'I gotcha, Boss': Old-time music community celebrates Travis Stimeling's life

Nov. 24—Chris Stimeling was a study in four-string stoicism that Sunday afternoon back in 2019.

The middle-schooler was bearing down on his Epiphone bass guitar from one fixed spot on the stage.

He was rocking the root note for all it was worth, as he and buddies of that same vintage — they called themselves Chorus of Chaos — were tearing through "Come On, Feel the Noise, " by Quiet Riot, their forefathers of distorted guitars and big hair, as it were.

The young outfit (not yet in their teens) was on the bill for an annual concert from PopShop, a School of Rock-type enterprise that puts people of all ages together, as a band.

While Stimeling, the bass player, didn't necessarily share the same sonic proclivities of his father, Travis — a nationally known WVU musicologist who headed the bluegrass and old-time music divisions of the College of Creative Arts — it also needed noting that none of that mattered on this day.

Nope, not one bit.

The elder Stimeling was head-banging with the best of them from a perch in the audience midway back from the stage.

And that's because the professor was also a performer could never help enjoying and celebrating that wondrous act of making music in front of people, no matter the genre.

Double-coil humbuckers coexisting with the Delmore Brothers, as it were.

Stimeling, who preferred they /them pronouns for that desire of inclusivity in the arts and society, died last week after battling an illness.

It didn't take long for the tributes to cascade in, like a fiddle break in an old-time jam session.

"Travis was radically inclusive, " their best friend and fellow musician Mary Linscheid said Friday.

"They wanted to bring everybody into the circle."

Fiddling, full circle As a kid in Morgantown, Linscheid, who grew up playing classical violin, found herself gravitating more and more to old-time music, as she got older.

She switched over to guitar and mandolin as she explored the music in earnest, and met Travis when she joined the WVU Bluegrass Band on her way to graduating with an English degree last spring.

Linscheid fully committed to her first instrument during that tenure. Like her professor's inclusivity, her shift was just as radical.

Goodbye, violinist.

Hello, fiddler.

And yes, they are two different animals and instruments, Linscheid said, with a little laugh.

While the violin is about strict rehearsals and staid concert halls, the fiddle trends more organically to that circle Travis always talked about, the musician said.

"Everything's different about it, " she said, of the contrast — from the way one bows the instrument to the way one simply approaches the music.

For her, old-time over the old masters is just more freeing, she said.

"When you're playing old-time fiddle, you're almost always sitting knee-to-knee with someone who's probably actually teaching you the tune at the same time, " she continued.

"Travis was all about that. They'd always say, 'People first, then the music.' They always celebrated that connection."

'I gotcha, Boss'

This coming Thursday, people and music will be part of the celebration of Stimeling's live and times that will take place at 4 p.m. that day at The Encore music venue on Powell Avenue.

Chris Haddox, a fellow WVU professor and old-time music buddy, will be there.

Haddox, a songwriter who also plays several stringed instruments in that style, is in possession of a self-titled album currently making a solid run up the Americana music charts here in the U.S. and overseas.

The album was produced by Ron Sowell, the music director of public radio's famed "Mountain Stage " show out of Charleston.

Stimeling profiled Sowell and Haddox in his 2018 book, "Songwriting in Contemporary West Virginia: Profiles and Reflections, " which gave a look at performers who sing songs and craft them, too.

"I wouldn't have an album if it hadn't been for Travis, " he said.

"That book got me on Ron's radar."

Haddox and Stimeling picked music together and collaborated on songs and academic works, also.

At WVU, Haddox teaches sustainable design practices in new building construction. Stimeling, he said, reminded him that music — especially music of the Appalachian ilk — can build whole communities spanning generations across the Mountain State.

The last time they played was at The Encore in October, for an old-time honky-tonk show, where Haddox led a band that worked through tunes by Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell and other vanguards of a golden age of Nashville music that peaked in the 1950s.

Stimeling, an authority on that music, played bass in the band, and grooved on the walking, boogie-woogie lines just a couple of steps away from the jump blues.

He was looking forward to another such show on Dec. 16, which will be dedicated to Stimeling's memory.

Their final gig, Haddox said, was magic.

"Every time I looked back, Travis would be there with this giant grin, " he said.

"I might say, 'Hey, Travis, it's in A, buddy, ' and he'd say, 'I gotcha, Boss.' Now, he's not gonna be there when I turn around. I'm getting emotional, just thinking about it."