The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  As our interview neared its close, Dale gave us a miniconcert, featuring some well-known favorites and a few songs that he has written himself, including “David’s Delight” and “Ephraim’s Blues.” And just before we said good-bye, he showed us his library, where he prepares for his sermons and studies—a room filled with bookshelves on each wall where he knows every book and can tell the story behind each. I hope you will enjoy getting to know this man as much as we have.

  —Teresa Thurmond Gentry

  I was playing the guitar from the time I was ten—taught myself—and I always wanted to play the banjo. I remember in early elementary school one day they had hobby day. They asked, “What do you do?” I told a lie. I said I was a banjo player ’cause I wanted to be so bad, but I couldn’t play. If they had said, “Okay, here’s one, play,” I couldn’t have, but I wanted to because I used to hear Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs on the radio on The Martha White Show early in the morning before we went to school—six fifteen in the morning—and all the family up, and there’s Flatt and Scruggs playing. It was great.

  I had to quit school because I had to leave home at fifteen—had nowhere to live, nowhere to go. For twenty-two days, I had nowhere to go. They write you off in school if you don’t show up. You would think they woulda sent somebody for me, but anyway, after twenty-two days, my buddy Larry found me and said, “Mama said you come stay with us.” At first I said naw. I was very ashamed and embarrassed, you know. It’s bad enough to not have anywhere to live, but you do what you have to do to survive. That was a Christian family that I moved in with, a poor family. I thought we were poor until I moved in with them. They were poor, but they were rich in love. Oh, my! They were very huggy people, tell-you-they-loved-you people. That was a different world for me. They were churchgoing people, and so I got a little bit involved in church. I had already been around them. That’s how I knew Larry. I met him when I was eleven or twelve years old. Got around old-fashioned preaching—an independent Baptist church—with guitars, fiddles, and stuff like that. At that time I was playing music a lot.

  PLATE 85 “I left North Carolina at age eighteen and went to traveling to see the world.”

  I never dreamed I’d really play until I was seventeen. A buddy of mine had an old folk banjo that didn’t even have a resonator on it. He played the style of Grandpa Jones and those people—Stringbean and David Holt and some of them—what they call drop thumb, ol’ mountain-style drop thumb. You didn’t use picks, but I couldn’t play like that. I started playing with picks like I play with the guitar, so by the time I was seventeen and a half, I was playing banjo. My dad had played music. He had a guitar. He could only play like G, C, and D. That’s it. Then my brother Steve bought a guitar and he wanted to play. You know, here I was playing already. You see, it came natural to me. I always said music is a gift from God. A lot of people take lessons. Back when I started learning, you didn’t have DVDs, and you didn’t have lessons, lesson books, hardly at all. You had to put the record on and try to learn flat full speed, nothing to slow it down, but I played with one of these cassette recorders. I listened back to it and heard what I was doing wrong and tried to get it just right—listen to the record, play, and then listen to the record and play.

  At the age of eighteen, I met Kenny Baker [Bill Monroe’s fiddle player] at a bluegrass festival. All of these guys back then, they drank alcohol. Aww, they drank. Whew! My first time ever around moonshine was in the back of an old car. We were going to pick, and I had some popcorn. I told one of ’em, “Pull over there, and let me get me a Coke.” And he said, “Ahh, here.” And I said, “What is it?” It looked like water, but he said, “Why don’t you just … it’s all right … take you a swallow.” Whew! It liked to burnt my toenails off. It was moonshine. They laughed; these old men laughed at me. I was a kid and that was my only taste ever in my life of moonshine. It was enough. That stuff’ll pickle you. You know, forget formaldehyde and all that.

  Anyway, Kenny told Betty Fisher in Marietta, Georgia, about me. She’s the band I played with—Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Band—my first professional job. So I started at seventeen and a half, and by the time I was nineteen, I was playing the Grand Ole Opry with Betty’s band. I played every day for five and a half hours a day, practicing the same thing—the same songs—till I got ’em right. I was also a studio musician. A lot of country singers wanted to record a song, but they didn’t have a band, so they would call me. This was in the early seventies. They would pay me a hundred dollars to come in for thirty minutes.

