UWANEE,
Ga., Jan. 20 — The back door of the old Everett homeplace swings
open again, and in walks another picker carrying a scuffed black
guitar case.
The house is a whirring carousel of sound. In the kitchen,
eight players on fiddle, mandolin, guitar, bass, steel guitar
and gutbucket stand around a Formica-top table and race through
"Free Born Man." In an adjacent bedroom, Jeff Deaton is warming
up his mandolin for the bluegrass show in the barn.
Randall and Roger Everett, the brothers who run the place,
are playing "Louisville Breakdown" in the family room. Another
cluster has formed in the back bedroom, dueling behind closed
doors. And in an addition built to house the Saturday night
bluegrass show before the Everetts put up the barn, six guitar
pickers are harmonizing with a mandolin.
Perhaps because bluegrass is so improvisational, or because
it is what one listener calls "honest music," the twangy picking
from various rooms melds into a warm blur.
It has been this way almost every Saturday night since the
Everett brothers picked up a guitar and a banjo in 1964 and
taught themselves to play. It began as a way to soothe their
parents, who were mourning the loss of their brother, Jerry, a
police officer killed in the line of duty. Soon friends started
coming over to jam. They brought their friends, and before long
75 or 100 people were crowding into the house.
In 1966, the Everetts decided to build the addition, with its
little stage, but the crowd outgrew it in two years. Using
lumber from a demolished duplex, they then built Everett's Music
Barn in the back yard of their two-acre plot in this town 30
miles northeast of Atlanta. After painting it red and white and
filling it with enough secondhand church pews to seat 170
listeners, they opened for business in 1970.
Well, not exactly for business. The Saturday-night shows that
have endured at the barn for more than 30 years have always been
free, with the Everetts providing complimentary cookies, soft
drinks and coffee to their guests (hot dogs cost $1). Donations,
slipped through a slit in a Folger's coffee can, are accepted to
help pay the light bill.
The Everetts and their guests take pride in preserving a bit
of the pastoral South even as Atlanta creeps inexorably toward
them. Ten or 15 years ago, Suwanee was mostly forest and
pasture. Now it is subdivisions and widened roads, with service
stations and fast-food restaurants cluttering intersections.
But even as the city encroaches, Saturday nights at the
Everetts' remain as pure and authentic as a small-town Christmas
parade. "It's like going back in time 30 or 40 years," said Bill
Stephens, a bluegrass aficionado who comes to the barn perhaps
35 Saturdays a year, just to socialize and listen.
Most of the bluegrass played at the barn is of the
traditional Bill Monroe/Flatt & Scruggs variety, though some
of the younger players sometimes stray close to country or jazz.
If the pace gets fast enough, 65-year- old Robert Dowdy may walk
down in front of the stage and buck dance a lick.
"Everything has changed so much around here," said Randall
Everett, 60, in his usual overalls and a plaid shirt. "You've
got to keep up with the times, but we play the music just the
way we did when we started."
Some things, of course, have changed. The house rules have
been relaxed since the days when the Everett brothers'
indomitable mother, Carrie, a hardshell Baptist, posted signs
announcing her code of conduct: "No drinking. No long hair. No
shorts. No sundresses. No exceptions." She once took a longhair
into the kitchen and gave him a bowl cut before letting him stay
and listen.
"I've had to loan men my husband's blue jeans because they
walked in here in short pants," said Diane Dunaway, the
Everetts' niece, who runs the snack bar (her brother, Tommy
Everett, handles the sound board). "And I've had people ask
where is a Wal-Mart because they've come all this way to hear
the music and didn't have any britches."
Mom Everett's survivors retired the no-shorts rule after her
death in 1986, but drinking is still prohibited and cussing is
frowned on. Though anybody can wander in, there has never been a
fight, never a car broken into, never so much as a capo lifted
from a musician's case. It has not hurt that several Everetts
have been police officers.
"People want something to do with their family," said Roger
Everett, 52, who works for a cabinet company when he's not
fiddling (having switched from banjo 17 years ago). "There
aren't a lot of places left where you can bring your wife and
kids and not have to worry about a lot of drinking and that kind
of stuff."
Most folks like the rules and respect the Everetts for
enforcing them. It is their house, after all, that they have
given up for the music. Most Saturday night shows, which open
with a 45-minute set by the Everett brothers' own five-piece
band, are standing room only.
No one has lived in the house since Randall Everett married
and moved down the road six years ago. But he will let players
stay and jam until dawn, and if they are too weary to leave they
are welcome to sleep on a couch.
Despite the city's approach, the Everetts have no plans to
change a thing. After all, the barn has kept several generations
of Everett boys out of trouble on Saturday nights. Some have
found wives in the crowd.
Jeff Deaton, the Everett brothers' great-nephew, is a
third-generation picker who first visited at age 6 and who was
married in the barn by the same preacher who married his parents
there. Now his 2-year-old son, Chase, is starting to pluck at a
bass, and Mr. Deaton dreams of the day when Chase may join him
onstage with the Everetts.
"I've never pushed the music on him," Mr. Deaton said, "but
he's been around it so much. When he wakes up in the morning, he
plays his bass, and when he goes to bed at night that's what
he's doing. It's something I love, and it's good to see him
following what I'm doing."
