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birthplace of country music. The organisa- tion operated a small museum in the local mall and sponsored musical performances in the region.”
“From 2005, BCMA worked with local partners and architects to plan towards a museum in a donated historic building. By 2012 the funding had been raised from various sources, and they merged with another local non-profit: Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. The organisation is now known as the Birthplace of Country Music and it’s the parent organisation of the museum, Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion music festival, and Radio Bristol. That’s kind of a long answer!”
Stroll the streets of Bristol and you’ll stumble on several previous commemora- tions to its musical past (as well as a diner that claims to be one of the last places Hank Williams was seen alive; Anna and I ordered ice cream floats in his memory).
“There are a number of plaques that recognise the history downtown,” says Rene. “Several highlight specific artists, and there’s also a historic marker for the 1927 sessions as a whole, along with a monument celebrating this event on the former site of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company building where they were recorded. Bristol TN and Bristol VA have also given honorary names to a few down- town streets based on Bristol Sessions artists or the local country music radio show Farm And Fun Time from the 1940s and 1950s.”
Reviving the Farm And Fun Time show
is one of Kris Truelsen’s passion projects, and it’s grown to become a monthly, sold-out, professionally filmed event taking place in the museum’s purpose-built theatre.
“O
ne of the first things that came to mind when we were talking about putting together a local radio station was
the idea of developing Farm And Fun Time, which was a really popular show on WCYB back in the mid-’40s. A lot of the first-generation bluegrass artists and country artists got their start on that show and it was very successful. Acts like The Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Jim & Jesse and Mac Wiseman all had a stint on Farm And Fun Time. So knowing that his- tory we definitely wanted to bring that back and try to carry on the tradition, but we wanted to put a contemporary spin on it to make sure that it feels here and now. So the way we’ve done that is not only focusing on the live music but having vari- ous segments that celebrate Appalachian culture as a whole. We have a storytelling segment called The Heirloom Recipe, that’s all about how food connects to family and to people’s personal stories here. We have a segment called The ASD Farm Report that profiles farmers doing interesting things around the region. And then as a throwback to old-timey country radio we do a lot of jingles. The house band Bill And The Belles, which is my band, write all the jingles for our spon- sors. It’s a point where there’s a tension between the past and the present. We really like that tension. It’s a celebration of the past but it’s as relevant as ever.”
That sense of the museum reaching in both directions is perfectly illustrated by a project they’ve been working on through- out 2018: an attempt to preserve a recent- ly donated transcription disc from the original Farm And Fun Time broadcasts, using technologies I didn’t know anyone had invented yet. Writing on her blog, Col- lections Manager Emily Robinson (“I am like a librarian for objects”) details both the rarity of the record and the difficulty in hearing its buried treasures.
“The fact that an original live record- ing of The Stanley Brothers with The Clinch Mountain Boys from Farm And Fun Time exists at all is pretty amazing, because the discs used to record radio broadcasts in the mid-20th century are highly unstable and prone to degradation. These discs have an aluminium core cov- ered with a lacquer coating. Over time, the lacquer becomes brittle and shrinks, the lacquer flakes off and the recording can no longer be played with a stylus. Until recently, recordings on degraded lacquer discs like this one were usually lost forever. Starting in 2014, the Northeast Document Conservation Center began offering audio preservation services using a new technol- ogy called IRENE. This process involves cre- ating highly detailed images of the grooves on a disc and recreating the sound from these images.”
You can chart the progress of this flaky slice of music history and IRENE’s endeavour to save it in a series of videos on the museum’s Facebook page. And if
that’s got your geek sense tingling then you need to see the vintage equipment Kris uses at the radio station.
“Our console that we use is a 1946 Raytheon that was actually used here in Bristol for many decades at WCYB. It’s all been repurposed and refinished; it’s an amazing console. Also we have various microphones that have historical signifi- cance. We have a Tennessee Ernie Ford microphone that we use. It’s an RCA 44 that he used when he was a DJ right here in Bristol. We also have some pretty cool mic stands from the Grand Ole Opry. It’s bringing together the history of these artefacts with new technology. Again, it’s kind of a cool tension.”
“I’m really, really focused on the idea of community radio and its importance in today’s media climate. It’s imperative for us to sound like Bristol, and to make sure that what we’re portraying on the radio is accurate to not only today but to the past of Central Appalachia. Because we’re here we can do that and we should do that. I think it’s our responsibility to do that.”
Rene has similar ambitions for the exhibits and space as a whole.
“I want our community to see us as their museum, and I hope that we will be a part of the pride people feel in their histo- ry and this region.”
They also have an excellent gift shop where I spent a not inconsiderable amount of money.
birthplaceofcountrymusic.org F
Photo: Malcolm Wilson
Photo: Angela Freese
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