The city of Beckley will honor the legacy and memory of Bill Withers on Saturday with a music festival. Bands are scheduled to perform at the Beckley Intermodal Gateway Plaza.
The city of Beckley will honor the legacy and memory of Bill Withers on Saturday with a music festival. Bands are scheduled to perform at the Beckley Intermodal Gateway Plaza.
Bill Withers was born in Slab Fork in Raleigh County. He grew up in Beckley, W.Va. and despite his fame, often returned to his home state.
Music selected for the festival will carry a theme of “When you’re not strong, I’ll help you carry on,” famous lyrics of Bill Withers’ iconic hit, “Lean On Me.” The music line up includes:
Carpenter Ants
Lords of Lester
Matt Mullins & The Bringdowns
The Parachute Brigade
Drew Bailey Lawrence
Scott T. Smith & Aristotle Jones
Groups are also working to cast a bronze statue of the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. Pastor Frederick Hightower from neighboring Boone County, W.Va. was selected to sculpt the statue.
Beckley officials say the Beckley Intermodal Gateway will be renamed the Bill Withers Plaza once the statue is placed as a focal point.
The Beckley Area Foundation is collecting donations for the statue and park project. Organizers plan to host the free festival annually on the Saturday that falls closest to May 15th. The Foundation is working with the city of Beckley, the Withers Family, the Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce and the Bill Withers Memorial Foundation, which is working towards 501c 3 status.
Withers won multiple Grammys and is a member of Grammy Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He was the first artist to be inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall Of Fame in 2007. Withers passed away in March 2020.
Last year, a Bill Withers historical marker was installed at his alma mater, Stratton High School, which is now Stratton Elementary School.
Though organizers are looking for a “Lovely Day”, if rain is an issue, performances will take place on the second level of the parking garage.
The Bill Withers Memorial Festival begins on Saturday at 1:00 p.m., following the Sweet Treats dessert event in Beckley.
West Virginia native Bill Withers has been honored with a road named in his honor.
“Bill Withers Memorial Road” is the new name for Slab Fork Road from the Lester Highway to the Coalfields Expressway in Raleigh County, the state Department of Transportation said.
The musician died at the age of 81 in 2020. He is best known for writing and recording “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lovely Day,” and “Lean on Me.” He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
The Division of Highways installed a sign last week renaming the road. The move was passed by the West Virginia Legislature last month.
“The uplifting messages in some of his songs really helped us get through the last year we’ve had,” Deputy Secretary of Transportation Jimmy Wriston said in a news release.
Bill Withers was not only an American pop music icon, he was a symbol of American music itself. His songs transcended styles and genres and bridged cultures and generations. “Lean On Me”, “Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Use Me”, “Grandma’s Hands” and many of his other classics can’t be easily labeled, but they can be and have been performed by soul, blues, jazz, rock, country, gospel and pop artists and even sampled hundreds of times in rap and hip hop. That’s the definition of a great song.
Bill was his own man from start to finish, fiercely independent and uncompromising. He received much deserved fame and recognition, but steadfastly refused to be packaged and sold in ways he didn’t believe in, probably sometimes to his financial detriment. I attended the ceremony when he was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s first class in 2007. His words of acceptance were profound and inspiring. He told of listening to soul, blues and gospel music at home in Slab Fork and then going across the tracks to friends’ homes where he heard country music from singers such as fellow inductee, Little Jimmy Dickens. It all became part of his unique and unmistakable sound.
Bill became an active inspiration and driving force in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame and more than once expressed his gratitude to its founder, Michael Lipton, for putting him back in touch with his home state. Michael invited me to join him as Bill’s guest when Bill was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. We sat beside some of Bill’s old friends from Slab Fork. The show was a marathon that lasted over six hours and Bill was second to last, right before Ringo Starr was inducted by Paul McCartney. Even in that company, Bill’s remarks were the highlight. He was the rare talent who knew his worth but retained true humility. He was inducted by Stevie Wonder. John Legend led his musical tribute. I’ll never forget Bill recognizing all the night’s other honorees and then slyly adding. “But I’m the only one being inducted by a Wonder and a Legend.”
