The Bluegrass and Beyond

The Kentucky High School Marching Band championships are under way today with perfect weather at Papa John Stadium in Louisville. Here are some photos from morning competition of Tates Creek, Henry Clay, Marshall County and George Rogers Clark High Schools.

Click on each thumbnail to see entire photo:

When Brian and Sara Turner finished their first concert poster in 2003, they wanted to sign it with the name of their studio.

Trouble was, the Lexington couple didn’t have a studio, although it was a dream beginning to form.

What they had was a small workspace in their damp basement, which was infested with crickets.

In a moment of whimsy, a word people sometimes use to describe their distinctive, colorful and eye-catching art, Cricket Press was born.

Now, you can see Cricket Press’ posters and other artwork all over Lexington — and across the country — promoting concerts, small music gigs, festivals, businesses and even weddings.

“Once our work got out there, other bands and venues started contacting us, and it took off from there,” Sara said. “Lexington has been very good to us.”

Cricket Press will be featured in a segment of Kentucky Educational Television’s Kentucky Life show Oct. 17-24. And The Morris Book Shop on Southland Drive will host an event 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 13 where the Turners will sign a book of their art.

Cricket Press is what can happen when two people combine their personal and artistic passions and figure out a way to make both a life and a living.

Sara, 32, a Lexington native, and Brian, 34, of Frankfort, met when they were fine-arts photography students at the University of Kentucky. After graduation and their marriage in 2000, they got good corporate jobs as graphic artists. “We were creating stuff, but we weren’t satisfied,” Brian said.

In addition to art, they loved music, especially indie rock, punk and jazz. They also loved riding bicycles, which are frequently a theme in Brian’s art. As music fans, the Turners came to admire gig poster art and figured out how to make prints using silk screens.

“They taught screen printing at UK, but we never took it,” she said.

The Turners usually begin a piece with a pen-and-ink sketch, which is then digitally scanned and refined. Each piece is hand printed, with a minimum order of 50 pieces. Job prices begin at about $300.

The Turners say they rarely collaborate on pieces. Each has his and her own style and interests, although they say their styles have become more similar.

“I’ve heard people say they can tell a Brian poster from a Sara poster,” he said.

Cricket Press is still a home-based business. In addition to the basement work space, the enterprise has taken over much of their home, with his and her computers in one bedroom, a printing press in another. Print-drying lines are strung across the upstairs hall, and a downstairs room is used for mailing, storage and cleaning screens.

So much work was coming in by 2005 that Brian quit his job to devote himself full time to Cricket Press. Sara works part-time as a graphic artist but doesn’t think it will be long before the business can fully support them both.

In addition to the orders for custom work, the bulk of their business, the Turners sell art prints and note cards through their Web site, www.cricket-press.com, and www.etsy.com, a site for art and craft sales.

Because their personal and artistic relationship is such an important part of Cricket Press, the Turners don’t want their business to get too big for the two of them.

Eventually, though, they would like to have their home back and move Cricket Press into a separate studio.

They want a studio with more room to print larger pieces, and a storefront that would be more convenient for local customers. But no crickets, thank you.

I had been meaning for some time to check out the Southland Jamboree, a free bluegrass music show each Tuesday evening during the summer on the lawn beside Collins Bowling Centers-Southland.

I arrived after this week’s show had started, and more than 200 people were there. A great band was on stage, each man dressed in perfect Bill Monroe style: dark suit, tie and white cowboy hat.

It was a classic Kentucky scene until the music stopped and the band leader started speaking — with an Australian accent.

It turns out the band, Bluegrass Parkway, hails from Perth, Australia. Southland Jamboree was a warm-up gig for this weekend’s 35th annual Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park campground.

Band leader Paul Duff said afterward that he wasn’t a musician until he was 18 and walked into a northern Australian pub where a bluegrass band was playing. “I walked out and said, ‘I’ve got to play it,’” he said.

Duff learned to play the mandolin, then learned how to make one. He first came to Kentucky to work and study in the early 1980s, then returned to live in Lexington for a time in the early 1990s. He went back to Australia with a Lexington-born wife, Maria Ketron, and a mission to spread bluegrass music.

“It’s real music …. It has got that universality,” he said, explaining that bluegrass is increasingly popular around the world, especially in Australia and Europe. “I love the sociology of bluegrass music. The sound is great, and the lyrics are about hard times and people sticking together.”

The Festival of the Bluegrass this weekend will include fans from across the globe. Find the performance schedule and other information at www.festivalofthebluegrass.com. And if you doubt bluegrass music’s international appeal, check out the Web site’s online guest map.

Also worth seeing, doing

Visitors also will be coming to Kentucky this weekend for Cycle the Gorge rally and family fun ride Saturday and Sunday at Stanton. It’s a prelude to a summer of racing events at the Red River Gorge that will attract cyclists from around the country.