  We made the cover of Bluegrass Unlimited. Anybody in bluegrass, this is the magazine that they subscribe to. We dressed up, every one of us; we all matched. A lot of bands came on in blue jeans. Ricky Skaggs had a group called Boone Creek, and they’d come on in blue jeans and casual shirts and stuff. It was a very good, clean show, and I thought the music was good. Of course, Betty was one of the few women in bluegrass at that time, and she had a good group. I stayed with her from the age of nineteen till I was twenty-three, when I got saved. I got saved in 1976 in August. I left bluegrass. I told the band, “Don’t book any more for me, but whatever you’ve booked, I’ll honor.”

  PLATE 86 “By the time I was nineteen, I was playing the Grand Ole Opry.”

  They said, “Well, what are you gonna do?” I said, “I don’t know, but the Lord has saved me—got something for me to do. I gotta find out what it is.” I didn’t see anybody for at least a year and a half. I didn’t see none of the people in bluegrass, although they called at first after I was gone. They quit calling after I said, “I sold my banjo, and I’m preaching.” I would witness to them. I’d say, “Listen, let me talk to you about the Lord.” They’d say, “Well, I ain’t got time.” I’d say, “Okay.” So that ended most of the conversations. In about one year, I had to get rid of my banjo because people kept calling and wanting to hire me, and it was tempting—people throwing money at you. I said no. I was twenty-three years old, and I sold my banjo. I found something serious. I thought, if I’m gonna devote my life to this, I can’t be torn between it. After a year, the Lord had given me victory to be able to say, “Hey, guys, look. I’m gonna play my banjo in church—play for the Lord,” and at this time, Jan and I were dating. We married in October, and I started preaching not long after that and have been ever since. I still play bluegrass. I still play “Shuckin’ the Corn” and “Groundspeed” and all that stuff. I just don’t play bluegrass at festivals; I play in church. I have people in church all the time say, “Play ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ ” and I say okay. I mean, pastors ask me to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” I’ll say, “Okay, you’re the pastor.”

  We have fun with the music, but the Lord has just used my music to assimilate it into my ministry. It’s become part of the ministry—not the dominant part. The preaching part has been the dominant part, but this has been a great door opener. I’ve gotten to win a lot of pickers to the Lord because I pick. Music ministers to the heart in a tremendous way. It prepares the heart. A banjo is a joyful instrument. You can’t help it; if you play it any speed at all, it affects your foot.

  So what I do in my ministry is that I play the banjo before I preach, and I play slow stuff on the banjo, not just fast. That’s the difference in playing by yourself and taking the banjo where normally you wouldn’t—jail, prison, hospitals, nursing homes, churches. They don’t normally have a banjo player, so it’s been an honor to be able, all these years, to go play for people who otherwise would not hear a live banjo player—to see one live—unless they see one on TV or something.

  Then I started writing songs. Even before I got saved, I wrote songs, but after I got saved I started writing more songs. I’ve written a pile of songs, and they are totally different than my bluegrass. I’m trying to get my songs done while I’m still able to be here to sing because once I die all those songs, unless I have ’em recorded, are gonna be gone. All my instrumental banjo songs that I’ve written I’m trying to put on tape—on a CD
—because, number one, a lot of ’em are hard to play; it’s going to take somebody real special to want to learn to play these. Any banjo player can play “I’ll Fly Away,” but to play some of the other stuff that I play, it’s very difficult.

  A buddy of mine up in Indiana helped me put all this stuff together. He told me years ago, “You need to start puttin’ your songs on CD. You could sell ’em when you go preach.” I didn’t have the money, so he helped me put my first CD together and then the second and so on. So everywhere we go, especially now, I sell my CDs. I sell ’em for ten dollars apiece, or I give ’em away. I tell people, “If you don’t have ten dollars, take a CD. You can have a CD, but one per family,” because I was in a church preaching, and a man and his wife had a pile of kids. When I said, “You can have a CD,” they all got a CD. I’m not kidding.

