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Vincent brings musical heritage to Cullowhee
The first time I ever heard the name Rhonda Vincent was on a Saturday evening broadcast of National Public Radio’s “Prairie Home Companion.”
As I listened to host Garrison Keillor talk with Vincent about her family band and how she’d grown up playing music, I remember thinking how much she sounded like people from around here – proud of her roots and content with a career that followed in the footsteps of her parents.
When we heard that seven-time International Bluegrass Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year Vincent would bring her band, the Rage, to Cullowhee to play Western Carolina University’s annual pre-Mountain Heritage Day show, I have to admit that our own WCU intern, Sam, was more excited than I was. She had heard Vincent play several times – most recently at Cherokee’s August bluegrass festival – and she couldn’t wait to see the multi-instrumentalist again.
When the opportunity for a pre-show interview with Vincent surfaced, Sam unselfishly offered to miss a portion of the opening act so she could keep me company backstage.
Not only that, she gave me lots of background information and questions for the reigning queen of bluegrass.
“Ask her how she learned to play,” Sam told me. “Ask her what kind of mandolin she uses.”
More help came from Randall Holcombe at WCU’s public information office, who happens to be another Rhonda Vincent fan.
“Ask her if she remembers when her family band, the Sally Mountain Show, played on ‘Fire on the Mountain,” which was filmed in Maggie Valley,” Randall said.
With all that encouragement and help, I was ready for the interview – once I convinced the Ramsey Center crew that I really was supposed to go backstage and talk to the star.
Eventually a very nice stagehand trusted Sam and me, and we were on our way to the “Green Room,” as the pre-show waiting area is termed by those in the know.
We sat down with Vincent for our five allotted minutes. It was 8:45 p.m., and she was due onstage at 9, but you would never have known it from her relaxed attitude. We sat on the couch, she posed for a picture with Sam ...
About then I realized I had three and a half minutes to get the answers to all our questions.
Leading off with a “Prairie Home Companion” query, I learned that Vincent loves the spontaneity of that live show and plans to join Keillor in three months for his New Year’s Eve show from Nashville.
Does she remember filming the “Fire on the Mountain” gig?
As a matter of fact, she does. It was in 1985, a year Vincent termed “pivotal,” and she even recalled that she wore the same color (sapphire blue) two decades ago for the television show that she chose for last month’s WCU gig.
The same year she filmed “Fire on the Mountain,” Vincent appeared on “You Can Be a Star,” and Jim Ed Brown invited her to work for him. She accepted the opportunity, and a then-unknown fiddler/vocalist named Alison Krauss pinch hit for her in the Sally Mountain Show.
“(Alison) traveled with my family and wore my clothes from April to October,” Vincent said.
A self-taught musician, Vincent traces her musical roots back five generations. She loved growing up in her family’s band, she said.
“Music was a way of life,” she said. “My dad would pick me up from school and he and my grandpa would play until suppertime, and then we’d play until bedtime.”
The way Vincent tells it, she had to learn to play. She had been singing since she was 3, but when she was about 8, one promoter told her dad that only the family members who actually played an instrument would get paid.
“My dad handed me a mandolin, showed me the G, C and D chords, and told me I’d be playing for a couple of hours each night,” she said. “After a few nights, he would say ‘Take it Rhonda,’ and I had to figure out what to do.”
Vincent’s tour sponsor, Martha White flour, is also an outgrowth of her childhood.
“I grew up listening to Lester Flatt sing the Martha White song, and I taught my daughters to cook using Martha White products,” she said. “One day we had a little extra studio time, and we recorded the Martha White song.”
According to Vincent, she then wrote to Martha White and asked them to sponsor her tours. Her persistence paid off, and she now travels in the Martha White bus and sings the song Flatt made famous during every show. The fact that her banjo player, Kenny Ingram, performed with Flatt as a teenager and now helps her sing the song provides another link to the past, Vincent said.
With that, Sam and I exited the Green Room just in time to find our seats before Vincent came on stage. The show was a good one, and we watched Vincent deftly switch from mandolin to fiddle to guitar and back.
Like Jackson County’s Queen and Deitz families, separate winners of WCU’s Mountain Heritage Day Award, Vincent traces her music back to earlier times and previous generations. And she’s also a shining example of this nation’s musical heritage.
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