Old Time Music Ozark Heritage Festival

MULE JUMP!

The happening place to be on Saturday, June 18, will be the fourth annual Old-Time Music, Ozarks Heritage Festival MULE JUMP!

Here's what you need to know:

--- Demonstration of mule jumping (that most Missourian of Missouri folk arts) at 11 AM, Saturday, June 18
--- Mule jump COMPETITION at 3 PM, Saturday, June 18
--- Location: Corner of East Main and South Curry Streets, West Plains, Missouri
--- Water and ample space for trailers will be available.
--- Standard Missouri rules will apply.
--- Competition in two height classes: below and above 52 inches
--- Monetary prizes in each category (amounts to be announced)
--- Pre-registration is recommended but not required; participants should check in on-site by 2:30 PM.
--- To pre-register or for general information, please call festival staff member Matt Meacham at (417) 372-3177.
--- For information about policies and procedures, please call mule jump coordinator Richie Dement at (573) 648-2524.

Stay tuned for further details!

GOAT CART RACE!

Pride of the Ozarks Goat Club to hold a goat cart race during the 2011 Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival

For the first time in its seventeen-year history, the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival in West Plains, will feature a goat cart race, thanks to the Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club. The exact time and location have not yet been determined, but the race will take place somewhere on or near the festival grounds in the vicinity of the West Plains Civic Center and East Main Street during the annual event, which is scheduled for June 17 and 18.

The Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club held its first goat cart race during one of its shows last year. The race was so popular that the club wished to organize another one this year.

The organization decided, however, not to hold any shows this year so that the money that would have been necessary to fund them can instead be used toward other projects, including donating goats to a children’s home in Arkansas and developing a mentoring program that will resemble Heifer International but will operate on a local level. Because the organization will not be hosting any shows of its own in 2011, it offered to present a goat cart race during this year’s Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival.

“Needless to say, we’re delighted that the Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club will be incorporating its 2011 goat cart race into the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival,” said Matt Meacham, folklorist with the West Plains Council on the Arts and a member of the festival committee.

The club will also have an information booth at this year’s festival, and club members will be available to answer questions.

The Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club meets on the second Saturday of each month at 1 PM at the Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative building on U.S. 63 just north of West Plains. It has a website: http://poogbc.org/main/.

The organization held its first meeting in 1997. The founders of the club were dairy goat producers, but the organization welcomes breeders of all types of goats: meat, fiber, pack, and pet goats, in addition to dairy goats.

“The club now has all but pack goat owners, although we do have cart goat owners,” said Debra Prince of the Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club.

Prince explained, “The club’s main mission is to share goat-related information. We discuss problems and experiences, and we have educational programs, presentations by guest speakers such as veterinarians, and demonstrations of skills such as kidding, how to bolus a goat, how to trim hoofs, or how to help a laboring doe. We also issue a monthly newsletter.”

For a number of years, the club held two dairy shows annually. It then began to host open shows for both meat and dairy goats so that people who do not have registered goats could participate in the shows as they once were able to do at county fairs, according to Prince. This year, the organization is turning its attention from shows toward philanthropic projects.

“We feel it is important to get the young people interested in agriculture and are looking for ways to attract them to it,” Prince commented. “Goats are good as they are less expensive to start with, easier to handle than cattle, and multiply much faster as well.”

Further details about the goat cart race will be available on the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival’s Facebook page as plans develop.

A recent episode of *Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations* on the Travel Channel featured none other than JUDY HARDEN of the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival's "WHAT'S COOKIN'?" STAGE!!! See the comments below for details...

Ozarks - Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations - Travel Channel
www.travelchannel.com
Anthony Bourdain heads to the rugged lands of West Plains, MO, backdrop of the book and Oscar-nominated film Winter's Bone.

Comments (which would need to be updated if they’re to be included):

Mr. Bourdain recently spent several days filming here in the Ozarks, joined by Daniel Woodrell, author of the acclaimed novel *Winter's Bone* (inspiration for the Grammy-nominated movie of the same name). Judy's squirrel pie garners well-deserved praise from Mr. Bourdain. Catch the big show on Monday, March 28, at 8 PM Central (or 9 PM Eastern and Pacific)!