  I’ve written a bunch of songs. When you hear my music, it’s totally different. To get my music out, it’s a blessing that people have recorded my songs. We just had a group up in Indiana, a gospel group, record three of my songs. They had already recorded two of my songs, so they’ve recorded five altogether. This ministers to the foot [pointing to his banjo], and my music that I’ve written ministers to the heart. Some bluegrass will minister to the heart when you play it right; some of that old stuff—the old slow gospel bluegrass, even “Cabin on the Hill,” a Flatt and Scruggs tune. Every time I hear that song, boy, it makes me think about going home. A lot of those bluegrass songs had that touch to them, like old country. Old country music is different from new country today. Well, old bluegrass is different than new. We have newgrass now—Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. I met him [Béla Fleck] and witnessed to him, and got to talking to him, and he said he was a Jew. I said, “So was my Savior.” “But are you saved?” is what I asked him. He’s a great banjo player in his style.

  All that I’ve accomplished in life is what the Lord has helped me do—my traveling—all the countries that I’ve been to, places I’ve been. At eighteen, I walked the Grand Canyon; I walked to the bottom—three and a half miles—and walked back up. I’ve got pictures of me in the Grand Canyon. I stood on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, on top of the Empire State Building, and the Twin Towers. They were building ’em when I was standing on the Empire State Building. I saw the Twin Towers coming up. They hadn’t finished them yet. To go out of this country, to get to go to Alaska, to fly within hundreds of miles of Russia and preach to a village of four thousand people—it’s an honor to have written these songs and written poems. And then to go preach and see so many saved; somebody might think that I’ve done a lot, when really I haven’t. It’s just that the Lord has let me utilize what I have.

  PLATE 87 “We have fun with the music, but the Lord has just used my music.…It’s become part of the ministry.”

  You’re born with the gift of music. I’ve had people say, “Brother Dale, will I ever learn to play a banjo like that?” I can say, “Practice hard,” but people are born with the gift of music. In the Old Testament, God gave Asaph and those people the gift of music. He put it in them. He put the ability to engrave in people that didn’t have it. That’s in the Old Testament. He gave them the gift of engraving, embroidery. They couldn’t do it, but he put it in ’em.

  So as a child I had the gift of music. I didn’t know I had the gift of music. I had to grow up, and I was on up in age in preaching before I realized, “Hey, this is a gift.”

  Dale Tilley’s music is available from Dale Tilley, PO Box 252, Ringgold, GA 30736-0252.

  “I’m a musician.”

  ~Gary Waldrep~

  I had the opportunity to meet and listen to Gary Waldrep and his band at a bluegrass festival in Long Creek, South Carolina, a few years ago. I was not in the stage area when the group began to perform, but the group’s rich harmony, echoing through the hills surrounding the park, drew me up front and close to the stage. Talking with Gary later, I realized he was a huge Foxfire fan, and that day he made plans to stop by my classroom at Rabun County High School, at some point in the future, to pick up a set of the Foxfire books. True to his word, a couple of months later, he and his mom came through Tiger, Georgia, and purchased the entire collection of Foxfire books. I found Gary to be not only a very talented musician and performer but also a loyal friend to his fans, both on and off the stage. He always has time to talk or play a tune with a stranger, who quickly becomes his friend. God has truly blessed Gary with talent in so many ways. I feel privileged to call him my friend.

  —Joyce Green

  I started playing music when I was five years old because my family played. It was just something that we picked up. I never had a music lesson; I didn’t even know what a music lesson was. We were just blessed with a God-given talent—the gift of playing by ear. When I was little, maybe four or five years old, I started playing my first instrument. It was a shoe box and two pencils. I would sit there while the folks played, and I would beat the pencils on the shoe box for a drum, and that was the rhythm. That’s how I learned to beat rhythm and keep time.

