This is archaic, I know. I should have done this on Instagram or Snapchat or at least Facebook. But here is a collection of snaps, match ups of regular people with famous people. These images from US Magazine (I am kidding) are no selfies either.
Why do we take pictures with famous people? We want some of the stardust fame rub off on us too.
I remember how cranked up I was about meeting Alice Cooper in person. As a teenager in Germany, I had his Bravo poster up on the wall, blackened eyes and all. On that day, Alice was promoting a friend’s sandwich shop. Alice Cooper, bad boy rock’n roller, is now a celebrity for saving the youth with his program Solid Rock. He has a music studio each for budding musicians in Phoenix and Mesa.He gets the youngsters engaged and off the street. I have visited Solid Roch with my student groups. A neat place!
I am certainly not a stage hog. But—The most famous picture, which I had always wanted, would have been with Elvis Presley. I was only a teenager when he died, cried my eyes out. But Gisela Solms-Wildenfels got a shot with Elvis when he was stationed in Germany. I stumbled into Gisela at a flea market in Wolfratshausen, where she was selling Hummel cups and other trinkets. She is of that Elvis generation. And this one encounter gave her joy to last a lifetime. She gifted me a copy of her Elvis picture.
Kurt Warner & Susmita
And on the story goes. I am not a sports crack, but I could pick out Kurt Warner (Arizona quarterback, 2005-2009) on our flight back from Omaha to Phoenix. We had attended a country music festival in Le Mars, Iowa. The football legend agreed to a photo with the cutest of us, Susmita. She didn’t know who we snapped her with, but it made me happy. Old reporter soul. Can’t ever switch off my scanning mode in an airport.
There are many more incidents of brushes with fame. Sometimes we don’t even realize when a celebrity passes by. I missed my chance to take a selfie with Max Raabe from the Palast Orchester. Oh, well. Better luck next time.
AnnElise arrested by TV cops Hubert & Staller (Christian Tramitz, Helmfried von Lüttichau)
Arduino co-founder Tom Igoe, remote controlled man Josh, and Priyanka Makin
AnnElise, AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes, Jeanne Devine, Randy Miller (SRP Board)
AnnElise, Kate Earley, and painter Jack Earley on Valentine’s Day in Loveland
NOTE: This poem by Priyanka, written in 2013 in high school, floored me when I rediscovered it in the keepsake box. Proud parent thinks, Little Genius in the Makin’
As I wander through the forest,
The warm sun rests on my shoulders;
The playful blades of grass reach up to my ankles.
The tall, tower-like trees stretch upward
And tickle the lonesome sky;
The sky has no friends to chase
On this cloudless day.
I see the flowers lean left and right
To get a good look at the magnificent trees;
The pine needles from above
Sprinkle down their spicy smell like fairy dust.
The mountain breeze climbs up my spine
And weaves through my hair;
He races through the trees
As all the leaves cheer for him.
A scripted butterfly lands
On the trunk of the tallest tree,
Basking in its glory;
The baby trees, standing straight and proud
In the shadows of their parents,
Know they can also, one day, achieve their greatness.
And as I witnessed the small trees
Standing as straight as can be, I thought to myself
No matter how small I start off, I can achieve magnitude.
November is Native American Heritage Month. The Mesa Public Schools NAEP celebrated a fabulous Heritage Night at Westwood High School. The evening was filled with Native royalty, sizzling dance performances, and a heart-felt community spirit. The evening started with an invocation by Freddie Johnson, Diné, and the Land Acknowledgment read by Vice Principal Paul Davis. Keynote speaker was Steven P. Toya Sr. from New Mexico, a much loved counselor and educator. NAEP Program Director Esther Nystrom was visibly proud of her District team that night. Senior NAEP Liaison Debra Toya from Mountain View High School had brought the Royalty and top performers to the stage.
Amazing performances by the internationally acclaimed Indigenous Enterprise group (top row) and Renae Blackwater/Maswade (above).
The fancy Rooster Dance
Multi-talented performers
The Drum Group (above) fired up the spirit of dance. Then the Traditional Akimél O’odham Singers (below; Salt River Pima) invited everybody to join hands for a social dance.
Everybody dance, and . . .
. . . they all did.
Finally, Thunder and his brother Tyler read us a story called “Thunder’s Hair.” Here Tyler and Thunder are with team leader Tiffany (middle) and their mom (right).