For a preview of the segment of the program featuring our good friend Judy, click on the link above, and then click on the video clip entitled "Squirrel Potpie, anyone?" CAUTION: This clip includes footage of a squirrel being cleaned, so it MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE WITH SENSITIVE STOMACHS. Again, be sure to watch the program itself on Monday, the 28th, at 8 PM Central on the Travel Channel!

Featured musical guests: JUNIOR BROWN, BLACKBERRY WINTER, LEONA AND RON WILLIAMS, and MORE!

We're pleased to announce that our featured musical guests for the 2011 Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival will include...

JUNIOR BROWN (http://www.juniorbrown.com/) on Friday evening!

And BLACKBERRY WINTER (http://blackberrywinterband.com/) and LEONA AND RON WILLIAMS (http://www.leonawilliams.com/) on Saturday evening!

Watch this website for further announcements about musical programming, including, of course, performances by OUTSTANDING LOCAL AND REGIONAL ARTISTS representing the MUSICAL TRADITIONS OF THE OZARKS!

Special presentation: ragtime piano music of the Ozarks!

Accomplished ragtime pianist Susan Cordell of Carthage, Missouri, will present a program of rags composed by James Scott on Friday, June 17 (time to be announced), in the West Plains Civic Center as part of this year's Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival. Scott, who was born in Neosho and raised in Carthage, is often described as one of the three foremost composers of the classic ragtime era (along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb). Stay tuned to this Facebook page for further developments!

If you're looking for a place to stay during this year's festival -- June 17 and 18 -- check out these helpful pages from our good friends at the Ozark Heritage Welcome Center here in West Plains: http://westplains.net/tourism/lodging.php and http://westplains.net/tourism/otherpages2.php. Keep watching this Facebook page for more information as it develops! And point your friends to this page, too!

Junior Brown will perform on the evening of Friday, June 17. An exceptionally proficient and inventive guitarist whose music, in the words of his online biography, “combines the soul of country and the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll,” Brown rose to national prominence in the mid-1990s with three albums on Curb Records: 12 Shades of Brown (1993), Guit with It (1993), and Semi-Crazy (1996).

Brown’s musical style strongly reflects the influences of Nashville, Texas, and West Coast country music of the 1950s and ‘60s, including that of Ernest Tubb, whose voice his resembles. His music also incorporates elements of rockabilly and guitar-oriented surf music, and it was embraced by alternative country audiences in the ‘90s. His best-known selections include the original compositions “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” “I Hung It Up” and “Venom Wearin’ Denim” and a version of Red Simpson’s “Highway Patrol.”

Originally from rural southern Indiana, Brown initially learned piano from his father but soon turned to the guitar and the steel guitar. He began playing professionally in the late ‘60s and performed with various country and Western swing bands throughout the ‘70s.

In the mid-‘80s, he became a guitar instructor at the Hank Thompson School of Country Music affiliated with Rogers State University in Oklahoma, teaching under the auspices of acclaimed steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe. It was there that he met Tanya Rae, whom he later married. She plays guitar and sings in his band.

Brown’s signature instrument is the “guit-steel,” a double-necked electric guitar. One neck is a typical six-string electric guitar neck; the other is a steel guitar neck. He conceived of the instrument himself and commissioned luthier Michael Stevens to build it in the mid-‘80s.

Brown moved to Austin, Texas, where he and his band began a long-term residency at the Continental Club, leading to a recording contract with Curb Records. He has released several albums in addition to those already mentioned, the most recent of which is Live at the Continental Club: The Austin Experience (Telarc, 2005).

Junior Brown was the only contemporary musician selected for Life magazine’s “all-time country band.”

Featured musical guests on the evening of Saturday, June 18, will include Blackberry Winter and Leona and Ron Williams.

Blackberry Winter consists of musicians who performed in the Oscar-nominated 2010 film Winter’s Bone or on its soundtrack album. The movie, set in the Missouri Ozarks, is based on a novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell of West Plains.

Blackberry Winter will be making its second appearance at the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival. Following on the success of the film, the band will be undertaking a concert tour of much of the United States and Canada this spring and summer, and this year’s festival falls between the two segments of that tour.

