Eugene Wolf - Music

Eugene Wolf - Music

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Singer/Storyteller
Singer with Brother Boys

Donate to Support Brian Tibbs' Fight Against Lymphoma, organized by Jennifer Lippard 29/10/2024

https://gofund.me/4e7a64e0

Brian Tibbs is the person who planted the seed for THE BOOK OF MAMAW and watered it generously! He created the video book for the show and has been traveling with me for the past seven years as my right hand man. He can use some generous help now. As you can read in the post, these treatment has had some setbacks, but there looks like some good possibility ahead! Please donate if you can. 

Donate to Support Brian Tibbs' Fight Against Lymphoma, organized by Jennifer Lippard Help Brian Tibbs Fight Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma In early January, ou… Jennifer Lippard needs your support for Support Brian Tibbs' Fight Against Lymphoma

Mitzi Gaynor, legendary actress and star of 'South Pacific,' dies at 93 17/10/2024

https://abc7ny.com/post/mitzi-gaynor-legendary-actress-star-south-pacific-dies-93/15438046/

Glitzy Mitzi. One of the few "show biz folks" left. She dealt in dazzle. And she did. I saw 1/2 of her touring act in 1975 at The Muni in St. Louis. Only half because someone called in a bomb threat at intermission. Her act was incendiary. She meant business. I was going to say good rest, but I bet she's already got some dates booked. Another sparkle gone.

Mitzi Gaynor, legendary actress and star of 'South Pacific,' dies at 93 Mitzi Gaynor, the legendary actress who starred in 1958's "South Pacific" and other musicals, died in Los Angeles. She was 93.

24/09/2024

EUGENE WOLF'S "THE BOOK OF MAMAW" ON SUNDAY @ 3 PM WILL GO ON RAIN OR SHINE. WE'LL MOVE INSIDE TUSCULUM VIEW SCHOOL IF QUEEN HELENE SHOWS HER FACE.

Same parking lot!

22/09/2024

UPDATE
“Eugene Wolf’s “Book of Mamaw” on Sunday at 3:00 pm will go on rain or shine! We’ll move inside Tusculum View School if we have rainy weather!”

THE BOOK OF MAMAW

Sunday, September 29 @ 3 PM
Ginny Kidwell Amphitheatre
Dogwood Park
Admission Free!

Listen Live - The Birthplace of Country Music 22/08/2024

Jo Carson’s book, “Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet” is the featured book on Radio Bristol’s Book Club Thursday Thursday@ 12PM.

The first half hour is discussion of the book by the book club. Then I’ll be interviewed about my friendship and association with Jo and her body of work. It will be a joy to talk about her and her unique voice!

Listen live @ 12 PM

https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/radio-bristol-wbcm/listen-live/

It will be archived a few days later at this link:

https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/radio/programming/radio-program/radio-bristol-book-club/

Listen Live - The Birthplace of Country Music Housed in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, Radio Bristol is a radio station and online destination for music fans who want more from the earliest seeds of country to today’s Americana and roots artists, WBCM Radio Bristol showcases the diversity found in our music’s past and present.

15/08/2024

I had a great lunch with my friend, Brian Tibbs today. Full of joy!

13/08/2024

This is one of the most beautiful melodies I know. I've always shied away from singing it because I've always thought of it as a classic song of romance. As I've never been terribly magic at romance, I've felt I couldn't sing it. But now, at 70, I begin to understand the lyrics in a different way. The Sufis consider God in a romantic way. God as our friend. And I think about the shepherd boy David, tending his sheep and playing the harp and singing out such beautiful thanks to the source that gave him the capacity to sing and play and tend to the creatures of this life. And in that spirit, this song seems right. If not now, when?

12/08/2024

I just can’t get over the beauty.

Photos from Eugene Wolf - Music's post 29/07/2024

A couple of shots from Harlan TBOM. I've always been a fan of Will Major's photo and was mighty pleased that he came to my performance and took some great shots. The show looked great in the space. Mighty pleased to be part of MAMAW FEST in Harlan, KY!

Also, Will has a show coming up this Friday in Johnson City w/Billie Wheeler and Zac Wilson. I'll post the link in the next post.

13/05/2024

13/05/2024

The rainbow before the show.

11/03/2024
27/02/2024

(The March 2024 edition of A! Magazine features the 50th Anniversary of the Carter Fold. The cover story is an interview I conducted with Rita Forrester, A.P. and Sara's granddaughter and Bonny Gable interviewed me about my time playing A.P.)

EUGENE WOLF and A.P. CARTER — Musical Souls Intertwined
A! Magazine March 2024
By Bonny Gable

Bonny Gable is a former theater professor and freelance writer based in Bristol,Virginia. www.bonnygable.com

When veteran actor Eugene Wolf was first approached by Barter Theatre
in 2002 to portray the iconic A.P. Carter in “Keep On the Sunny Side,” a play
by Douglas Pote about the Original Carter Family and their music, he was
apprehensive. His knowledge of their history was sketchy, and he didn’t consider
himself steeped in Carter Family music. But from the far reaches of his childhood,
he recollected the voice of his mamaw humming and singing those tunes as she
went about her chores. The call of that voice led him to what would become one of
the most successful and enduring roles of his career.

Wolf realized that being raised in Greeneville, Tennessee, by that singing
grandmother gave him a unique edge for approaching the role. “I’m from the
same dirt that A.P. was born out of,” Wolf says, “and so, there’s something about
me that already knows the landscape, physical and emotional, social and cultural
landscape of this person.”

