Cherryholmes

Podcast

With Sandy Cherryholmse

More podcasts

• blogs.roanoke.com/cutnscratch/category/podcasts

FiddleFest

With Lonesome River Band, Mountain Heart, Cherryholmes, The Jeanette Williams Band, Paul Williams & The Victory Trio, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Sandy Ridge, Acoustic Endeavors, The Wolfe Brothers

• Cherryholmes schedule Saturday: 3:30 p.m. preview show, Hollins University visual arts auditorium; 8:15 p.m., second-on-the-bill set at Tinker Beach Stage.
• Musical instrument workshops: 10 a.m. Friday; 10 a.m. Saturday.
• Jam sessions: 10 a.m. Friday; 1:30 p.m. Saturday
• Mini concerts: 2:30 p.m. Saturday
• Evening concerts: 6 p.m. Friday; 5:45 p.m. Saturday
• Full schedule: roanokefiddlefest.org
• Where: Hollins University
• How much: 2-day pass $45 advance; $50 gate. One-day pass $20 advance; $25 gate; evening concert $12 advance; $15 gate
• Info: 366-4616, (866) 883-9466, roanokefiddlefest.org, lonesomeriverband.com, cherryholmes.musiccitynetworks.com, mountainheart.com, jeanettewilliams.com
• Go to this story at roanoke.com/entertainment or to blogs.roanoke.com/cutnscratch to hear a podcast with Sandy Cherryholmes. Hear more talk about raising the band and about Jere’s “neutering tool” strategy, a bit of onstage banter meant to keep the creepy types away when Cia and Molly were children.

A family is onto something when its annual vacations include paid gigs at European bluegrass music festivals.

And in that way, Sandy Cherryholmes and her husband, Jere Cherryholmes, watched their children grow up and heard their blooming musical skills.

Sandy said she loves being onstage with the kids, playing along while one or the other is "whipping out a lead or doing something really phenomenal.

"And then I get to stand back and be a part of the observation and feel that same pride as a parent -- not only being a part of it, being able to witness it," she said. "And it's really great."

Cherryholmes -- the family name is the band's name -- comes to the eighth annual FiddleFest for two Saturday shows.

The band has experienced sustained success in the bluegrass world. But it didn't come without some orders from parents to children.

In this band, there was no power struggle. Sandy was the home-school teacher with multi-instrumental and dance skills, whose physical education classes featured step-dancing. Jere was the bass player and bus driver, a stickler for strict individual rehearsal who consulted with his wife on which instruments the four children would play.

The payoff: a band of dependable kids who write and play great music. Their combined picking and step-dancing skills surely were a factor in 2005, when the band was selected entertainer of the year at the International Bluegrass Music Association awards. The family's songwriting has brought recording success. The act's latest record, "Cherryholmes IV: Common Threads" (Skaggs Family), has spent at least six weeks in the Billboard bluegrass album chart's Top 10, peaking at No. 1.

"Jere and I have been able to make a lot of objective decisions regarding [the kids]," Sandy said. "But of course, they're my kids, and to me, they're the greatest. But I have to say that, even from an objective standpoint, I've got some of the best musicians in bluegrass in my band. As far as talent, they're great."

In a July 9 phone interview, Sandy talked about the offspring she and Jere call band mates. Along the way, a picture of musical parenting emerged.

Team players

The Cherryholmes family, then based in California, began playing music together as a response to the 1999 death of the oldest child, 20-year-old Sherry. The band has dedicated each of its seven albums to her memory.

The picking was meant as a way to bond, but jam sessions beginning in April 1999 led to paying shows, and with that work came the need for the family to define itself as an act.

But it had at least had one problem. None of the children played banjo, and no self-respecting bluegrass band could go onstage without one. A parental decision loomed.

The oldest child, Cia, was 15 when she began playing guitar in earnest. Sandy had bought her an instructional tape that demonstrated the style of bluegrass giant Tony Rice.

"She ended up becoming a pretty good picker at a really young age," Sandy said.

But Jere asked Cia, the most diligent, to switch to banjo. She didn't like it, but she is a team player, Sandy said, and she went at it hard, quickly teaching herself not only to play well, but also to sing while playing an instrument that tests speed and multifingered dexterity. In 2007, she received an IBMA nomination for banjo player of the year (Tony Trischka won). Her vocals and songwriting are crucial to the act.

"I think that's what she really stands out in is being able to play full tilt and sing full tilt at the same time," Sandy said of Cia.

Ultimately, she was able to establish more of a niche for herself as a female banjo player, Sandy said, noting that there are plenty of guitarists who can pick in the Rice style.

"She was not always confident," Sandy said. "But her dad told her she could."

A little musical rebellion

Son B.J. was 11 when the band started, and more than a little fidgety, his mother remembers. "We chose the violin as a method of self-discipline for him."

He had a time of it staying focused, but he enjoyed playing fiddle and jamming with his siblings. And when his father napped after a long bus drive, B.J. would sneak off and get in on a mandolin jam. Sandy said she would "look the other way."

Skip, too, would sneak in some skill-building. At age 9, he had practically no experience with an instrument, but the likeable and entertaining kid would do anything. Sandy taught him the mandolin rhythm "chop." (She covered the real mandolin playing early on). He played a little guitar, learned to play spoons, and wasn't shy about step-dancing to draw a crowd. But when Cia took up the banjo, they moved Skip to guitar full-time. Jere cautioned him just to strum it.

"In the course of doing what you're told not to, he would pick on the side," Sandy said.

He became a good lead player, but remained disciplined in his rhythm practice and made his style indispensable to the band. B.J., too, "ended up sneaking enough to where he really became super on the mandolin and the guitar."

The rebelliousness was not all bad, and the balance of parental attitudes worked, too, Sandy said.

"When I felt there was something good going on, I wouldn't be too much of a stickler on it."

'Like a sponge'

Molly, the fiddler, was 6 when the band started, and 7 when Cherryholmes debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn. She already had enjoyed a great experience in the earliest of Cherryholmes festival jams. Even then, she took what her mother called a very basic lead break with a bunch of much older players who were jamming on the spiritual "I'll Fly Away."

"When they heard that, they went crazy, and they would give her every lead break," Sandy remembered.

It encouraged her to keep working. She even listened to her siblings' individual rehearsals, then frustrated them by quickly learning and playing the licks they had struggled to master.

"She wouldn't miss a lick," Sandy said. "Then she just got better and better. ... She was absorbing it, like a sponge."

Early on, it took both Molly and B.J. on fiddles to create one fiddle sound. B.J. would play the melody, while Molly played the drone note.

"It sounded as though we had a fiddler in the band, but what it was is two very young fiddlers who were just learning, but when you put the two of them together, it blended," Sandy said.

Years later, the pair provides a legitimate double-fiddle threat when B.J. isn't on mandolin. Molly, who contributes songs and does lead and harmony vocals, also plays cello, bass and piano.

All of the Cherryholmes children still dance onstage. The boys, in particular, "kind of grew out of it" in their teens. But Sandy draws a hard parental line there.

"If I write your check, you dance," she said, laughing. "The audience wants dancers, and that's what they're going to get."

Of course, it's a band strong suit.