Debra Toya and Esther Nystrom provided gifts for Royalty and honorees.
Great job, everybody!
IMPORTANT NOTES:
Arizona is home to 22 Tribal Nations that comprise approximately 28 percent of Arizona’s land base. Two important legislative bills impacted the Native American communities in 2021:
In April, Governor Ducey signed a historic tribal-state gaming compact agreement that modernized gaming in Arizona.
The Governor also signed legislation allowing Native American students in communities across Arizona to wear traditional tribal regalia at their graduation.
ABOVE: Performing at LeMars, Iowa, in 2015 are Frankie Carter (left), Tommy Buller (middle), Lillie Mae Rische (right, fiddle), and two more.
Bob Everhart has left the building. He passed away on August 20, 2021, at the age of 85 from heart complications. The world of Old-Time Country Music has lost its most passionate advocate. He was a great entertainer as well. Here we are with Bob and Sheila at LeMars in 2017.
I met Bob on my first trip to the United States in 1979, visiting my hometown Friend Maria “Leni” Petersen in Omaha, Nebraska. She, an accomplished zither player and singer, took me to a county fair park called Westfair.
Maria “Leni” Petersen, plays the zither, her friend the guitar, the harmonica, and the saw.
Instantly, I was immersed in a world where folks strummed and fiddled and balladed on every corner of some dusty arenas or around the camp fires in the RV park. You could hear bluegrass, honky tonk, highway music or Appalachian dulcimers, a vast range of styles topped off by gospels and spirituals. This good-natured music mania was also going on simultaneously on several stages. There were competitions, instruments, vendors, foreign guests–I was hooked. In the eighties, I often ventured to Iowa over Labor Day weekend for a country music bath and to hear familiar acts again.
Bob is recognizing Harry Rusk, a First Nations minister and singer from Alberta, Canada, with a lifetime award.
Bob Everhart was the perfect host at his festival, scootering on a golf cart all over the park. He was also an accomplished singer of train songs, when he let his harmonica do the Train Whistle Blues, ALL Around the Water Tank, the City of New Orleans, or the Wabash Cannonball. And in the winter he usually went on tour to Europe, including Germany. When I still lived there, I booked a couple of gigs for him at the Oklahoma in Munich, the Notabene in Wolfratshausen, and even Gasthaus Lacherdinger in Ascholding. I will never forget that raucous evening with the Black Bottom Skiffle group. That night I realized that I would never want to be a music event manager. How, dear Bob in heaven, could you do that tricky business for more than 40 years? God bless you! Please tell him/her to blow a bit of traditional country music our way, and not those terrible hurricanes!
A snapshot of Bob and me in 2015.
Nobody made a lot of money at Westfair, Avoca, or LeMars, but we all made lifetime friends. When I revisited Bob’s festival in 2015 and 2017, I recognized some familiar faces from the eighties, like Stanley “Gallon Hat” or Erv Pickhinke. Some I didn’t recognize because they weren’t born yet in the eighties. These young musicians were the maybe-soon-to-be-famous offspring of the CW hardliners. Bob cared a lot about growing up young country musicians. He was excited to provide them a platform to show their talents. Bob kept his Who’s Got Talent in Country Music going until his eighties. Well done! A life unmatched.
And so many of the young CW folks played him their last respects with songs like “In the Sweet By and By.” But here comes Jacob Austin as Dapper Dan.
Bye, bye, Bob! Keep on jamming with Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and company.
Here is more In Loving Memory of Robert Phillip Everhart
42nd National Old-Time Music Festival and Pioneer Expo
August 28 – September 3, 2017
Plymouth County Fairgrounds—LeMars, IA 51520
Funny, how a small Bavarian village (where I spent most of the summer) can harbor all kinds of memories. But country music? When the Ascholding riding club let out a few country western tunes, it sent me down memory lane. Those tunes sounded much like the skiffle group that I taped two years ago at Bob Everhart’s Festival at Le Mars, Iowa (above), or back then at guesthouse Lacherdinger.
Country music was nothing new in Ascholding. More than 30 years ago, old-time country music ambassador Bob Everhart came to perform in my quaint German hometown. Maybe those stones got rolling there?
