“Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour,” a documentary from the University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio, will be shown in Rome, Italy as a part of the 7th annual Mojo Station Blues Festival. The three day festival features performances by blues musicians and films on blues related subjects.

The Mojo Station radio program was created by Gianluca Diana and Pietropaolo Moroncelli in 2002 to celebrate and promote blues music in Italy. The program led to the creation of the Mojo Station Blues Society, a non profit organization, which established the Mojo Station Blues Festival in 2005. Each year the festival brings live blues music and documentary films to an appreciative audience in Rome.

“Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour” will screen on Friday, November 4th at the Cinema Palazzo. The film film tells the story of a Memphis, Tennessee based musician who draws his inspiration from the hill country style of music from north Mississippi. Johnston is a popular performer at venues around the world but at the time the documentary was shot, he was performing primarily on the sidewalk along Beale Street in Memphis. The documentary has been screened at film festivals across the US and Europe and has won five festival awards. It was produced and directed by Max Shores.

For more information:
The Mojo Station Program Podcast
Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour (info about the film)

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Max Shores.

Two documentaries produced by the University of Alabama will be screened in Paris, France during October, 2011. The documentaries, originally made for broadcast in Alabama, have both had an impact well beyond the boundaries of the state.

“Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour” will screen as a part of the Raw Sounds Movie Club on October 17th at Le Fanfaron (6 rue de la Main d’Or). The film, which won the Best Alabama Film Award at the 2007 George Lindsey UNA Film Festival, tells the story of a Memphis, Tennessee musician who was performing frequently in Alabama during the time it was produced. Johnston draws his inspiration from a unique style of blues music that comes from north Mississippi’s hill country and the film serves as an introduction to the musician and the style of music. It has been shown across the US, England, and Germany but this screening will be the French premiere.

“Songs Inside The Box” will screen during the Cigar Box Guitare Mini-Festival on October 22nd at Boullion Belge (6 Rue Planchat). The film chronicles an Alabama cigar box guitar festival which attracts participants from across the US. It recently won the Best Feature Length Documentary Award at the 2011 Prometheus Film Festival and portions of the documentary are currently being shown at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles as a part of an exhibit of cigar box guitars. Through “Songs Inside The Box,” the Alabama festival has led to similar festivals around the world and the film will be shown at the first such festival in Paris. It has previously screened in Australia, England, Germany, and across the US.

Both documentaries were directed by Max Shores at the UA Center for Public Television and Radio. The Center was created in 1955 to produce programming for the newly formed Alabama Public Television network of stations covering the state. For the past 20 years the department has focused primarily on the production of single topic documentaries which have shared aspects of life in Alabama and the southeastern US with audiences around the world. In addition to broadcast distribution, CPT&R documentaries have been screened at international film festivals where they have won awards.

The presentation of these two music documentaries within one week in Paris is a coincidence but the stories told by the two films are related. It was through Richard Johnston’s use of cigar box guitars that director Shores learned of the widespread interest in the instruments and the Alabama festival that brings cigar box guitar makers and musicians together.

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Max Shores.

“Songs Inside The Box,” the cigar box guitar documentary has been selected for screening at the Prometheus Film Festival of York, Pennsylvania. The festival will take place in the York Little Theatre on August 19th and 20th, one week before York will host the annual Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival.

I’m very proud to have the film screening in York because it is the home of Shane Speal, the self-proclaimed King of the Cigar Box Guitar and central figure of “Songs Inside the Box.” Shane will be performing at the festival.

For more information:
PrometheusFilmFestival.org
ShaneSpeal.com
SongsInsideThe Box.com
Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival

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Max Shores.

Richard Johnston plays a cigar box guitar in a Mississippi Juke Joint

“Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour,” the award-winning documentary by Center for Public Television & Radio producer/director Max Shores, will be shown at the 7th Annual Cigar Box Guitar Festival in Huntsville, Alabama at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 4th. Shores will be in attendance and will answer questions after the screening.

Presentation of this University of Alabama documentary is just a part of the two-day festival which will begin on Friday, June 3rd at 6:00 p.m. with a free performance by cigar box guitar musicians, Hymn for Her. Following the documentary screening on Saturday there will be performances by Pat, John and Uncle Chuck Nickel, Microwave Dave, John Lowe, Seven Hills Stomp, Nadaband and Earl Williams. Bill Jehle’s Cigar Box Guitar Museum will be on display as well as demonstrations of various hand crafted instruments. The admission charge for the Saturday events will be $15.00.

Richard Johnston is a Memphis musician who is inspired by the music of the hill country of north Mississippi. He and John Lowe worked together to create a unique cigar box guitar which allows a musician to play both bass guitar and lead guitar simultaneously. It was through Johnston that Shores learned of the annual CBG event in Huntsville which ultimately became the subject of his documentary, “Songs Inside The Box.”

The 7th Annual Cigar Box Guitar Festival will take place in the Flying Monkey Arts Center located at Lowe Mill. The address is 2211 Seminole Drive Southwest Huntsville, AL 35805.

Here is a schedule of events during the festival:

6/3 – Friday – Hymn for Her, Admission FREE Concerts on the Dock (6pm – 9pm)

6/4 – Saturday – Artist Market 2nd floor, handcrafted instruments and more… (Noon – 4pm)

Demonstrations: How to Build a Cigar Box Guitar with John Nickel (1pm & 3pm)
1st floor studios : Nickel Cigar Box Guitar

Workshops:
12:30 & 2pm – “Build a One- String CBG with Steve Webb
1st floor classroom – $30. materials & tools provided questions or registration: backpocketcrafts@yahoo.com

1:30 & 2:30pm – “Learn to Play a Cigar Box Guitar” with Pat Nickel
1st floor lounge near Nickel’s CBG Studio

Jam Sessions: 1st floor lounge area / 2nd floor connector / on the dock
Special Guest, Max Shores, documentary filmmaker
“Songs Inside the Box” and “Hill Country Troubadour”
2nd floor Film Co-op / Don Tingle studio near theater

Flymo Theater Extravaganza – Saturday – 4th (4pm – 12am)
4pm – “Hill Country Troubadour” film screening, Admission $5
“Live” Cigar Box Guitar Music ’till midnight, Admission $10
6pm – Pat Nickel
7pm – Seven Hills Stomp
8pm – Microwave Dave
9pm – John Lowe
10pm – Earl Williams
11pm – Nadaband

For more information:

Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour
Songs Inside The Box
The Flying Monkey Arts Center
Hymn for Her
Bill Jehle’s Cigar Box Guitar Museum

Source: The University of Alabama Center for Public TV & Radio

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Max Shores.

I recently discovered that the trailer for the 2003 documentary “A Taste of Hog Heaven” had been placed online by my colleague Rob Briscoe. (Thanks Rob!) It brought back some good memories. Here’s the story behind the documentary which I wrote in 2003:

For the past twenty years, I’ve traveled over Alabama collecting stories to tell through public TV documentaries. Everywhere I go I prefer to eat at local restaurants rather than national chains. If there’s a barbecue restaurant handy, that’ll be my first choice.

I like barbecue and so do most of my co-workers. In fact, some of my co-workers through the years have been barbecue fanatics. There was one cameraman who just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to stop at Jim’s Bar-B-Q on Highway 82. Every time we traveled from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery, he’d stop there for a late breakfast or early lunch. Then on our return drive to Tuscaloosa, he’d stop again to pick up takeout for his family.

Imagine this scene… Three or four (and sometimes more) public TV people eating lunch at a barbecue restaurant. We’ve been up since long before sunrise, driven for an hour or three, worked all morning with cameras and lights and we’re already pretty tired. We’ve got a lot more work to do after lunch and we know that we won’t be back home until late. This lunch is our only time to relax, and we’ve found a great place to eat. The meat is tender and smoked to perfection and the sauce adds just the right bite.

It doesn’t take long before someone says, “We should do a documentary about barbecue.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard those words. I’ve even said them myself.