The band includes vocalists Marideth Sisco and Linda Stoffel, fiddler Billy Ward, multi-instrumentalist and singer Bo Brown, banjoist and singer Van Colbert, guitarist Dennis Crider, and bassist and singer Tedi May. All members of the band either are natives of the Missouri Ozarks or have longstanding ties to the region.

Nationally acclaimed singer and songwriter Leona Williams’s career in country music spans more than five decades.

A native of Vienna, Missouri, Williams began singing with her family as a child and had her own radio program, Leona Sings, on KWOS in Jefferson City by age 15. Her radio appearances brought her to the attention of Loretta Lynn, who invited her to sing and play the bass in her band.

In the late 1960s, she moved to Nashville and became a solo recording artist affiliated with Hickory Records, releasing such hits as “Once More,” “Country Girl with Hot Pants On,” and “Yes, Ma’am, He Found Me in a Honky Tonk.”

Williams joined Merle Haggard’s band in 1975. She and Haggard recorded a vocal duet, “The Bull and the Beaver,” which became a top-ten hit in 1978. An album of duets, Heart to Heart, soon followed. She wrote or co-wrote several songs for Haggard, including “You Take Me for Granted,” “Someday When Things Are Good,” and “We’re Strangers Again.” She also sang on a number of his hit recordings in the ‘70s and ‘80s, among them “The Way I Am,” “The Roots of My Raising,” and “Big City.”

Williams has also contributed vocals to recordings by George Jones, Vince Gill, Johnny Bush, Gene Watson, and Jimmy Martin. Her compositions have been recorded by Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Tammy Wynette, Hank Thompson, Ray Price, Loretta Lynn, and other renowned musicians.

Her own albums include San Quentin’s First Lady, the first country album recorded live in a prison by a woman, originally released on MCA in 1976 and re-released by Heart of Texas Records in 2005, Leona Williams Sings Merle Haggard (Ah-Ha Records, 2008), and her most recent recording, Taste of Life, which features bluegrass-influenced music and includes guest appearances by Rhonda Vincent, Mac Wiseman, Sharon and Cheryl White, Rodney and Beverly Dillard, and others.

A member of the Missouri Country Music Hall of Fame and the Country Music Association of Texas Hall of Fame, Williams has made numerous appearances on the Grand Ole Opry.

Appearing with Leona Williams will be her son Ron Williams, an accomplished country guitarist, singer, and songwriter in his own right. His albums include The Longer You’re Gone, Texas Style, and Natural Thing. He has performed with such notable musicians as Gene Watson, Vern Gosdin, Bill Anderson, Sammy Kershaw, Ferlin Husky, Lori Morgan, and others. He is a regular host of the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree.

Leona and Ron Williams’ performance has been arranged by Deborah DeWitt, theater and events coordinator for Missouri State University-West Plains and a first-year member of the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival committee.

“Leona Williams was part of my childhood. I grew up listening to her and Merle Haggard. I’ve always loved her beautiful, honest singing. It makes me proud that she is a native of Missouri and a living country music legend in our state,” DeWitt commented. “And I know everyone is going to love her and her son, Ron. Ron was raised on country music and his music is classic country.”

“We’re pleased that these nationally recognized musicians, several of whom are natives of our region, will be our guests. Of course, there will also be plenty of opportunities for participatory music-making and dancing, and we’ll hear performances by many local and regional artists who represent musical traditions of the Missouri Ozarks and form the real musical core of the festival,” said Matt Meacham, folklorist with the West Plains Council on the Arts and a member of the festival committee.

One of those artists is accomplished ragtime pianist Susan Cordell of Carthage, Missouri, who will present a program of music by James Scott.

James Scott (1885-1938), a native of the Missouri Ozarks, is often described as one of the three foremost composers of the classic ragtime era (along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb). Scott was born in Neosho and raised in Carthage. His best-known works include “On the Pike,” “Frog Legs Rag,” and “Grace and Beauty.”

“It will be a real privilege to have such a distinguished pianist with us to perform compositions by one of the most significant African-American musicians from the Ozarks,” Meacham commented.