During his European trips, Bob and I and another few put several country music acts on stage in Germany. I will never forget when the Black Bottom Skiffle group heated up the fully stuffed “Saal” and eventually made off with all the door money, or when Jeff Doty ran up the phone bill mile high at my friend’s house. Kathl, by now almost 90 years old, still remembers the story. Jeff had the love-sick blues. Duh, that explains the phone bill. Luckily, there were more stints to come in Wolfratshausen and Munich.
Bob Everhart has been promoting traditional country music all his life. He has recorded classics for a select album for the Smithsonian Institute (Folkways Records), runs the Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame, “live-streams” the traditional tunes (Wabash Cannon Ball etc.) at countless appearances and hosts every Labor Day the Old Time Country Music Festival in Le Mars, Iowa.
Bob Everhart is a country boy to the bone, as he reveals in his autobiography, “What I Saw”. Bob came from a day laborer family, which was terrorized by an alcoholic, violent dad and held together by a saintly mom. The singer had his first “radio appearances” in the Navy as a radioman. Maybe he also caught the travel bug there because the Navy took them as far as Japan.
Soon after his college studies, music fever led Bob Everhart into the hard-knock music business. Big record labels called the shots, and good bands got their songs stolen. In his early beginnings in the hard-hitting music industry, newspaper reporter Bob met the Rolling Stones when they toured America early in their career before the Battle of the Bands in Omaha, Nebraska.
I visited Bob’s Traditional Country Music Festival in 2015 and was amazed that his flagship event was still going. My friend Maria (also from Ascholding) faithfully played the zither there at several workshops as 30 years before. Bob apparently had not changed much; but he was close to 80 years old now (did I miscount?). How did he keep up this energy? Music keeps him young.
Eventually, I stopped at the festival information booth. Boy, some of these photos seemed familiar. When I was a student at the University of Texas, I attended Bob’s Old-Time Country Music Festival several times. And took pictures. Yep, some of my snapshots stuck out of the photo display. Bob had kept them all these years! Even Bob’s Folkways album cover seemed awesomely familiar. I remembered that performance in the 80ies. I came to Iowa from the University of Texas. Could I have taken the picture for the album cover and didn’t know it?
Bob Everhart has a fabulously strong voice, Nashville-good. But he didn’t want to go that route, selling out to the music industry. He decided instead to serve the Midwestern people’s old-time music and friendships. It’s no easy feat to pull off such a large festival each year. Seems the audience has gotten a little older. But many young musicians join the lineup just as well as the old faithful make the pilgrimage to present faithful crowd pleasers.
If you like traditional people’s music and want to spend a couple of casual days with friendly people, the Traditional Old-Time Country Music Festival is just the right place for you.
Music by Waco Brothers, live at Monty Hall, Harm’s Way.
Yes, I am submitting my docu-shorts as a new category to the movie academy in Hollywood. If I don’t win, then Molly would for sure. Molly, aka Susie, does the Rubics cube in under ten seconds. What a Speedy Gonzalez. Whatever–Happy Oscars to you!
Music by Josh Armistead, Full-time Casual album, Peace with my Brothers.
Music by classy firetruck.
Music by catch-me-if-you can police. Video by Susmita Makin.
The Taj Mahal was a highly involved school project from the last year. Susmita got totally into it with the sugar cube building method. She built a fairly large (2×2 ft) replica of the most famous romantic mausoleum on the planet. I forget how many boxes of sugar cubes went into this construction, perhaps 2 kg. Card stock, plastic cups, foam balls, Christmas light decorations—it all turned out fabulous!
Then the Taj Mahal, as happens with many projects after presentation, sat on the work bench in the garage for the next six months. It was still beautiful, too nice to toss it out. What to do? We couldn’t keep it. So we found a creative way of deconstruction. We put the Taj Mahal in “acid rain” (symbolically, because our drinking water in Arizona seems to be fairly pH neutral). How long would a sugar Taj Mahal hold up in the sprinkler?
We recorded the experiment for you. Enjoy the show!
We made a creative experiment, but the erosion of the Taj Mahal is for real. See this Taj Mahal Case Study from India.
I didn’t fall to pieces, but I fell in love with this girl. Lillie Mae Rische drew me in at first sight and sound. She is a folk/country singer with attractive looks and great personality. Not only can she sing like Nancy Griffifth (with a touch of Taylor Swift and a pinch of Joan Baez), a little moody and smokey at times, she also plays the fiddle amazingly well. At LeMars she carried ahead of her a whiff of world travels and bigger things to come.
