Average Guys Turn Neighborhood Jam Into Real Gigs

Summary

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If you go What: Fort Hillbillies When: 10 p.m. Friday Where: The Empty Glass, Elizabeth Street

A favorite cover song of The Fort Hillbillies is Ricky Skaggs Simple Life, which includes the line: I live a simple life, a good coat when the cold winds bite, leather boots for my bare feet and now and then a steak to eat. I pick with the boys on Friday night, so I live a simple life. The Charleston band also does Merle Haggards Working Man Blues and Jimmy Buffets Pirate Looks at 40. See a theme? This Friday night, the Fort Hillbillies will bring its picking and songs of middle age and middle class to the Empty Glass. The band, made up of Monty Barnett on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Craig Ellis on bass and harmonies, Lee Newell on lead guitar, and Bill Lee on fiddle and banjo, started three years ago after Ellis bought an upright bass. Barnett said Ellis didnt have much of a musical background besides messing around with a guitar and singing in Herbert Hoovers show choir, but he purchased an instructional book and taught himself to play the gigantic instrument. Barnett has been playing guitar since he was 15, after his older brother brought him his first instrument when he came home from college. He was interested in acoustic music back then, too, and learned by playing along with Willie Nelson, Tony Rice, and Hank Williams Jr. He played with St. Timothys Lutherans praise and worship band when he got older, but left after he and his wife had children. So Ellis soon invited Barnett over to his house atop the Fort Hill neighborhood to jam. Newell joined the fray after he moved to the same street as Ellis. Mandolinist Brian Semenie also joined the jam sessions for a brief time. His most lasting contribution to the group, Barnett says, was the bands name. We were up there trying to come up with a name and he just said it jokingly, and it stuck, he said. The threesome played its first gig a year later at a friends St. Patricks Day party. Thats kind of how we got started, Barnett said. More formal performances followed, including the bands first real show at Pattys in South Charleston. The band took a sharper turn toward bluegrass when Ellis and Newell brought Lee, who also plays for the St. Albans sextet The Grass Stains, on board after the three wound up at the same Hibachi Steakhouse table. But Barnett says he doesnt think of the Fort Hillbillies strictly as a bluegrass band, despite its Appalachian instrumentation. Id say were more of a country band that has a bluegrass flavor to it, he said. We play some bluegrass songs, but we have a real bluegrass flavor to everything we play. Barnett says the band built its original repertoire, which includes songs from the catalogs of Jimmy Buffet, Merle Haggard, Ricky Skaggs and Willie Nelson, on songs that band members already knew. It just kind of happened; its just what we all knew, he said. Now, like any maturing band, the guys are beginning to incorporate original material into their performances. Barnett wrote a song about his dad called The Finest Man Ive Ever Known firmly in the bluegrass vein. But Ellis and Newell have a song called Your Beach or Mine about a Key West bar singer and the girl he picks up that would fit in perfectly on a Buffet or Kenny Chesney album. It kind of fits right in with what we do, Barnett said. He added that the band has about a dozen original songs and hopes to record them sometime this winter. Theyre currently in search of a recording studio, but plan to have a CD out by spring. The Fort Hillbillies are primarily a live band, playing about once a month at local bars or events. Weve had a lot of fun with it, Barnett said. The band also has played at several neighborhood parties around the area, at the Nitro City Festival, the Ripley Apple Butter Festival, Smokeys on the Gorge, Tomahawks Smokehouse and Saloon, and Griffs. The Hillbilllies have even traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to play a party for a Charleston doctor who moved south. But Barnett says the band doesnt have any aspirations of becoming a touring group. He says he enjoys Charleston-area gigs just fine. Its just fun to be up there and hear yourself playing and thinking it sounds halfway decent. Its just a rush to play in front of people, Barnett said.

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Average Guys Turn Neighborhood Jam Into Real Gigs

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