hanging tree guitars

​Various Artists (from the album Hanging Tree Guitars on Music Maker Relief Foundation)
The picture on the album cover is Freeman Vines, an artist, a luthier and spiritual philosophizer. Working as a luthier for five decades, Freeman Vines has made guitars from materials found in ancient tobacco barns, mule troughs, and old radio parts, forever in pursuit of the sound he hears in his head, the tone that haunts his dreams. His searches took Freeman through eastern North Carolina, a land where his family has lived since their days of enslavement. The Music Maker Relief Foundation album, Hanging Tree Guitars, is a companion to the book that travels with Freeman Vines through his journeys and introduces the woods he uses to craft his art, including gifted wood from a hanging tree. 
Rufus McKenzie opens Hanging Tree Guitars with “Slavery Time Blues”, reaching back into history to tell the story of day-to-day life in captivity. One-man band, Aldolphus Bell, tells the tale of “Black Man’s Dream”, a spoken word piece dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. while Bishop Dready Manning and Marie Manning handclap and strum up memories of “Hard Life and Trouble”. The Hanging Tree Guitarscompilation offers both Sacred Soul and Blues music, the song roster divvied up with Blues tracks preceding the sacred songs. The live instrumental “Turning Point”, from James Davis and Gilbert Henderson, trudges to its ever-present marching beat as the Hanging Tree Guitars provides ragged Blues rhythms to back the salvation shouts from Elder Anderson Johnson in “Glory, Glory” as The Glorifying Vines Sisters sway on a heavenly groove for “Get Ready” and Faith & Harmony claim “Victory” on the acapella strength of their vocals.
Listen and buy the music of Hanging Tree Guitars from AMAZON
 
For more on Freeman Vines and Hanging Tree Guitars, please go to the Music Maker Foundation website for more information
 
Please visit the Hanging Tree Guitars virtual exhibit to view the art of Freeman Vines
 

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