THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610200241
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: 78 lines
Brother Blue, the legendary black spellbinder, bedecked in the color of his name, stood on a street corner and regaled a teen-age crowd with the story of ``Romeo and Juliet.''
Shakespeare's wild tale of youthful passion, sudden rage and boneheaded parents was, after all, about teen-agers.
``Willie,'' Brother Blue informed his impromptu audience, ``is my man.''
He made him theirs, too. Bristling with ribbons, rings and butterflies inked in the palms of his hands, Brother Blue caught the watchers in his bright web. As the crisp Tennessee afternoon tingled toward dusk, two Bards worked in tandem.
A magical moment in a magical town.
Jonesborough, Tenn., was jumping with similar scenes all over its bricky historic turf earlier this month as host to the 24th annual National Storytelling Festival, where upwards of 9,000 fans showed up for three days of folklore and inspired prevarication.
Friends and neighbors, it was a rouser.
The festival started back in 1973, when a high school journalism teacher named Jimmy Neil Smith was driving along and happened to hear Grand Ole Opry regular Jerry Clower on the car radio. Clower was telling a tale about raccoon hunting in Mississippi. Smith, a man dedicated to facts, found himself captivated by the fiction.
He and some other Jonesborough civic leaders started the first festival in the high school gym. Clower was the headliner. The day after, folks found themselves gathering on hay-bale bleachers around an old farm wagon to hear some more. And the year after, they were clustering to swap lies all over town like bees on Grandma's garden.
Word, as it will, spread.
Librarians, teachers, street poets and aural superstars came from all over the country to the foggy crease between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smokies. Jonesborough hadn't had this much action since roughhouse Andrew Jackson routinely bar-crawled the burg back in the early 1800s.
``It's still a unique place,'' said Steve Lewis, who runs the horse-drawn carriage tours of the town with his wife, Patti.
Jonesborough is a town of collectibles shops - quilts, antiques, andirons and old dolls. In fact, with its bonging courthouse clock tower, bannistered bed-and-breakfasts and repose-punctuating railroad racket, Jonesborough, toylike, seems itself the ultimate collectible. But it's not backward; Lewis' day job is executive pilot for a food store chain.
And once a year, this already colorful spot becomes downright kaleidoscopic.
Brother Blue, ``the man with the blue guitar,'' came all the way from Boston, one of 19 tellers to receive Circle of Excellence awards; and they didn't even make a quorum to the panoply of professionals in attendance.
There was Ocracoke's Donald Davis, recounter of all things Appalachian, and Native American Joseph Bruchac, lore sharer of the Abenaki. Jewish storyteller Steve Sanfield, Northern Irish wags Liz Weir and Billy Teare, wheelchair cowboy Buck Ramsey, Virginia's Dovie Thompson, Alabama's Kathryn Windham, California's Vicki Juditz.
The five sprawling story tents each held 1,400 people, show after show, hour after hour, from dew-wet daylight deep into the dark.
The entertainment was live, the audiences were, too, and it was fare for the whole family - proving once again that art can be hip without hop.
The big news this year is the impending $8 million National Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, planned to become a hub for year-round yarning.
The National Storytelling Association, P.O. Box 309, Jonesborough, TN 37659-0309, will attempt to retain its grass roots amid all the high-tech construction. The organization now has a website - http://www.hedstrom-sands.com/storynet/frmhome.htm
And, of course, an 800 number: 1-800-525-4514.
The weekend was a thinking person's Woodstock, an authentic calico-and-lamplight, flapjack-and-eagle-feather, birch-bark-and-denim, down-home-country lollapalooza.
Brother Blue stood on a street corner and explained the steamy balcony scene in ``Romeo and Juliet.''
``It was torch-to-torch on the porch,'' he said.
A big hot-air balloon floated by high above, but nobody among his listeners looked up. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia
Wesleyan College. by CNB