Kenny Rogers: Deal me another hand

Sunday News (Lancaster, PA)
Publication Date: August 12, 2007
by MaryAlice Bitts

After more than five decades in the business, Kenny Rogers knows when to hold 'em. But when to fold 'em is a matter of debate.

Just a year into his new contract with Capitol Records - a noteworthy business development for a man approaching 70 - Rogers is still going strong, wrangling an annual 125-day touring schedule that would tire men half his age.

"I swear I'm going to cut my schedule back," he said in an early-morning telephone interview prior to a show in Westbury, N.Y. "I really have more work than I want right now, and so I raised my price last year because I didn't want to work as much, and I'm working more this year than I did last year! So, I'll raise it again next year until people quit hiring me, and then I'll retire.

"It's kind of a slick way to get out."

Or not. The truth is that while the long bus rides, flights and hotel rooms that accompany life on the road are getting annoying, the Gambler clearly relishes his time onstage. And here is his conflict: It seems as if he can't bring himself to quit and wants to get somebody else to do it for him.

This is no surprise. The well-liked Rogers is one of the most enduring and hardworking figures in the industry, and he loves what he does.

Born poor in a Houston housing project, Kenny Rogers is the fourth of eight children and the first member of his family to graduate from high school. He kicked off his music career early, learning guitar and fiddle as a kid and snagging a spot on "American Bandstand" as a teen. But early on, his true love was jazz.

After a stint as a rockabilly guitarist, Rogers played upright bass for a jazz combo before signing on with the more commercially successful folk rockers the New Christy Minstrels. Then he formed the First Edition, an eclectic group that had its own TV variety show and produced hit singles such as "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town."

It wasn't until the '70s that the gravely-voiced Rogers ventured a solo country-pop music career, and he's been reaping the benefits ever since. In a span of about 10 years, Rogers generated a staggering songbook of hits, including "Lucille," "The Gambler," "You Decorated My Life," "Coward of the County," "Lady," "Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer" (with Kim Carnes), "We've Got Tonight" (with Sheena Easton) and "Islands in the Stream" (with Dolly Parton).

With these hits, Rogers ushered in a new era of country music, a time when country stars could break onto the mainstream charts with soft rock hits and experience previously unimaginable success. Over time, Rogers developed into an American icon. He appeared in several movies, commercials and 12 television specials, and has been spoofed on "Seinfeld," "Mad TV" and other mainstream media outlets.

Although his airplay waned in the '90s, he remained in the public eye, and as the new century ramps up, his career is experiencing a boost. Last year, Rogers teamed up with Don Henley to record a Grammy-nominated single, "Calling Me." And he's recently amassed a new fan base in Kenya, where old-school country stars like Rogers and Parton are enjoying a resurgence.

"I have this theory about performing," Rogers said. "I think that singers have to have hits, but entertainers can work forever."

This is the key to Rogers' long-standing international appeal. He's a storyteller who understands what his audience wants, and believes it's his obligation to deliver. And he does it with a smile, night after night, year after year.

"Music should do one of three things: make you laugh, make you cry or make you think. I think if you make people think too much, they're not going to like it. I don't care how big the songs are.

"They need to laugh and have a good time and walk out smiling. That's what I shoot for," said Rogers, who once employed comedy writers to pen material for his shows, and then realized he did better when he just told amusing stories from his own life, in his own words. "People might clap to be nice and polite, but they do not laugh to be nice. I would much rather hear someone tell me, 'I had a great time at your show' than to hear 'You are such a great singer.' I want to know they are having a good time."

Still, in the past few years, he's found himself pulled in other directions. His shoulder has been bothering him lately, and his knee gives him trouble, too. He avoids the bustle of airports whenever possible, opting instead for a deluxe, customized tour bus. But long days in transit take their toll.

More significantly, when he's on tour, he misses his wife, Wanda, and their twin 3-year-old boys, Justin and Jordan.

"I didn't envision spending the last years of my life as the father of young boys, but I have to tell you, it's been the greatest gift," said Rogers, whose voice lilts as he speaks about them. "It's tough to be on the road without them."

