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    Excavating Jerry Garcia’s Crucial Bluegrass Roots

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    In 1964, the guitarist took a road trip, hoping to become Bill Monroe’s banjo player. The journey, and his longtime love of the genre, shaped the Grateful Dead.Just off the lobby of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum is the “picking room” — a cozy, glass-enclosed corner where visitors are encouraged to grab any of the guitars, banjos and fiddles hanging on the wood-paneled walls and play. Located on the Ohio River 35 miles northwest of Rosine, the small farming community that produced the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, the museum’s readily available instruments and neighborly spirit are no surprise.What is unexpected? The 1961 Chevy Corvair sticking out of a wall upstairs in the museum’s main hall and the newly unveiled exhibit it anchors: an in-depth look at the Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s long and often intense love affair with bluegrass music.Best known as the standard-bearer for San Francisco’s psychedelic sound and the house band for Ken Kesey’s storied Acid Tests, Grateful Dead concerts were not a big draw in the beating red heart of bluegrass country. Of the more than 3,500 shows Garcia played with the Dead and his own bands, only seven were in Kentucky. But the subsequent emergence of the “jamgrass” scene — a bluegrass cousin to the bands who take a cue from the Dead in emphasizing extended improvisations — is one of the ways that time and a widening appreciation have proved the Dead to be one of the most American of bands. It’s also given Garcia a new kind of cultural heft and near-mythological status, 28 years after his death.The new exhibit “Jerry Garcia — A Bluegrass Journey” will run for two years at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum.Chris StegnerMusicians and listeners alike have long singled out “Old & in the Way,” a 1975 LP from one of Garcia’s side projects, as the gateway recording that introduced them to bluegrass. But much of “Jerry Garcia — A Bluegrass Journey,” the imaginative and carefully curated show that recently began a two-year run at the museum, is built around an intriguing and less well-known event in Garcia’s career: Before forming the Grateful Dead, he aspired to a career as a bluegrass musician and undertook a 1964 cross-country musical pilgrimage, largely in the hope of landing a job as Monroe’s banjo player.“I’ve been with the museum for 13 years and an exhibit on Jerry Garcia has always been on the back burner,” said its curator, Carly Smith. Those discussions were pushed to the forefront when the museum moved in 2018 to a new 64,000-square-foot home that enhanced its ability to present detailed exhibits and includes superb indoor and outdoor performance spaces. Though the pandemic necessitated a two-year delay, the show is an ambitious bid to highlight a little-known connection and build bridges between genres and audiences. Mounted with the cooperation of Garcia’s family, it includes a dozen of his instruments, numerous clippings, artifacts and mementos and a well-researched narrative of Garcia’s formative years on the Bay Area’s folk scene.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tyler Childers Puts His Own Spin on Heartfelt Rural Anthems

