Molehill Highlanders - Volume 2

Liner notes:

Fiddling convention season was well underway in NC's Piedmont section and the Molehill Highlanders took blue and red ribbons at most of them, that Spring of 1970. The circuit led us to remote school houses throughout NC and VA often criss-crossing back roads and rural routes prior to Interstate 77's construction. One fine Saturday we headed to a fiddle contest in Southwest VA and after 3 hours of uphill road we arrived only to find we were a week early! The contest would be held the next Saturday. And from there it was down hill all the way.

We stopped in Statesville, NC, at radio station WFMX. Odell Wood (brother to banjo picker, A. L.) broadcast a daily country show heavily salted with bluegrass. We convinced Odell that he needed a break in his schedule and we would supply him with a weekly half hour tape of Molehill Highlander music. Odell consented to our plan since he still got paid whether he talked or played our tape.

It was logistically difficult to assemble the band each time we had to do a show so we recorded some of our tunes at one session to be incorporated into various programs later. The show was an amalgamation of serious humor, old 78s, cylinder records, archaic LPs of old time bluegrass and our Molehill music -- music not readily heard on radio then or now. Contests were held over the air, records given as prizes and we found who our audience was in NC and VA. The legendary J. E. Mainer recording star from the 20s, tuned in and wrote many letters of praise.

Clyde Williams was a stickler for tight tune openings and he insisted on no double shuffle fiddle intros to key the band's timing -- we had to listen, watch his lead and jump in playing. "Any band can play with an opening shuffle -- not all can play in time without it," Clyde would admonish. "We want to be a cut above." Finishing a tune was to be done together and not haphazardly. Usually Clyde incorporated the "Possum Hunter" ending and infrequently used a "Haircut" as a tag. The yellow and red doghouse bass we used was built by Clyde and was large enough to house a dog for it was slightly oversize. It had only 3 strings because, "Nobody uses the 4th one," boasted Clyde.

The Molehill Highlanders stayed on the air about 7 weeks until the station management discovered we were "unauthorized" and started charging us the preacher's discount fee for commercial air time. Since no sponsors or benefactors could be found, the Molehill Highlanders radio show ascended to the limbo of frail and fragile things, never to be heard from again ... until now .. for it is from those crumbling, forgotten tapes, made in the field out behind Chuck's house, that this recording was made. Ah! What happy times!

When re-mastering the analog tapes to digital, we discovered things on them that were previously inaudible years ago. A thought struck that if we put the tapes back on the shelf another 20 years, with the inevitable future technological electronic advances, perhaps we would discover things that were never on them to begin with.

Jim Scancarelli