Here is where the conflict arises. At 68, Rogers, who has three older children to previous marriages, is acutely aware of how fleeting life is ("The older you get, the faster your life goes, so you have to be very careful that you don't wish your life away"), so he wants to spend as much time as possible with his family.

At the same time, he said he's "afraid of the time I will not be able to perform anymore because, let's be honest, that time will come."

For now, he's found a quick fix by bringing his family on tour for short, city-to-city jaunts on the tour bus, and occasionally including the children in his show.

"They're so cute," he said proudly. "They come onstage and sing with me. Jordan sings 'The Gambler,' and I defy you to understand one word of it. Justin sings 'Oh, My Darling Clementine.' I have no idea where he learned that. They're such sweet kids."

Rogers also balances his life with other pursuits. He ran an international chain of fast-food chicken restaurants for several years, and he established a local homeless shelter near his home. He also is a photographer, having published two books of his work, and he currently runs a land development business out of Atlanta.

In between these ventures, he finds time to make television appearances (at last year's "American Idol," for instance) and, occasionally, to reach out to his fans. He's even voted for his favorite Kenny Rogers look-alike on the cult hit Web site, menwholooklikekennyrogers.com.

When asked why he continues at such a fast pace, he gets philosophical.

"You need three things in life to be happy: someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. And I think that if you don't, you get into trouble," said Rogers, who watched his older brother age prematurely after taking an early retirement.

So Rogers keeps working.

"I was talking to Neil Diamond the other day, and he said he was going to work 38 days this year. I said, 'My god. I do that in August!'" he said. "It's just always been my nature to be productive. I cannot just sit around and exist.

"Music is really what I am, and everything else is just what I do. I'm trying to enjoy every show, now, as much as I can, because once I'm onstage, there's nowhere I'd rather be. I can't imagine my life without it.

"They're going to haul me out on a stretcher," he said with a chuckle. "None of my joints will be working anymore, but I'll just lay there and sing!"

Robert A. Nelson: Bring Your Imagination

In Robert Nelson’s work, there’s everything from flying monkeys to really big dogs.
By MARYALICE BITTS
Published: Dec 23, 2007 12:10 AM EST

LANCASTER, Pa - A Robert A. Nelson exhibit is no place for the unimaginative.

Representing the artist's rather gleeful disregard of the laws of time, natural order and reason, Nelson's works present a sometimes playful and sometimes vaguely unnerving imagined world where allegory, mythology, classical and historical figures, mechanical locks and machines and oddly anthropomorphic representatives from the animal kingdom impossibly collide.

"Some people ask me, 'Where do your ideas come from? Are you on drugs?'" says Nelson, a former Lancastrian whose award-winning work resides in several noted museum collections."They aren't always able to accept black humor and a certain level of surreal strangeness."

Those who can, however, are in for a small treat. That's because a modest show of Nelson's recent work is currently on display at Lancaster's Criswell & Shreve Gallery, 112 N. Prince St.

In it, you'll find studies and paintings that show classically precise renderings of larger-than-life animals in the driver's seat of antique cars; an unruly flock of pigeons being fed by a traditional Greek statue; and, in a nod to what's over the rainbow, the well-named "Flying Monkeys Capture Alexander the Great: Unrecorded Events in Oz.

"There's also the acrylic work "The Really Big Dog," which shows a clearly amused terrier atop a vintage auto (a companion piece show two such dogs climbing over an antique Rolls Royce).

"He has such wild juxtapositions," says gallery co-owner D. Robert Fenninger."There really is no limit to where his explorations can go. His imagination doesn't seem to stop."

This is a great departure in style for the relatively new gallery, which typically shows antique artifacts and works by art history greats such as Gaugin and Cassatt. But, says Fenninger, the exhibit represents a happy collaboration.

"This show highlights what we've enjoyed about his work for the past 25 years," says Fenninger, who befriended Nelson some two decades ago, while Nelson taught art at Millersville University."He has great talent and humor, and he is a master draughtsman."

Crafting and drafting
That mastery is the result of a lifetime of dedication to the craft.

An inquisitive child who grew up fascinated by images he found in comics and children's books, Nelson later refined his drafting skills in the Air Force, during World War II, and when the war ended, he spent a year drawing maps for Rand-McNally, and working as a draftsperson for a meat packing firm.