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      The country musician has sung about racial violence and made a video depicting a queer love story. His new album, “Rustin’ in the Rain,” was inspired by his roots — and Elvis Presley.There are parts of Kentucky where the ground is pruned and prettied, and there are parts where the grass just grows. During the early days of his career, Tyler Childers had one foot in both — as a kid from rural Lawrence County doing landscape work for a Lexington mill while he played country music for whoever would listen. One night, his worlds converged. Asked to perform at the office Christmas party, he dressed up in a tie and good shoes. He thought he looked sharp until an older man stopped to crack a joke.“He told me, ‘You look like a mule looking over a picket fence,’” Childers, 32, said last month, having returned from playing a festival, powered on nicotine and caffeine. It was midday in a borrowed Nashville living room; Childers, despite his growing success, has resisted a move to Music City in favor of staying anchored in Kentucky. “I thought, ‘I’m a mule.’ I’m a poor working man’s animal, and I’m looking over the fence in somebody else’s yard. Do I even belong here?”Childers proudly poses with a mule on the cover of his new album, “Rustin’ in the Rain,” out Friday. It’s a flip on that fateful moment, turning the animal (and the people who rely on it) into something powerful and graceful. Childers’s music, from his 2017 debut “Purgatory” and beyond, has always done this work: rewriting and recontextualizing rural and Appalachian America and the folks within it, and spreading their stories wide.In the past few years, he’s sung about racial inequality (“Long Violent History”), made a music video telling a queer love story (“In Your Love”) and explored the possibilities of an inclusive faith on “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” His songs with roots in bluegrass, Southern rock and Appalachian tradition have pushed the boundaries of country music and even his own fan base, while cementing him as one of the most successful touring and streaming artists in his field — without the aid of radio. Last month, he played two sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York. In December, he has a pair booked at Lexington’s Rupp Arena.Childers grew up in East Kentucky in the shadow of the Baptist Church. His father had a job in the coal industry, and his mother worked at the health department. While the family had a double-wide trailer with running water and electricity, the neighbors didn’t, so he and his sibling were acutely aware that they were “one bad decision” away from disaster. At 15, Childers moved to a new school, where he coped with being the new kid by spending his lunch playing guitar. Eventually, his classmates took notice. They invited him to sing at parties, and introduced him to some new music.“Drive-By Truckers became the soundtrack to my teenage angst,” he said, wearing dark jeans and a button-up despite the 100-degree weather. He started writing his own music, and quickly built a following across Kentucky and West Virginia — country fans were eager to hear fiddle and steel guitar, and his voice carried that lonesome sound of someone who’d studied both Ricky Skaggs and Kurt Cobain. When he sings live, his eyes burn with the ferocity of a preacher, and fans hang on to every word.When “Purgatory,” co-produced by another Nashville boundary-pusher, Sturgill Simpson, was released, things happened fast. Childers went from opening shows with his band, the Food Stamps, to headlining the same venues in a little over a year. In 2020, he made his first overtly political statement with “Long Violent History,” an album fueled by his rage over the police killing of Breonna Taylor, a fellow Kentuckian. He wanted to be explicit, releasing the title track with a video statement in which he spoke directly to his white rural fans, telling them, “We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter.”“I felt compelled,” he said, leaning forward in his chair and stiffening up as he talked. “I started looking at the people listening to me, and I was listening to them. I wasn’t stretching out in some weird, forced way — I wrote that song in 10 minutes.” Now he sees it as a responsibility not just to speak for his people, but to grow with them. “There are a lot of artists out there trying to do the work,” Childers said. “Every little effort to give someone a glimpse into that light helps put water on this fire before it boils over into white-hot rage.”The video for “In Your Love,” the new album’s first single, features a love story between two male coal miners in 1950s Appalachia. The inspiration was personal. When Childers asked a gay cousin to be the best man at his wedding to the singer-songwriter Senora May, he started to hear rumblings about “what kind of man Senora might be marrying.” Childers welled up recounting the story, never once trying to wipe a tear or hide his watery eyes — he’s sober now, free of alcohol since 2020, and emotions come fast and easy.To create the treatment for “In Your Love,” he turned over control to the Kentucky poet laureate, his friend Silas House. “That’s unheard of,” House said in a phone interview. “The very first thing Tyler said to me was, ‘I want to make a video for people who have never seen themselves in a country love story.” He added, “It was only ever about telling another rural story.”After his 2017 debut arrived, Childers went from opening shows with his band the Food Stamps to headlining the same venues in a little over a year. Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesChilders has long told rural stories: about people trying to get by with poisoned water or blackened lungs, about drug addiction and the impact of corporate greed on the people who tend the land — but also about the sheer beauty of these places, too, and the love within them. His allyship, especially for marginalized people out in the country, is a natural progression. He stays deeply connected to place where he was raised: hunting, gardening, tanning the hide after he cans the meat. “I’m a dial-up man,” he said, “in a 5G world.”“Rustin’ in the Rain” is not just about love, or Appalachian life. It’s also about Elvis Presley — songs Childers could have pitched to Elvis, to be exact, a conceit he came up with while cleaning his house, a little accidentally high on some metal polish fumes. The family had just gotten a dog, a Malinois he’d taken to calling his “velvet Elvis.” “I don’t know if it was me saying that,” he said, “or the algorithm thought I was the guy to send it to, but all of the sudden there was all of this Elvis stuff around me. So I played it like a Nashville songwriter, trying to come up with songs to pitch.”“Phone Calls and Emails” is a modern-day lonely lament, while he considers “Luke 2:8-19” his “Christmas song,” with Margo Price as the angel bearing news of a messiah. “In my Christmas play, the angel is this strong woman,” Childers said. “I was like, that’s Margo.” Said Price in an email, “As a woman in country music, just having any opinion at all is considered controversial. I’m beyond grateful he has always stood by me.”One track, “Percheron Mules,” is for Childers’s beloved animals, and “Space and Time,” the album’s closer, is a cover by S.G. Goodman, a fellow Kentucky musician. “Tyler is writing out of a region, and he is putting back good into that region,” Goodman said in a phone interview. “For him, it extends outside of art, as a vehicle for positive change in our communities.”“Rustin’ in the Rain” is a succinct seven songs, which is very intentional. Childers’s albums “are getting shorter as they go,” he said. “A countdown.” What happens when he gets to one? “I go home,” he said — to his mules, his wife and their baby boy, and to his farm. To his own rural story.Just don’t tell him that his videos and country songs about racial inequality and queer love are “courageous.”“People are like, ‘Oh, you are so brave,’” Childers said before gathering his chore coat and heading to a bookstore on his way out of town. “I think it’s sad that’s a brave thing. To me, it’s just about love. And that’s all it ought to be.” More