Being public TV storytellers, naturally we researched the topic. We read about the history of pit cooking and how it originated in the Caribbean, was brought to North Carolina, and spread across the US. We read how different sauces were developed in various locales. We talked about it over lunches in barbecue restaurants across Alabama for years, but we never got anything done on it. After lunch we’d go back to the job at hand. We were always busy with something else.

Then one day Dwight Cammeron walked into my office and said, “We’ve been talking about this for years. Let’s do something!”

The history of barbecue cooking is a fascinating subject, but we decided not to focus on that. We decided instead to focus on barbecue restaurants around the state. After all, barbecue restaurants had been our inspiration from the very beginning.

As you might expect, we had lots of favorite places and it didn’t take long for us to realize that we couldn’t include all of them. We decided to feature ten restaurants spread out across the state. Dwight had a highway map hanging on the wall in his office and he drew ten big circles on it to divide up the state. He started looking for restaurants in five of the circles and I took the other five.

We phoned all over the state asking folks we know and folks we didn’t know until then about their favorite barbecue restaurants. When we came up with a list of good places to eat, we started calling restaurants. Some of the restaurant owners thought we were practical jokers. Some didn’t have time to talk to us. Some got real excited. All of them probably thought we were crazy.

In the end, we came up with nine restaurants scattered over the state. Passionate barbecue enthusiasts may question why we included one restaurant and not another. Well, we only had an hour of TV time to work with. We were looking for interesting stories and colorful people. We were also trying to include places ranging from extreme north Alabama to extreme south Alabama and all points in between.

We decided to let the restaurant folks tell their own stories without a lot of commentary from us. We hope the end result will let the viewer get to know the people and see behind the scenes. The folks at all of the restaurants were great to work with and were glad to share their life’s work with interested people.

We spent a couple of days at each of the featured restaurants dragging cameras and lights into tight corners, standing on chairs or lying on the floor to get just the right picture. We choked on smoke and worked up a sweat. Then we had lunch and celebrated the fact that we were finally doing something we’d talked about doing for years.

But the subject of conversation over lunch has changed. Now we talk about plans for the next barbecue documentary.

For more about “A Taste of Hog Heaven” and the featured restaurants, click here.

The next barbecue documentary was “Holy Smoke Over Birmingham” in 2006.

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Max Shores.

Microwave Dave performs at the annual Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza

The 7th Annual Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza (now renamed “The Alabama Cigar Box Guitar Festival”) will take place on Friday, June 3rd and Saturday, June 4th, 2011 in Huntsville, Alabama. This is the event at which most of my documentary, “Songs Inside The Box” was shot several years ago.

The event attracts cigar box guitar enthusiasts from across the eastern U. S. and is a fun outing for anyone interested in these unique instruments.

Times and performers have not been announced at this writing. Screenings of two of my documentaries, “Songs Inside The Box” and “Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour” are planned along with lots of live music.

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Max Shores.

I’m pleased to announce that “Songs Inside The Box,” the cigar box guitar documentary will be screened at the 2010/2011 Woodford Folk Festival in Woodford, Queensland, Australia. The screening is scheduled for Wednesday, December 29th at 6:30 p.m. and will be followed with performance by Eb ‘n’ Flo, a local cigar box guitar duo.

The annual Woodford Folk Festival is one of the largest cultural events of its type in Australia. The festival takes place over six days and nights from December 27th to January 1st each year. It features a wide range of performance styles, musical genres and nationalities, in many simultaneous venues across the site. About 130,000 patrons attend annually, camping on-site.

Eb ‘n’ Flo are actually Paul Thorley and Fluer Shelton who are from the area. They both make cigar box guitars and perform together. Their music ranges from melodic Appalachian music to country blues. I am excited that they will be appearing with the documentary.

For more information:

The Woodford Folk Festival

Paul Thorley’s profile at CigarBoxNation.com

Fleur Shelton’s profile at CigarBoxNation.com

SongsInsideTheBox.com

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Max Shores.

"Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour," my documentary about the amazing street musician and one-man-band Richard Johnston, will be shown on November 29th at the Don Gibson Theater in Shelby, North Carolina. The special screening will be a part of the state of North Carolina’s celebration hosting the Smithsonian Institution’s "New Harmonies" traveling exhibit.