By the time he entered the Art Institute of Chicago in 1946, he had several years of professional experience honing the techniques of realistic drawing. He received his master's degree in 1951, and launched a full-fledged artistic and scholarly career.

Over the next 55 years, Nelson earned a doctorate in education, taught art at several colleges, and held approximately 150 solo exhibits across the country. In 1961, the French government awarded him that country's coveted Cezanne award, and today, his work is housed in the Washington's Smithsonian Institute, New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Seattle Art Museum.

Although he briefly flirted with abstract expressionism in the 70s and 80s ("I learned that paint and texture alone is not a message,"), he soon returned to the figurative style that he sharpened as a soldier and draftsman, paying nearly honorific attention to the detail and mechanics of the ideal human form.

"He has an incredible mastery of the human figure, and he's interested in finding out the way things work. So, he's able to push and pull the features a bit to communicate certain ideas," says gallery co-owner L. Scott Paden. "He finds a little bit more than what the eye would normally see."

Namely, Nelson might slightly enlarge a subject's shoulders, to subtly and economically denote power, strength or resilience. The body of a sluggish or beleaguered figure may seem to house a loose sack of stone-like objects, under the surface of the skin.

Read the note!
In his studies, Nelson augments these visual clues with written notes and explanations that not only remind his future self of the precise details of the painting he hopes to someday complete (for example, "longer body," or "bring forward"), but also tell viewers how to interpret both the sketch and the finished work.

His sketch "Movie Making: The Emperor Who Hated His People No. 2," for example, shows two traditionally dressed figures in motion.In a penciled note, Nelson characterizes the figures as "Chinese Actors in an 18th-century film," and helpfully writes the explanatory, if odd, note: "Hidden jacket pads hold fake arrows."He also writes the state, season and year in which the piece was created."

The explanations are done to set up a kind of empathy for the viewer," Nelson explains."You take a school kid into an art gallery and you show them a 10-by-12 painting that has a white line down the center, he will get bored very quickly. You will find him in some Dutch still life room, looking at a lemon that has been pared very carefully. There's a desire to understand and connect."

And this is part of what makes his work so compelling. As fanciful and bizarre as Nelson's scenarios can be, they are also rooted in the recognizable: Children's book characters, historic figures, mythological beings, pets and everyday objects evoke certain universal responses, no matter how incongruous their settings may be. And any pet owner can tell you that their dog or cat would love to argue for possession of their masters' meals.

"It's this business of the animal world taking on aspects of our world, because they sort of already do," explains Nelson, who owns four dogs, and several cats, horses and donkeys at his Oregon horse farm.

"It's like a dog standing in front of you with a toy, wanting to play, or a cat, at night, wanting to sleep very close to your head so it can be close to your breath.

"These are almost like human behaviors. So it's not difficult for me to let a cat argue with a person over a piece of meat. They can be insistent. It seems logical."

Speaking from his Oregon horse farm, Nelson underscores this point when he notes that as he speaks, miniature donkeys are braying outside his window, in the hopes of being fed.

Art of farming
This farm life is demanding, he says. But, now in his 82nd year, he says that he remains committed to producing as much artwork as he possibly can, chores withstanding.

"I have horses that have to be cared for, and a blind stallion that has to be led around. And, there are thousands of books to read," says Nelson, who is currently steeped in books about the Greco-Roman world, and who visits his local library several times a week. "There's just so much to enjoy. But, in the twilight years, you're a little more conscious of the work you need to do.

"I have so little time left that I have to guard it rather preciously, because life is precious to me. I'm out there on a limb, and somebody's sawing on it. If I I finish a piece of art, I say at the end of the day, 'Thank God I got that in!' Then I start the next one."

Charles Demuth Museum: I Saw the Figure 25 in Silver

By MaryAlice Bitts
Sunday News (Lancaster, PA)
October 22, 2006

Charles Demuth came of age in an exciting era of American innovation and industrialization. He saw the Wright Brothers fly the first successful airplane, and Ford introduce the Model T. Women were granted the right to vote; the Allies won World War I; and Charlie Chaplin, talkie films, plastics, the Titanic and the discovery of King Tut's tomb captured the public's imagination.