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E-WV
As I said, to me Bill is a symbol of American music. More importantly, he’s a symbol of what America is at its best: A blend of strong flavors that, with the right cook, makes a masterpiece . He’s also a symbol of West Virginia. He grew up in tough times and overcame many obstacles, from poverty to stuttering. He joined the service and later got a factory job. He began writing songs later than most successful writers and although he believed strongly in himself, he never thought he would be the one to make them famous. Booker T. Jones told me that when Bill came into the recording session that became his first album, he thought someone else was going to be the artist. Unassuming but resolute, fame and fortune were not Bill’s gods. These are characteristics that I associate with West Virginians
After only eight years, Bill walked away from a performance career that most artists would kill for. He’d had enough of the indignities of a music business that he never really wanted to become a part of. He wasn’t driven by the unbridled ego, greed and ambition that seems ever present in today’s world, in and out of music. He quit performing, but his songs never retired and will be in demand as long as good taste survives.
I wish everyone, and especially every child in West Virginia could have met Bill Withers. In a few words, his pithy point of view could cut to the heart of what is important and put you in your place while never exalting himself. His main message to children was simple: “…take the limits off of yourself – and realize that there’s no magic that somebody else has in the world that you don’t.”
American soul singer legend and West Virginia native Bill Withers has died at 81 of heart complications, unrelated to coronavirus, according to the Associated Press. In a statement released to the AP, Withers’ family said he died Monday in Los Angeles.
“Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean On Me” and “Lovely Day” were just a few of the hits Withers wrote and sang during the peak of his career in the 70s and 80s — songs that have stood the test of time, most recently with people referencing “Lean On Me” as an anthem for hope during the coronavirus pandemic.
Withers was a three-time Grammy Award winner and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
“I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia,” Withers told Rolling Stone in 2015.
He was born in 1938, the last of 6 children, in the coal mining town of Slab Fork in Raleigh County. In some ways his childhood was similar to many West Virginians, with his family historically working in the coal mines, but in other ways it was much different.
“My family lived right beside the railroad track, and so all the white people live on one side of the railroad track and all black people are on the other side of the railroad track,” Withers said in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 2007.
Withers said much of his music was inspired by his childhood and his time spent growing up in West Virginia.
“You know, I think we all become the composite of the places we’ve been and the people we’ve met,” he said. “And I think wherever you grow up, you know, you can go somewhere else but you never really leave that place.”
The song “Grandma’s Hands” was about his grandma, who he said he remembered sitting on the porch, singing gospel songs and clapping her hands.
“She was the most encouraging person in my life,” he said. “When you’ve got people all around you telling you, ‘you can’t do nothing,’ you need somebody who tells you can.”
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wikimedia commons
The song “Lean On Me” was also heavily influenced by Withers’ childhood in West Virginia. The song includes the lyrics, “Lean on me when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend.”
“I remember we had a phone and the people across the street had a refrigerator, so they gave us ice and they used our phone,” Withers said about his neighborhood in West Virginia. “Just the economics made people kind of share and and help each other
After 14 years in the music industry, Withers abruptly departed in 1985 upon disagreements with his label Columbia Records, who he was with for nine years after a rocky relationship with his first label Sussex Records. He entered into an early retirement, focusing his time on his family, never returning to the industry.
However, he did give one spoken-word performance in his retirement at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2007.
“Bill has become a beacon and an icon – not just because of his music but for his dedication to caring about people,” according to a Facebook post from the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. “To that end, “Lean on Me” is an anthem whose time has clearly come again. Very few need to be reminded of his contributions to American music, and I have no doubts that you will continue to hear his magical songs many, many times in the future.”
Withers is survived by his wife, Marcia and children, Todd and Kori.
This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.
