Article Reprinted from June, 2003 edition of the 'Folkzine' on www.efolkmusic.org.
Written by Marci Shore
Larry Perkins has been getting more in touch with his past in recent years. Producer of the IBMA’s 1994 Recorded Event of the Year, ‘Touch of the Past’ which featured artists such as Alison Krauss, John Hartford, and the Osborne Brothers – Perkins has moved back to his native North Carolina after residing in the Nashville area for the previous 12 years.
Perkins has traded his “little white house” in Madison, Tennessee for a little white farmhouse in the hills not very far from his hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina.
During the 1990's, Perkins' home in Madison served as host for some of Nashville's legendary musicians. The late John Hartford wrote a song about the picking sessions, that was scheduled to be on John's next project. The chorus goes:
Out behind the fire hall, Under a full moon;
Fiddlers and banjo pickers, Gathered in this room;
Playing songs made popular, Back in 1953;
Raisin’ the roof on a little white house, In Madison, Tennessee.
These weekly ‘post Grand Old Opry” Thursday get-togethers were frequented by the likes of musicians that included Earl Scruggs, Grandpa Jones, Jimmy Martin, Benny Martin, Sonny Osborne, Uncle Josh Graves, Roy Husky Jr., and John Hartford, who gathered to share cornbread, stories and musical fellowship.
“One night I looked around and saw Kenny Baker point and shout out to Benny Martin, who was coming in the front door, ‘There’s the best bluegrass fiddler that ever lived.’ Not long after that Bobby Hicks came walking through the door, then Vassar Clements. Not to mention that John Hartford was already there. I thought to myself, ‘It just doesn’t get much better than this,’” said Perkins recalling some of his more memorable gatherings.
During his decade in Nashville he worked consistently as a session player, was a regular performer with the Sidemen at the Station Inn, and with a variety of artists on a weekly basis at the Bell Cove Club in Hendersonville and worked as a touring musician with bands that included Curley Seckler, Willis Spear and the Nashville Grass, Larry Cordle, Glenn Duncan and Lonesome Standard Time, Kenny Baker and Josh Graves, the Sullivans, and most recently, with the John Hartford Stringband.
The ebb and flow of musicians in and out of his Madison home continued throughout the years, though Perkins began passing on opportunities to host the weekly parties. “It started out kind of being a family secret,” explained Perkins about the weekly get-togethers. “It was just me and Earl, and John and Sonny, and Terry Eldredge and a few others. Then more people started showing up – with tape recorders, video cameras. I would look up sometimes and think ‘I don’t know a third of the people in here.’”
“I was getting to where I was craving some privacy,’ remembered Perkins, explaining that the open door policy he had at the house had gotten out of hand. His own excesses had admittedly gotten out of hand as well.
In the summer of 2001, his father was diagnosed with cancer, so he left a house filled with memories and a city full of friends to return to Kannapolis to be with his family during his father’s final days.
“I heard music before I was even born,” explained Perkins, whose mother was
the church pianist. His father knew a few guitar chords, and his father’s brother – Uncle Harley – introduced him to the banjo. “I was fascinated by the banjo,” said Perkins remembering his visits to the Kentucky home of his uncle and his Aunt Wanda, who played the accordion.
An ardent watcher of old country music shows that included ones starring Kenny Price, Porter Wagoner, and the Wilburn Brothers; he was also an avid collector of “every Beatles record he could get a hold of” and Glenn Campbell’s records. But while recorded music was an early inspiration, the music that Perkins heard as a youngster in church still resonates loudly in the spirit of the sounds he hears in his head. “I just don’t think that you can beat the melodies and harmonies in those old hymns,” he explained in referring to the divine sounds of he grew up hearing in church, at revivals and homecomings, and at summer camp.
He was soon “turned on” to other divine sounds while a teenager visiting his Kannapolis friend, Wade Garrett. Garrett was a banjo player and a collector of Victrola records who handled the recordings as if they were the “crown jewels” - keeping them in their original cases and always keeping extra needles on hand to help prevent records from being scratched.
It was Garrett who first played Perkins a recording of Earl Scruggs, and for whom the instrumental ‘Thanks Wade’ on ‘A Touch of the Past’ is dedicated. According to Perkins, Garrett once told him, “I used to think that Snuffy Jenkins was the best. But that was before I heard Earl Scruggs. If you listen and learn from Earl Scruggs, you won’t go wrong,” he advised me.
Perkins concurred whole-heartedly with his friend and took the advice to heart. Determined to become the “closest thing to Earl Scruggs,” he became a scholar of the Scruggs-style of banjo playing by investing time in studying the intricacies of the melodies, rolls and complexities of how the Foggy Mountain Boys worked together as a band. Especially impressive to Perkins was how Scruggs backed up other musicians in the band without overshadowing them. Explaining that he sees Scruggs as being a “servant to the melody,” he elaborated by saying that Scruggs’ “unselfish” back-up playing , and deference to the singer or soloist to bring the song across in the best possible way, is what sets him apart from everyone else.
“Everybody in a band has to be pulling in the same direction,” said Perkins admitting that it is a practical theory he has used throughout his professional career, right up to his most recent touring gig with John Hartford, with whom he played on the road for around five years.