Naturally, the art world picked up on this electric atmosphere and ran with it. As Picasso introduced the world to cubist ideas, expatriates gathered in Paris to discuss and create daring new art, literature and music - works that sparked an artistic revolution across Europe and America. And Demuth, "Deem" to his friends, was a part of it.

A leading force in the modernist movement whose works arguably set the stage for pop art decades later, Demuth traveled to artistic hot spots in America and abroad. He hung out in jazz clubs and cafes in New York and Paris, befriended some of the cultural elite and generally soaked up avant-garde artistic inspiration. Then he returned to his downtown Lancaster home and poured that inspiration into interesting new works that ranged from delicate floral pieces to the industrial age landscapes for which he is best known.

This month, the Demuth Foundation and Museum will celebrate Demuth's Nov. 8 birthday with Cheers to Charlie, a jazz-soaked celebration with international flair that foundation director Anne Lampe believes would have appealed to Lancaster's famously fun-loving, jet-setting artist.

To be held Nov. 10 in the museum's new space at the 1770 Demuth Tobacco Shop, 116 E. King St., the celebration will feature period jazz by the Ruth Benns-Suter trio, hors d'oeuvres by Log Cabin Restaurant, a cash bar and decorations that include birthday greetings from Demuth's sparkling international circle of friends and contemporaries.

"There will be valet parking, we'll have a red carpet and we've set up the third floor to be like an old jazz nightclub," Lampe said. "I think Charles would have felt right at home."

The fete is part of a yearlong celebration of Demuth Foundation's 25th anniversary, which also includes the "25 Years of the Demuth: Homage and Hurrah!" exhibit, which spans each phase of the artist's career.

"People in Lancaster know his tulip paintings, but they don't know the whole breadth of his works. What I really tried to do in this exhibit was bring pieces back that haven't been in Lancaster since Charlie was alive," said Lampe, who imported 40 pieces from collections across the East Coast for the show, which runs through Nov. 30. "I really hunted down pieces that were unusual to him and his oeuvre, to give people a new idea of Charles' art."

These include a drawing of a nude woman thought to have been created in Auguste Rodin's Paris studio, and a travel piece titled "Review in Paris," which has not been shown here in 50 years. Portraits, landscapes, architecturals, nightclub/vaudeville scenes, early childhood and student works and a progression of floral watercolors dating from 1915 to 1922 round out the exhibit.

"The floral paintings show the evolution of his style," Lampe said. "In the beginning, he's doing watercolor florals with an all-over washed or toned background. Then he starts experimenting with a very actively colored background, drawing the eye more to the background than the subject matter of flowers, which is something that the impressionists and early modernists in avant-garde Paris were playing with. And then we have his first tempera piece."

Lampe explained that Demuth, a skilled watercolorist who had long mastered that form's washing, blotting and layered, short-stroke techniques, first tried using watercolor methods with dryer, chalkier tempera paint, to lukewarm effect. She believes that his experimentation with this new material eventually led to his later renditions of Lancaster buildings, granaries and other machinery, works that came late in his career for which he has become internationally known.

"There are lots of straight lines and smooth brushwork in the architectural works, and so the tempera really works for him," Lampe said. By 1922, she said, the artist had applied his fully mature, precisionist style to his still lifes and other works, as well. Although the still lifes' subject matter is conventional, she said, the artworks are nothing short of radical.

"At first blush, you can say, 'I know what that is. It's a pear.' And you feel very comfortable with it. But when you start looking at that pear, you see he's really challenging your concept of what a pear looks like," Lampe said. "He's really trying some of the cutting-edge, avant-garde ideas that were going around the Paris scene."

Lampe hopes the exhibit will help shine a light on the place Demuth holds in modern art history.

"I think he was by far more intellectual in his approach to his artwork than anyone might have thought. He was really pushing limits," she said. "I think, had his life gone on longer, he would have had a greater impact, like his very good friend Georgia O'Keefe.

"He was trying to see where we could go as Americans: What can we create that is our own? He really was among the important, leading artists of the day."