On July 8, 1972, Bill Withers’s song “Lean on Me” topped the Billboard charts for the first time. Rolling Stone magazine later ranked “Lean on Me” as the 205th greatest song of all time.
The Raleigh County native wrote the tune while thinking about the close community ties he experienced in Beckley and in the nearby mining camp of Slab Fork. It was in Beckley where Withers first honed his skills by singing gospel music.
In 1972, “Lean on Me” bumped Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue” from the number one slot and held on to the top spot for three weeks before giving way to Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally.”
Withers had had his first hit the previous year with his Grammy-winning song “Ain’t No Sunshine.” He’d later win another Grammy for “Just the Two of Us” and a third one as a songwriter for Club Nouveau’s cover of “Lean on Me.” Bill Withers, who also penned such classics as “Use Me” and “Grandma’s Hands,” is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Since the show began almost two years ago, A Change of Tune has highlighted some of the best up-and-coming artists out of these West Virginia hills with podcast-y chats ranging from The Sea The Sea to Coyotes in Boxes, Qiet to Bud Carroll and beyond.
But those interviews have been a bit infrequent, and since West Virginia Day is coming up (not to mention A Change of Tune’s second birthday), we thought we’d do something special: 30 days, 30 brand new #WVmusic interviews that range from Morgantown alt-rockers and Parkersburg singer-songwriters to West Virginia music venues and regional artist management and beyond, all of which contribute to this state’s wild and wonderful music scene.
And today, we are chatting with Charleston’s own Michael Lipton, who wears many, many hats in the #WVmusic scene. He tours around the state with The Carpenter Ants, he plays guitar for the Mountain Stage band, and he also directs the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and preserving the rich and lasting contributions West Virginians have made to all genres of music. One of those ways is through a new documentary, which will air on West Virginia Public Broadcasting later this summer. We spoke with Michael about his work as a West Virginia musician, the mission of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, and why it’s important for West Virginians to listen to West Virginia’s musical past.
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Michael Lipton speaks with musician Tift Merrit at a Mountain Stage in Grand Marais, Minnesota.
Are you from West Virginia originally?
I was born outside of New York, moved to Miami when I was 12, then escaped from Miami as soon as possible and ended up in Calhoun County in West Virginia when I was 20. Around 1970, I was in a group in high school, and the music scene in Miami didn’t have much national attention to it. Of course, right after we left, they had Derek & the Dominoes recording there and The Bee Gees moved down there.
Of all the places in West Virginia, why did you move to Calhoun County?
We had moved to Boston as our group. We were there for the better part of the year. There seemed to be a lull in the Boston scene at that time, and it seemed to be kind of tough to play original music there. After a year, we decided to call it quits, and I wanted to go someplace where I could, perhaps, not work for six months. I looked in an almanac and saw that West Virginia was the poorest state east of the Mississippi, and I said, “Well, never been there. Let me give that a try.”
It was a huge culture shock. It couldn’t have been more different than where I was raised or how I grew up. Maybe I was the stereotype of the person who doesn’t know that West Virginia’s a state, because I was driving around thinking, “Where are all the white houses with columns and things?” But even though it was incredibly different, there was something about it that felt good and made sense.
The very first night we spent in West Virginia, we were driving south and deciding where to look for a place. It was getting dark, and our car’s gas was getting low, but we had sleeping bags, so we pulled off and slept on the side of the road until morning. We found a field, put the bedrolls down, and I woke up in the morning and saw an old man digging potatoes around me. He said, “I tried not to wake you.” That was when I knew this place was meant for me. I stayed in Calhoun County for 15 years after that.
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A definite throwback moment for the Mountain Stage band.
How did you end up playing and living in Charleston?
