Pickens Sentinel

Publication: Pickens Sentinel; Date:2005 Dec 21 Local musician Bobby Holliday releases local musical tribute     By Olivia Fowler Staff Reporter   Bobby Holliday is a musician and songwriter. For years he worked in Nashville using his talents for other people. Holliday wrote for Ronny Millsap’s publishing company.    One day in 1995, Holliday says, he just got tired of writing songs other people wanted him to write. That was when he got off that particular merry go round.    Now, Holliday writes music that means something to him. His newly released CD, Crown of the Carolinas, didn’t happen overnight.    It began as an idea some years back when it was thought the wilderness of Jocassee Gorge would be bought by developers and lost forever.    Holliday wanted to raise money to help the state save the land. That’s when he decided to write again. He wanted to write music about the place he loves and create a musical history and portrait of the land. That was the beginning.    But when the state was able to secure the Jocassee Gorge wilderness, Holliday put the project on hold.    Years later, he picked the project up again. The result is a finely woven body of music. He wrote the music and lyrics and recorded in Nashville and Greenville with some really fine musicians. Bill Monroe’s last fiddle player, Robert Bowlin, plays mandolin; Randy Khors, who plays with Dolly Parton, plays dobro; and Viktor Krauss, Allison Krauss’s brother, plays acoustic bass guitar.    Holliday plays guitar and harmonica and other instruments and performs vocals on the recording.    The music is a real mood setter. You can hear the waterfall and the wind rippling through trees.    Each piece of music is about a different place in the Carolina mountains, places Holliday dearly loves.    He speaks about a cabin in Eastatoe near Twin Falls where he often visited as a child. His cousin, Calvin Hudson, lived there. Holliday says it was not unusual for a week to pass without setting eyes on another human being.    He believes the unique beauty of this part of Appalachia is an attraction, which could lead to the destruction of the area.    “It’s a natural thing, wanting to be close to these mountains and all the beauty, but we must be careful that we don’t end up destroying the very things that attracted us in the first place.”    Tucked inside the CD cover is a map of the area Holliday has showcased. Each area, which inspired a song, is identified with the image of a diamond.    The song, “Simple Life,” expresses a desire for a less harried and complex existence that the singer feels is almost attainable.    Holliday says he can add nothing to traditional Appalachian music as he considers it is already complete, and can’t be improved upon,” but he did want to make an original tribute.    One of the unique ways he stamped the music his own was by using a slack key tuning method used in Hawaiian music which gives a completely different effect to the instrumentals.    All seventeen songs connect the dots of place tributes on the map and CD.    The song, “Autumn” is included because Holliday wants listeners to see the season through the music.    “’Autumn’ is a pretty straight-ahead song about the changing colors of the fall season. But one thing many people may not realize is how unique this event is in the world. I remember reading, and this is what inspired the lyric in the middle of this song, that when people in other parts of the world see a photograph of these brilliant fall colors, they think the photo has been retouched or painted, and that it couldn’t possibly be real,” he says.

 

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