The always popular “What’s Cookin’?” stage will present demonstrations of traditional foodways of this region coordinated, as usual, by Judy Harden of West Plains. Harden appeared in an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations that was filmed in the Ozarks recently and was broadcast earlier this week on the Travel Channel. Her squirrel pot pie garnered praise from Bourdain.

“It’s great that Judy has become known as a spokesperson for the culinary folklife of this region,” Meacham remarked.

Harden said, “Once again, I am very excited about the cooking stage presentations planned for this year. Along with an expansion of old-time recipes and demonstrations, we will have a special segment featuring men cooks. The segment will be called ‘Watch Out, Ma! The Boys Are in the Kitchen!’”

She added, “I am looking forward to demonstrating old-time techniques and will probably try to come up with an unusual presentation. We will start a little earlier than most of the festival activities, so we are inviting festival-goers to start their day at the ‘What’s Cookin’?’ stage.”

All trainers of jumping mules are invited to participate in the festival’s fourth annual mule jump competition. The competition will take place in the parking lot near the Senior Center at the corner of East Main and South Curry streets on Saturday, June 18, at 3 PM.

Prizes of $100 (first place), $75 (second place), and $50 (third place) will be awarded in each of two classes based on the mules’ heights: up to 52 inches, and taller than 52 inches. Standard Missouri rules will apply. Water and ample space for trailers will be available. Richie Dement of Centerville will coordinate the event again this year. Hirsch Feed & Farm Supply will sponsor it.

Pre-registration is recommended but not required. Contestants who wish to pre-register may contact Meacham at (417) 372-3177 or matthewmeacham@missouristate.edu. All participants are asked to check in on-site by 2:30 PM on Saturday, June 18. Those who have questions about specific policies and procedures may contact Richie Dement at (573) 648-2524.

“We were pleased that last year’s mule jump featured the largest number of competitors in the event’s history thus far. We hope that trend will continue,” said Meacham.

Preceding the competition will be a demonstration of mule jumping at the same location at 11 AM. Attendees will be welcome to ask questions of the demonstrators (and, for that matter, the mules, though there’s no guarantee that the mules will answer).

Mule jumping, that most Missourian of Missouri folk arts, developed when hunters began training mules to jump over fences so that they did not have to interrupt the hunt to locate a gate. It became a competitive event unto itself, and mule jumping contests began to take place at county fairs and town picnics throughout much of the rural Southeast and Midwest, especially Missouri.

“Based on the research that I’ve done, it appears that there are more mule jumps annually in Missouri than in any other state,” Meacham commented. “It seems safe to say that the Show-Me State is the mule-jumpingest state in the country.”

Additionally, for the first time in its seventeen-year history, the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival will feature a goat cart race, thanks to the Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club. The exact time and location have not yet been determined, but the race will take place somewhere on or near the festival grounds.

The Pride of the Ozarks Goat Breeders Club held its first goat cart race during one of its shows last year. The race was so popular that the club wished to organize another one this year.

The club will also have an information booth at this year’s festival, and club members will be available to answer questions.

The main mission of the organization, which first met in 1997, is to share goat-related information, according to member Debra Prince.

Prince explained, “We discuss problems and experiences, and we have educational programs, presentations by guest speakers such as veterinarians, and demonstrations of skills such as kidding, how to bolus a goat, how to trim hoofs, or how to help a laboring doe. We also issue a monthly newsletter.”

Festival organizers encourage users of the online social utility Facebook to “like” the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival’s Facebook page to keep informed as plans develop. Facebook users can do so by searching on “Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival.”

“The festival has a beautiful website, www.oldtimemusic.org, thanks to WebSightMaster of West Plains, but we’re usually able to update the Facebook page more rapidly than we can update the website, so the Facebook page probably is the best means of staying informed about developments as they happen,” Meacham explained.

Major sponsors of the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival include the West Plains Council on the Arts, the City of West Plains, the Ozark Heritage Welcome Center in West Plains, the Greater West Plains Chamber of Commerce, and Missouri State University-West Plains. Admission to all festival activities is free of charge.