THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408050290
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
IF A FARMER'S MARKET can have a Pied Piper, the one here must be John Keeling.
For 17 years Keeling and his Pure Country Band have entertained a family crowd every Friday night in the summer at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market. The Friday hoedowns bring cash to the market, and help it over rough spots, like adjacent road construction that has dragged on for the past four years.
Players boast that Pure Country performs rain, shine or traffic detour.
``We never cancel. If it rains we just move under the boardwalk,'' said Keeling, 64, founder of the group and its mainstay all these years.
On pretty evenings, the fellows in the band take center stage on the lawn inside the market's traffic circle and pick one tune after another.
Not on a recent night. Chancy weather sent Pure Country looking for shelter and left the band's prime seats to George and Katherine Baines. They and friends sat on the empty center stage and faced the band, set up right next to a vegetable stand.
``This is our private box,'' joked Katherine Baines. She and her husband call themselves charter members of the hoedowns. The Chesapeake residents have been driving over, matching lawn chairs rattling in the car trunk, since they began.
``We enjoy the music,'' said Katherine Baines. ``It's relaxing here. There's no alcohol, we like the family atmosphere and it's not as loud outdoors. We've been to some of these gospel sings and it gets so loud I can't stand it.''
The music is good for the farmer's market, say city officials. For the past four years, visitors to the outdoor shops have navigated through barricades and lumpy asphalt torn up by road construction on Princess Anne and Landstown roads.
Without Keeling and Pure Country it would be hard to show off the market to so many people.
``It's important exposure,'' said George Denice, administrative assistant to the city director of agriculture. ``People come for the hoedowns and then come back to shop on Saturday and Sunday.''
The music is free. It is paid for by donations from area businesses, the Virginia Country Music Association and by proceeds from passing the hat at the hoedowns.
On that recent night, John Bowers was on drums, Jim Hysinger played rhythm guitar and Bill Clark, who played in Patsy Cline's band for three years, strummed lead guitar. Keeling, 6-feet 4-inches tall - not counting the heels on his cowboy boots - towered over his partners. He played bass.
Bowers, with the group for three or four years, and Clark, a member for eight years, are the newcomers. Hysinger, the only other old-timer besides Keeling, started playing with Pure Country about a month after the group got started 17 years ago.
The band plays country and some bluegrass, many of the same tunes every week, but, said Keeling, it never gets old. He's a died-in-the-wool country music lover, and serves on the board of directors of the Virginia Country Music Association.
``The people make it different, you know?'' he said. ``It's such a nice crowd. I always tell them you're the world's greatest audience. I love playing for families and where the kids can have a good time.''
The kids do.
The crowd, in the hundreds in good weather, flops onto blankets and lawn chairs brought from home. Youngsters sidle up to the front and dance when the mood strikes them, grandparents and parents look on and laugh. Babies sometimes get one last bottle of milk under the stars before it's time for home and bed. Bigger folk break diets with ice cream cones from Bergey's Dairy Store.
Keeling founded Pure Country Band in 1977. The spring before, the Little Neck resident had seen an ad in the newspaper.
``It was when the market first opened. There was a little write-up that said musicians bring your guitars and banjos out. There was only four of us who showed up. We met in the back parking lot and played and were asked to come back the next month,'' he recalled. Keeling was a waterman then, working oyster beds on the Lynnhaven River before pollution and the state shut down shellfishers eight years ago.
The market's first year they played monthly.
By the second year, the band played every Friday night. When a newspaper reporter asked Keeling what the name of the band was, he said it had none, but they played pure country music. The name stuck.
Two of the original four band members
have since died. A third, Ward Sower, still plays on Friday nights in the market's back parking lot, where pickers and strummers hook up in impromptu jam sessions.
A couple of Friday's ago, six fellows were grouped around the open tailgate of a red Toyota truck. Half strumming guitars, the rest on banjos, they played, watching each other and listening, whooping when a song was done and done well.
Wayne Hicks, a Chesapeake fireman, turns out with his banjo whenever he's free on Friday nights.
``This is bluegrass,'' he said with satisfaction, waving the finger picks on his right hand. ``It's different from what's out front.''
Out front, Pure Country Band hosts guest bands and guest singers. Cloggers and square dancers entertain during breaks. Area musicians stop by unexpectedly sometimes and play a song or two. Some crooners hop on stage from the audience or from out in back.
``We have people who don't sing so good,'' said Keeling, his small gray moustache twitching with laughter. ``But sometimes you'd be surprised at the talent we discover.''
None as big as his own.
Keeling's guitar-playing helped him woo and win his wife. The couple laughed about how 30 years ago Keeling convinced his wife's mother that he was a good catch.
Sheila F. Keeling met her husband when, at 16, she answered a magazine ad for a pen pal in Virginia Beach.
``I was writing another boy and when he got married he passed my name on to John,'' she said. The two wrote for three months, then Keeling made the trip south to Wendell, N.C., to meet her.
He was in his early 30s then, twice his teenaged pen pal's age.
``My mother didn't know that,'' Sheila Keeling said, laughing. ``He charmed my mother with his music. He'd come down with his guitar and they'd sit in the living room or on the front porch and used to sing up a storm.''
Sheila Keeling's mother, Clara Thomas, now 69, had a favorite song Keeling played often. It was called ``Court'n in the Rain.''
Keeling laughed at his wife's recollection, ``She used to ask me, did you come down to see me or my mother?''
The young couple married a year later, in 1964. They have one daughter, Stephanie Cole, 26, who plays piano.
Keeling misses going out on the water. He still shucks oysters for restaurants and caterers. He does most of the shucking for Tandom's Pine Tree Inn.
At this stage of his life, Keeling says he's able to indulge in his love for music even though he practices only when he puts on his cowboy boots and hat.
Given the choice, Keeling would rather play at the market than anywhere else.
``I have really enjoyed it. I've been a musician for 35 years and I've enjoyed the Farmers Market more than anything. The clubs, you know, get to be old hat after a while,'' he said. ``I've turned down a lot of good playing jobs to be here on Friday nights. I've been out here since the Farmers Market started and feel like a part of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo on cover by PETER D. SUNDBERG
John Keeling, 64, founder of the Pure Country Band, has been playing
at the Farmer's Market for 17 years. ``I love playing for families
and where the kids can have a good time,'' he says.
Photos by PETER D. SUNDBERG
Jim Hysinger, left, John Keeling and Bill Clark - part of the Pure
Country Band - play it safe on a cloudy Friday evening, seeking the
shelter of the Farmer's Market covered boardwalk.
Diane Campbell and her grandchildren Benjamin, 4, and Autumn
Campbell, 5, stop to listen to the music. Crowds, numbering in the
hundreds during good weather, flop onto blankets and lawn chairs.
Youngsters sidle up to the front and dance when the mood strikes
them.
ABOVE: While the Pure Country Band played in the center of the
Farmer's Market, a group of die-hard bluegrass musicians gathered
behind the stores to pick and strum a few tunes.
BELOW: Jim Hysinger, who has played rhythm guitar for the Pure
Country Band for 17 years, jokes with spectator Jean Bowden about
his pet cow.
by CNB