Stay Aware

I love a good story! To be able to write a good story, I find I have to stay in a state of awareness so I can recognize a good story; and to recognize a good story, well, sometimes you have to go in search of it. My favorite thing to do is collect new folks around me all the time.

I just got back from teaching a songwriting workshop in Florida and when in the sunshine state I always feel compelled to find the local watering hole to have a cold adult beverage by the shoreline, maybe some raw oysters thrown in for good measure.

So that’s where me and my farm darling were, a place called the The Filling Station, created out of an abandoned gas station and garage. The big rolling doors had been removed and not replaced, it was all open air. The beams were exposed, the original oil and maybe antifreeze was permanently residing in the concrete slab floor and the bar was created out of scrap metal. When we got there, the place was empty with the exception of an older woman tending bar. Her hair was a bleached platinum blond reaching her shoulders in straight, fried strings. She had a neckless made of some kind of beads around her neck, a bright pink tank top exposing her weathered arms where a few tattoos were fading on skin which had seen many days under the Florida sun. She was enjoying a small glass of something on tap with a cigarette hanging between her two fingers, resting her elbow on the bartop. I loved her at first sight. There was a woman with a story.

She threw her hand up in greeting and asked what we would like. I couldn’t tell her that what I would like was about an hour talking to her about how she got to this place today with my tape player rolling. I just said I’d like a cold Corona instead…well, make that two because my sweetheart was just as anxious as I was to get to the next step in my plan to figure her out.

This perfect woman never put her cigarette down, just lowered her right arm and put it slightly behind her back as she dug our beers out of the chest. Then one by one, she popped the cap off one handed and set them on the bar. This was going to be fun!

I told her we had just gotten to this lovely town the day before and we were songwriters, which never fails to get a good bartenders attention. She leaned over and asked if I’d written anything she might have heard before and there we were, off to the races, talking ninety miles an hour. That bartending beauty never heard the tables turn in our conversation, she just started answering a million questions thrown expertly from a trained people collector.

Born and raised in that seaside town, she told us she could name everybody who lived there year round. She knew them by their drinks and loved what she did. She had a love once but no babies, they weren’t in her plans. Walking on the beach was her morning ritual and had been her whole life and she always rode her bike to get there from an old house her family had always owned just down the road from where I was soaking up her story. The owner of the bar was her friend and he let her have run of the place. She laughingly said he wouldn’t continued on page 18

Donna is the IBMA Songwriter of the year for 2016, And 2017 Song of the Year winner. She was also the 2018 SPBGMA Songwriter of the year. Her latest CD, Livin’ Large, on Blueboy Records, was released in February 2022.

DonnaUlisse.com

We here at Americana Rhythm aren’t shy about our affection for Merlefest. The festival that was created 35 years ago (1988), to celebrate the life of Doc Watson’s son, Merle, after his life was tragically cut short in a farm tractor accident – It’s the festival that inspired us to create this magazine almost 20 years ago. It was the beginning of my baptism into the string music family – and I just couldn’t believe how much I had been missing. Then I realized most of my immediate friends hadn’t heard about this celebration either. Hmm … How could I tell as many people as possible about my new favorite genre’ of music?

Here we are 98 issues later, getting excited about the 35th edition of Merlefest, and what would be the 100th birthday of Doc Watson –father of Merle, and a man who championed a style of music he simply called, “tradition plus”; and we have come to commonly know as, Americana.

It’s a genre’ that pulls together a lot of styles, from Appalachian old time, to Bluegrass, to Folk, to Singer-