The Honey Dewdrops on Sunday, January 6th (Rescheduled date).

THE HONEY DEWDROPS come to Harrisburg for a Sunday, January 6, 2019 concert sponsored by Susquehanna Folk Music Society. The concert will be held 7:30 PM at the Fort Hunter Centennial Barn, 5300 N. Front Street, Harrisburg.

The Honey Dewdrops are comprised of a young, multi-talented husband-wife duo, Kagey Parrish and Laura Wortman. Their sound is characterized by compelling, earthy harmonies – so tight that they often sound as if one person is singing in two compelling voices. Both sing lead and harmony, play acoustic guitar. In addition, Parrish plays the mandolin, and Wortman plays banjo and harmonica.

Concert tickets are $24 General Admission, $20 for SFMS members and $10 for students ages 3-22.

Tickets are available at http://www.sfmsfolk.org/concerts/HoneyDewdrops.html, by calling (800) 838-3006 or at the door.

We had the opportunity recently to speak to Kagey about the duo’s name, what kind of music they are likely to play during the Susquehanna Folk Music Society concert, and the group’s songwriting.

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FOLKMAMA:  How many years have you and Laura traveled together as The Honey Dewdrops?

KAGEY: It’s been 9 years now, going on ten. We’ve had a nice long run. There are a lot of bands that don’t make it to their 10^th year anniversary! We met in college and played together in the one-time-only rock band. The band didn’t last, but we found that we really liked playing together, so we started doing that first and then became a couple later.

FOLKMAMA: I like your name, it’s pretty cool. It reminds me of some of the old bands that used to play in the early days of radio. Where did it come from?

KAGEY: You know that Uncle Dave Macon, one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry was nicknamed the ‘Dixie Dewdrop’. I always kind of liked the sound of that! For us we liked the idea of a name that tied us to the past but also conveyed a sense of place. We were living in Scottsdale, Virginia at the time and there was this inn there called the Dew Drop Inn. It was actually the place that the Dew Drop Inn in the TV show ‘The Walton’s’ was patterned after. So that was the ‘Dewdrop’ part and the ‘Honey’ was because we are married, as in a ‘honey-do-list!’

FOLKMAMA: When I think of your band and your overall sound, I think of you as singer-songwriters who are choosing to play their music within the framework of an old-time sound. You are clearly creating new music, but I’m interested in hearing about your inspiration for framing it the way you do.

KAGEY: Both Laura and I grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we were very influenced by the music around us. For us, the traditional sound really works.

First off, the duet style of singing has been so present in American folk music—there are tons and tons of recordings. For me, the idea of two voices together in harmony accompanied by guitar or banjo opens up so many possibilities. It’s an uncomplicated, stripped-down style that produces a real clarity of sound that has the ability to resonate with listeners really deep down. But although we’re taking cues for older recordings, we are very interested in putting our own signature on what a duet sound can be.

We also play tunes too. We play some traditional ones like ‘Whiskey Before Breakfast’ but also some that we’ve written ourselves. Laura plays clawhammer banjo and guitar, and I play guitar and mandolin. I especially love playing fiddle tunes on guitar and mandolin.

FOLKMAMA: Tell me a little about your songwriting–the content, as well as the process.

KAGEY: We like to write songs that feel real to us, songs that reflect what’s going on and help us to make sense of the world. You know we were talking a moment about traditional music. Some of our themes are not too different from past struggles written about in old folk songs. Times change, but in some ways, they are still the same.

Here’s an example. Recently we were driving through West Virginia and we could see the devastation to the land that was caused by pipelines coming through. It reminded me about the destruction that was caused by coal mining that Hazel Dickens wrote about so many years ago. It seems like we are destined to repeat history and there is no shortage of tough stuff to write about. Our challenge when we are writing is to look at current human experiences and look for the good—try to make some sense of life in a deep spiritual way.

I usually supply the lyrics, the story line and I give it to Laura and she handles the melody. Sometimes she does both. Our process is pretty open-minded. There have been some other musicians that have covered our stuff which we are pretty happy about. It’s just really good to get the music out there.

FOLKMAMA: I’m glad that you mentioned the story line. When I hear your music I really think of storytelling because your songs paint such vivid images. Storytelling used to be considered a folk art but now it’s everywhere—The Moth Radio, Snap Judgment, story slams, etc. Do you think that the current emphasis and interest in storytelling has helped to broaden the appeal of your music?

KAGEY: Actually, I think it has. It’s given us a more genre-bending identity and allowed us to play in a wider variety of places. What we look for in a venue is that they are welcoming to a quieter, more message-driven style of music. It doesn’t have to be a folk venue.

FOLKMAMA: You’ve really gotten your original music out there with four strong studio recordings, the latest being Tangled County. What’s next?

