top of page
Randy Wilson
Folk Artist
Sourwood Mountain Muse
Hello Friends and Neighbors,
I am back in the mountains of eastern Kentucky calling dances and doing some gigs. This week I am at Pine Mountain Settlement for some songs and dances with middle schoolers, then over to Cowan Creek Community Center for a Halloween dance. Back to Pine Mountain Settlement School next week with some more kids.
I want to alert you about the Hindman Settlement School Dulcimer Homecoming on November 19-21. Dulcimer history seminars, concerts, and dulcimer playing workshops for everyone. Look that up on the Hindman Settlement School home page. The Hindman Settlement School is the cradle of the dulcimer. Uncle Ed Thomas made some 2000 there there from 1890-1930. And eastern Kentucky's Jean Ritchie made the instrument famous worldwide. I will be there with a host of other great musicians and storytellers. I will be doing beginning dulcimer lessons, concerts, and a seminar on The Dulcimer and the Early Song Catchers. Come and learn more about it!
Cowan Creek Mountain Music School is gearing up for Winter Cowan- online lessons on a variety of traditional instruments. I will be doing workshops on old time banjo styles- brush stroke and old time thumping on the banjo.
Look on Cowan Creek Mountain Music webpage for details.
My blogs will now focus on music and history here in the mountains. Come with me in the journey!
"A Bunch of Heatherns Live Over There"
"A bunch of heatherns", that's what my Dad said when I moved back to the mountains, living up on Old House Branch. I moved back to the mountains from the San Francisco Bay area in northern California. I was working in a school in the latino district of town- inner city school....good school...loved the kids and teachers...but I was singing songs like Old Groundhog and Whoa Mule, Whoa. I'd walk the halls and look out the window at all those city buildings and ask myself, "
Randall Wilson
5 days ago4 min read
Carcassonne
"Joe," I said, "It's snowing! You think there's going to be a dance up on Carcassonne?" "Oh, yeah," he replied, "There will be a big crowd on a night like this!" I had my doubts. Who is going to show up for a dance on top of a mountain on a night like this!? But I fired up my car and off we went up Elk Creek. And it was snowing and sticking to the road. And the road up there is mighty steep. But people were on the road and we were pushing cars and sliding all over that
Randall Wilson
Oct 203 min read
The Sea
Torii on the reef. Snowbound Mt. Fuji Look out on that rocky reef that reaches out into the sea. A Torii, the gateway to sacred space. Sometimes words just won't do. Here is the sound of pounding waves and the rocky shores of Japan's Michinoku Coastal Trail- a meditation for your day. Here is Yoko at Zuiganji temple. Peek through the gate. Matsushima, the islands and the sea. Matsushima- Pine Tree Islands Yoko
Randall Wilson
Oct 201 min read
Voices From the Mines
"I went out to my well. For the last week or so I was getting less and less water out of my well. Well, I just stuck my head in the well head and wondered, and then I just hollered down that well,'WHERE IS ALL MY WATER?' Well, a voice came back from down below,'It's all down in this mine!!!'" Voices from the mines. Here are stories I have heard from coal miners and friends over the course of 30 years doing music in eastern Kentucky schools and nursing homes. "We were tra
Randall Wilson
Oct 105 min read
Mount Fuji
Here is the touchstone of Japanese culture. Mount Fuji. At over 12000 feet, it towers over central Japan. Everyone looks for it, and addresses it as their friend. "Can you see Fuji San today? Can you see it?" everyone asks. It is the iconic center of the nation. Many a hiker try the pilgrimage to the top of this volcanic mountain, latest eruption in 1707. There are way stations to spend the night. Or you can do it in one day. We tried the climb and stayed in a climb
Randall Wilson
Oct 102 min read
Japan Major League Baseball
The score is 4-3. Hiroshima Carps lead the home team, Yokohoma Baystars. It is the bottom of the ninth inning and the Yokohoma Baystars are at bat. They have a man on third. There are two outs. Maki, a pretty good hitter, at the plate. Yoko, Baba, me, and Goro San, a family friend from Yokosuka, are about three rows up on the third base side. Great seats!!! Goro San has his lucky Baystars jersey on him. It has the signatures from all the players on the back!!! His fr
Randall Wilson
Oct 12 min read
Joe and Gay Nell Begley, Blackey, Ky.