The exhibit commemorates the legacy of American music with interactive kiosks devoted to jazz, the blues, R&B, bluegrass, country western, zydeco, Cajun, Tejano, klezmer, folk, and gospel. It traces the emergence of such genres to African influences and the traditions of early European immigrants to North America. New Harmonies “tells a new American story” with displays of vintage sheet music, photographs, and instruments such as the dulcimer, banjo, diddley bow, spoons, washboard, and drums. A listening station provides an opportunity to experience music firsthand with legendary performers such as B.B. King, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Earl Scruggs.

New Harmonies is part of Museum on Main Street, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress.

For more information:
The Don Gibson Theater
Destination Cleveland County, NC
Richard Johnston: Hill Country Troubadour

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Max Shores.

The second annual UK Cigar Box Guitar Festival will take place on Saturday, October 16th at The Public in West Bromwich, West Midlands (near Birmingham) and I’m pleased to announce that “Songs Inside The Box” will be screened at the event.

“Songs Inside The Box” is a documentary about cigar box guitar enthusiasts who communicated over the Internet and decided to get together in person at an annual event in Alabama. The Alabama Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza has been the longest running such event and now the UK festival is following in its footsteps.

Just like the Alabama festival, the UK festival came about as a result of discussions on the Internet. Both festivals owe a debt of thanks to Shane Speal, the self-proclaimed “King of the Cigar Box Guitar” who created avenues for communication among cigar box guitar builders and players around the world. Speal is the founder of CigarBoxNation.com and discussions there inspired member Chickenbone John to establish the UK event.

I’m very proud that “Songs Inside The Box” will be a part of this event and wish everyone there all the best!

For more information:

CigarBoxNation.com discussion about the Festival

Information from ChickenBoneJohn.com

Information from The Public.com

Songs Inside The Box website

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Max Shores.

Shane Speal, King of the Cigar Box Guitar

Add a stick and some strings to a wooden cigar box and you’ve got an inexpensive musical instrument, a cigar box guitar. Each one is an original and some people say that each one has its own songs inside. These unique guitars and the people who make music with them are the subject of “Songs Inside The Box,” Sunday, June 20th at 2:00 p.m. on Alabama Public Television.

“Songs Inside the Box” was shot primarily at an Alabama event that brings together cigar box guitar enthusiasts from across the eastern U.S. The Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza takes place each year in Huntsville. It will be on Saturday, June 26th this year. (More information below.) The event is attended by some of the more than 3,000 cigar box guitar builders and musicians who are connected through an Internet forum started several years ago by Shane Speal of York, Pennsylvania. Speal is the self-proclaimed “King of the Cigar Box Guitar” and he has united cigar box guitar hobbyists and professional musicians in a movement he calls the cigar box guitar revolution.

The revolution is all about having fun building instruments and playing music while finding some aspects of your personality that might otherwise remain hidden. Daniel Carter Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, published instructions for building a cigar box banjo in 1870. His programs were designed to help boys find their hidden inner savage.

“When you pick up a cigar box guitar, it’s like putting on a mask for Halloween,” says Huntsville blues guitarist Microwave Dave who appears in the documentary. “It gives you license to do whatever you want because nobody knows what to expect.”

Cigar box instruments have provided inexpensive entertainment since the 1800s and many professional musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, started their careers with cigar box guitars. “Songs Inside The Box” includes performances by more than a dozen different musicians and information about how to build and play your own instrument.

“I’ve had the opportunity to present this documentary at several film festivals,” said director Max Shores. “People in the audience laugh at the characters on the screen initially but then they begin to identify with them. By the end of the film a lot of people decide to build their own instrument and write their own songs,” he continued. “It’s an amazingly powerful way to express yourself.”

Shores is a producer-director in the University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio which is a service division of the College of Communication and Information Sciences providing instruction and practical experience on high quality productions to students.

For more information:

SongsInsideTheBox.com

The Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza

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Max Shores.