ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 27, 1996 TAG: 9609270012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO ERIC BRADY/STAFF.
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
The four members of Shallow Creek have the cool calm of someone three times their age.
Or perhaps, as bluegrass musicians plucking out the traditional, steady rhythms of Appalachia, they've just learned to keep some of their excitement inside.
They're definitely not the type of guys to bash their guitars or leap around on stage (an impossibility, anyway, with a stand-up bass).
"Well, I've been singing all my life," said Mark Hudson, 13. He's the guitar player and lead singer for Pittsylvania County's Shallow Creek, which features Jeremy Stephens, 12, on banjo, Travis Fitzgerald, 13, on mandolin, and Jason Flinchum, 14, on stand-up bass.
Sunday they'll be on national television. ABC's "Good Morning America Sunday" got word that the band had been named Virginia's Junior Entertainers of the Year for the second year in a row, and decided it was time to do a story.
WSET does not carry the 8 a.m. program. (Unless you have satellite TV, the nearest station that does is WHSV in Harrisonburg). But 80 percent of the ABC affiliates across the country do.
"Oh, we're looking forward to it," Mark said in a phone interview. He was breathless from riding his bike, but responded to questions like he'd been talking to reporters for eons. "We're not nervous or anything. We're very excited. It's an honor, that's what it is."
Shallow Creek plays mostly on weekends during the summer and school year.
An ABC camera crew followed band members around last weekend, when they played at Pig in the Park, a bluegrass and Appalachian music festival at the Explore Park in Roanoke County. The crew was with them Friday, too, at home and at their various middle schools.
"The show's pretty good," Mark said.
He's told a few people about the segment - friends, family, those who care about bluegrass, which is all he plays.
"Bluegrass to me is well, it's hard to explain," he said. "It's wonderful music, it's all I listen to. It's really good family music."
Jeremy and Mark began playing bluegrass as Shallow Creek two years ago.
Jason, Mark's best friend since kindergarten, joined the band in January.
"Mark said, 'Jason, you've got to learn to play the bass,'" recalls Janice Hudson, Mark's grandmother. "He went through Mark's torture camp until his fingers bled."
Travis, another friend, joined the band in July when Shallow Creek wanted to enter a contest that required musical groups to have either a fiddle or mandolin player.
"Now Travis, he called himself a heavy metal musician," Janice Hudson said. "But Mark threw the mandolin in his hands and taught him enough to get by."
Mark likes to tell people the band saved Travis' soul by introducing him to bluegrass.
(P.S. Shallow Creek won the competition.)
Janice Hudson said she'd never listened to much bluegrass music before Mark got into it, which he did when he was all of 3 years old. She's not sure where that influence came from.
"We laugh and say they've been reincarnated," she said. "We say it's Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs back again."
Shallow Creek plays a few original songs, but mostly leans toward traditional bluegrass tunes, Mark said. "Ruby, Are You Mad?" by the Osborne Brothers is one of their favorites.
"That's what they always end with," said Janice Hudson, who manages the band along with Jeremy's mother, Susan.
As managers, they are allowed to show excitement, particularly about the "Good Morning America" segment, which will give the band the most exposure it's ever received.
"Though we got called by Channel 7 this week and we thought that was quite an honor, too," Janice Hudson said.
The station will feature the band on "Fuzzy Logic," a kids' show which is supposed to air sometime in the next month.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB