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MY OLD TIME JOURNEY:  A Note from Producer/Director Chris Valluzzo

It's fall 1991 and it's the beginning of my senior year of high school. 

 

While my friends have spent the last year listening to hip hop and heavy metal, I have spent the last year listening to nothing but Delta Blues.  It was my first exposure to roots music.  I was absolutely consumed with it.  One day I decided to take my time after class getting to my car around 3 pm.  I stumbled across 88.5 WAMU and on it was the Bluegrass Show.  I had never heard anything like it.  It had the rootsy feel of delta blues but clearly it was different.  I spent the next year listening to nothing but Bluegrass. 

 

I arrived in Blacksburg, VA in the fall of 1992 to attend Virginia Tech.  A few weeks later a friend down the hall in my dorm told me there was a bluegrass night at a local restaurant.  So we went.  Unbeknownst to me, I was listening to Old Time music.  My ears couldn't separate the two . . . and didn't for the next decade.  Probably b/c it wasn't my time to catch the "Old Time Bug." 

November 2008:  Old Time legend Mike Seeger and Horse Archer Producer/Director Chris Valluzzo at Seeger's home in Virginia.

In 2002, I returned to Blacksburg to work at a new job. Shortly after that I signed up for the New River Valley old time listserv. Reading the entries from so many people who were so passionate about this music made me ask one question: Why?

Why do they learn songs a hundred or more years older than they are? Why do they travel to conventions and festivals? Why do they move from all over the country and world to this area just to be closer to the source of this music? It was then that I decided to do a documentary called Why Old Time.

Flash forward to July of 2004.  I'm at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in Upper State New York and I spent a couple days listening to nothing but bluegrass bands.  On the stage walks The Wilders from Kansas City. They're an interesting mix of Old Country, Honky Tonk and Old Time.  But their first Old Time song was "my old time moment."   They broke into Black Eyed Susie and for the first time I understood what Old Time was.  It WAS different from Bluegrass and I knew that not only was the film Why Old Time? a viable concept, but I knew that I had to do everything in my power to wrap my brain around this music and learn to play it.

It took another few years to get my production company off the ground and to complete the first few projects we had. But in early 2008, we began production. It was time for me to catch the Old Time bug. The past year I have been all consumed with this music. Traveling to many states, many homes, many conventions, and other places related to this music. And listening to nothing but it.

I've spoken with folks who were born into this music, folks who found the music while the old timers where still around, folks who just found this music through other genres, and folks who just plain love this music. Like so many other people, this music speaks to me in a way that no other genre has and I want to spend my life embracing it. And I want to have my daughter grow up around it and you’ll see me at the conventions along with my wife and daughter.

I told some folks along the way that when someone catches the Old Time bug they buy all the old recordings they can, they trade in their resonator banjo for an open back, they pawn the violin and buy a locally made fiddle, they seek out older more experienced players, and they go to every convention and festival they can.

June 2008:  One VERY hot day in Mt. Airy NC.  In addition to Chris, camera operators Eric Schenkel and Jack Bennett are featured to the right.

Well, instead of all of that, I've decided to make a movie about it.  This film is my way of honoring this music.  It's my way of telling the world of OT, here I am, and you'll see/hear plenty of me.  Hope you all enjoy it.  See you around the bend.

A Note from Co-Producer/Co-Director Sean Kotz

What I Know Now that I Did Not Know Then

On my 40th birthday, Chris and I drove out to Glen Lyn, Virginia, to the home of Dean Reed, son of Old Time legend, Henry Reed, and officially began a new life as a film maker.

Technically speaking, The Henry Reed Legacy . . . the film we were shooting that day and a precursor to Why Old Time? . . . was not our first project.   We had started Hokie Nation a few months before, but we had not gotten permission to film anything yet, and in the meantime, we turned to the Henry Reed project to keep our wheels moving with an important story about both Old Time music and rural cultural history.

April 2008: Dean Reed (center) plays with members of the Giles Mountain String Band at Chris Via's home . . . just because they want to.

When we walked into Dean's house, I felt genuinely welcome and we were offered cookies and coffee in the same breath as his hello.  It was just the way my grandmother's house was 40 years ago.  I knew very little about Henry at that point, and even less, I suppose about Old Time, but what I understood instantly is that Old Time has no pretense.

That appealed to me because I have never cared much for "pop" music.  That's not to say my CD collection contains no music that also happens to be popular.  What I mean is that some music comes from the heart and from legitimate experience and other music is essentially just an act . . . a show that talented people can put on and make an audience believe it is heartfelt. 

You need merely look at an episode of "American Idol" to see the evidence.  Those people make a lot of money precisely because they can sing whatever is in front of them and make it sound like they care--whether it is a love song or a cola commercial.  They do it for the money and they do it for the stardom, but they don't care what they are singing as a general rule.

That is not the way it is with Old Time music, that's for sure: for Old Time musicians, the point is simply the music.

It's nice to have people watching and applauding and dancing, but it is more about the communal experience of playing with your next door neighbor and a guy or gal you just met, than it is about showing off your chops or collecting a pay check.

In other words, there is no great line between the Old Time musician and the audience.  In fact, most of the time, there either is no audience or the audience is full of musicians.  And honestly, I can't think of another type of music where this is the case.

To put it another way . . . before there was commercial radio and TV and LPs, CDs and MP3s, there was this music and people were playing it because . . . they wanted to.

So, from Dean Reed's house a few weeks before Christmas in 2005 forward and across several states, I have interviewed some of the most interesting people I have ever met (and keep in mind that Hokie Nation got us interviews with big time politicians, poets, historians, college coaches and an NFL Hall of Famer.) I also never went hungry, never went thirsty and never, ever felt like I was at a distance from the people we were interviewing no matter who they happened to be.

That's because the common thread is the music and the community it inspires, which have a tremendous equalizing power.  It crosses international, political, social, racial, educational, generational and economic boundaries and, in fact, I am amazed by how many stereotypes are shattered by this film.

Maybe, in the end, that's what I really want to say about this project.  I think it will reach at least a little bit beyond what we thought we'd have when Chris first presented the idea. 

What is the Documentary About?

Why Old Time? is a positive and celebratory feature length documentary about Old Time music fan culture.

This film focuses on the relationship between the music and its fans, examining why so many folks travel long distances to festivals, why they spend so much time learning songs written decades or longer before they were born and why the musical tradition established hundreds of years ago is being preserved by people today.

We explore the sense of community based around the music and why people gather weekly to play Old Time music and commune with each other form house concerts to huge festivals. We also address the tremendous wealth of knowledge fans retain on not just a given song, but where it came from, variations of it, and musicians that were known to play it.

In essence, documents both the Old Time music scene as it is today as well as its development over the years. Why Old Time? demonstrates why it is important to preserve this music and share it with younger generations.

Why Old Time? will be available on DVD in Spring of 2009 and can be pre-ordered at a discount rate below.  This documentary is brought to you by Horse Archer Productions, the people who brought you Hokie Nation:  A Team, A Town and the Best Darned Fans in College Football and Virginia Creepers:  The Horror Host Tradition of the Old Dominion.

Mike Seeger Passes:

Sadly, Mike Seeger left this world on August 8, 2009.  We had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Seeger in November of 2008 when we interviewed him for "Why Old Time?" and while he was not in the best of health then, he was gracious and very interested in the work we were doing.

In short, we felt honored.

Neither of us could claim to be close friends with Mr. Seeger, but he sure treated us like that in his home and in his correspondences.  In fact, we had been invited to document a performance scheduled in Blacksburg, Virginia in November, and again, we felt honored.

Whenever a great person passes, we try not to feel too heartsick.  After all, imagine the world without Mike Seeger's contributions . . .

November 2008:  Old Time legend Mike Seeger and Horse Archer Producer/Director Chris Valluzzo at Seeger's home in Virginia.

A PERSONAL NOTE FROM CHRIS VALLUZZO:  I was deeply saddened to hear about Mike Seeger passing. I'm relatively new to Old Time but one thing I knew early was that Mike Seeger had spent his life promoting and playing Old Time music. I was at Clifftop talking with a friend about Mike and it came to me that there are a whole lot of folks around here jamming in circles because of Mike Seeger. Directly and indirectly. I was so honored to have him in our film.

As a filmmaker documenting old time music, I was honestly a little star struck to be sitting across from a man that dedicated his life to this music. He was gracious, honest and open during our interview and expertly kept the small wood stove at the perfect temperature. There were instruments on every wall of the room which was, for me, the visual affirmation of how much this man LIVED this music. Thanks Mike. See you around the bend. Keep on pickin.