Rural Resources

Ready for food and fun? Rural Resources has teamed up with the Dogwood Park Concert Series to present a fabulous time on Sunday, August 21 from 4 to 7:30pm at Dogwood Park (located directly behind Tusculum View Elementary school at 1725 Lafayette Street in Greeneville.)

The event is FREE.  Now why, you might ask, is RR teaming up with our Dogwood Park friends? We at RR are all about connecting EVERYONE to local food and we figure music and fun and food all go together.  It's as simple as that.

Food line up: shishkabobs with juicy chunks of local beef and yummy local veggies cooked right in front of you on the grill, ice cold watermelon, and lots of water, lemonade and tea!

Gettin' down to the music:

Richard Spain & “WA WA” Bean classic country

The Fugitives pop country

Tim White & the VW Boys bluegrass, talking banjos, laughter

The Roys from Nashville, TN: Brother and sister Lee and Elaine are on their way to the top with good, old fashioned, honest music that will touch your heart.

For the kids:corn hole, watermelon seed spitting contest, egg on the spoon races, hog calling contest. Prizes.

Our sponsors: Tennessee Arts Commission, East Tennessee Foundation, Gateway Ford, Tri City Beverage, The City of Greeneville, Greeneville Parks and Recreation, Graysburg Hills Farm, Snapps Ferry Packing, Pop Corn Video, and a host of volunteers who make this event possible and FREE

Praise for The Roys from the Prescription Bluegrass Blog...

They learn where their food comes from in a very hands on way—they milk a cow and make butter, they plant and harvest herbs and vegetables, and they do some cooking.  They learn to connect food with the sun and rain, and soil and water on the farm. Also, they create art using materials found on the farm so that their creativity is nurtured in the process.  We want children to have the opportunity to build relationships with the land, plants, animals and with farmers.  We have very deliberately designed this program to work with small groups of children so that we can build relationships with them and they with us.  We have watched many children grow up as they have come back year after year, gaining in their understanding of and connection with the farm.

Their voices rise and fall in raw harmonies, sometimes breaking off into rounds. The acapella tunes bring to mind old-time church revivals of the early 1900s, but these singers are keeping the tradition of sacred harp alive even today.

Don and Julianne Wiley have been participating in sacred harp for almost 20 years. Julianne describes it as an experience like no other.

“(It’s) a huge wave of sound that just picked me up, bowled me over, pulled me way down and then picked me up again,” she said. “Wow.”

Sacred harp, also called shape note singing, is a community activity open to experienced and inexperienced singers alike. Singers sit in a hollow square formation with one voice part on each side. The square allows the singers to hear one another and also emphasizes that they are their own audience.

The music itself comes from nineteenth century hymnals. Every hymn has four voice parts. Each note of the scale is marked with a different shape to help new singers sight-read the music. Learning the shapes is often easier than learning to read music. At group sings, anyone interested can chose to lead a song. The group will first sing through the shape notes, and then add the lyrics.

Julianne said, “You won’t easily find contemporary hymns which have the vocabulary, the complexity, or the emotional range, caroming from frank fear-and-trembling to outright exaltation as these hymns.”

Shape note singing gained popularity in East Tennessee in the mid-1800s and remained popular through the 1930s. People from around the region would meet for all-day sings. It was a good opportunity for members of different communities and churches to get together. The Harp Singers’ Review, a monthly magazine for the shape note community, was published in Greeneville in the 1910s and ‘20s.

Today, small groups still meet all over the region to participate in sings. One group meets at the Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area every third Sunday at 2 p.m. and another meets at Greeneville Cumberland Presbyterian Church every fourth Sunday at 3 p.m. These groups will also participate in larger sings together, still making shape note singing a great way to meet people from other communities.

While the sacred harp music usually is known for the unusual shapes of the notes, it’s the lyrics combined with the harmonies that make this music so special to the singers.

“It’s not good just because it’s old. It’s good, well, because it’s good,” Don said. “It is one hundred percent democratic. Everyone is equal in the hollow square. It allows us to give voice to our deep beliefs and emotions. We can sing words to each other that we might not be able to express otherwise.”