Press

 
 
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Why this artist built guitars out of a tree that was once used in a lynching

"I say it's strange he's dead and the tree is still living," said artist Freeman Vines.

 
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Hanging Tree Guitars: The Wood's 'Not Good, Not Bad, Not Ugly — Just Strange'

A new book and museum exhibition celebrate the work of North Carolina luthier Freeman Vines. His handmade guitars are crafted from found materials and hunks of old wood, including some from a tree once used for a lynching.

 
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THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND WORK OF GUITAR MAKER FREEMAN VINES

For nearly half a century, the North Carolina native has created instruments out of found wood—including some from a notorious hanging tree

 
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‘Hanging Tree Guitars’: See Artist Freeman Vines’ Haunting Creations

A North Carolina guitar maker built instruments out of wood supposedly taken from a tree where a black farmer was once lynched

 
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‘Hanging Tree Guitars’ Highlights the Worst of Endemic Racism and ‘the Art of Resistance’

A book, companion CD and virtual exhibit celebrates the life and work of musician and luthier Freeman Vines.

 
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Freeman Vines shares musings on music and more

Timothy Duffy, who has been photographing and recording artists across the South for more than 30 years, describes Greene County native Freeman Vines as a poet.

 
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Covid-19 taking toll on blues community

Not only are many blues artists black, senior adults -- two populations that have been disproportionately dying from the virus -- but the majority of them were already making very little money playing gigs that have now completely dried up.

Timothy Duffy’s portrait of Sam Frazier featured

 
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SEARCHING FOR HIGH JOHN

Twenty-five years ago this week, Tim and Denise Duffy founded the Music Maker Relief Foundation in North Carolina with a specific purpose — not just to document the folk music of the South, but to ensure that the people who made the music did not have to live in poverty.

 
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VISUAL Q&A: Timothy Duffy

Timothy Duffy is a wet plate photographer who has been recording and photographing musicians across the South since age sixteen. He and his wife, Denise, also founded the Music Maker Relief Foundation; to aid musicians in need. His current series is a monograph published by UNC Press in association with the New Orleans Museum of Art, “Blue Muse: Timothy Duffy’s Southern Photographs.”
We ask Timothy questions, questions that could only be answered with images…

 
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Capturing The Undersung Blues People Of The Rural South

Timothy Duffy is on a mission to document America's vernacular music — specifically, the blues — and the everyday men and women who carry on the tradition. He's the co-founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation, a nonprofit that helps struggling and aging musicians.

 
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Their ancestral cultures have been oppressed and forbidden, and yet they rise up singing

It is no great secret that many of the most talented and influential people in the arts (and other areas too, of course) often go unheralded. Who knows why some people garner recognition and others do not? There are any number of reasons, but there are some people out there trying to rectify that.

 
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Wet plate portraits honoring overlooked blues musicians in the South

Timothy Duffy founded The Music Maker Relief Foundation 25 years ago as a way to preserve, recognize and provide support to the people behind the musical traditions of the South.

“Most of these people are unseen and silent, even though they created the greatest music that America has,” Duffy says. “The blues, jazz and gospel, still drive in the south, and are our greatest musical export to the world.”

 
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Honoring Blues and Roots Musicians in Tintypes

Staring into Ironing Board Sam’s smile, beautiful and bright as his fingers dance across a keyboard, one can easily forget that somewhere above him is a man balanced next to a 14-foot-high stand, aiming a large-format camera down at him, waiting for a strobe light to fire.

 
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These Portraits of Southern Blues Musicians Prove That Blues Is Not Dead

Ironing Board Sam began playing the pump organ as a small child in Rock Hill, South Carolina. By 14, he was playing local gigs for 10 bucks a pop. By 16, he was entertaining revelers at Winston-Salem drink-houses with his boogie-woogie piano tunes. By the mid-1960s, he’d landed a regular gig playing on Night Train, the first African-American TV music program. He played with a still-unknown Jimi Hendrix and the already wildly popular Sam Cooke…