Literary and Music Spotlight: Between Rock and a Home Place
Several years back I wrote a feature on Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the Rolling Stones and former member of the Allman Brothers Band. As well, he is a preeminent forester and conservationist. PBS aired his series, “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell.”
Chuck and I got to know each other and when he felt it was time to expand his 2004 memoir, Between Rock and a Home Place, he asked me to write it with him.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re good, a Southerner like me, and I trust you.”
“Good enough,” I said.
For some time I have been at work on his memoir, which in some ways and places is mine as well. Here, then, is a preview from a chapter titled “Pines.”
The Leavells live among pines and hardwoods. They call it Charlane, Char from Charles and lane from Rose Lane. Charlane Woodland sits squarely in the geographic heart of Georgia where pines aplenty reach for the sun. I grew up in eastern Georgia. We had our share of pines as well. As a boy, I sat on my parent’s screen porch and counted the pulpwood trucks rolling down the Augusta Highway. It was evidence of what some term the green monoculture, the spread of pines. Pulpwood’s reign as a cash crop had begun.
Those days put their mark on me. Like Chuck, I have my own love for trees and music. Through the pines some 200 yards distant my father’s tin chainsaw shop caught the sun. Behind it he tested repaired saws —fixed as we say—on pine logs. To this day the strangely beautiful whine of chainsaws and clean, turpentined smell of felled pines comfort me.
Pine is one of those words that works two shifts. It means an evergreen coniferous tree and it means to long for the return of something. Like childhood. I long for those green monoculture days when I was a boy and life was simple.
Early in life Dad cut pulpwood. He struggled mightily. We were poor but didn’t know it. Dad couldn’t afford to repair his saws. Instead he learned to repair them himself. That led to the shop where I worked as a boy and so did a marvelous man, Sam Turner. Earlier in life he sang in a duet with James Brown. Yes, that James Brown. Sam could sing and whistle as if yodeling. I have never heard anything like it since.
A black church, Pleasant Grove Methodist Church, sits a stone’s throw from Dad’s shop. Google it and you will see my father’s shop to the right, no longer tin thanks to another owner’s upgrade. Many Sundays I listened to the congregation’s music. Through the pines there came drums and guitars and a piano and clapping and foot stomping. I had never heard such glorious live music. I could not know it at the time but pines, chainsaws, and church music were preparing me for what lay ahead. Writing about a piano player who loves trees and music as I do.
Chuck considers himself a student of the environment, forestry, in particular, and, of course, the piano. Georgia’s native pines fall into three major groups: white pine, Southern yellow pine, and jack pine. Chuck knows these things and more. Forestry and music may seem far apart but with Chuck they’re not. Blazing music fills nights. Days are devoted to blazing trees. There are cords and chords, soft wood and hardwood, soft rock and hard rock, marking timber and marking time, and there’s pitch and pitch.
This book covers a lot of ground. There’s the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones, Capricorn Records, trees, bobwhite quail, and more. For me it is a pleasant trip down memory lane remembering things like the British Invasion, screaming saws, and pines … lots of pines. Pianos and music.