“Common Ground” founder Walt Michael takes time to strum his guitar on the lawn of “The Hill” (McDaniel College).
Written By Donna Engle, Photos by: Phil Grout
In the crucible of the ’60s, young Walt Michael went to West Virginia as a poverty-fighting volunteer. Among the mountain people, he found the music that would become his life’s art. And he deepened the commitment to racial and cultural harmony that, decades later, would lead him to found Common Ground on the Hill.
A virtuoso musician, Michael is Artist in Residence at McDaniel College and executive director of Common Ground, the annual traditional arts program and festival at the college. The title captures the program’s intent:
“To find common ground,” said Michael, “we have to aspire to our best and think the best of others.”
“The Hill” is the college’s nickname, but for Michael, it carries a metaphorical meaning related to interracial understanding: “As Dr. Martin Luther King would say, ÔLet’s go to the mountain.’”
For 16 years, Common Ground has brought together potters and poets, storytellers and musicians for two weeks each summer, culminating in a two-week festival in July. Common Ground also produces a concert series starting in October at the Carroll County Arts Center and may become producer of the annual Deer Creek Fiddlers’ Convention at the Carroll County Farm Museum.
“Keeping the fiddlers’ convention alive is something that people want to do,” said Dottie Freeman, the Farm Museum’s administrator. The museum has managed the event since 1993, but county government downsizing means fewer resources for stage events. Talks continue between Common Ground and the Farm Museum.
Michael plays guitar, banjo and harmonica, but the hammered dulcimer is his instrument. Now 64, the father of two grown children, he has performed for nearly 40 years, playing Southern Appalachian, Celtic and original compositions and singing.
Michael’s philosophy was shaped by the era and the family in which he grew up. His father, the Rev. Marion Michael, worked to integrate the Methodist Church as superintendent of the Washington, D.C. church district, and the Michael children saw the inside of many African-American churches.
His mother, Juanita, imbued him with the history of his Scots and Northern Irish ancestors. The family discussed poverty and injustice around the dinner table. As a Supreme Court page from 1960-1963, Michael witnessed first hand the proceedings of the Warren Court.
Michael’s father sang and his mother played piano, but their son flunked piano and saxophone. He wanted to play the folk music that was in his head, and as a teenager found the right instrument, his uncle’s old guitar.
While a student at Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College), Michael spent three summers as a volunteer in West Virginia. The students hauled books from Westminster to open and staff the area’s first public library. They stayed with local residents, learning of the resilience, make-do spirit, and occasional violence of people who lived hardscrabble lives working in coal mines.
The mountain people taught Michael ballads dating back to the 1700s. He learned “old style” banjo from a player who made the instruments from wood and squirrel or groundhog skins. And he discovered his ancestors’ musical origins.
“Music has roots,” Michael said. “You can hear the voice of the people in it.”
After three summers, “I didn’t feel changed,” he said. “I knew more. I knew that poverty was based on class, not on race, and that the general public doesn’t know who these people are.”
Michael spent a year teaching adult education, then decided to become a minister. He enrolled in 1969 at Drew Theological Seminary, but spent most of his time making music at the local coffee house and thinking of ways to work ministry around his music. Ministry was not his calling, he realized.
Shortly thereafter, he shipped aboard Pete Seeger’s Hudson River boat, Clearwater, built to head the folk singer’s campaign to clean up the river, and learned from the experienced guitar and banjo players he met on board.
In 1971, Michael, guitarist Jim Albertson and Lew London on banjo began touring as the Bottle Hill Band, playing “new grass,” rock and roll in bluegrass style.
Michael discovered the hammered dulcimer, an instrument with strings stretched across a sounding board that is played with two small hammers. The instrument was being revived after years of decline, and Michael was enchanted. It responded to his sense of rhythm. He could use it to think creatively, to hammer out hard-driving music and tap it for slower pieces.
The Bottle Hill Band broke up in 1977. Michael, Tom McCreesh on fiddle and Harley Campbell on acoustic bass, formed Michael, McCreesh and Campbell. The band gained public notice and had what Michael describes as “a good run.” It performed with the Pilobolus Dance Theater on Broadway, at the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers and in the 1980 Winter Olympics, did the music track in the movie, “The Outcast,” toured Europe and released two albums before breaking up in 1981.
Michael formed Walt Michael & Co., his current band, with Tom Wetmore on bass, Alexander Mitchell on fiddle and Ralph Gordon on cello and bass. The band performed at the White House in the early 1990s, in conjunction with a group of young Scottish fiddlers, whom Michael led on tour.
The band members had each been impressed by Michael’s skills years before they became Walt Michael & Co. And they like him personally.
“Walt tries to find the best in other people and himself,” Gordon said, “He’s good at multitasking. He does his art, music and organizes that whole two-week festival.”
The idea for Common Ground formed in Michael’s head as long ago as 1969. “Finally in the mid ’90s, I had the maturity and skill set to bring it off, and also a sense of wanting to give back to the institution,” he said.
He broached the idea to then-college president Robert Chambers, who agreed to provide office space, but no funding. For the first few years, Michael earned a living by touring while working to build and organize Common Ground. It was a killer pace, but Michael’s appointment as the college artist in residence in 1998 eased the financial strain and recognized Common Ground’s value to the community.
Currently, Common Ground is the parent organization of Common Ground Scotland, a similar summer traditional arts program at the University of Dundee.
In addition, Michael is turning his attention to the Southwest, where he would like to establish a new Common Ground, one that would bring together Latino, Native American and majority culture artists.
He developed the idea of a Common Ground Southwest as the issues of immigration and border states’ responses to undocumented immigrants came to national attention. He does not have a partner yet for the program, but has been looking in the Tucson, Arizona area.
“Realizing each other’s humanity by way of the arts,” Michael said, “realizes the possibility of seeing each other as people, not as Ôother.’”
Coming Events:
Roots Music Concert Series at Carroll County Arts Center, 91 W. Main St., Westminster. All performances at 8 p.m. Tickets: 410-848-7272 or www.carrollcountyartscouncil.org/attractions_dt.asp
October 2, 2010: The Vanaver Caravan, American and International Dance and Music
November 6, 2010: Jonathan Edwards, acoustic guitar and harmonica
December 18, 2010: Walt Michael & Co. Annual Holiday Concert
January 8, 2011: Robin and Linda Williams, bluegrass, folk, acoustic country.
February 5, 2011: Archie Fisher, Scottish folk singer on U.S. tour
March 5, 2011: Happy Traum, guitar and five-string banjo
April 2, 2011: Craobh Rua, band, traditional Celtic music
