Written By David Greisman, Photos by: Walter Calahan
As a full-time musician for more than two decades, performing during the 1980 Winter Olympics’ Closing Ceremonies and, later on, adding the grounds of the White House to the list of venues where he has played, Walt Michael had more than enough gigs to make a career out of it.
But he returned to his alma mater of Western Maryland College in 1994 with an idea: a camp for people of all ages where they could learn and experience the arts through various ethnic perspectives; a place where bluegrass musicians, for example, could play in the midst of black gospel performers, and where they would be joined by dancers, writers and visual artists, all of them coming together through a shared experience.
That idea became Common Ground on the Hill, which is held at what is now McDaniel College. This summer marked the 19th year of Common Ground classes, concerts, lectures and workshops at the school, culminating in a festival that attracts between 2,000 and 5,000 people each year. It is funded largely by tuition, as well as grants and private donations. The event brings in instructors and others, both locally and from around the country.
“I feel that arts that come out of an ethnic perspective carry an amount of wisdom,” Michael said on an evening in the program’s office. “They carry the melodies and the stories. They carry the things that sustain everyone in their different ethnicities, and therefore there has to be some commonality.
“If we can see each other through those, then we can cut through the stuff that separates us. It’s a window into each other that I felt there’s a great need for,” he said. “That’s the kind of community I want to live in. I think a lot of people do. I think Common Ground has proven that. It draws people in.”
Michael, 67, is a 1968 graduate of Western Maryland College. So is Common Ground’s visual arts coordinator, Linda Van Hart, who also teaches metalsmithing, mixed media collage and design at the school.
“You’ve got a couple of professionals organizing the whole thing. Walt has been a musician all his life. I’ve been an artist all my life,” said Van Hart. “We’ve been working hand in hand for going on 20 years now to make this an exceptional experience for the town of Westminster. It’s a joyous time. It’s unlike any other arts camp.”
Michael has made his home on a Westminster farm since returning to his alma mater to start Common Ground. Three years later he was named the school’s artist-in-residence.”
He is a native Marylander, growing up in Bethesda in Montgomery County. His father was a minister who helped integrate the Methodist Church, sang church music and had once performed in a touring choir. His mother played the piano.
“I was in choirs when I was a kid. I played the saxophone. I failed miserably at piano. It became apparent, ultimately, that I was an ear musician and not a sight-reading musician,” he said.
Then, during the folk boom of the 1960s, he picked up the guitar and banjo. And after arriving at Western Maryland College, he traveled with a school group to Appalachia, where he did social action work in the summer of 1966 in the coal country of MacDowell County in West Virginia. The trip influenced him.
“I found musicians down there who I learned from,” Michael said. “There was old-time mountain music down there. It had soul. It told stories. And there was a real bluesy nature to Southern music that is very direct. It strikes the heartstrings. ÉThere was some very, very old black choral music. It was people singing about what was really going on inside of them. The music came out of the slave experience, and it’s what sustained them.”
He went back to Appalachia twice more while a student before graduating with a degree in English, and he still returns there to this day.
“What I wanted to do at that time was go back to Appalachia and teach in the public schools and do photography and music and writing,” Michael said. “But that wasn’t going to happen, because Vietnam was raging.”
A conscientious objector, he joined folk duos and trios, taught adult education in 1968 in Baltimore, then went to Drew Seminary in New Jersey in 1969. It was there that the young musician encountered a vibrant folk scene with great musicians.
“By 1971, I was in a band that we formed, and we toured colleges,” Michael said. “Now they call it newgrass. It was a bluegrass band, playing all kinds of material from Rolling Stones to straight ahead, traditional bluegrass. Some would call it a job. I played full-time, no other means of employment from 1971 through 1994.”
He played with a group called Bottle Hill until 1977, when he joined two other musicians and formed Michael, McCreesh and Campbell. They stayed together until 1981, when he started Walt Michael and Co.
Michael has performed around the United States, as well as in Bermuda, Canada, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Switzerland. He has also been featured on such shows as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and A Prairie Home Companion and released more than a dozen albums.
His job remains Common Ground, which has expanded far beyond the original two weeks at McDaniel. There are monthly concert series in Westminster and Baltimore and last June, the Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention in Westminster. Common Ground on Seminary Ridge launched last year. Soon his efforts will take him to Chincoteague, Va., for Common Ground on the Shore, and to Arizona for Common Ground on the Border.
He still plays — music remains an integral part of who he is — and his shows help spread the word about Common Ground. “His show repertoire now includes as many as seven instruments; his forte is the hammer dulcimer.” The group performs a range of songs, some dating back hundreds of years.
“I play a few original things that I’ve written, but I’m not prolific,” Michael said. “In my estimation, it’s really hard to write something better than or as good as something that exists in the oral tradition.
“I’ve never been interested or driven to become a household name,” he said. “What I love is playing music, and playing it with other people.”
