I got to interview my friend Vollie McKenzie at the Madison County Arts Council yesterday and hear some songs that he’s recorded with friends and mentors, and a handful of live ones. We had a great conversation about life and music, what gives us hope when we are always pendulating between hope and despair, and Dionne Warwick. Stay tuned for the archive of the full two hour interview, but here is a sneak preview.
Vollie has been playing guitar around Asheville for twenty plus years and we have found ourselves bantering about Chet Baker, basketball (he is quite tall), spirituality, and what makes a great sandwich or cup of coffee, in various spaces throughout those 20 years. Recently he mentioned to me that he wanted to get some of his music up onto youtube, but wasn’t sure how to do it, and I knew I could help. My desire and willingness to put this project into play has to do with capturing Vollie’s easeful essence and wisdom.
Where we live in a time of maximum efficiency, we need to edit as much as we can to make content digestible, when there is so much out there to consume. I think that’s appropriate and will use those methods in making content for fitness and programming. But this project was about the process, and giving him permission to take up space here, and tell stories, and tune his guitar, and make adjustments, and share his music accordingly, which is a quality in making art and music that no technology will ever be able to replace for us, and a huge lesson I have learned by taking up the task of being an amateur radio deejay.
This was such a beautiful moment between two friends and I’ll never forget it, but here it is anyway.
Lee
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion". bell hooks, All About Love