It’s not too late to register for the rally and family run ride. Go to www.tour-rrg.com.

For a less strenuous tour of Kentucky’s natural beauty, consider booking one of the Suburban Women’s Club’s behind-the-fences tours of local horse farms. This year’s tour dates are June 19, July 17, Aug. 21 and Oct. 16.

The five-hour bus tour visits Chesapeake and Woods Edge farms, with lunch at Chrisman Mill Winery. The tour costs $50, with profits going to the club’s charitable works, which include college scholarships and Operation Read.

The Suburban Women’s Club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, has been doing these tours for 36 years. For more information, call (859) 624-2338.

If you like contemporary art, Breathitt County artist and former corporate lawyer Theo Edmonds, whom I wrote about in April, is back in Lexington. He has rented space at 351 West Short Street for a free gallery show 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day through June 19.

The show features some terrific work he created during six months in New York. Edmonds has set up a studio in the back of the gallery space, where he is working and eager to talk.

If you like less-contemporary art, you have three more days to see Excavating Egypt, the fascinating show of antiquities at The Art Museum at University of Kentucky in the Singletary Center. The exhibit closes Sunday at 5 p.m. For more information, go to the museum’s Web site, www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.

For ideas and more information about things to see and do in Central Kentucky this summer, go to the Lexington Arts Council’s Web site, www.lexarts.com, or the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Web site, www.visitlex.com.

At age 25, Ben Sollee has gained a national following with his heartfelt songs, his soulful voice and his unconventional cello technique.

Sollee can do amazing, unexpected things with a cello. He’s doing one this week, and it also involves a bicycle.

“I was looking for something a little bit different in touring,” he said. “I had gotten in this habit of flying to one side of the country and flying back for one gig, then hopping in the car and driving six hours for another gig. The pace was inhuman. I wasn’t really feeling the places I was at anymore.”

Sollee is feeling those places this week.

Oh, is he feeling them.

Last Wednesday, Sollee and two friends began riding bicycles from his Lexington home to the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festval at Manchester, Tenn., where he will perform this weekend.

They rode from Lexington to Frankfort in a steady rain, and Sollee gave a concert when they arrived. The next morning, they officially began the 330-mile Pedaling Against Poverty Tour.

Each day since then, the trio has ridden about 50 miles a day, stopping to play concerts in Danville, Berea, Somerset and Cookeville, Tenn. Another show is planned near McMinnville, Tenn., on Wednesday. Then they ride to Bonnaroo.

In addition to making a statement about environmentally friendly music touring, Sollee said the trip is intended to promote the anti-poverty charity Oxfam America and Xtracycle, the California company that made the bikes he and Marty Benson are riding.

The stretch bicycles have 24 gears, disc brakes and a cargo platform in back. Sollee has his cello case strapped to one side. His gear is strapped to the other side for balance.

Benson is videotaping each day’s progress and posting it on Xtracycle’s Web site.  Benson’s sister, Katie, is with them on a regular road bike.

“Considering I hadn’t really ridden much before this tour, it’s going great,” Sollee said Monday. As he talked on his cell phone, Sollee pedaled Ky. 90 through Wayne County. His voice was occasionally drowned out by the swoosh of a passing truck.

“We had a really hard day going from Berea to Somerset … hauling about 60 pounds of gear up all those big hills,” Sollee said. “Heading into Somerset I didn’t think I was going to make it. We pulled in eight minutes before show time.”

There have been a few minor breakdowns and a couple of wrecks without injuries. Sollee ran off the road near Harrodsburg while trying to ring a bell on the back of Benson’s Xtracycle. It’s a game: Whoever rings the other’s bell the most pays for dinner at the end of the trip.

“Marty rang my bell today and wrecked his bike,” Sollee said. “It was sweet revenge.”

Sollee said he has learned several things on the ride, such as how roads are graded, how diet influences stamina and the importance of pacing yourself. And he has learned it is hard to draw a crowd at small-town concert venues.

Usually, Sollee is good at drawing crowds. National Public Radio named him one of the top 10 “unknown artists of the year” in 2007. He became a lot better known last year with two CDs, If You’re Gonna Lead My Country and Learning to Bend.

He performed on ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March and was among those who played at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday concert last month in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Sollee was the featured performer at February’s “I Love Mountains” rally in Frankfort. His next project is a CD with Daniel Martin Moore to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining.

It is an impressive resume for a native Lexingtonian who not that long ago was studying at Yates Elementary, Winburn Middle, Lafayette High and the University of Louisville school of music.

When I called again Tuesday afternoon, Sollee had 45 miles under his belt for the day and was eight miles from Cookeville.

“We’re within spitting distance,” he said. “We made really good time today.”
With Bonnaroo only two days and about 75 miles away, Sollee seemed to have gotten a second wind.

