An old guitar and a couple of country songs can unite people who never knew one another. With the right songs, the right guitar, the impact on a family can be deep.

That's the lesson local rock musician and disc jockey John "J.D." Sutphin has been learning.

Both the songs and the guitar belonged to his maternal grandfather, Jim Freeman, who died on July 4, 1974, about a decade before Sutphin was born. Thirty-five years after Freeman's death, his grandson has revived some of his songs on the 1961 Martin D-28 that Freeman cherished. The feeling of bringing those tunes back to life has been amazing, Sutphin said.

Courtesy of J.D. Sutphin

Photos by JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

J.D. Sutphin (above), a member of the local hard rock band Madrone, performs a set of recently discovered songs by his late grandfather, Jim Freeman (top photo), a prominent figure in Roanoke's music scene decades ago. Sutphin used Freeman's 61-year-old guitar for the set.

J.D. Sutphin sound checks before performing his grandfather's music at Kirk Avenue Music Hall.

Sutphin arranges his grandfather's sheet music.

Upcoming Madrone shows

• 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Roanoke Civic Center Plaza, pre-show party for Staind, Shinedown concert.
• 5:30 p.m. July 24, Salem Red Sox pregame show, Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium.

Sutphin, 26, described it as like "discovering the Holy Grail. ... The interesting thing is that it really felt like I found something that I didn't know I'd been searching for, for, like, my entire life. The songs came so effortlessly."

He's been performing them live, both solo and with his band, Madrone. Recently, he debuted stripped-down acoustic versions at Kirk Avenue Music Hall. Family members in the audience cried.

"I was just blown away," said his aunt, Amanda Patton. "I just felt like I was watching my dad through him. I have very few memories of my father. I was only 4 years old when he died. Whenever anything like that comes across to me, I hold that very near and dear."

Found art

It's good luck for Sutphin that the songs came at all. Patton was helping clean out her parents' house last year when she discovered an envelope addressed to Jim Freeman. The return address was Freeman's home.

"I thought: Oh wait a minute. This is a poor man's copyright," she said, referring to the process by which songwriters prove a work is their own without going through a publishing company. "I opened it, because I just had to know what was inside. ... There was gold in that envelope."

Inside was sheet music of two Jim Freeman originals, "A Great Day" and "The Old New England Shore." She made copies of the music and gave them as Christmas gifts to her children and nephews.

"Little did I know that John was going to learn them," Patton said. "I thought he might, but it's not the genre that John usually plays."

Sutphin saw the gift and an attached note in another way.

"She basically alluded ... 'You know what to do,' " Sutphin said. "It was really, really emotional. And she didn't have to say that. I had to learn those songs."

Both Sutphin and Patton agree that the songs are part of a larger project, probably an album, that Freeman was unable to finish.

"I just hope that there's more songs," Sutphin said. "I really think there's got to be, if we just keep digging through stuff."

His last party

Jim Freeman was a music leader in the Roanoke Valley in the 1960s and 1970s. He taught music at Virginia Western Community College. He was a founding member of the Roanoke Fiddle and Banjo Club, and his wife, Mary Freeman (later Mary Freeman Garman) became its historian. He made 45 rpm records, back when records were on vinyl.

And every July 4, he and Mary Freeman threw a big party at their house in Vinton.

"The thing was, in Vinton and Roanoke, if you were invited over to Jim Freeman's house, you were going to hear music and you were going to have a good time," Sutphin said. "He would sit in front of the tree in front of their house, and he'd sing and play bluegrass songs. And people would just be sitting, gathered around, Indian-style."

To this day, people who knew Freeman will tell Sutphin about those parties.

"That's bigger than any one hit [song], in my opinion," he said.

During the party in 1974, they ran out of drinks and other party supplies, so Freeman put his guitar in its case, closed it up, and went to the store. As he returned, he attempted to cross Washington Avenue, but was hit by a car, according to a story in The Roanoke Times' July 5, 1974, edition.

"I have the guitar picks that were in his pocket [that day]," Sutphin said. "And that guitar had not been opened. He would always close it up. He would never leave it out. That Martin was his baby.

"They closed that up and didn't open it until the day they gave it to me."

Family tradition

As Sutphin grew up, family members noticed that he looked a lot like his grandfather. And Mary Freeman Garman was waiting for him to show that he could play music, too.

The family played Freeman's old cassette tapes around the house. They took Sutphin to the monthly Fiddle and Banjo Club gatherings. The two even looked alike in childhood photos, Sutphin said.

"My mother's side of the family was the most musically oriented people," he said. "At Christmas time and stuff, we're singing.

"Grandmother, from as early as I can remember, would say, 'When are you going to start playing music?' She would say to my mom, 'Cathy, when are you going to have him pick up that guitar? You know it's waitin' on him.' "

Sutphin finally heeded the call at age 15, getting an electric guitar and learning hard rock songs off the radio. Six months later, it was time to open that old guitar case and pull out the Martin.

"I still can remember when they gave it to me: I started playing 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night,' by Nirvana," he said. "I didn't think about it, but to my mom and my grandmother and my aunt, that was [the ancient folk song] 'In The Pines,' a song my grandfather played." The song has been performed under various titles and was popularized by the folk singer Lead Belly.

He had never written his own music before, but with the Martin, he began working on the tunes that would later coalesce with his band, Madrone.

Fast-forward 11 years, to that Christmas present from Sutphin's Aunt Amanda. Sutphin, not a great music reader, began making his way through the songs.

"I remember a couple of times in my musical career, when something like that really grabbed ahold of me and said: This is the next plateau," Sutphin said.

He could feel passion in his grandfather's music. "It was just like seeing the gravestone," he said. "It was right in your face."

At the Kirk Avenue Music Hall show, he dressed in a suit and tie, like his grandfather had, playing the Freeman originals, along with "In The Pines" and Freeman's favorite song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

Sadly, his grandmother had died only a month before. But she knew her grandson was working on those long-lost tunes.

"When I told her about it, she said, 'That's what you should be doing,' " Sutphin remembered. " 'You should learn those songs.' "

He did. And in them, the hard-rock guy who wasn't that into country music found a new voice for himself. Patton said she was hearing her father's voice when Sutphin performed "Great Day" and "The Old New England Shore."

"That was it," she said. "What I remember of my father's singing, his vocals were kind of high and they were very nasally. And John has that -- he has that with him."