March 5, 2011 - Roland White and "Y'all Come"

Roland White and Y'all Come

After the gig Friday night at Bernie's Guitar in Redding, we drove up to Linda and Bruce's home on their 100-acre ranch above town where three of us in the band were staying the night.

We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a lovely home on a beautiful ranch with cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, and fruits and vegetables of all stripes. Bruce was in the kitchen cooking up chilaquiles, a Mexican egg dish, and Linda was preparing the dining table for company.

[Chilaquiles: Cut fresh tortillas into triangles and fry in oil with garlic salt until they are crisp. Sauté onions, peppers and sausage, stir in a dozen beaten eggs and finally, when almost done, some homemade salsa. Lay down a layer of the crisp tortilla chips on each plate and dish spoon the egg mixture over. Top each dish with grated cheddar and pepper jack cheese. Watch as cheese melts into the eggs, slides down their crevices, and pools in white bubbles of milk fat.]

We had started in on this high cholesterol and yet somehow deeply flavorful meal — likely the most scrumptious breakfast I've ever had — when in walked Linda and Bruce’s daughter, Wendy, her husband, Tom, and their three kids, Ellie, Rory, and True. As coffee and O.J. started around, a genuine breakfast party got under way.

Neighbor down the road, Mike, who owned the local coffee shop, dropped by for a cuppa joe, and we all shook and howdy-ed. Then the son-in-law’s sister, Sara, who lived across the lane, walked in and joined us. Laurie Lewis and Patrick Sauber arrived with their hosts, Barry and his wife, Maline. So we had sixteen people eating a taste bud-altering breakfast, slogging coffee, tea and O.J., while over here some perfectly behaved kids were running around, and in this corner dad was reading a children’s book to his youngest. The satellite bluegrass channel was on the tube. When an old Flatt & Scruggs tune came on, Roland told a story about playing with Lester.

We were playing a schoolhouse that probably sat 100. But when we walked on stage, there were only 11 people sitting in the audience.

I turned to Lester, “I guess you don’t draw much here,” I said.

Flatt shot back, “This is your crowd, Roland.”

Then Roland, Laurie and Patrick sang an a cappella chorus that hushed the room.

I asked Linda, “How often does this beautiful scene take place here?”

She said, “Just about every day.”

So there it was, a real, living “Y’all Come!” Grand-ma and grand–pa, kids and grandkids, neighbors, in-laws and outlaws (well, a traveling bluegrass band), dropping in, eating and drinking at an overflowing kitchen table, standing around the oak-fired fireplace chewing the fat, sitting in the living room with bluegrass playing in the background (or being sung live in the foreground), in the setting of a country ranch with cows mooing, a rooster crowing, and chickens scratching.

The last line of “Y’all Come” is, “You all come to see us when you can.”

And the last thing Bruce and Linda said to us as we left was, “Please come back again, any time!”