Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990 TAG: 9005110193
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What he came up with was Curley Ennis and the Roadrangers.
"Curley" was a joking reference to the thinning hair of Larry Ennis, the leader of the band. "Roadranger" was borrowed from the side of a truck.
The band has broken up and re-formed many times since those days, but Ennis' nickname has stuck.
"Nobody calls me Larry except my mom," Ennis said.
Ennis lives on the fringe of Vinton, where he shares an unpretentious hillside place with a dog named Flossie, three New Zealand rabbits, a three-legged cat called Kitty and, weekends and summers, his three children.
Ennis, divorced and 51, is living in Western Virginia for the second time. He tried farming and organic gardening in Bedford County in the late 1970s, moved back to Omaha in 1980, then came to the Roanoke Valley in 1988.
Ennis was born in Kansas and reared, mostly on farms, in the Omaha area. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and entered Arizona State University as a graduate student in English, but wearied of school and dropped out in 1962 to join the Air Force. Four years later, troubled morally by the Vietnam War, he left the service. He spent two years as a technical writer for General Electric, then quit to run a couple of art galleries. One of them was in the building, a one-time church, made famous by Arlo Guthrie as "Alice's Restaurant."
He also made lots of folk music in the Berkshires, playing with the likes of Guthrie, Tom Paxton and Peter, Paul and Mary. Ennis eventually gave music the top priority in his life, accepting with it the travel demands and the financial see-saw. With that decision, he left the security of the 9-to-5 world behind.
"That got me in trouble with the mother of my children," he said. "The arts can make for a hard family life."
To help makes ends meet, Ennis gave music lessons, managed a restaurant, taught horseback riding and did other odd jobs.
He also played polo, but strictly for recreation.
In 1980, he returned to Omaha to spend most of a decade doing arts residencies, festivals and touring as a folk entertainer and performer. There was extensive television and radio work, as well as service on the boards of groups such as the Omaha Folk Arts Alliance and the Great Plains Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association.
Ennis can play all types of music, but it's the traditional kind that he specializes in and much prefers.
"It's real music for real people," he said. "It's not the kind that's written just to sell."
"I always liked the songs he did," said mandolin player Tom Ohmsen of the Roanoke band Homebrew. "They're songs that actually say something."
Ohmsen is one of Ennis' many musical friends, some of whom stay with him when their travels take them through the Roanoke Valley.
"We'll sit and pick awhile and talk about what's going on," Ennis said. "That's a great satisfaction."
Ennis has played the guitar since he was 4. He also performs on the harmonica, mountain dulcimer, banjo, songbow and fiddle in addition to singing.
He credits two years of opera training while in college with preserving his baritone voice against the depradations of time, country-rock lyrics and smoke-filled clubs.
"Curley Ennis is no dude in cowboy boots and a pointy old Stetson," wrote one Midwest reviewer. "He is authentic. He has a vast repertoire of traditional songs which conjure up long watch-night stands around a drover's campfire - or you can ride the rails with Curley's tunes and hear a train's plaintive whistling across the prairie."
Ennis seems to have a special rapport with children. He does numerous programs for them, singing folk songs and showing the songs' close links with cultural history. He does school programs whenever possible and campaigns tirelessly for the inclusion of music - and other arts - in the educational curriculum.
"The arts expand awareness," he said. "They open up so many avenues for what the kids might become."
Though folks in these parts know Ennis is a fine entertainer, they tend to speak first about another side of him.
"He's always quick to say `If you need some help, give me a call,' " said Brook Dickson of The Arts Council of Roanoke Valley.
And, says Julie Hunsaker, "He means it. He wields a hammer with the same finesse he plays the guitar."
Those aren't Ennis' only virtues in the view of Hunsaker, who runs the Grandin Theatre and is a generally lively presence on the arts scene.
"He looks good in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat," she said. "And he can do a mean jitterbug."
Ennis did a free children's program at last year's Festival in the Park and is scheduled to take part again this year. He recently performed gratis for Earth Day. His current projects are a rummage sale for Blue Ridge Montessori School, which he's helping to publicize, and tonight's benefit concert for Total Action Against Poverty, which recently was burned out of its headquarters.
Ennis rounded up the talent, including the latest incarnation of The Roadrangers. All the bands will play for free.
"That's really important to me," he said. "Music can really help people in a community get behind a project."
Ennis is doing in the Roanoke Valley what he has done everywhere else since the early 1970s: trying to make a living as a musician.
It's been slow and he has had to resort to other jobs for income. He has worked at a salad bar on the Roanoke City Market and sold vegetables and fruit at a produce stand. Since last week, he's been putting siding on houses.
It may not be the dream career, but Ennis said he has no plan to exchange his jeans and cowboy boots - and his freedom - for a 9-to-5er's suit.
"I've been doing this for so long it'd be hard to change," he said. "I've been getting by. Life is full of both good luck and bad luck. I'm just hopin' for more good than bad."
The benefit concert for Total Action Against Poverty will be tonight at 7:30 in the Unitarian Universalist Church at Grandin Road and Brandon Avenue Southwest. Scheduled to perform, in addition to Curley Ennis and the Roadrangers, are Homebrew, Brad Jones, Tim Sauls, Radar Rose with Cactus Jane, Genie Krieger-Lindsey and Reflections. Refreshments will be available. The charge for admission will be a $5 donation to T.A.P. For more information, call 342-3257, 342-8719 or 342-8729.
TAP BENEFIT CONCERT: Featuring Curley Ennis and the Roadrangers, 7:30 tonight, Unitarian Universalist Church. 342-3257.
by CNB