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      in Theater

      Tennessee Law Limiting ‘Cabaret’ Shows Raises Uncertainty About Drag Events

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      The measure is part of a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country against drag performances. Many are wondering how it will be applied.NASHVILLE — A bill signed into law this week in Tennessee makes staging “adult cabaret” on public property or anywhere a child could see it a criminal offense. The law forbids performances in those places by topless, go-go or exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who, as the law defines it, provides entertainment that is “harmful to minors.” The word “drag” does not appear in the legislation. And to some legal experts, the description provided in the letter of the law would not apply to drag as they know it. But many in the state are still trying to grasp how the measure will ultimately affect drag events, theater performances that involve drag, and even transgender and gender nonconforming people as they go about their lives.The law is part of a cascade of legislation across the country fueled by a conservative backlash to drag events, which has also spurred protests from far-right groups and threats directed at performers. Now that it is one of the first to succeed, with lawmakers in other states pursuing legislation with similarly ambiguous language, the law has prompted concerns about how it will be enforced and the implications it could have.“The murkiness of this law is causing a lot of people to be on edge,” said Micah Winter, a performer and board member of Friends of George’s, a theater company in Memphis whose shows are often centered on drag.Proponents of the legislation have described it as a way to safeguard children, asserting that drag events can have sexualized language and suggestive performances that may be too mature for younger viewers.“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Republican state senator who sponsored the legislation, said on Twitter.Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee giving his State of the State address in February. Mark Zaleski/Associated PressStill, the legislation figures into a campaign by conservative lawmakers across the country to curb the rights of people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In Tennessee, one proposal would block transgender people from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses, and on Thursday, the same day Gov. Bill Lee signed the adult cabaret bill, he approved legislation that prevents all puberty-delaying treatment, hormone therapies and referrals for transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care in the state.Drag has become more mainstream in Tennessee, as in much of the country. Performers in vibrant costumes that upend gender assumptions could simply be reading a book, promoting acceptance and literacy. Or they might be “reading” — that is, playfully mocking — tourists piled onto buses rolling through Nashville or lip-syncing in variety shows in boozy brunches in Memphis or Chattanooga.“Not one of our performers on this bus has ever shown more skin than a Titans’ cheerleader on a Sunday afternoon,” David Taylor, an owner of the Big Drag Bus Tour in Nashville and bars that host drag events, said in a hearing on the legislation.Legal experts said the equivocal wording meant that the adult cabaret law was not exactly a ban on drag but could still have consequences.“It’s an anti-drag law,” said Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, “because they passed it intentionally to try to chill and prevent people from doing drag, but that’s not really what the law says.”“It should not even touch any drag performances,” she added. But after watching public commentary and a series of legislative hearings debating the merits of the bill, she said, “it’s clear that some people think that drag in and of itself as an art form is obscene and that it should not be viewed by children.”But Ms. Sinback said the parameters set in the legislation should not apply to most drag performances, given that they would have to be considered extremely sexual or violent, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values, and be considered broadly offensive and obscene to a child to warrant charging the performer with a crime.Mr. Johnson said that the law was not meant to target drag performances in general or discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “It simply puts age restrictions in place to ensure that children are not present at sexually explicit performances,” he said in an interview with CNN.Critics said the legislation reflected what many in the gay and transgender community have described as a bleak and dangerous climate in Tennessee, threatening people who are often marginalized and already uniquely vulnerable. The law over medical care has provoked the most alarm. The Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposed the law, saying in a statement that it will “significantly limit our ability to practice to the standard of care established by numerous national medical organizations.”Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is working with other civil liberties groups in mounting a legal challenge to the legislation barring gender-affirming care, said, “This is clearly an effort to villainize us and isolate us because they fear our resilience and our self-love and our collective power.”People protesting against the bill on cabaret restrictions in Knoxville, Tenn., in February. Jamar Coach/News Sentinel, via ReutersTennessee is one of more than a dozen states where conservative lawmakers, focusing on issues of gender and identity, have pursued legislation that explicitly or otherwise seeks to impose restrictions on drag events.Some of the bills would require venues to register as adult entertainment spaces or “sexually oriented businesses,” and others would forbid performances at schools or libraries. A proposal in Arizona would outlaw drag performances within a quarter-mile of public playgrounds and schools.The law in Tennessee has not yet spurred a legal challenge, but activists and lawyers were prepared to start one as they watched to see how it is applied. Those who violate the law will be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for continued offenses.The drag performer Poly Tics attending a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. Bruce Schreiner/Associated PressIn Kentucky, where the State Legislature has advanced a sprawling bill to curtail health care access for L.G.B.T.Q. children, lawmakers had also considered restrictions that included prohibiting what the state classifies as “adult performances” from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship. The legislation was amended on Thursday to limit such performances from taking place in public places or a location where the performance could be viewed by a child — a step that critics of the legislation took as a victory.“This version is much more narrowly tailored to just explicit sexual content,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Kentucky, who acknowledged that much of his organization’s limited energy was focused on challenging the legislation on restricting gender-affirming health care.Compared with other proposals on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that advocates contend will have immediate and damaging impact, the ones that are tied to drag stir worries rooted more in uncertainty.For transgender and gender nonconforming people, who face a heightened threat of violence, some fear the law could be wielded as a tool to further discriminate against them.“The language is vague enough that it leaves it in the hands of each individual jurisdiction to define what counts as a ‘male or female impersonator,’” said Dahron Johnson, who works in community outreach with the Tennessee Equality Project. “They could say I, just going about my daily life, am an ‘impersonator.’”In theater, there is a long history of performance featuring cross-dressing and drag — Shakespeare famously employed male actors to play female roles — and many touring shows feature some variation on the practice: “The Lion King” (a male meerkat, Timon, dons a dress to dance the Charleston), “Hairspray” (the protagonist’s mother is often played by a man in drag) and “1776” (now touring with a new production in which all the male characters are played by female, transgender and nonbinary actors).“Hairspray” and many other theater productions feature drag performances.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re absolutely opposed to any legislation that restricts the rights of our producers to present stories we’ve been presenting for 4,000 years,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and presenters around the country. Ms. Martin said the league is “very concerned” about the legislation under consideration in multiple states.Brett Batterson, the president and chief executive of the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis, said that on Friday, he paused conversations about bringing to Memphis a solo show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” a small, long-running and popular touring production that has played all over America and is performed by a man in drag.“We decided we would pause our discussion to see how some of the language is interpreted,” Mr. Batterson said. “I think the law will be challenged, and we want to see how it plays out.”For now, Friends of George’s was not ready to change any of its plans. “We think it’s outrageous, but we’re forging ahead with our next production in spite of everything,” said Ty Phillips, the nonprofit’s vice president.Yet uncertainty remained. Mr. Winter noted that over the years he has played Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” and the mother in “Hairspray.”“Can I still do that?” he asked. More

