Hot Springs is set to hear some prizewinning musicians at this year's Arts & The Park festival, with national banjo and state fiddle champions scheduled to perform.
The 10-day festival, themed "Creative Roots" this year and set for April 29 through May 8, is partnering with the Arkansas Highlands Folk Project, which has spent the last few years trying to bring awareness to Old Time music, a genre that predates the recording industry.
Charlie Moore, founder of the project, said he was invited to join Arts & The Park and bring some Old Time performers to town.
Those performers will include Lillyanne McCool, who won the national banjo championship in 2018, and Mary Parker, who has won multiple state fiddle championships. Both are members of the band Meemaw and the Squirrel Chasers.
"One of the groups that we're bringing in on the 30th of April for the Arts & The Park Festival is going to be Meemaw and the Squirrel Chasers. It's a string band from Mountain View. It's composed of Crystal McCool, who is a mom, and she's Meemaw, and it's also her husband Jackie, and will also include her daughter Lillyanne McCool, who is 18, and she has won competitions to where she is now recognized as the National Banjo Champion," Moore said.
"It's a prestigious thing to be recognized as the National Banjo Champion," he said. "The fact that she's 18, that's another thing, and once folks hear, they'll understand. She's a dynamic player and just a sweet young lady."
Moore said he met Park when she was 12 years old and "she was already a very accomplished fiddle player and I think she had already won youth competitions at that age, and now she's 17. She's won 10 state competitions, and I believe that includes multiple states, and probably multiple categories like 12 and under and 13 to 15, but I mean she's 17 and got 10 trophies."
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Meemaw and the Squirrel Chasers are "a very experienced group" who "put on a great show," Moore said, noting they will perform with Keith Symanowitz, a multi-instrument musician, teacher and professional dancer in "a leadership position" with the Ozark Folk Center State Park, who will teach jig dancing while the band is performing part of their set.
Jig dancing is a "traditional old dance style, and also, like the music, it came from the British Isles, it's kind of a cross between clog dancing, tap dancing," he said. "You don't have to have a partner, you can do it by yourself. No matter how fast the music is going, you can go at whatever pace you want to. You can be as fancy and energetic as you want to, or you can just be out there participating."
Moore said he is happy to be a part of Arts & The Park this year, noting, "This is the first time we've been asked to be a part, and when they decided to focus on heritage and folk, they thought of us."
Another group, the Ruff and Ready String Band, is from southeast Arkansas. "Their lead fiddler was taught by someone who was born in the late 1800s, so he got that old-fashioned Old Time style that we're looking for," Moore said.
The Arkansas Highlands String Band, featuring Moore, is also set to perform along with Sad Daddy, Ricko Donovan, Ken Tillery and Laura Lee Willard.
Moore started the project in 2017. "Actually, Terry Diggs, who is a folklorist locally covering Lonsdale, and Mary Zunick and Paul Kagebein and I sat down in the library and focused on how we might bring this project forward and have something interesting to share with the library patrons at the time, and we came up with the name Arkansas Highlands Folk Project, and it's served us well," he said.
"I'm very happy with the progress and I'm really happy with the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance asking us to be a part. I think this is going to kind of fill a void of their mission in that we are going to get some more of the rural experience," Moore said.
"The country folks that didn't live necessarily right in Hot Springs but were just a few miles away that also contributed so much to the unique culture that we enjoy in Hot Springs and we hope to share more and more of that," he said.
Moore recently gave a presentation at the Garland County Library about Old Time music at the Garland County Historical Society's monthly meeting, where both he and Liz Colgrove, HSACA festival and event coordinator, spoke about the upcoming festival.
Charlie Moore, founder of the Arkansas Highlands Folk Project, makes Liz Colgrove, HSACA festival and event coordinator, laugh while speaking about Meemaw and the Squirrel Chasers, a band that will perform at Arts & The Park this year. Both were speaking at the Garland County Library about the upcoming festival. - Photo by Tanner Newton of The Sentinel-Record