FROM EVERY STAGE
Images Of America's Roots Music
BY NADINE KERFOOT

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the 200 photographs in this collection tell a long and engaging story of how folk music in its many genres has flourished in the U.S. in recent decades, and whose current popularity is evidenced in festivals and dances across the nation. Author Stephanie Ledgin, a New Jersey native, has been at the roots music scene for the past 30 years. Oddly enough, her long association began quite by chance. With music in her genes and a near-reverence for photographs, she was drawn to a career as a music journalist. In 1975 she answered an ad for an editorial job with a music magazine. She soon learned it was Pickin' magazine and found herself working as a professional journalist in bluegrass. You might say the picture took. Since then she has been a roots music advocate, working in various locations as photo journalist, public relations rep, personal and event manager, taking pictures at venues from open-air festivals to indoor meccas like Nashville's Station Inn and the Bottom Line in New York. Interspersed with personal interviews, From Every Stage depicts - many in full color - artists as diverse as folk icons like Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, bluegrass legends like Bill Monroe and Ricky Skaggs, some leading lights of country such as Wynonna Judd and Randy Travis, Scotch and Irish fiddlers, clog dancers, instrumentalists, and the zydeco Queen Ida. But the author cautions that "this is not a picture book of who's who in the broad spectrum of folk, country, blues and roots music. So don't look for anyone specific." Some of the photos were taken in spare moments, unexpectedly, hence their impromptu quality. Others are a reflection of Charles Osgood's observation in the forward: "In life as in music, they say timing is everything. That's also true in photography, where you must sense precisely the instant to click that shutter to capture the light at the moment of truth." Either way, Ledgin predict confidently that "your eyes and ears will be filled with the music projected form these pages." BMP

July-August 2006 Issue
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