Lillie Mae has a CD out called “Rain on the Piano”. She wrote several songs on it herself. I liked each one of her poetic tunes. Her work has a consistency about it, showing that she knows what style she is driving. “No surprise that Lillie Mae Rische is a complete bad-ass and an all-round powerhouse of melody,” her ThirdMan Store record distributor writes. No wonder, she is a Nashville girl.
And then there was this dude by the name of Frank, maybe Carter or maybe Rische. Methinks he is related to Lillie Mae. He played guitar so handsomely. Here he is with “Gentle on My Mind.”
Fred Techau and his wife Dorothy presenting the Overture to Wilhelm Tell.
One fine morning as I was strolling the LeMars fairgrounds, I stumbled upon a dulcimer workshop at the Village Square. Dorothy and her sister Marilyn were initiating another player into a whole other way of tuning. There was one extra dulcimer. So what should they do? They placed that instrument on my knees and handed me and extra sheet of notes. Play. OK. The dulcimer has four strings on its keyboard (left had) to make chords with. The right hand plucks the rhythm with a plectrum. After you know three chords, you can play to accompaniment to most country songs. Playing the lead is a different story.
The mountain dulcimer is a soft-spoken instrument. It harmonizes well with many acoustic sets and is an important sound element in traditional country music and the Appalachian folk life. The frets are arranged in the diatonic scale. It can be tuned in the Mixolydian or Ionian mode. Now, Dorothy didn’t let me worry about that too much, but instructed me to move my set of fingers in tandem three notches up the board. There! Anyone can learn this in ten minutes. I spent the most relaxing half hour that morning tuning into the dulcimers. How nice it is to play music!
Harry Rusk was introduced into the Country Music Hall of Fame by Bob Everhart at LeMars in 2015.
Harry Rusk is a widely known country music artist and Nashville performer from Alberta, Canada. He is a Native American from the Slavey tribe, born at Fort Nelson, British Columbia. In his autobiography “Beyond the Bend of the River,” Harry wrote down his painfully honest and sometimes heartbreaking life story of discrimination and survival. He is one of the very few people remaining who grew up in the traditional trapping lifestyle of the Pacific Northwest.
In his youth Harry suffered from tuberculosis and was hospitalized at total bedrest for four years. Both his parents and brother perished from TB. Through all the early tribulations, the country singer who got inspired by old-time star Hank Snow, cherished any small kindness given to him as a great treasure. He was not fond of the heartless Catholic missionaries, who almost refused to give his mother a Christian burial. Then, in 1975, Harry found Jesus. Since then he uses his musical talent for his ministry. But I haven’t gotten that far in his book yet. I have enjoyed one page after another of insights into a much varied life of self-determination.
Meet an authentic singing farmer: Ervin Pickhinke from Sioux City, Iowa. I stumbled upon one of his performances at Bob Everhart’s festival, but, too slow, buffalo, I had missed my shot. That’s why Ervin repeated his John Deere ‘wheelings’ especially for me, because by then he had also run out of CDs. This song was truly funny, it had taken me by surprise. I was delighted.
Ervin Pickhinke and his daughter Sara Sennert have country music in the blood. “Living Country” is the title of their heart-warming joint album. Ervin retired from farming after working his property for 41 years. His young neighbor bought the farm and proudly continues the tradition. Ervin’s business card says, “A Farmer’s Trade Is One of Worth.” Ervin is of German roots, and there are still Pickhinkes living in Germany, as Sara found out. Apparently, Ervin’s grandfather set sail for America and didn’t tell his parents, where he was going. They later found out the truth from a cousin.
Below you can see a John Deere at work, plus a classic Hanomag.
Meet Maria Petersen, from Omaha, Nebraska. She was raised in the same Bavarian village as I and got me into country music. Here Maria is performing Amazing Grace with friend Jeff Osthus minding the saw. The zither has a keyboard of strings for melody and accompanying chords. Maria has performed often at the German American Club in Omaha, for many social groups, and at Bob Everhart’s annual country music festival. She plays Bavarian folk songs, country music, classical pieces and children’s songs. Maria founded a zither society and arranged a national convention of zither players in Omaha in 1999. She has released four CDs with her own recordings.