KAGEY: We’ll have a new CD out next year and actually we’ll be playing some music off the new CD at the Fort Hunter Concert on November 15^th. It’s called Anyone Can See and it’s a little bit of a snapshot of how the world looks to us right now.

A Conversation with Luthier and Musician Wayne Henderson, who will appear in concert with the Jeff Little Trio on Nov 10th in York, PA

Join us as the Susquehanna Folk Music Society presents an extraordinary evening of old-time music with finger-pick guitarist and luthier Wayne Henderson and the Jeff Little Trio in concert on Saturday, November 10, 2018, at 7:30 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of York, 925 S. George Street, York.

 

 

Preceding the concert Wayne Henderson, who is a National Heritage Fellowship recipient recognized for his excellent craftsmanship, will give a talk on guitar building from 6:30 pm-7:15 pm. Henderson has built guitars for Tommy Emmanuel, Doc Watson, Peter Rowan Gillian Welch, and Eric Clapton.

 

To purchase tickets for the evening visit: http://www.sfmsfolk.org/concerts/JeffLittleTrio.html

 

Curtis Rockwell, a fellow luthier based in Huntingdon, PA had the opportunity to interview Wayne, and offers his insights in the article below:

 

 

Whittling with Wayne: 

 

By Guest Folkmama Blogger Curtis Rockwell

 

In the world of folk and bluegrass music, Wayne Henderson of Rugby, Virginia, is well known as a musical artist for his skillful picking guitar style, having been most greatly influenced by the music of his close friend, the late Doc Watson.   But perhaps even more significantly, Wayne is known as an esteemed luthier.  His guitars and mandolins are highly coveted and sought after by collectors, instrument enthusiasts, amateurs, and professional musicians, as well as nearly anyone who has followed the development of guitars and mandolins which are inherently designed to reproduce the tone and craftsmanship of the great Gibsons and Martins of the 1920’s and 1930’s.  He’s built instruments for the likes of Peter Rowan, Gillian Welch, Eric Clapton, and Doc.  On the rare instances when one of Wayne’s instruments shows up for sale, the prices can often reach well into the five-digit category.  Otherwise, you can still order a guitar or mandolin directly from Wayne, if you’re willing to wait several years to enjoy playing your new instrument.

On Saturday,  November 10, Wayne will be joining the Jeff Little Trio in York, PA for a concert following a 45-minute talk on guitar building which starts at 6:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of York on South George Street.  As a luthier myself who has known of Henderson’s instruments and their reputation and desirability for years, I jumped at the chance to interview Wayne when Jess Hayden asked me to do so for her “Folkmama Blog.”

With building instruments and playing music being so linked in his life, I wondered how Wayne got started.  His first instrument was a six string flat top guitar that his brother ended up with second-hand.  The original owner “Ordered it for 9 dollars and a half.  He said they had two models and the other had maybe another strip of binding on it and had Carson Robison’s name on it and it cost eleven and a half, and he said he couldn’t afford that eleven and a half so he got the nine dollar and a half one.”

“It was an old Recording King – it’s a pretty nice guitar – that Gibson made.  They sold it through Montgomery Ward.  It was a flat top – sort of an odd shape, like a Gibson 185 or something, sort of like a small J-200.  It was a cheaper model, but it was a pretty nice guitar for this area at the time.  My brother knew three chords and he showed me those three chords and ever since I got those three chords when I was five years old, I beat on that thing for years and years.  Luckily I still have that old guitar in my collection.”

It wasn’t just the playing of music that was preoccupying Wayne’s attention.  “I’ve always made stuff even when I was a little kid.  If I got a store-bought toy, I would always try to make one like it myself.  I always wanted to be making something.  I’ve got a guitar body or a guitar that I made when I was like eight or nine years old out of a cardboard box and I whittled out a neck and put fish line on it, and I still have one of those too in my collection.  Evidently, I’ve just about always had that guitar building something on my mind.”

“In the sixties, in the early sixties, I finally got one made that I thought was a real guitar and I put a serial number in it in 1964.  That is my number one, but I made several instruments and things like instruments before that.  But that one actually plays and has a fingerboard.  You can actually play it.”  It’s one of many significant instruments Wayne still has in his collection.

By the time Wayne was working on his seventh guitar, he was working hard to emulate the famous and coveted Martin D-45 and was able to whittle the intricate grooves for its fancy inlays with his pocket knife.  I wanted to know more about how Wayne came to understand the relationship between a guitars structure and its tone.  “I learned to build mostly by doing repair work on the Martins.  Somebody brought me one that had been run over by a car and I got exactly to see all the brace patterns and every time I would ever work on it, I’d study every piece of it to try to figure out chisel marks, sander marks, everything – how did they do that?  The old ones were pretty much handmade in ways that I could figure out how they did it.”

