[blues guitar music] - Coming up on Best of Our State, a trip down memory lane with North Carolina clay gurus East Fork Pottery.

And musician David Holt had the privilege of jamming with Piedmont Blues legend Etta Baker.

That's next on Best of Our State.

We dip into treasured stories for a look at all the beauty and character of North Carolina.

Hello and welcome, I'm Elizabeth Hudson, Editor-in-Chief of Our State Magazine.

North Carolina has a long and rich history in pottery making.

In 2014, we visited the beautiful beginnings of East Fork Pottery where Alex Matisse found himself immersed in North Carolina clay.

[soft music] [soft music] - People always say it must be just like Christmas, opening a kiln, but it's not really.

There's a lot more anxiety because there's so much work that goes into each firing, each load of pots.

It's a really private personal time and can be really wonderful, but it can also be pretty difficult.

And I can't even really objectively see the pots for about two weeks.

[soft music] Once you can let your expectations melt away, then you can actually look at the pot and see it.

They really reveal themselves gracefully to you.

[soft music] [soft music] The cold never bothers me 'cause I grew up in New England.

I like the cold, I like a real winter.

[soft music] There are days certainly when I wake up out here and I wonder and I question what motivated me to be out here?

[soft music] And I think that maybe there was a small percentage that was running away from something.

[soft music] And there's days when very clearly I feel like I needed to put this space here.

[soft music] [Alex whistles] Came down to North Carolina to go to college at Guilford in Greensboro, talked my way into a class with Charlie Tefft, who runs the ceramic program.

It was there that my eyes were really open to this huge world of clay that exists in North Carolina.

[soft music] There was a potter named Matt Jones and I started helping Matt fire.

The first time I went into his workshop, there was a smell about it and it has a dirt floor and it's very dark and something felt really right about it.

I felt I could really put my head down and learn something.

The apprenticeship at Matt Jones' was structured in the same way that his apprenticeships were structured.

I would do chores like chop wood, mix glazes, mix clay.

As long as I had those things taken care of, I could also make pots.

All right, Corey, these are little coffee mugs.

They're a variation of that coal mug that I love from Sanford, North Carolina.

He would throw a pot, that was the small piece of perfection that I was striving for.

I actually think that somewhere in between... And the rest of the day, I would look at that pot and I would try to mimic it.

And you need to sacrifice your ego.

If you can't do that, this type of apprenticeship will prove to be very difficult.

Keep that a little lighter at the top.

It's bigger than just you.

You're part of a whole arc.

I worked with Matt, Matt worked with Mark Hewitt, Mark Hewitt was with Todd Piker.

They were with Michael Cardew in England.

Cardew was Bernard Leach's first apprentice.

So we're all in it together and pushing each other forward.

North Carolina's really a land made of clay.

It's everywhere.

I can remember the first time that I used a local clay and it was a huge amount of work.

And it's incredibly labor intensive to refine it and process it.

But it threw beautifully and the color was beautiful and it had all this character.

But the throwing, I struggle with it.

[light music] I think that's a funny illusion that art is joy 'cause it's not always joy.

And I think a lot of good art comes from struggle.

And there's good days and there's bad days.

[soft music] The way that I throw, it's looking at older pots, especially older pots from North Carolina and looking at characteristics of those pots.

Since most of those pots were made for function, it was important that they were light.

And so there's certain things that I really beat myself up about trying to make them as light as possible.

But they have to look good sitting a nice mid century home or a modern home.

That's the real challenge for me now I feel is the pots fit into a broader context of the world, not just be suited for a country cottage.

[soft music] Every once in awhile, it's nice to come back to an older form.

There's an elegance to a pitcher that I don't really wanna mess with.

Instead, it's just a slow refinement of the form.

[soft music] I mean, they had to make a lot of these, they had to be very proficient, but they still added a little bit of themselves into each one.

They still had the touch of the maker.

[soft music] The technique that I use to decorate the pots is called slip trailing and it's an old technique.

You can see it all over the world in all different pottery traditions.

And it's something I express a little bit of myself in that.

And that's certainly what people seem to recognize me for is my slip trailing.

[soft music] I grew up with both my mother and father practicing artists.

As long as I can remember, they were in their studios working.

That was what I saw.

So to be an artist, nobody would raise an eyebrow at it.

It was like the doctor's son going to med school.

Being up here every day, it turns into a juggling act.

[soft music] Certain ones need to be attended to at certain times and they need to be decorated and these need to be glazed and these need to be trimmed.

Watching the racks fill up with pots, it's really fantastic.

[Connie laughs] Did you really?

- I erased it and then I had to try to-- - Well, all you gotta do, you can just turn this into a leaf.

