Wednesday 8-10PM November 19th.
Show runs 90 minutes with one intermission.
http://musideum.com/concerts/bill-king/
401 Richmond Street West
Suite 133
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Early on the soundtrack to my life came from the 1,500 miles of mountain range called Appalachia. It was the blues, the hymns, the folk ballads and spirituals that haunted the region like ghosts hidden in the night wind - traveling along unseen currents and carrying with it a mix of English, Scottish, Irish and African-American influence and history.
Every year we’d pack up the station wagon and head further south to visit aunts and uncles and at times search for a long lost relative rumoured to be among the living deep in the Tennessee woods. All of these excursions connected to father’s upbringing in the minute border town Hazel, Kentucky.
The Great Depression whipped them out. Tobacco farming was the family business – the other- survival. The crash of ’29 left every family in peril. The farm was lost– the kids barely had enough food on the table to encourage physical growth and decisions had to be made who would attend school and who would work the fields.
Gloryland (Tales from the Old South) is my pastoral portrait of family – the family that tilled the land and for better or worse endured the history and conditions in a region where thousands of lives were spent, racism institutionalized, a genuine mistrust of government prevailed and a belief problems should be solved through resourcefulness. Beyond the hardships it was a place where song and sound illuminated people’s lives with joy, humility, inspiration and situations.
Along the rivers there were baptisms and picnics – lover’s quarrels the occasional burial. The devil was everywhere – at least that’s what the preacher saw and ranted about Sunday morning. Further south was gator land – places you never sink a foot into a pool of mud. Farthest south, the smell of burning cane fields sweetened the midnight air.