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      in Movies

      The Real Story of ‘Cocaine Bear’

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      Nearly 40 years after a 175-pound black bear found and ingested cocaine in a Georgia forest, the drug binge has inspired a movie.The trailer for a new movie called “Cocaine Bear” was released on Wednesday, and the film’s title is not a metaphor or clever wordplay: The movie is about a bear high on cocaine.The bloody spree that follows the bear’s cocaine binge, as depicted in the trailer, is fictional, but the story about a high bear is very real. Its lore is likely to grow with the movie, which was directed by Elizabeth Banks and is set for a Feb. 24 release.“Cocaine Bear” stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta, who died in May, in one of his final film roles. It depicts the bear’s drug-induced trail of terror and the victims he leaves behind.The real story is less bloody.It all began, as you might guess, in the 1980s. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in December 1985 that a 175-pound black bear had “died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch of the drug,” according to a three-sentence item from United Press International that appeared in The New York Times.A United Press International item on the cocaine bear appeared in The New York Times in December 1985.“The cocaine was apparently dropped from a plane piloted by Andrew Thornton, a convicted drug smuggler who died Sept. 11 in Knoxville, Tenn., because he was carrying too heavy a load while parachuting,” U.P.I. reported. “The bureau said the bear was found Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.”The bear was found dead in the mountains of Fannin County, Ga., just south of the Tennessee border.“There’s nothing left but bones and a big hide,” Gary Garner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told The Associated Press at the time.Dr. Kenneth Alonso, the state’s chief medical examiner at the time, said after an autopsy in December 1985 that the bear had absorbed three or four grams of cocaine into its blood stream, although it may have eaten more, The Associated Press reported that month.Today, the very same bear is said to be on display in Lexington, Ky., at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall. The mall said in an August 2015 blog post that workers there wanted to know what happened to the bear and found out it had been stuffed. The blog post says the stuffed bear was at one point owned by the country singer Waylon Jennings, who kept it in his home in Las Vegas, before it was delivered to the store. (The New York Times could not independently confirm this account.)What happened to the bear in its final days, or hours, after the cocaine binge is a mystery, but the origins of the cocaine are not.Mr. Thornton was a known drug smuggler and a former police officer. He was found dead the morning of Sept. 11, 1985, in the backyard of a house in Knoxville, Tenn., wearing a parachute and Gucci loafers. He also had several weapons and a bag containing about 35 kilograms of cocaine, The Knoxville News Sentinel reported.A key in Mr. Thornton’s pocket matched the tail number of a wrecked plane that was found in Clay County, N.C., and based on Mr. Thornton’s history of drug smuggling, investigators guessed there was more cocaine nearby, The News Sentinel reported. The investigators searched the surrounding area and found more than 300 pounds of cocaine in a search that lasted several months.They also found the dead bear. More