I was planning on going to Northwestern University’s School of Journalism, but then I decided I wasn’t going to school. I had started writing for the Calhoun Chronicle, just for the hell of it. And when we had this band, I was trying to get some press for it. One year, we were playing a costume New Year’s Eve party in Alderson Prison, so I called the Charleston Gazette and asked if anyone wanted to cover it. They said they didn’t have anyone to send out on New Year’s Eve, and somewhere in that conversation, I guess I must have said I was a writer. So they said, “Well, why don’t you write it?” And even though they never ran the piece, I just kept writing for them. I kept doing it more and more, so I just ended up moving to Charleston.
We (Larry Groce, myself and Frank Venezia) eventually took over Graffiti. I knew Frank from Calhoun County. He was part of a commune out there and after my house in Calhoun County was hit with lightning and burned down, he helped me rebuild my house. As for Larry, when I started writing about music for the Charleston Gazette, the most interesting thing to write about was the stuff that was happening on Mountain Stage. At that time, it had only been up-and-running for a couple years. So we became friends, and he asked if I wanted to play guitar for the show.
I’m not very good with remembering dates, but I am with this one. It was 2004. Graffiti had not broken even, not even one month in 15 years. It was a miserable experience with a lot of work and not a lot of credit. Anytime you see you name in print, it was fun. But that satisfaction ended a long time before the paper ended. And we saw the writing on the wall with the internet and hard copy becoming tougher and tougher to keep going. So Ogden Newspapers, a big conservative publisher, bought it. Around that time, I had been to Nashville to the Country Music Hall of Fame and thought, “Gee, why doesn’t West Virginia have one of these things.”
The first exhibits we did, I went in my basement and picked out all the West Virginia records I could find, just to give us something to do. But when I first bought them, I didn’t know that any of them were from West Virginia. After that, I started looking for more things. One of the things I like about the whole project is finding that kind of stuff.
Prior to starting the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, what did you know about the West Virginia music scene?
I thought I knew a lot about it, because I had been playing here for 30 years, but then I realized that I didn’t know much at all. I didn’t know Bill Withers was from Raleigh County. I mean, I knew Little Jimmy Dickens and Kathy Mattea, but I didn’t know two of the co-founders of Parliament-Funkadlic were from West Virginia. The list goes on.
One of the things I think is wonderful about West Virginia is that you can have an idea and you can do it. If you were any place else, there would be three of them that exist already or it would be very difficult to do because of red tape or money or what have you. But here, you can just start things. Keeping it going is a different story, of course.
What was the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s first induction ceremony like?
The first induction ceremony was in 2007. That was one the things we knew we had to start doing. The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame board picked the people. The first induction class was amazing, really. Little Jimmy Dickens, Hazel Dickens, George Crumb, Billy Edd Wheeler, Clark Kessinger, Johnnie Johnson, and more. There were ten inductees then, and we have never had as many inductees in a class since.
Andy Ridenour [one of Mountain Stage’s co-founders] got me an address for Bill Withers’ wife, so we figured we’d start with the biggest fish, and we figured Bill Withers was the biggest fish. We wrote him and said, “We’re starting this thing, you’re in our first class of inductees. Could you be present for this ceremony?” And he wrote back and said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He’s been key to a number of things we’ve done, and once he said that, we thought, “Ok. It looks like we’ve got something here.” He’s received awards from all over the world, and in some ways, his memories of West Virginia aren’t that fond. So I could certainly understand if he was too busy or whatever. But he came. All of the five surviving members of that first class of inductees came.
You’ve inducted over 40 West Virginians into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. What are the qualifications for getting selected or being inducted?
There are no exact guidelines. Obviously you’ve had to amass as canon of work and been influential in some way. But there are two main categories: either you were born here or chose to spend your life here. So long as you’ve had a remarkable impact on the state and the nation at-large.
Is there a region of West Virginia with the most inductees?
Kanawha County has the most inductees. But in terms of where respective musicians come from in the state, the central part of the state (the swath that goes through Gilmer, Roane, and Clay) is home to really the best old-time musicians. That’s because that region of the state had the least influx of outside folks.