But his portrayal of A.P. Carter was not rendered without a lot of hard
work and preparation. Tasked with also creating the vocal arrangements for the
play, Wolf taught himself guitar in order to master the Carter Family songs and
understand their structure. He trained on a nylon-stringed guitar and thought he’d
gotten his hands in shape, but Doug Dorschug, an old-time musician hired to be
the musical director for the show, had other ideas. Wolf recalls, “He brought me
an Epiphone guitar with very heavy strings, because it was similar to the steel-stringed
Gibson guitar Maybelle Carter had played. He said ‘Eugene, take this.
Practice.’ So, I had to get my hands strengthened and really learn how to play.”
Wolf gathered information about A.P. the man from as many sources as
possible. He reveled in first-hand stories from lots of folks who had known A.P.
personally. Particularly helpful was Bill Clifton, an accomplished country musician,
avid follower of the Carter Family music, and close friend to A.P. himself.
In 2004 an invaluable resource emerged with the publication of “Will You Miss
Me When I’m Gone” by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg, the first definitive
biography of the Carter Family. It revealed new information about the Carter
family previously unknown outside of the tight community of Poor Valley, Virginia.
As playwright Pote integrated these discoveries into his script, Wolf more fully
fleshed out the character of A.P.

Although very little film footage of A.P. exists, Wolf painstakingly studied his
photographs. “I like physicality. If I understand the form of somebody, I can take
on the form and then fill it up with things I learn from the script.” A special talent
of Wolf’s is the ability to mimic physicality. “And when I say mimic, I don’t mean
‘just lay it on top,’” he says. “It’s organic. I know where the impulse comes from in
my body to make this happen.”

One example of this technique stems from the story of A.P.’s impending birth.
When his mother was eight months pregnant with him, lightning struck a tree
near her and chased her through the ground. When Alvin Pleasant Carter was
born, his mother said he came out “nervous.” His hand shook and would do so for
the rest of his life.

Wolf was able to incorporate A.P.’s physical characteristics into his
performance to a striking effect. After seeing Wolf perform, A.P.’s daughter,
Janette Carter, commented to someone, “You know that man that plays Daddy
shakes just like him. Is there something wrong with him?” High praise indeed.
But Wolf has his own theory about what the lightning incident meant for
A.P. “I like to think that he was driven. That the lightning that almost struck his
mom transferred into him, and ‘tuned’ him. He needed to find something—an
intention—back to that. And the thing he wanted most was music.”
Wolf believes that A.P.’s tremble was more than a mere physical trait. “That
otherworldly tremor in his voice is a gateway for us, because it opens something
in our hearts, and in our brains and in our psyche, our souls that lets us in to a
hundred years ago.”

When it comes to the power of music, Wolf and A.P. seem to have souls that
are intertwined. “A.P. knew that people had to have this music to survive,” Wolf says. “To get through sorrow we need music to shift the molecules in us, and when you sing
these things, you’re releasing. I understand that, and I think A.P. understood
that, too. He got such joy from the music, the performing, the singing. I get that
too. I don’t know where I’d be, I don’t know what I’d be or what I’d be doing, if it
weren’t for music.”

One of A.P.’s greatest joys came when the widespread appeal of Carter Family
music exploded between 1938 and 1940. The family traveled to Texas to perform
radio broadcasts at a Mexican border studio boasting an impressive 500 kilowatts.
Those powerful sound waves enabled thousands of listeners from coast to coast to
feel the passionate influence of their music.
“Somebody referred to them as the first Internet, in a way,” says Wolf,
“because everyone was relating to this one sound. And even though it had a
country flavor, everyone had somebody that had gone off to war, somebody they
had loved and lost, somebody that they loved but who wouldn’t love them back.
The Carter Family was singing about things that everyone could translate to their
own culture.”
That influence has reverberated into subsequent generations. Due to popular
demand, “Keep On the Sunny Side” has been reprised at Barter several times,
seen many performances at the Carter Fold and enjoyed a highly successful
national tour.
Perhaps the best assessment of Eugene Wolf’s portrayal of the iconic A.P.
Carter comes from the play’s own author, Doug Pote. In a Kingsport Times News
article dated March 1, 2015, Pote says, “I even joke to both Eugene and Rita
[Forrester, A.P.’s granddaughter] and say that if A.P. Carter came back and played
himself in the play, he wouldn’t be as good as Eugene.”
Wolf is quick to give credit where credit is due. “I didn’t come into playing
A.P. knowing all the things that I think I know now. Playing A.P. Carter reinforced
to me the transformative power of music, the love of family and the notion of
forgiveness.
“And here, a hundred years later, the Carter Family is still in our thoughts. We
have their beautiful melodies, and lyrics wrought from the Victorian language of
the hymns. Even if you’re not a Christian, or not necessarily spiritual, those songs
reach for things we don’t reach for anymore. But we’re learning that we can, again.”

20/02/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/QTzhuBoPo5en4C6v/?mibextid=WC7FNe

📣 Exciting announcement!

We are thrilled to welcome Eugene Wolf for a performance of ‘Book of Mamaw’ in the barn!

Treat your mom, wife or friend to a wonderful night on the farm:
🧀Gourmet cheese boards
🍋Homemade drinks
🍗BBQ buffet by
🎭Performance by
🔥Bonfire with a s’mores bar

Tickets live at fullbloomfarmhouse.com✨

✍️Graphic design by the talented

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