- [Connie] But I tried to do that and then it looked ridiculous.

[Connie laughs] [soft music] - Connie and I met in Madison County at a farmers market in the bottom of the old roller rink in Morris Hill.

And she worked for a goat dairy in northern Madison County.

She was selling goat cheese.

We spent that first winter driving back and forth on these snowy roads, it was the craziest winter that we've had in years, through two feet of snow.

She's watched this go from an old tobacco field to what it is today and been part of that change.

She's really hugely important.

[soft music] Our year is broken into cycles and right now, I fired the kiln four times.

So that's four different cycles.

As I'm making the pots, I have an idea in my head where they're gonna go in the kiln.

Let's come over towards me just a hair.

That's good, it's okay, it's okay.

It's a puzzle to fit them all in.

I think the short fat one, yeah.

Bring me that one.

For the most part, the pots farther back in the kiln, have more decoration, more glaze.

The farther you are in the front of the kiln, the more ash and salt the pots are gonna have on them because the hottest part of the kiln is in the front, so they don't need as much surface decoration.

The form is important, but then the form will interact with the ash deposit that the flame will put on them.

So that relies on the fire to do all of the work.

Well, that's the most intense moment because you've got two or three months of work behind you and you load it into the kiln and then you step back away from it.

[soft music] There is an element of serendipity and chance that you have in that process that doesn't exist in many other artistic processes.

I still have control, but there's certainly a lot of things that are happening in the kiln that you don't have control over.

[light music] [soft music] I think in my situation, I had to run away to find myself.

[soft music] So my family history, if we wanna talk about my family history, is Henri Matisse, a painter, who had some children, one of whom was Pierre, who's my grandfather.

I grew up with this stuff all around me.

It was just an everyday part of our lives.

We never talked about Henri.

It was always sort of a great elephant in the room.

There's a power behind it that certainly doesn't go away.

And every time you walk through an exhibit, it always leaves me speechless because what do you do in that wake when that's always behind you?

There are times when it feels like the shadow that's cast by those figures is too broad to ever get out from underneath.

[light music] But nothing that I think putting your head down and getting to work won't resolve.

[light music] And being here, pushed me forward to make the best work that I can make.

It didn't really matter what my last name was because people started to recognize me for what I was doing.

[light music] So this is the third and final day of the firing.

That's good.

- Enough.

- Right now, we're at top temperature in the front.

The clay is mature, it's done.

We're just building up ash deposits on the clay, building up the character of the clay body.

Right now, Josh is stoking and the door's open, so the temperature's dropping as he stokes.

It'll take a minute.

There's always a lag.

And as it's catching, right in the beginning, the kiln will go into reduction, meaning there's too much fuel and not enough oxygen.

But as that fuel starts to burn, then we'll see the temperatures start to go up as it is.

And this kiln is very responsive.

It also depends on the wood you're burning.

This wood is mostly pine and poplar and it's been drying for about three months, so it's really dry, it's ready to burn.

So after a stoke in the front, you'll see a huge flame coming out the chimney.

Once that flame comes back into the chimney, then you know the atmosphere is cleared up in there and the back is ready for a stoke.

Are we ready?

- Can I go in?

- Yep.

It's important in the back because that's where all the glazed ware is.

It's important to get temperatures so the glazes will melt and I formulate my glazes to be a little stiffer because this kiln gets so hot and you need it to be really hot to get that temperature in the back.

[light music] Every once in awhile towards the end of a firing, I'll pull out a cup, something small from the front.

I'm never actually in love with the pots that I pull out because a lot happens from the time you stop firing till the time they come out of the kiln.

What it does give me is a sense of how much ash and how much salt I have on the pots.

This has a pretty thin sheen on it, which has gotten a little darker in the reduction of the heat in the front that I would like a little more ash on that spot.

So I'll probably just keep going for another hour or two.

[soft music] I have this notion of wanting to go into the woods and come out and have this skill, and have something to offer the world.

I wanted to create a place that would eventually have its own energy and attract other people.

It is doing that, it is opening itself up.

The evolution is very slow.

You're not gonna hit a point one day and wake up and suddenly you're there, you've arrived.

I have to work at it.

[soft music] [light music] - Growing up, Etta Baker awoke most mornings to the sound of her father playing guitar.

Chords and songs would come to her in dreams.

And over time, she became known for her easygoing two-finger picking style.

Musician, David Holt, had the privilege of jamming with a Piedmont blues legend.

[guitar music] - Etta Baker of Morganton, North Carolina is one of the finest guitarists in the Piedmont blues tradition.

[guitar music] She learned this smooth rhythmic style of picking from her father in the early 1900s.

[guitar music] Etta is a winner of the National Folk Heritage Award as well as the North Carolina Heritage Award, making her a living national treasure.

