She reinvested herself in that wider network during the eight-year gap between the duo’s Folkways albums. (They cut the follow-up soon after, but infamous label head Moses Ashe simply forgot they made it. I went on tour, a project in which an integrated coalition of musicians traveled the South on a pittance and reintroduced their musical heritage to the communities that nurtured it. Driving through endangered neighborhoods, a diverse roster made a maneuverable political statement.
“The people who made the music we admired so much didn’t talk about themselves and brag about what they did,” said Gerrard. She recalled Dickens’ funny and lewd Tour riders written on mauve toilet paper, demanding daily lobsters, sex and martinis on stage. All they really wanted was water.
In 1981, after divorcing her second husband, archivist and musician Mike Seeger, Gerard decided to fully commit to the community. She moved to Galax, Virginia without her children and rented a ramshackle cabin near the old musical epicenter of America for $50 a month. She scoured the town for songs and stories.when she helped her make documentary As for the violinist Jarrell, he even befriended Les Blancs and played with him like most of his subjects. Gerrard never pretended to be an academic anthropologist or folklorist. This was her life, not her career.
“Young people weren’t interested in their parents’ music because they wanted to learn something powerful,” says Gerrard, noting that her enthusiasm was so unabashed that she never felt like an outsider. “It was a two-way street. We told them their stories and gave them the joy of knowing their music would live on and be carried on by young people.”
Again, death forced a radical change. She recorded her elders, lived with them, and played until midnight with violinist Luther Davis and others, who were in their late 90s at the time. But then they started dying, a melancholy reminder that this wasn’t the only music with an expiration date. She had her own songs to share. “I had to stop being a mentee,” she admitted.