“My father was a carpenter, wheelwright, and passionate musician. So he decided to have a little house music with us children, my brother and I. Anderl, would soon give up on the zither. So father taught him the guitar. The zither also cut hard into my small fingers. But I practiced for hours at a time, because I wanted play it like my dad did. Well, my mother was very happy with me practicing too. She let me get off the chores when I was making music. She praised me consistently, even though all that practice might not have sounded so good. Here I am, still playing after all these years.” Amazing Grace on the zither!
Will the circle be unbroken? Yeah, I don’t think it ever was broken. Rather I came all the way around at Bob Everhart’s 40th country music festival. I went to LeMars. Where, Mars? No, Le Mars! That is a small town in Iowa. After a long time I went Country again (once a cowgirl, always a cowgirl), listening to famous tunes four days straight.
Bob calls his brand of event a “mouthful.” To be precise, we are talking about the “National Old Time, Country, Bluegrass, and Folk Music Festival and Pioneer Exposition of Arts, Crafts, Flea Market, And Agricultural Lifestyle & Rural Living Convention.” I am calling it Bob and Sheila’s (his wife) country music festival.
Now I don’t know if time was standing still, I skipped a few decades, or I was fast-forwarding to the Plymouth County Fairgrounds from my yesteryear Texas college days—I still recognized some faces of the old-time music hardliners. I’ll be darn, the music festival, as I had known it from Avoca (Iowa), although smaller, was still going strong.
Granted, a number of musicians had passed on. Yet, just like I vividly remembered, there was this array of RV campers and a village of show barns filled with musical entertainment. For seven days during Labor Day week, on ten stages, all day long, traditional country music would play itself out. You could get an endless earful of acoustic folk music, “exotic” instruments such as dulcimer, autoharp, or singing saw included. Some performers came from as far as New Zealand. READ ON BELOW JACOB AUSTIN BAND VIDEO
Bob Everhart, the organizer of this medley, is a great performer, recording artist, promoter, and encyclopedia of country music. He and his wife Sheila have earned a spot at the Smithsonian’s Traveling Museum. Bob chose his country music mission early on in life. He didn’t try too hard to become a star. Why? He put a value instead of a price tag on his favorite music. Bob didn’t sell out to the music industry, because those traditional tunes feel best when everyone sings and plays them together. So the Great Plains troubadour started many a friendly competition. Bob has always kept good-natured about the (tough) music business. His favorite key is “h” for humor. He likes to joke when things go wrong. And the show always goes on somehow.
Not only has Bob put on his festival (and many other gigs) for 40 years, he also founded the National Traditional Country Music Association and established a prairie “roots music” Pioneer Music Museum in Anita, Iowa, with America’s Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame and many music memorabilia in it. Call it “Planet Country Music.” Sheila plays music (bass) with Bob and helps him with the organizing and hosting the awards at the big, annual NTCMA festival. For the rest of the year, all three (add daughter Bobbie Leah to the mix) have planned a number of events at their Oak Tree Opry in their hometown Anita, Iowa.
How do I know Bob Everhart? Let’s go back to prehistoric 1979. My friend Leni (alias Maria Petersen) from Omaha took me along to his country music festival. She and I come from the same small village in Germany (Ascholding). Now as then, Leni was scheduled for a number of appearances with her zither (so far the one and only at this festival over the last 30 years). This time, I followed her around, taking pictures for her portfolio.
Oh, what a memory lane I got on! I had organized, as a teenager, some country music appearances for Bob and his travel companions around my German hometown. That was such a thrill and highly unusual at the time. Here’s another thing: On stage I had to translate the introductions of songs for Bob. He kept telling the listeners about the famous Carter family in country music. You know what I thought? Jimmy Carter, President. I was confused. Now, how did the presidents suddenly get into country music? So many Carters out there?
Finally, where is today’s “Home on the range?” At Bob Everhart’s country music festival, I’d say, “where never is heard a discouraging word.” People, this was a lot of fun for me. Be sure to tune in for more country music soon at this station. I’ll play you some.
Why do we take pictures with famous people? We want some of the stardust fame rub off on us too.
I am certainly not a stage hog. But—The most famous picture, which I had always wanted, would have been with Elvis Presley. I was only a teenager when he died, cried my eyes out. But Gisela Solms-Wildenfels got a shot with Elvis when he was stationed in Germany. I stumbled into Gisela at a flea market in Wolfratshausen, where she was selling Hummel cups and other trinkets. She is of that Elvis generation. And this one encounter gave her joy to last a lifetime. She gifted me a copy of her Elvis picture.