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      in Movies

      ‘From the Hood to the Holler’ Review: A Race to Galvanize the Poor

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      A new documentary revisits the former Kentucky state representative Charles Booker’s 2020 campaign to unseat Mitch McConnell in the Senate.At a hearing in 2019 for a vote on a bill that would restrict abortion access in Kentucky, Charles Booker, a state representative at the time, gave an impassioned speech about abortion rights, criticizing politicians who had compared the medical procedure to lynching. When the speaker of the Assembly tried to silence him, Booker yelled, “My life matters, too, speaker,” as an older white man screamed at him to “sit down.”“I can only imagine that in this white person’s mind, he thought he had the right to tell this Black person to sit down,” Attica Scott, another state representative from Kentucky, says later.The exchange plays out in the new documentary “From the Hood to the Holler,” directed by Pat McGee. It follows Booker’s subsequent run for Senate in 2020, including a campaign defined by his willingness to walk across that racial divide, traveling to “hollers,” or poor, mostly white communities in Appalachia, to unite impoverished voters. Booker lost narrowly in a Democratic primary against Amy McGrath; some weeks before the election, the documentary notes, he had raised around $300,000 compared to her $29.8 million. (In May, Booker won the primary by a landslide, and he’ll face off against the Republican senator Rand Paul in November.)The documentary succeeds at presenting Booker as a candidate who can unite voters, and its best scenes show him meeting the moment. In one scene, he mediates between the police and protesters after the death of Breonna Taylor, whom he knew, convincing the officers to drop their batons in a show of solidarity. In another, he strategizes with his team about safety procedures for traveling through places that may have once been considered sundown towns, showing how racism persists in modern-day Kentucky and the nation.But though Booker’s story and success are inspiring, the documentary falls flat, feeling more like a political tool than a commentary on the state of politics in Kentucky. It would have benefited from less focus on Booker and more on the many Kentuckians he spoke to who are ready for a change.From the Hood to the HollerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      in Music

      After a Tornado Blew His Roof Away, He Played Piano Under an Open Sky

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      The morning after Jordan Baize’s house in Kentucky was destroyed, he turned to his Yamaha piano. It was a moment of calm that his sister recorded on video.Jordan Baize returned to his house in Bremen, Ky., on Saturday to find that it had been badly damaged in a tornado. His piano was still intact, though, and he played a Christian worship song as his sister filmed.William Widmer for The New York TimesAfter emerging from his basement in Bremen, Ky., where he had sheltered during a tornado, Jordan Baize saw that the roof of his house had blown away, doors had come off their hinges, and shattered glass and insulation were scattered everywhere.His Yamaha piano, however, was still intact. Under an overcast sky the next morning, Mr. Baize sat alone in his living room and started to play a song that had been stuck in his head for days.Whitney Brown, Mr. Baize’s sister, said she heard her brother playing on Saturday while she was in his bedroom packing clothes into boxes. As she started recording Mr. Baize, she recognized the tune as a Christian worship song, “There’s Something About That Name,” and recalled the words:“Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there’s something about that name,” a reference to Jesus Christ.Ms. Brown said those lyrics seemed apt for the situation. Her brother’s house, his “kingdom,” had been destroyed, but his hope had not been, she said.“It was healing, just to know that he was still clinging on to the hope of Jesus,” said Ms. Brown, 32, a massage therapist and doula and an owner of a saw mill.At least 88 people were killed as tornadoes tore through Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee on Friday. Twelve people were killed in Bremen.Mr. Baize’s daughter’s chicken Betty atop his Yamaha piano after the tornado.Whitney BrownMr. Baize, 34, said he had not realized that his sister was recording him but was heartened by the response after she posted the video on Facebook.“In these times, whether folks all around the world have suffered a tornado this past weekend or not, we all are facing storms of some kind,” said Mr. Baize, an accountant and consultant. “That little bit of peace and perspective that I was dealing with, in what I thought was a personal, private moment, I think has spoken to people across the world.”Mr. Baize said that he rushed into the basement with his two children, his ex-wife and her husband, and they huddled under a mattress just before the tornado was expected on Friday night. Three or four minutes later, it arrived, he said. It lasted about 30 seconds.After the storm passed, he and his children spent the night at his parents’ house nearby. When he returned to the house the next morning, he took stock of the wreckage: debris everywhere, five or six inches of rain in what was left of the house, and damaged trees that three generations of his family had grown up climbing. He turned to the piano, which was covered with water.“I thought I might just see what shape the piano is in,” he recalled thinking. “If it’s in awful, terrible shape, I can at least play once more.” He started playing and felt a sense of peace.Gloria Gaither wrote the lyrics to “There’s Something About That Name,” and her husband, Bill Gaither, composed the music. She said she was overwhelmed after seeing the video clip of the song they wrote decades ago.“A song appears in somebody’s life when they need it, evidently,” she said, “in circumstances we never could have dreamed.” More

