This class will feature a collection of Bare Bones’ favorite songs by several 20th century songwriters, including Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Lotus Dickey, John Lilly, and others. The Bryants wrote pop hits for the Everly Brothers like Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie, Dream, and Love Hurts, as well as the bluegrass standard Rocky Top, and many country hits as well. Using what we now understand as classic doo-wop chords that “sent those chills up and down the spines” of a whole generation, they helped birth rock and roll. Lotus Dickey, the favorite son of Paoli, Indiana, never got big on the radio. But in addition to being a fine old-time fiddler, he was also an excellent writer of songs in jazz, folk, and Tin Pan Alley motifs. And John Lilly has been channeling Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, and his own muse, to create a whole new songbook. He’s a long-time West Virginian and an Augusta favorite. Bill Kimmons, Becky Kimmons, and Dock Cutlip will help singers strip these songs down to their soul. Their mission is to reveal chords that will set a whole new generation of spines tingling. In the process, you’ll improve your ear by singing without instruments, and take home some new favorite songs!
Instructor Bio
Bare Bones is an acapella trio that has been interpreting a wide variety of songs in a wide variety of venues since the early 1980s. Some remember them as the Missing Person Soup Kitchen Gospel Quartet, aka Soup Kitchen, but they’ve been Bare Bones since 2007. Mark Davis is their usual tenor, but Dock Cutlip, an Augusta veteran, will be working with Bill and Becky Kimmons to deliver a trove of songs by the fabulous Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and a set of old-time gospel songs such as Dock grew up with in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
Becky Kimmons grew up at her Primitive Baptist grandmother’s knee, so is well versed in the keening acapella style of Hazel Dickens, also of WV Primitive Baptist heritage. She and that same grandmother listened together to hours of radio music, thus her grounding in genres of pop, blues, jazz, and country. She loves and does them all.
Bill Kimmons grew up singing choral music and doing theatre in North Carolina. When he landed in West Virginia in 1976, he discovered old-time music, and has been lending a solid bass line to many a jam since. He and Becky have done a singing tour of Ireland twice, in 2001 with the Bing Brothers Band, and again in 2004 through the Irish-American Folk Park.
Dock Cutlip discovered Augusta more than 20 years ago as a student of Irish music, then met Bill and Becky, who discovered his amazing talents as a singer and guitarist. Dock grew up singing with his family in rural Pocahontas County, WV, where they lived a 19th-century lifestyle that had music near its center. He owes his broad song repertoire to a short-wave radio.