Up Moses Creek: ‘Blow wind like you’re never gonna blow again’
Darren Nicholson played at the Tuckasegee Trading Company, with band members Richard Foulk and Aynsley Porchak to his left, Kevin Sluder and Avery Welter to his right. Becky Kornegay photo
On Saturday morning, Dec. 14, Becky reminded me that she was going to hear Darren Nicholson and his band play at the Tuckasegee Trading Company’s annual holiday open house, and she hoped I’d go too.
Nicholson grew up in Tuckasegee, and although he’s now an award-winning bluegrass musician who performs all over the place, including the Grand Ole Opry, he comes home each year for a Christmas hoedown of bluegrass, country, gospels and carols at the store. The music started at 11 a.m., and Becky went. But hunched over my books as usual in the mornings, I didn’t get there until the final set.
The band was at one end of the Trading Company’s storeroom, with mandolin, fiddle, guitar and bass behind a single microphone stand and drums to one side. The fiddler, Aynsley Porchak, was new to the band, and when she played lead, she’d take one long swooping step up to the mic. Porchak could make her fiddle sound like it was from a holler in Little Canada, a community in the headwaters of the Tuckasegee River. But, smartly dressed in a long coat and stylish hat, she looked like she’d stepped out of another land — which she had, having been born and raised in Canada.
The audience sat in chairs and on feed sacks across from the band, and between the two was room for dancing. It’s good to hear Darren’s band, better to hear and sing along with it, best to hear and sing and dance. Becky and I danced a made-up polka-swing to a couple of songs, and several of us clogged to another. I was back among the feed sacks wiping my brow when Porchak started the kind of lonesome, yearning, lingering air that only a fiddle can play. The band then joined with power. The song was a little slow for clogging, but it sounded too driving to suit lighthearted polka. It didn’t seem to call for couple dancing or square or circle or line or any other dancing that’s shaped — but for movement rhythmic and free. I found myself swaying to it.
The song ended with the fiddle again, and I asked storeowner Wanda Herren what it was called. “Seminole Wind,” she said. I learned later that the song had been a hit in 1992. My son tells me he listened to it in his treehouse when he was a kid. Goes to show how up I am on music. But the pump was primed.
A few songs later, and about to wrap up, Darren took requests, and I called out — “A repeat, ‘Seminole Wind!’” He made it the finale. This time I didn’t wait. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. This time, when the music went into overdrive, I felt my legs pulling the rest of me out onto the floor. As for the “bone on bone” diagnosis a doctor had given my left knee and right hip just the day before? — “Seminole Wind” blew life back into those lame bones. “You danced like you were possessed,” Becky said.
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It might have been possession. Seminole means “wild, runaway,” and, looking back, I wonder if the song’s proud, ghostly Seminole warrior Osceola, called back from the dead, had run away with me as he pranced around an Okeechobee fire. Or maybe the musicians had strings attached to my arms and legs, and as they picked and strummed and drummed and drew the bow, they played me like a puppet. I danced in a way we’ve all probably done at one time or another — when home alone.
Or maybe “Seminole Wind” was a kind of Christmas carol, its spirit of joy working in me. The musicians didn’t gyrate theatrically like some rock and roll bands do. They sent all their inspiration into the marvelous instruments instead, harmonic wires, every note electric with expectation. And heaven and nature sang.
All too soon the band wound down to the yearning fiddle. Then, with a little smile to the audience, Darren declared me “the gold-medal dancer!” It’s not a difficult medal to win when you’re the only one on the floor.
Back home again, I was all exclamation point for hours — unable to curl back up into a question mark around a book. It’s good to seize the day, but better to be seized by it. Tuckasegee Trading Company is only two miles from Moses Creek as the crow flies — just over a ridge known locally as the Gunstock — but you’d think it was a world away.
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County.)