Even now, Wayne admits “If I get a really nice instrument, I still do a lot of looking and studying and I just did that for years.  In the early seventies, I would work in Nashville at Gruhn Guitars.  He would have me come down there and do repair work for him and I got to work with a guy named Randy Wood who was a good repair guy and builds stuff too, and that was probably the first, and maybe the only repair guy that I ever worked around too much that I could learn stuff from.  He knew some pretty good tricks and I worked with him quite a bit.  I’d go down there and stay two or three weeks and then I’d come back home because I always had my shop here with more stuff to do than I could do, and I’ve been behind for forty years.  But it was fun to go down there and work in that shop there where all kinds of really nice instruments – famous people’s instruments – would come in there all the time.”

To look at a Henderson guitar is to see a masterful reinterpretation of the great pre-World War Two Martin guitars from Nazareth, PA.  “They’re some of my favorite guitars and always have been.  I assumed that if I could make any of mine look or sound like the ones made back in the thirties, especially, when they had great materials and great craftsmen working, and they had to do more hand work.  Their guitars are still great today, but they’re done much more by machine.  Back in the twenties and thirties, I think they were just a bunch of people working by hand – carving tools and hand chisels and stuff like that.  That’s the kind of work I appreciate the most and try to copy.”

For some builders, there are musicians, and styles of music that are of particular influence in the way guitars are shaped, woods are chosen, inlays are designed, and the instruments are voiced.  I asked Wayne if there were any musicians who were particularly influential in his designs. “Doc Watson is one of my most influential people in my picking and instruments, and all his nice old records – the ones I’ve loved and listened to first – he was playing an old Martin in there – a D-18 that I just absolutely loved the sound of.  Of course, most of that sound was probably coming out of him.  The people influence the sound almost more than the instrument.  Tony Rice gets a sound like almost nobody else in the world and everybody says it’s that old guitar that he plays all the time, but I’ve worked on and played that guitar.  When I play it, it doesn’t sound any better than all the rest of them, but when he plays it, it’s something special.  Doc’s guitars – he was always playing something different back in his early days, recording days.  He almost never owned those guitars, they were borrowed guitars.  He would play anything he could get a hold of and make it sound great.  With that caliber of player, it has more to do with their touch than the instrument.”

I wanted to further discuss the subject of Wayne’s choice of traditional tonewoods, many of which are becoming increasingly difficult to procure in the quality that’s desired for musical instruments.  This immediately led us to discuss Wayne’s daughter, Elle Jayne Henderson, now 33, who is building beautiful guitars and ukuleles of her own.  I recently met Jayne and had the chance to play one of her guitars that was made using some stunning Black Walnut that she found at a sawmill near her home.  When I asked Wayne about the woods, he said, “She has opened my eyes to that stuff a whole lot.  I have to go by my customers, too – you know what they ask for.  I’m a traditional builder.  Everybody that wants me to make a guitar wants me to make it out of traditional stuff like Martin used, you know Mahogany and Rosewood, and that’s what I’ve always done.  But since she’s been doing that, I’ve discovered what great guitars can be made out of our local wood here.  I’ve checked and that white oak she uses sometimes has about the same weight and density and hardness of Brazilian Rosewood, and it sounds like it, and its beautiful stuff.  And Walnut always makes great guitars.  I haven’t made very many, but seems like all I’ve made, I’ve been impressed with, and the ones she does are gorgeous and sound good too!  It’s bound to get sometime when you can’t get a hold of that exotic wood.  It’s pretty much that now.  It’s hard to get good Brazilian and stuff like that.  I’m sure sometimes, it’ll get so hard to get, it won’t be worth fiddling with.”

Jayne’s interest in moving towards alternative, more sustainable woods is an outgrowth of her interest in environmental studies and law.  When she completed her degree, school debt brought her to the doorstep of her father’s shop.  “She’d seen what my guitars bring in on eBay and she wanted to know if I’d build her a guitar she could sell to pay her student loans.  Of course, I said I probably would, but y’all ought to build it yourself.  She said no she couldn’t do that, but I knew she could because I’d seen her artwork, how good she is with her hands, stuff like that and I knew she could do that if she would.  She said, well she’d try and she started building one of my guitars.  It’ll have to be made just right and you’ll have to re-do stuff, have to put up with that.  She said she would.  She got about halfway through that guitar, came in one day and said, you know I can’t believe this, but I’m having a good time!  She really got into it, then started making her own after that, so she’s been at it ever since and has been behind on orders ever since.  She makes beautiful stuff – whole lot better business person than I am.  I’m real proud of her, the way she does everything.”

The tradition continues…

 

Curtis Rockwell is a luthier and part-time school bus driver from Huntingdon, PA.  You can follow and contact him through Facebook at Curtis Rockwell Guitars where he shares his latest musical exploits and musings.