Rev. Truman Goines: News

Headline management in the UK has selected Rev. Giones as one of the artist to promote in Europe. Negotiations are underway.

GOINES ALONE

Upon request, Rev. Truman Goines has recorded an intimate guitar and vocal only CD of his original tunes. Look at the calendar for current tour dates.
Straight and to the point, this CD touches your soul and captures the unique style of the Reverend. You can get the CD: The Legend of Rev. Truman Goines, Vol. 1 - Livin' & Lovin' in the Sourlands at cdbaby.com/revtrumangoines

Save the Sourlands
Fourth annual Sourland Music Festival aims to protect mountains' ecology and heritage

By BILL NUTT
Correspondent

According to legend, the original German settlers of western New Jersey found one section so unsuitable for farming that they called it the Sourlands. The Sourland Mountain area, which spans Somerset, Hunterdon and Mercer counties and is about 60 miles from both New York City and Philadelphia, may not have been able to sustain many crops, but it has been fruitful source of cultural, historical and ecological pride. John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, made his home there. So did aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.

And many hike the Sourlands' scenic trails every day.

That rich and varied heritage will be celebrated Saturday, when the Sourland Planning Council holds the fourth annual Sourland Music Festival at Hillsborough Golf & Country Club. All the performers either live in or have ties to the Sourlands.

"We hear about the Skylands and the Pinelands," observes Rev. Truman M. Goines of Lambertville, one of the founders of the festival, as well as one of its performers. "But the Sourlands have been a forgotten area to most people in the state."

Goines, a history buff who specializes in folk and acoustic blues, has written several songs about the history and people of the Sourlands that he will perform at the festival. "Minnetown" tells the story of an African-American enclave near Hopewell. "Highfields" is named after the Lindbergh estate in East Amwell, where Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped and killed in a case known as the "crime of the century."

Promoting awareness about the region was one of the intentions of the festival, says Tom Kilbourne of Hopewell Township, trustee of the Sourland Planning Council.

"We wanted to raise money, but we also wanted to raise consciousness," explains Kilbourne. "We have this green swath, the largest contiguous forest in Central Jersey. We want to encourage preservation of the land and studies of the region."

The Sourlands is a special place in New Jersey that deserves such attention, says Jim Popik, a Hopewell resident who is both a trustee of the Sourland Planning Council and a performer with the eclectic Ten Foot Tall Band.

"On one side is Flemington, on the other side is the Princeton Corridor," Popkik says. "In the middle is this remarkable area."

Popik, along with Kilbourne and Goines, came up with the idea for a music festival as a benefit for the council in 2004. That first event was held at Joe's Mill Hill Saloon in Trenton. The following year, it took place at Hillbilly Hall, a larger venue in Hopewell.

Last year the Hillsborough Golf and Country Club hosted the festival for the first time. Although inclement weather kept some patrons away, attendees and performers were enthusiastic.

"The kind of music was rather unique," observes Donald Payne of Hopewell Township, who attended with his wife, Adrah. "Some of the songs were actually written about this part of the state, so we felt a connection to it. It was a very enjoyable time, and we plan on going again this year."

Though Adrah Payne had been recovering from a stroke at the time of the festival last year, she and her husband had no difficulties.

"It was at the top of the hill at the country club grounds, so it was easy to get to," says Donald Payne.

John Sonntag of Lambertville performed last year, and he agrees that the event was special.

"It had an intimate feel for a festival. Everyone was very relaxed and very personable," he says.

Sonntag adds that he is glad to be part of the festival with his new backing band, the Tall Tones. He and his family moved to the area from Hoboken about four years ago, and they quickly came to appreciate the unusual character of the Sourlands.

"The joke is that New Jersey has a love affair with concrete, but that's not true here," says Sonntag. "I love taking the back roads around here. It doesn't feel like New Jersey, it doesn't look like New Jersey. Anything we can do to preserve it is a good thing."

Another musician who is a fan of the Sourlands is Tom Marshall, longtime lyricist for the jam band Phish and current leader of the group Amfibian. Marshall was born in Princeton Township and now lives in the Skillman section of Montgomery.

"I hike in the Sourland Mountain Preserve (with my children) all the time," declares Marshall. "We're very interested in nature, and when (the Sourland Planning Council) approached me about playing, I was happy to agree. Any charity that helps a cool cause like this, we'd love to take part in."