It’s hard to know if Sollees’ Bonnaroo performances will be as high-energy as usual. Life on the road is hard on a musician, especially when he has to pedal his cello up all of those big hills.

Check out Marty Benson’s daily videos from the trip:

Here are slide shows from the semi-finals and finals performances of Lexington’s Lafayette High School and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, along with music from each band’s finals performance Saturday night at Papa John Stadium in Louisville.

Lafayette earned its 15th first-place trophy at the competition in the largest-school division. Dunbar, which has won four times, placed second.  They both had terrific shows.

LOUISVILLE  - The results had been announced and the trophies presented. Lafayette Band director Chuck Smith and a few helpers had walked through the rows of 200 students, putting a medal around each neck. Everyone held ranks, more or less, amid an electric atmosphere of pure, pent-up joy.

Finally, Smith dismissed the band the way Lafayette directors have been doing for at least a half-century, by asking who they were.

“Lafayette Band!” was the thunderous reply. “Pride of the Bluegrass, Sir!”

With that, the practiced precision that had just won Lafayette the title of best marching band among Kentucky’s biggest high schools melted away in a jumping, hugging, shrieking mass of teenage pandemonium.

The victory Saturday night at Papa John’s Stadium was the 15th for Lafayette.  The only other band that has won the state championship contest since 1990 was the second-place finisher, its Lexington neighbor Paul Laurence Dunbar, which has won four, including the 2007 title.

“I thought it was our best show,” said Lafayette junior Katherine Sturgill. “It felt really good. You could feel the energy on the field.”

Freshman Sarah Scott said simply: “We rocked!”

I hadn’t been to a high school band contest in 30 years, since soon after I graduated after spending three years in the Lafayette Band. I left Louisville early Sunday morning thinking I was glad I hadn’t been a judge, because I thought every band had rocked.

I spent most of the day looking through a camera viewfinder trying to capture moments, so I didn’t see the big picture. But through my long lens, I got a closeup view of the energy, musicianship, showmanship that went into each performance. Standing on the sidelines, the sound was amazing.

Lafayette’s show was loosely built around Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.” I also loved the music and choreography of Dunbar’s ninja-theme show. But each band I heard had a creative, exciting and highly polished show.

And each band had a uniformed corps of parents with ATVs and trailers to get props on and off the field, and to set up and remove the “percussion pit” down front - timpani, chimes, marimba and other special instruments. One band wheeled a harpsichord onto the field because its musical score included some Bach.

Fayette wasn’t the only county with more than one standout. Hardin County had the third- and fourth-place finishers in the largest-school division. Graves, Bourbon, Hardin, Davies, Madison, Calloway and Boyle counties had more than one band in the semi-finals; Fayette had five. Tates Creek, Bryan Station and Lexington Christian didn’t advance to the finals.

Bourbon County scored a coup in its division by beating one of Kentucky’s band dynasties, Adair County.  It wasn’t easy.  Adair County has a terrific band, which is why it has been chosen to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York in 2009. It also hasa powerful cheering section.

As Adair County was getting ready to take the field, I noticed a bunch of big guys front and center in the stands, yelling at the top of their lungs. Eric Graves, the head football coach, had brought his entire team to Louisville to cheer the band. At how many high schools would that happen?

“Adair County’s here, so we’re here,” said Graves, who was whistling and yelling as loud as any of them.

Aside from my alma mater, I have to say my favorite competitor Saturday was the third-place winner in the Class 2-A category, Shelby Valley High School of Pike County.  That band got more sound out of fewer people than I’ve ever seen.

The Shelby Valley Band had 24 people, if I counted them correctly, including a drum major and a two-person color guard.  About half its members formed the drum line. There were only nine horn players, although you would have never known it, given the volume and polished musicality of their performance.

“This is the smallest we’ve ever been,” said Shelby Valley’s director, Robert Scheeler. “We got to band camp this summer and there were nine of us.  So we said, what the heck, let’s make the most of it.”

And they did. It’s why, like the Sweet Sixteen basketball tournament, Kentucky’s state marching band championship is special.

It was a good night for Central Kentucky bands as Lafayette and Bourbon County won first place in their divisions. Here are some photos from the finals Saturday night at Papa John Stadium in Louisville.

Click the arrows to advance the slide show below. To see the slide show bigger, click here.

See earlier posts on my blog for photos from the semi-finals of the 5-A competition Saturday afternoon. They also include photos of Tates Creek, Bryan Station, George Rogers Clark, Central Hardin, Madison Central, Marshall County and Graves County.  And click here for slide shows of Lafayette and Dunbar photos with audio of their finals performance shows.

Here are more photos from the state high school marching band championships in Louisville.  This group includes photos of Lafayette, George Rogers Clark, Central Hardin, Madison Central, and Paul Laurence Dunbar high schools.  Click on the photo to enlarge.