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      in Music

      After 15 Years in Opera, Martha Prewitt Runs a Farm in Kentucky

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      “It’s Never Too Late” is a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.Hear the one about the opera singer-turned farmer?There isn’t a punchline. There’s just the pre-dawn wake-up, and the baling, and the 150 heifers, and one with pink eye and the thousand other realities of Martha Prewitt’s new existence.This wasn’t the plan. Growing up on the family farm in Versailles, Ky., two centuries of Prewitt corn and hay and cattle bearing down, the plan was: leave.She did, following a passion for performance into 15 years of classical singing and opera, performing with the Knoxville Opera, Capitol Opera Richmond in Virginia and Charlottesville Opera in Virginia, and earning a Master’s degree in vocal performance along the way. But sometimes passions curdle, and sometimes barn doors blow back open.At 33, following the sudden death of her father last year, Ms. Prewitt came home again. It never seemed possible, doing what he’d done all those years. But there, under the wide Kentucky sky, she discovered that something had shifted. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)By Morgan Hornsby For The New York TimesTell me about the opera life you’d been leading before this change?I got into opera through choir, in high school. The thrill of singing with an orchestra, the vibration in your bones, being totally in character and completely outside of yourself. There’s nothing else like it.But there are things about the industry that didn’t gel with me, politically and culturally. With a few exceptions, I thought the opera world was operating under an outdated, elitist business model. A few years ago I started to fall out of love.Had you ever considered farming?The farm’s been in the family since 1780 or so. My dad was a farmer from when he could walk. He could do anything: build a house, fix machines, tend to the soil’s pH level, plumbing and electrical work. Farming never seemed right for me, partly because I just didn’t think I could do it. I’m a woman, I’m 5’6” — that was a lot of it.After he passed away in June 2020, I was living at home again to be with my mom, and this little worm started to work its way through my brain: ‘Women can be farmers, too. Maybe you’re not strong now, but maybe throwing hay bales around will make you strong.’What was it that made you take that chance?I always knew I’d eventually inherit the farm, and it means a lot to me that it stays a farm. Who knows what developer would buy it and turn it into some subdivision or shopping center?I started thinking, if it means that much to me, why not take it on? Why not me? Soon I was researching things like regenerative agriculture, or how much chemical to put in the spray mix.Martha Prewitt with the farm manager Sherman Cole, who is showing her how to run the farm. It has been in her family for two centuries.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesMs. Prewitt, who had spent her career as an opera singer, working on the farm in Versailles, Ky. She took over the business after performing in operas around the world.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesNot the hands of an opera singer.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesHow did you get started?Those first few days, I began getting up early and going out with our farm manager, Sherman. At first we’d just feed the cattle together, and then I started working full days with him.I began to love it. If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done. I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.How did you find the courage to take on this huge project?My dad once told me, “When things need to get done on a farm, you just have to get them done. There’s no choice.” It’s true, and I’ve learned that suits me. I’m still pretty terrified, but I’ve also started to think, maybe I can be good at this.How has this new life changed you?During lockdown, I didn’t go outside for six weeks. I didn’t even walk out to my car. Now I’m outside every day, for most of the day. I’ve hardly used my computer since moving back, and I don’t watch much TV. I have a much deeper appreciation for nature and the environment — its beauty and also its power.Do you still sing?A lot of what I do these days is driving a tractor. It’s great because I can sing as loud as I want. “Un bel dì vedremo,” from “Madama Butterfly” is one of my favorite arias, and I’ll start singing it in the middle of a field, surrounded by trees and birds and dirt. I’ve sung to cattle a few times. Sometimes bugs fly in my mouth.Ms. Prewitt pets the cattle, which she also sings to. “I’ve sung to cattle a few times,” she said.Morgan Hornsby for The New York Times“If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done,” Ms. Prewitt said. “I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.”Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesWhat would you tell other people who feel stuck and are looking to make a change?Everybody has a different path. In my case, just because all these other farmers have been doing it all their lives, it didn’t make my ability to farm any less.If you’re feeling stuck, being patient and not freaking out about it is so important. Everything you do gives you experience and skills and tools, wherever you go. I ended up finding something much more profound than I’d ever expected. It’s as if I’m working in all times, past, present and future, in the midst of my ancestors who were here before and future generations who will come after me.Anything you wish you’d done differently when you were younger?I wish I’d done 4H.What can people learn from your experience?People always say, “Follow your passion.” Well, I tried that. I sang opera. It ended up not being how I want to spend my life.I took, I don’t know how many, personality tests. Nothing ever said I should be a farmer, except this little nagging voice saying maybe I could.We’re looking for people who decide that it’s never too late to switch gears, change their life and pursue dreams. Should we talk to you or someone you know? Share your story here. More

