The Slack Family is a phenomenal bluegrass band with
a strange and sordid history. I'll attempt to tell the story here, as best I can recollect it. The Slack Family was living a peaceful day to day life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, somewhere near Possum Hollow, Va. They had only the shirts on thier backs and the good sense god gave them. They were surviving by brewing up corn squeezins and playing bluegrass tunes at the local watering hole, Clem's Place. They would probably still be living that way today, except that while searching for the legendary Buckshot Still, some revenuers discovered the Slacks back in the woods. The AT&F boys found the Slacks living in a one room tarpaper shack, and decided that they better 'save' the Slacks from the evils of mountain life.
The revenuers brought them to the county courthouse and turned them over to the magistrate. He took one look at the sad bunch and said they would have to go live in the poor house over in Galax. The Slacks were so upset by this news that they broke into one of their sadder tunes, something about the 'fields are dry and my hound-dog died'.
Anyway, the magistrate, being a man who enjoyed a good tune and a nip now and again, knew he had stumbled onto some real talent.
He phoned up his old buddy, big city record man, Dicky Jay. Dicky made the trip from River City down to Clem's Place just to hear the Slacks burn the joint down with their hootin' and hollerin' hillbilly music. He signed them to an exclusive contract on the spot, and today they are the barndance darlings of River City. The Slacks don't think much of all this, and continue to live life in the old ways. It's rumoured that they still make a little mash over on Oregon Hill, just for medicinal puposes, of course. Well that's the Slack story as told to me by a man selling swamp land in Florida.
They also performed at the July 11, 1997,
and the Dec. 5, 1997 shows at the Floodzone,
and at the Sept. 19, 1998 show
at Alley Katz.
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