He soon began putting his knowledge to practical use, performing with Kannapolis friend Banks Patterson and his brothers in a band at local rest homes and churches. Within just a couple of years, Perkins met his mentor Earl Scruggs at a street festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and by the early 1980’s he was playing in a band that included Foggy Mountain Boys alumni Curley Seckler on recommendation from Earl Scruggs himself.
“Earl and I used to sit in his living room and trade licks on the banjo, playing songs the way that some of our favorite singers would sing them,” noted Perkins, who became closely acquainted with Scruggs in years subsequent to first meeting him in Winston-Salem. After moving to Nashville in 1989, Perkins said that Scruggs ‘rescued’ him from the apartment in which he wasliving, and offered him a house in Madison that he had available for rent.
Demonstrating his allusion to imitating singers, Perkins proceeded to play ‘I’ll Fly Away’ on his banjo in a style that he referred to as using vocal licks that George Jones might would use. “Earl might would take the same song and play it the way Roy Acuff would sing it,” he said prior to his playing of the song, nodding his head at the point where the singing styles diverged.
“I think a lot of people underestimate the influence that singers had on Earl’s playing,” continued Perkins. “I’ve always been a big fan of singers too.”
Perkins said that one cannot overestimate the influence that one singer/songwriter/musician has had on him and his present pursuits. He said of his friend and former band leader, John Hartford, “John wasn’t afraid to be himself, and express himself,” adding that Hartford “saw the relevance of everything.”
Hartford would often walk to Perkins’ house in Madison, as he lived just a couple of miles down the road on the banks of the Cumberland River. Perkins described an indelible image he has of Hartford walking down the sidewalk toward the house: “He was writing on his 3X5 index cards that he always had with him. He had written a song by the time he had gotten to my house.”
“At the age of 40, I’d hardly ever written anything in my life, except for some instrumentals,” explained Perkins. “About a week after John died, it all started pouring out of me,” as he described a flurry of songwriting activity that began in the summer of 2001 and hasn’t ceased but, rather increased with time.
When Hartford wrote songs, he didn’t care whether it rhymed or if it seemed to have much reason to it, added Perkins. “He wasn’t trying to impress anyone or write a top 10 hit. That he was inspired to write something down, was reason enough for him to write a song.”
Hartford encouraged Perkins to give credence to his own thoughts by writing them down to share them. The Hartford tour bus broke down on a road trip with Perkins driving. “I started making up lines to fit the melody of Tom T. Hall’s hit song ‘I Love.’ I sang, ‘I hate buses that won’t run, gig that ain’t no fun, banjers out of tune.’ John shouted out, ‘That’s great. You should finish that!’” He later did finish the song, and continues to commit his thoughts to paper, and his lines to verse. “Sometimes a sentence will expand into an entire song,” said Perkins. “I really have an appreciation for what songwriters do, and I’m learning that anyone can write if someone is aware of how they feel and are committed to write it down.” Not only has he begun to write down his thoughts, but has committed himself to giving them a voice – his own voice. “The way I see it, I’m the only one who know these songs, so I guess I’m the one that should sing them.”
Though he has not publicly performed any of his new songs, he is currently recording them in a home studio and hopes to release some of his songs within the year.
As demonstrated by his self-produced project Touch of the Past, which he orchestrated in its entirety - from archiving the old songs, teaching them to the artists who sang them to designating who played each instrumental break - Perkins has a passion for revealing old songs from the past to a present generation. He seems to have acquired a new love for delving into his own past and old experiences to create brand new songs.
“Things have happened to me for a reason – happy and painful things. I’ve found I can write them down, set them to verse and share a part of myself to others. I’m hoping it might help someone avoid making the same mistakes I have made.”
“I’d never want to sound like I left Nashville because I think that Nashville is bad,” qualified Perkins. “I’ve definitely been my own worst enemy.”
“Nashville doesn’t hurt anybody. Nashville and what I consider to be my ‘family’ there have done nothing except extend a helping hand of friendship and love,” he was quick to add.
Perkins said that he believes that he just wasn’t meant to live in a city. His long-time friend ‘Uncle’ Josh Graves even made the comment to him on the phone shortly after the move, that living in the country sounded like it would suit Perkins’ personality more.
“I do miss Nashville though, and the ‘family’ of musicians there,” he added. “I miss the days when I would have several sessions lined up for the day, only to return home to find messages from people like Jimmy Martin on the answering machine, wanting me to play somewhere, and to have road gigs lined up for the weekend. It’s good for the psyche to have a schedule.”
Ironically, though, he admits that he has played his banjo more in the past six months at his home outside of Music City, than he had in his final years there. In addition to his singing and songwriting and his renewed interest in playing the banjo, he has plans to make a project out of some previously unreleased tracks featuring some legendary players. As well, a most exciting project for him, is a “bona fide sure enough” tribute to Earl Scruggs that he has had completed in his mind for a couple of years now, but just “hasn’t committed it to tape yet,” he says.
Perkins says he is blessed to have lived in Nashville in what he sometimes considered to be a “fairytale” – seeing musicians every day that he saw on television as a young man, and that he had admired for years. He added that he is blessed as well to be thinking clearly these days, living cleanly and being creative.
He is committed in the present to reflect on his past experiences, and to write about them in the hopes of being a blessing to someone else in some way in the future. “I’d like to do something that comes natural to me, that is a blessing to other people. That’s when I am happiest,” he has concluded.