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      ‘’Til Kingdom Come’ Review: An Unusual Religious Bond

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘’Til Kingdom Come’ Review: An Unusual Religious BondMaya Zinshtein’s revelatory documentary explores the political and philanthropic alliance of American evangelical Christians and Israeli Jews.A scene from the documentary “’Til Kingdom Come,” directed by Maya Zinshtein.Credit…Abraham (Abie) Troen/AbramoramaFeb. 25, 2021Updated 1:23 p.m. ET’Til Kingdom ComeDirected by Maya ZinshteinDocumentary1h 16mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“’Til Kingdom Come,” the new documentary by Maya Zinshtein, probes the entanglements of politics and prophecy that bind two strange bedfellows: American evangelical Christians and Israeli Jews.The film follows Yael Eckstein, the president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and the Kentucky pastors William Bingham III and his son Boyd Bingham IV. The hefty donations that the Binghams’ church makes to Eckstein’s organization — which is advertised through sentimental videos of older Israelis receiving care packages — belies a curious logic: Many Evangelicals believe that the return of Jews to Israel portends Armageddon, leading Christians to the rapture and Jews to hell.[embedded content]Why would Israelis want to court such views? Talking-head interviews with politicians and commentators point to geopolitical opportunism. In recent years, as evangelicals gained a powerful platform under President Trump, Israel’s settler community — which seeks to normalize the occupation of Palestine — sought their support, successfully campaigning for the U.S. embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.Zinshtein’s patient, observant approach catches her subjects in moments of damning irony: Eckstein smiles awkwardly whenever the End Times are mentioned by her evangelical allies; the Binghams encourage their poverty-stricken congregation to send their spare change to the Holy Land. When a pastor in Bethlehem explains to Bingham IV that his donations support a theocracy that makes Palestinian Christians second-class citizens, Bingham simply insists that it’s all part of God’s plan.Zinshtein’s own Jewish identity brings this doublespeak to a head. In the film’s striking ending, Bingham IV tries to proselytize to the director and her crew during a sermon. He “wants to get them saved right now,” he says. His seeming good will cannot disguise his troubling convictions.’Til Kingdom ComeNot Rated. In Hebrew, Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More