Amfibian usually plays as a "loud electric band," in Marshall's word, and that's how the act will close the Sourland Music Festival. But at the request of the organizers, the group also will play an acoustic set earlier in the day.

"I've been wanting to play a broken-down, unplugged version of the band, and this will give us the chance," Marshall says with a laugh. "I think the acoustic set will blend nicely with the other guys, but by the end of the day, the audience will be ready to rock."

The lineup, which includes jam-band rock, blues, jazz and folk, is the most varied in the brief history of the Sourland Music Festival, Goines says.

"This will be the breakthrough year for us," he declares. "We have a family-oriented event with good food and good music. I think after this, the festival will be known and respected, and it will help people pick up on the magic of the Sourlands."

Rev. Goines has hooked up again with Jr. Bliggins to produce a fantastic new CD of Sourland Songs and stylings. You can also get Vol. 1, and Rev Goines solo piano CD, Rumble Rattle & Roar.

Go to: cdbaby.com/bligginsandgoines, to get the new Vol. 2 CD.

Rev. Truman Goines, with Jr. Bliggins on harmonica, won "Best Band of the Sourland Music Festival". Singing original tunes about Charles Lindburgh, Hopewell Borough, Lambertville, and Minnietown, Goines thrilled the audience at the Festival, which attracted over 500 people. When asked anout Rev. Truman Goines, Tom Kilbourne, Sourland Planning Council Trustee said, "These are soulful tunes with a history lesson. I love these songs".

Why Piedmont blues on Sourland Mountain?

"The Piedmont is the region of the eastern United States of America which lays between the costal plain, from which it is divided by the fall line, and the eastern mountain ranges, the Appalachian Mountains. The width of the piedmont varies, being quite narrow or vanishing above the Delaware River, but nearly 300 miles wide in the state of North Carolina. The surface relief of the Piedmont is characterized by relatively low, rolling hills with heights between 200 and 800 feet above sea level. Its geology is complex, with numerous rock formations or different materials and ages intermingled with one another. Basically the Piedmont is the roots of an ancient coastal mountain chain that is now worn down to low relief." (freedictionary)
New Jersey’s Sourland Mountain is part of the Piedmont region. The musical history of the area is varied; early influences can be traced to Dutch, English and Scottish traditions. Later blues migrated to this area into archaic Minnietown.

Minnetown was a collection of shacks on on Sourland mountain in what is now East Amwell it was off Rileyville Road close to Hillbilly hall.

The area was home to black immigrants on the mountain from the 1850’s until the early 1900’s most of these people worked on local peach orchards, however some worked in the Belgian block quarries. One such Quarry is now the Quarry swim club on Crusher road in Hopewell. The quarries had recruited black stone drilling specialists from the North Carolina tunnel construction crews. (Luce 71)

The immigrants from the south including North Carolina brought their music with them. Songs like John Henry, Lost John and Crow Jane were well known to them. Some of these traditions still survive on the mountain today. “Harmonica Joe” born in 1910 and Cowboy Jim remember hearing pieces of these song traditions in their youth more recently they have passed them on to Rev. Truman Goines.

Rev. Truman Goines is the Winner of the 2005 New Jersey Folk Festival Songwriters Award.

Blues musicians come from different backgrounds, have their own ideas and personalities, and do things with their own spin. With that in mind, one does notice that the Piedmont folk/blues does have certain characteristics, which distinguish it from other blues. The Piedmont blues (or East Coast blues') is thought to have developed about ten or fifteen years after Delta blues in Mississippi and Texas country blues. No one is entirely sure why; Bruce Bastin, in his book Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast, has speculated that the string band tradition may have been stronger in the Southeast, hindering the development and/or popularization of the blues, or that the older music still suited the recreational needs of the listener. Whatever the reason, when blues was recorded in the twenties, the Piedmont blues had less time to evolve before the style was formalized on commercial recordings than other folk blues forms did. This is likely why pre-blues forms are more common on records and (one presumes) in artists' repertoires from the Southeast.