Here are some photos from the first few competitors at Saturday’s Kentucky state high school marching band contest at Papa John Stadium in Louisville.  Click on each photo to enlarge it and read the caption.

I’m attending the state high school marching band championships Saturday in Louisville, so I thought I would get ready by stopping by a Lafayette Band rehearsal earlier this week.

It didn’t take long to feel as if I were in a time warp. It was a cold, crisp afternoon, and the setting sun cast long shadows across the school’s blacktop practice field where I had spent countless hours as a teenager.

DANVILLE - In high school, I was a band geek.

Since then, I’ve mostly been a newspaper and bicycle geek.

But once you’re in a high school band, especially a marching band, you never seem to get it out of your system.

Just ask the dozens of musicians in the 18 bands performing at the Great American Brass Band Festival this weekend. Not to mention the several thousand people here to listen to them.

“For me, the great thing about this festival is seeing all the younger players coming out, having a great time and producing a great sound,” said Jim Drake of Frankfort, who started playing trombone in fifth grade, switched to tuba in ninth grade and is still playing in two brass bands.

Danville always seems to look like a Norman Rockwell painting, but never more so than each June when the brass bands come to town. People from all over the country set up lawn chairs around one of three stages and listen to bands like the ones most American small towns had a century ago.

“I’ve heard this is our 10th year, but I’ve lost count,” said Dan Shields, who plays tenor sax in the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis.

“All of the people are here for the music,” he said. “It’s a language that people should learn and not forget, even if they don’t keep playing. It makes them a more educated listener.”

In addition to free public performances, the festival included a Chautauqua Tea on Thursday, a Brass History Conference on Friday and a big parade down Main Street on Saturday.

You can still catch some of the action Sunday, when the main stage at Centre College will have performances from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. The annual balloon race, postponed Friday because of bad weather, has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Stuart Powell Field outside Junction City.

The bands range from Ameriikan Poijat, a Midwestern band that plays Finnish-style, to the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers, a four-man combo from Lexington led by Dick Domek, a University of Kentucky music theory professor who plays a mean piano.

There are several military bands - the Hellcats from West Point, the U.S. Army Brass Quintet and the U.S. Air Force Reserve Band. Plus crowd favorites from an earlier era of military bands: the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., and Saxton’s Cornet Band from Kentucky, which use antique instruments to recreate Civil War-era music.

In honor of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial, the history conference this year focused on music from his time. It included a re-enactment by the Olde Towne Brass of Huntsville, Ala., of a concert Lincoln and his Lexington-born wife, Mary Todd, attended. Saxton and Excelsior both played a popular tune that they noted, ironically, was one of Lincoln’s favorites: Dixie.

As a bicycle geek, I was fascinated by the 18 riders from the Ohio Wheelmen, who led the parade on big-wheel “bone shakers” and other two-wheeled relics.

“This is a unique parade,” said Del Nichols of Findlay, Ohio, the group’s leader. “There’s a higher class of people who come here because of the music.”

Back when I was a band geek at Lexington’s Lafayette High School in the mid-1970s, there were two musicians we all looked up to: Trumpeter Vincent DiMartino, who was then at UK and now teaches at Centre, and euphonium virtuoso Earle Louder, then a professor at Morehead State. They each performed solos in concert with us, and we were awed by how they could make their instruments come alive.

Now, DiMartino and Louder moonlight as the directors of the festival’s host band, the Advocate Brass Band of Danville, which is sponsored by the local newspaper. The band played Saturday evening at the festival’s Great American Picnic, and will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday.

If that wasn’t enough to make me love the Advocate Brass Band, there was this: Former director George Foreman spent years having the band explore the great heritage of newspaper music. Yes, newspaper music.

The most famous example is John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March, which was commissioned in 1889 for the U.S. Marine Band to play at an awards ceremony for the newspaper’s student essay contest. The march became one of Sousa’s most popular, and started a trend.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers across America commissioned marches. It was like the 19th century version of a TV marketing jingle. Foreman documented more than 300 newspaper marches, and under his direction the band recorded four CDs of them.

There’s even a Lexington Herald March, written in 1936 by Robert B. Griffith, a UK student who went on to direct the University of Louisville marching band. Click here to hear a short clip of the Lexington Herald March. Click here to find out how to buy the Advocate Brass Band’s CDs.

If you have time Sunday, drive over to Danville. It just might make a band geek out of you, even if you weren’t one in high school.

Photos, top to bottom: Mick Gould of the Ohio Wheelmen leads out the parade Saturday. Members of the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., play on a wagon in the parade. Dick Domek of Lexington plays with the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers. Natalie Fieberg, 3, of Danville, watches Dan Shields of the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis run by during the parade. Photos/Tom Eblen