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How long have you been working on getting the new West Virginia Music Hall of Fame documentary up-and-running?
It’s been five years. The idea behind the documentary was not to just look at all of these people’s careers. The idea for it came from realizing that growing up in West Virginia is a different experience than growing up in other places. Granted, any place can say that, but I really think this is more different than other places, partially because of the isolation. Another thing that made me think about doing it was this: when we talked to all of these inductees for the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, there really hasn’t been anybody who has crashed and burned. I wanted to showcase how the ideals that people were taught growing up here helped keep their heads on straight, both when things were going great and when things were going bad. This is how this state has influenced their lives and influenced their careers.
What’s a common thread from each of those inductee’s experiences?
One was that almost everybody started music from church. Another was this common sense of community, family, and support. I think that’s a thread that goes through the whole film. And that this is a very special to be from.
Anna Sale, the host of WNYC’s “Death, Sex & Money” and an alumnus of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, provides the narration for this film. How did you get her on-board with this?
We did the whole film backwards because we didn’t know what all of these people were going to say. I think I did 47 interviews with 130 hours of film. So we were trying to figure out how and when we were going to need narration to bring it all together. Jack Wright, who helped us finish the film and was a friend and film professor at Ohio University, suggested Anna Sale to us. She actually did all of the interviews for us for the first class of inductees when she worked at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. I had also known her for a long time.
And Larry Groce is no stranger to speaking off the cuff, so when we were trying to figure out how to get from “point A” to “point Z” in the film, we looked at Larry’s interview and saw it was all there. In a sense, he serves as another narrator, as one of the film’s guides.
Credit Courtesy of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
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Since 2007, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s traveling museum has visited over 500 schools.
Why is this #WVmusic documentary, not to mention the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, important for West Virginians to see?
One of the things we really try to do with the traveling museum, a project we put together with the West Virginia Department of Education and has been to over 500 schools and been seen by 15,000 kids, we try to stress that all of these people grew up in the same situation, if not worse. The last quote in the film was something Bill Withers said (which I’m paraphrasing): “The real goal when you live in a place like West Virginia is to show kids that nobody has any magic that they don’t have. They’re just people.” So that’s it in a nutshell: to let people know that they don’t have to be from a big city to do this. You have to work hard, you have to have the talent, you have to have the determination, but it’s still possible. And this is also to give people a sense of pride of where they live.
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Michael Lipton warms up for this 2015 Mountain Stage at Ohio University.
How do you think West Virginia is doing right now in terms of its music output?
There’s definitely a new vitality, which wasn’t here to this extent back in the ‘90s. There’s always been a lot of great players, not to mention an incredible amount of sidemen from West Virginia who now live in Nashville. But I think there’s a new sense of pride here, which is great. People are starting to move back [laughing]. Not as many people are coming back as are leaving, but everything fuels everything else. The more you feel like you live in a real, vital, energetic place, the better you feel about your work and the more you become a cheerleader for it.
What advice would you give to folks wanting to get into music?
There are so many more avenues now to get your music out there. You just got to really want to do it. That’s what we tell kids, too. “You want to be an athlete? That’s great, that’s fine, but how long is your career going to be? 10 or 20 years, maybe? You can play music virtually the day you die, and it doesn’t make any difference if you’re playing on the back porch or playing on the stage. It will be enjoyable for you and hopefully for other people to.” If that can’t be your own reward, then you’re in trouble.
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Keep an eye on West Virginia Public Broadcasting for the television premiere of West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s new documentary, West Virginia My Home: Musicians and the Mountain State Experience. And keep an ear out for a Little Jimmy Dickens tribute album (featuring Bill Withers, Russ Hicks, Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., Kathy Mattea, Tim O’Brien, and more), which will be out later this fall. To hear more #WVmusic, tune in to A Change of Tune, airing Saturday nights at 10 on West Virginia Public Broadcasting. And for more #WVmusic chats, make sure to go to wvpublic.org/wvmusic.