Like other genres, Piedmont folk/blues has its own, easily-recognized style. In general, blues from the Southeast sounds more country and ragtime oriented than the blues from the Delta and Texas. Some scholars and blues fans have thought this makes the Piedmont blues less black than other blues because Piedmont blues sounds more influenced by country and jazz sources than, say, the Delta blues does. As Bastin has pointed out, this doesn't hold water given what we now know about segregation in the area and about African music. Music most similar to the Piedmont blues was influenced significantly by black music. The Carter Family recorded many songs that they borrowed from Leslie Riddle, and numerous early country artists from the Southeast and Appalachia clearly learned from black artists. This is merely my speculation, but if Piedmont blues sounds more jazz and country than other blues forms, it may well be because certain non-blues musical styles were heavily influenced by it.

The repertoires of most Piedmont bluesmen also have a definite folk songster quality. This is nothing unique to the East Coast, of course. About half of Charlie Patton's records are non-blues; Johnny Shines has said that Robert Johnson could and did play anything from country music to polkas; Texan, Mance Lipscomb was more songster than bluesman; etc etc. But the tradition of the songster, being able to play any style at any time, was the strongest and lasted longest in the Southeast and continues to this day. The songs penned by Archie Edwards are thoroughly blues, but he still plays pre-blues ballads like John Henry and songs by country artist Jimmy Rodgers. John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, while definitely bluesmen, have recorded spirituals, RB, ballads, etc; and Brownie McGhee recorded a lot of RB/rock-and-roll in his time. And amongst Piedmont bluesmen, the most popular songs outside of blues were rags. Today you might hear traces of soul/ RB. The soul/ragtime style is very evident in Truman Goines guitar style.

Piedmont blues also has a definite flavor of ragtime running through it; many of the great Piedmont bluesmen who recorded before World War II had quite a few rags in their repertoire (William Moore, Willie Walker). But where ragtime is a piano music, the guitar is the dominant instrument in the Piedmont blues. This is really no surprise, since the guitar is dominant instrument in all of blues; but the guitar dominates Piedmont recordings as in no other genre. There are/were a few harmonica players, and some of them are the best to ever play: Peg Leg Sam, Eddie Mapp, Sonny Terry, and Phil Wiggins. Piano players are few and far between, compared to Texas and Mississippi. There are also quite a few artists with banjo or tenor guitar as a primary or secondary instrument. The banjo does appear rarely (if at all) in other blues genres, but with nowhere near the frequency that it did in the Southeast. This is not to say that non-guitarists weren't important to the music, but the list of who's who in East Coast blues is thoroughly dominated by fantastic guitarists: Brownie McGhee, Blind Blake, Rev. Gary Davis, William Moore, Willie Walker, Curley Weaver, Blind Willie McTell, and so on.

The fingerpicking technique of Piedmont folk/blues, which looms large in the definition of the genre, is thought to be an adaptation of African-American banjo playing: the thumb plays rhythm on the bass strings and two, three, or even four fingers pick the others, though a slide is often used. This requires a bit of dexterity, and Piedmont artists consider mastering this technique a significant accomplishment. Unfortunately, this style does not readily lend itself to amplification. Few Piedmont artists recorded on electric guitar with any regularity; and when they did, they often sounded more like Lightnin' Hopkins (like Carolina Slim did), or more like mainstream RB/rock-and-roll (Brownie McGhee). There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but the upshot is that the Piedmont blues never moved North to spawn a new style in urban areas; Chicago blues came from the Delta, West Coast blues came from Texas, but no parallel New York City blues ever really developed.

These are just a few generalities for a quick introduction, of course. There is quite a range of music within the Piedmont blues, more than one might expect from a music with such potentially limiting characteristics. There is a huge difference between Barbecue Bob and Rev. Gary Davis; the more artists I listen to, the more diversity emerges. This page is meant to be a short primer on the music and, of course, is no substitute for reading more about the music and musicians, or for listening to it yourself.

Rev. Truman Goines adds a 21st century spin to this old folk form combining tradition styles with original songs about the central New Jersey Sourland region. Because this region is both rural and between New York City and Philadelphia the music blends urban folk, soul, and mountain styles to create a almost funky folk experience. The tunes have a desire to dance and telll a story. The Sourland region is seeped in American history. It is natural for Rev. Goines to slip into a song about 17th century John Ringo, a pirate and slave trader who legend has it buried a treasure of gold in the Sourlands, or Hillbilly Hall, which all locals have some notorious story about and was a the center of successful moonshining operations in the 1930's. There is always a bluegrass, ragtime, and blues element to this country music that can be heard in various forms throughout New Jersey.