another creative outlet for me. Another was that I had gotten the idea the I might like to try writing, such as essays or articles for magazines, and maybe even a book in the future. I thought this would give me some practice toward that thought and goal I think it was a help, and I enjoyed producing them. I had several positive responses and felt good about that.

The timing of the issues was a little erratic, varying from 3 or 4 times a year to only twice a year. This format may make me write things a little more often, but will not have all the variety that was on a single newsletter. The parts can be put in at different times. I hope you find some things here that you enjoy.

My children are wanting me to write up some of my memories of growing up in the mountains. I may put some of those essays on here as well. I'll see as time goes. I have an idea for this, but not yet a firm plan. If you have suggestions, please leave them as a comment or e-mail me. Thank you for your visit.