C. B. Caudill started the country store in Blackey, Ky. His daughter, Gay Nell Caudill married Joe Begley and they took over the store. My friend said, "They didn't want her to marry Joe." "Why?", I asked. "Because he was a wild man", she replied. Well, he was a free spirit. I'd have to say that. After all, he quit school in the eighth grade because the history books called native victories "massacres" and soldiers actions "victories". And this had to be somewhere in t
Randall Wilson
Oct 14 min read
The Old Country Store
In 1973 I was at Centre College in Danville, Ky working on a bachelor degree in Philosophy and Religion. It's hard to see how this would lead to Appalachian banjo. I didn't have a banjo at the time. But I had a guitar. I picked up a guitar in high school....at a tire store (go figure) in downtown Corbin, Ky. It hurt my fingers to play, but I was obsessed with it. My dad passed by me one day. I must have looked painfully inept as I worked on that blasted guitar. He sai
Randall Wilson
Sep 263 min read
Japanese Horseback Archery- Yabusame
The samurai horseback archer thunders by you in full regalia and emits a guttural yell, "In-yo-in-yo!" (darkness! light!) and it acts as a charm, a magical incantation that takes you back a thousand years- Yabusame at the Shinto shrine in Kamakura, Japan. The track for Yabusame is narrow (8 to 10 feet wide) and 270 yards long. There are three targets and the rider, needing both hands free, must guide the horse with his knees, rise slightly in the stirrups, steady, steady, a
Randall Wilson
Sep 262 min read
Up Big Branch
Up Big Branch. That's where I was born. Up Big Branch in Leslie County, Ky. Along around 1972 I drove my aunts from Corbin, Ky to visit their sister, Alifar Jackson, in a little mining camp named Mary Alice, in Harlan County. I was twenty years old. I had a recording unit with me. We met Alifar and her husband, Andrew Jackson. He played banjo and he was nice enough to play and sing Pretty Polly for us. I knew Alifar and her family since I was very little. They lived on
Randall Wilson
Sep 193 min read
The Trail of the Serpent
A religion that is indigenous, intrinsic. Yet, it has no founder. It has no central sacred text. It has no clear beginning. It has no supreme or creator being. It has no central authority or doctrine. No moral code. Yet, it is everywhere. It is manifest in every living thing- the mountains, the wind, the rivers, the seas. It is Japanese Shinto, indigenous and intrinsic to Japan. Some scholars project that it may have started around 300 BCE according to some archaeologi
Randall Wilson
Sep 183 min read
Little Birdie
Along around 1980 I ventured over to Roscoe Halcomb's place in Daisey, Ky up Leatherwood near the North Fork of the Kentucky River. I listened, amazed at his playing and singing, his big gnarled hands wrapped around the neck of the banjo, playing with such force and intensity. It was some rocking melodies, not bluegrass, not rock and roll. It was just Roscoe's own thang, born of hard work and hard living. He could play overhand. He could play two finger, three finger, an
Randall Wilson
Sep 112 min read
Full of Deities, Empty as Mu
It is a riddle- a culture full of deites with a spirituality intent on emptiness. Shintoism with its central symbol, a mirror, reflecting the spirit in you and all of nature, then Buddhism, no supreme being, but with a multitude of deities and its meditative goal to empty oneself of all images, all rational constructs and return to the center of being, Mu, no-thing. Yoko said the deities are somewhat like the saints of the Catholic church- spirits that are honored and venera
Randall Wilson
Sep 113 min read
Johnny Had a Wedding,Phoebe Didn't Come
I was in a college dorm room in 1973 listening to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and their album with May Belle Carter. It was called "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". I heard them playing "Soldier's Joy" on the banjo. What was that sound, I wondered. It wasn't bluegrass. It was something else. That sound tickled me. Where was it from? You know how you are walking along and you hear or see something just at the corner of your awareness. You turn your head. Then you turn and
Randall Wilson
Sep 42 min read
Joy on the Streets of Shimokitazawa
The dance is called Awaodori and it originates from the island of Shikoku in Japan. The drums pulsing through the streets, the sheer exuberance of the dancers, the brilliant colors, men, women, and children dancing and parading through the streets of Shimokitazawa, Tokyo, Japan! Streets of joy! I could not get enough of it!!! Shimokitazawa is one of the many burghs in Tokyo. This one, the ancestral home of Yoko's family, the Nogamis. A little rain this night, but when yo
Randall Wilson
Sep 42 min read
Sakana!!!
Japan! It is a series of islands in the ocean the size of California! Lots of islands, hundreds of them, four of them are the largest. Islands in the sea. That means "Sakana!!!"- a lot of fish to eat! Fish fixed in an endless variety of ways! Fried, grilled, boiled, raw! In soup, in dumblings, in pudding! Sakana!!! Breakfast in Japan Baba sings children's song about Killi fish. Temaki Sushi dinner - tuna, squid, flounder, yellow tail, salmon, salmon roe, cod roe, sea ur
Randall Wilson
Aug 272 min read
When Corn Was King
The Wilson family from Big Branch, Ky ca. 1920 L-R Alifair, Mamaw Donie, Elmer (my dad), Woodrow, Grandpa Drew, Addie This is my father's family from Leslie County, Ky. Well, it's the start of the family. There were 6 more to follow. Marcus, Nancy, Dorothy, Edward. Two children died as infants-Allisee and Edna Mae. Many famlies in that era had a lot of children- help to raise corn. A lot of corn. Corn fed the hogs, cows, chickens, mules. And corn fed t
Randall Wilson
Aug 273 min read
Eastern Kentucky Banjo
When the folk music revival got traction in the 1960s folksters flocked to the Round Peak section of North Carolina to record some great old time banjo players like Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. And there were numerous other old time banjo players in that area. Nearby Galax, Va held an annual folk festival that drew people by the thousands. Manuals and books sprouted like cudzu, all promoting one style of old time banjo they called Round Peak or"clawhammer". In the 1970s I
Randall Wilson
Aug 181 min read
Shintaro Agi
Shintaro Agi, that was his pen name. His family name was Hideyuki Nogami. I just called him Jiji (Japanese for Grandfather) because he was the father of my partner, Yoko Nogami. He passed away in June and I came across the waters to Japan, joining Yoko, her daughter Tora, Tora's fiancé Justin, and Mitsuko, Mr. Nogami's wife, to memorialize his life. We were joined by a multitude of friends who knew him and his work. His birth was somewhat biblical. The family needed
Randall Wilson
Aug 132 min read
Mountains, Migration and Music
Chip Bang! Chip Bang! Chip Bang! It is spring on the mountain and there it is- the unmistakable sound of a Scarlett Tanager. A brilliant red bird with stark black contrasting wings. Hard to find in the canopy filled with trees and leaves but that call- I know it is there and I can remember days I have seen this extraordinary bird. It is spring on the mountain and the warblers are back as well- the hooded warbler, Kentucky warbler, Cerulean warbler, and countless others. And
Randall Wilson
Jun 173 min read
bottom of page