[guitar music] [guitar music] That's beautiful, Etta.

Where did you learn Going Down the Road Feeling Bad?

- Just from Daddy.

- From Daddy, and where did he learn it, do you suppose?

- He learned that from his daddy.

- From his daddy, now, how did you learn to play this guitar?

- My dad, he'd sit me up in the middle of the bed and he'd lay the guitar across and I'd know from the top.

He knew I had my fingers in the right place, but I wasn't getting much sound.

- [David] You were three, just three years old.

- I like about a month being three.

- That's amazing and you once told me that you still practice an hour a day.

- Right.

- [David] And you been doing that since you were three.

- A long, long time, about 89 year.

[David laughs] - What's so great about your music is that we're hearing something that goes back into the late 1800s or middle 1800s.

And I know one of the very first early styles of blues guitar was the slide guitar.

People would put a bottleneck on their finger or a piece of pipe-- - Yeah, Dad would cut a bottleneck and he would saw around it a little bit and then rub it with a big heavy coarse thread and get it hot and hit it and it would pop off.

- What kind of bottle did he use to do that?

- Well, some of granddad's whiskey bottles.

- [David] There you go.

[Etta laughs] [guitar music] [guitar music] [guitar music] [guitar music] [light music] Looks like you got some beautiful apples here in your garden.

- That's due to be a yellow delicious, but it's kind of late.

- [David] Now, you've lived to be 91 years old.

- Didn't know a doctor till I was 89.

- [David] Wow.

[Etta laughs] What's your philosophy on that?

- [Etta] Working hard, that's good for you.

- [David] Mm-hm, what kind of work do you like to do?

- [Etta] I do all of my yard work, my hedge cutting and all of that.

[light music] - [David] What is it that you love so much about gardening?

- Well, I guess I took that after my mama.

She loved it.

[light music] - [David] Etta, you told me one time you didn't feel old till you were 90.

- [Etta] No, I didn't.

- What's your motto?

- Well, I just won't give up.

- Just keep on going.

[guitar music] Do you think your music helped you stay alive a long time?

- Oh yeah.

- [David] In what way?

- You get to playing and it makes you feeling good and you forget your troubles.

[guitar music] [guitar music] - Now, the Carolina Breakdown is one of the first blues tunes, is the first blues tune your father ever-- - That's the first one I heard him play.

- Yeah, and it was the first one he ever heard, too, wasn't it?

- Mm-hm.

You're playing in what we call the Piedmont blues style where you're playing with your thumb and your pointer finger and that's playing all the notes.

The thumb's playing the bass notes, the pointer finger's playing the melody notes.

And you're really one of the people who play this that learn it from folks who learned it way back in the late 1800s.

So let's take one of those old tunes that came from your grandfather, so way back in the 1800s, Railroad Bill, let's try that one.

[guitar music] [guitar music] [guitar music] [guitar music] [guitar music] Did you have a lot of brothers and sisters in your family?

- [Etta] Mm-hm.

How many?

- It was eight in all, four of each.

- [David] Uh-huh and which one were you?

Were you the youngest?

- Mm-hm.

- So did anybody else play music in your family?

- Yeah, all of my sisters and brothers played.

[guitar music] - [David] When you were younger, did you ever think about maybe you'd go out and play professionally?

- [Etta] That's what I always wanted to do.

- [David] Oh really?

- Oh yeah.

[guitar music] This man came down from Portland, Oregon and he said, "Etta, why would you work so hard "when you could pick up your guitar and make it easy?"

And this was on Wednesday and I got to thinking about what he said and I went to the office and I told them that I was quitting Friday.

And I did.

I give them three-day notice.

[guitar music] - You're still learning new songs?

- Mm-hm, trying to.

- How do you go about learning a song because you don't read music, do you listen to records and learn them or how do you-- - No, I don't like to take other people's music.

- You just get them in your head?

- Mm-hm, and I dream a lot of my chords.

- [David] You dream your chords?

- I dreamed Kentucky Rain.

- That you had a dream about?

- Yeah, and it was like putting a crossword puzzle together.

This was about a quarter till three and I slipped my sister's guitar out from under her bed and I went out on the porch and put my dream together.

[guitar music] [guitar music] - Etta, thanks for being with us today.

- Oh, I have really, really enjoyed it.

- Let's close out with one of your classic tunes, the One Dime Blues.

- [Etta] One Dime Blues.

[blues guitar music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [light music] ♪ ♪ - Thank you for joining us for Best of Our State.

We have enjoyed sharing North Carolina's stories with you.

See you next time.

[light music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] More information about Our State Magazine is available at ourstate.com or 1-800-948-1409.