  The first true instrument that I ever had in my hands was a mandolin, which I still have out there in the office. It belonged to my aunt, and she let me borrow it and play it one day. She showed me three chords—G, C, and D—and I started playing and getting my rhythm down with just three chords on the mandolin. Today I’m really a banjo player, and I make a living playing the banjo, but it all started with the mandolin.

  My first prize was a silver dollar when I was five years old. My family was playing at a local rescue squad fund-raiser, and this old man walked up to me and gave me a silver dollar. That was the first money that I ever made. During my preteen and teenage years, my aunt was playing bass in the family band. They played gospel and old-time country music. At this time there was not a lot of bluegrass, so they were playing southern gospel and old country gospel—stuff like the Carter Family, Roy Acuff, and Hank Williams. They loved country music, and my aunt started showing me some runs on the electric bass guitar. I learned a few runs and moved from playing the mandolin to bass guitar.

  PLATE 88 “It’s come apart. It’s terrible, but on that mandolin is where I learned to play my three chords—G, C, and D.” The mandolin that Gary started playing when he was five years old

  I played bass guitar for five or six years until my aunt fell in love with this guy, Kenneth [Kenny] Townsell. He loved bluegrass and while they were dating, he brought an old banjo over there to my grandparents’ house and started playing it. Well, I picked it up naturally, after he showed me a few licks. You know how musicians are; we want to go around learning to play different instruments, and so I started playing it, and I kinda liked the sound of it. You know, I thought the banjo was pretty cool ’cause I’d always played country and gospel and didn’t really know what bluegrass was. Kenny kind of brought the bluegrass influence and old-time music into the family. So I got my driver’s license so I could drive and started going to some fiddlers’ conventions and square dances—anything that I could find that had old-timey bluegrass music—and I would play the banjo. Thirty-two years later, and I’m still playing banjo and making a living with it. That’s where I got started into bluegrass.

  My family played music, but they didn’t tour extensively like we do today. They mostly stayed in the community. They would go to different people’s houses on Saturday night and pick, or to church singings and nursing homes and play for the folks there. My mother was a wonderful singer. She didn’t play an instrument hardly—just the guitar a little bit—but she taught me and my sister how to hear the different parts in singing. I owe all my singing ability, which is not a whole lot, to my mother ’cause me and my sister grew up listening to her sing. She’d be singing a song like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and she’d tell us, “Now, don’t sing my part ’cause I’m singing my part. Sing high above me or below me.” She said, “You get a part, and you get a part.” Well, that’s how she taught us to sing the harmony. I lost my mother three years ago with col
on cancer. She was sixty-five. My dad is still living. He’s seventy years old and on the road with us. He helps drive the bus and sells my CDs.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I got out of high school. I thought, “Well … I don’t want to be a dentist, and I don’t want to be a lawyer.” You know, I’m thinking, “I’m a musician.” I was in the band in high school, and I loved the band. I was drum major. If it hadn’t been for band, I probably would’ve flunked school [laughs] because I didn’t like school that much. Thank God for band!

  When I finished school I was already playing bluegrass music. I would go to fiddlers’ conventions on Saturday night, and they would hold contests for banjo playing, fiddle playing, and buck dancing. Well, I’d enter in every category because I thought I could play a song on something, and I would end up winning prize money. When I’d get home, I’d have two or three hundred dollars in my pocket. And I thought, “This is something. I might could do this for a living. Why not?” My parents didn’t push me to play, but my mother always encouraged me in my music ’cause she loved music; however, my dad wasn’t very keen on the idea. He wanted me to be the big football player type, but I was not into sports much. I’m an Alabama fan; that’s about as far as it goes. I thought, “Well, I don’t want to do that, so what am I gonna do?” Basically, I started playing for money. I’d enter contests and get in these little bands, and we’d enter contests and win five hundred, a thousand dollars, or whatever.