Common Ground on The Hill
Sponsor of Multifaceted Enrichment and Opportunity
The June issue of Bluegrass Unlimited included an article about the history and summer Traditions Weeks of Common Ground on the Hill, an initiative founded thirty years ago by Walt Michael on the campus of McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. That article promised this concluding part two to feature Common Ground on the Hill’s initiatives to further the promotion of bluegrass music education; use music and the arts to assist Veterans with their reentry process; and explore issues along the Arizona border with Mexico. It concludes with naming winners of this year’s Deer Creek Fiddlers’ Convention sponsored by Common Ground on the Hill, and gives a preview of the lineup for its winter concert series in Westminster Maryland.
The Steve Mandell Memorial Music Scholarship Fund
Common Ground on the Hill manages a scholarship fund that memorializes a professional musician who is remembered as being a perfectionist when it came to playing bluegrass, a traditionalist who enjoyed Earl Scruggs, and a humble man who served his community and generously shared his bluegrass experience and musical knowledge. Steve Mandell died at age 76 in 2018 from prostate cancer, survived by his wife, Terry, with whom he had been married for 44 years, and their son, Joshua who is now 31.
Steve Mandell was most widely known as the guitarist on the 1973 Grammy award-winning “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance, but he also played extensively as a studio and touring musician. He learned the guitar and banjo as a playmate of his childhood neighbor, Winnie Winston, who went on to play briefly with Bill Monroe. As a teenager, Mandell was a regular at the Sunday bluegrass scene in the late 1950s in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park. In 1961 he, David Grisman, and two others formed the Garrett Mountain Boys.
Mandell toured with Judy Collins throughout the 1960s. The day after playing both banjo and guitar at a March 1964 concert recorded for The Judy Collins Live album, Collins dropped him off at Fort Dix to start his two years of Army service. Mandell expected to be sent to Vietnam as a radio teletype operator. Instead, last-minute orders sent him to Germany. After his 1966 discharge, Mandell reconnected with Judy Collins.
Common Ground on the Hill’s Founder and Executive Director, Walt Michael, recalls meeting Mandell when they were introduced by their mutual friend, Tony Trischka, at the 1972 Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. Michael was touring with the bluegrass band Bottle Hill, two decades before Michael started Common Ground on the Hill. A friendship developed as Michael and Mandell shared experiences evolving from the later years of the folk scene in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park.
While touring with Collins in Illinois in 1973, Mandell met his future wife, Terry, when she was near the stage at a concert venue of 20,000. According to reported remarks of a bandmate and friend, Mandell was immediately smitten and invited Terry to a dinner that evening, which Judy Collins attended. Steve and Terry married and eventually settled in New York, where Steve played in pit bands of Broadway shows, was a session musician for studio recording, and a sideman for live shows. He also kept steady employment selling electronic equipment so he could maintain a stable family life.
Motivated in part because technological developments had reduced both studio and Broadway opportunities for professional musicians in New York City, the Mandells preceded Michael in relocating from New York state to the Baltimore area in 1988. They became regular participants at Common Ground events. Steve served both as an instructor for Traditions Week and as a judge for the Deer Creek Fiddlers’ Convention’s talent contest.
After Steve’s death, Terry Mandell approached Walt Michael as she was exploring how to start a scholarship program to perpetuate Steve’s love of music, and primarily bluegrass. Recalling that she had been more interested in folk and country music before she fell in love with bluegrass as she was falling in love with Steve, Terry says, “I married into bluegrass.” Michael knew that Steve Mandell’s life had reflected the ideals of Common Ground, so the Mandell Scholarship seemed like a natural fit.
Although Terry is a well-organized and capable accountant who is employed by J. D. Power, she was pleased to leverage the resources and credibility of McDaniel College and Common Ground. To build on and expand the opportunities that Common Ground’s platform has enabled, Terry Mandell regularly travels as a volunteer from her home in the Baltimore suburbs to promote the Scholarship Fund at a considerable number of East Coast bluegrass and Americana music festivals and events. Her extroverted and positive personality make her an ideal ambassador.
The first scholarships were awarded by the Mandell Scholarship Fund in 2020. Applications are reviewed by an advisory board of music professionals; and awarded funds are paid directly to a scholarship recipient’s instructor. Thirty individual scholarships of $500 to $1,000 were awarded over the Fund’s first four years to enable persons of all ages to learn or enhance their ability to play acoustic string instruments.
The Mandell Scholarship Fund not only gives applicants an opportunity to propose a qualified instructor who can provide them with in-person lessons, but recently it began to fund virtual lessons by tapping into its growing network of instructors who teach through video conferencing. Terry Mandell summarizes her excitement about the recently enabled virtual lessons, “Technology rocks!”
Two scholarships were awarded in 2022 to musicians from the West Bengal city of Kolkata, India, who had been referred by multi-instrumentalist and instructor, Tara Linhardt, who had met the applicants as she toured in Asia. One scholarship enabled a student in the West Bengal city of Kolkata to take mandolin lessons from Jake Howard, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, who records and tours as the mandolinist for the Chicago-based Henhouse Prowlers. Another recipient from India is taking guitar lessons with Grant Gordy, a native of Oregon who now resides in New York City. Gordy toured as a sideman with Tony Trischka, the David Grisman Quintet, and others before in 2013 becoming a founding member of Mr. Sun with Darol Anger and Joe Walsh.
For those who want to contribute financial support to worldwide expansion of bluegrass and other Americana music, the Mandell Scholarship Fund is a credible vehicle. Common Ground on the Hill is recognized as a tax-exempt organization under section 501 (c) (3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Donations are appreciated, either through the Common Ground on the Hill website or by sending a check to: Common Ground on the Hill, McDaniel College, 2 College Hill, Westminster, MD 21157. If donating to a specific program, such as the “Mandell Music Scholarship,” designate that on the memo line of a check, or otherwise in an on-line donation.
Veterans’ Initiative at Common Ground on the Hill’s Traditions Week
The path which led retired Marine Corps Corporal Josh Hisle to Common Ground on the Hill reflects Walt Michael’s expansive network and credibility as a curator of acoustic string music with American roots. The Veterans’ Initiative was launched in 2012 by Hisle and Michael. Hisle is one of dozens of Veterans who have participated as part of a Traditions Week, which were explained in more detail in the June article.
Hisle first attended Traditions Week at Common Ground on the Hill at the suggestion of a musician with whom he had been collaborating on a tour and recording project. Hisle’s friend, Michael Ronstadt, came with the Santa Cruz River Band at Michael’s invitation to perform music rooted in the cultures of the American Southwest and Mexico, as Ronstadt’s famous, Tucson-based family had done since the late 19th Century.
Michael recalls that, when he first heard Hisle perform his harsh ballads with raw emotion, “I was blown away, not only by his ability, but by his need to speak the truth.”
Hisle had been suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since his return from Iraq. His experience at Common Ground led Hisle to encourage those who served with him as part of Fox Company 2/5 to join him at Traditions Weeks the next year. What resulted was that Hisle and Michael soon co-founded the Veterans’ Initiative.
Michael has a stained-glass peace symbol hanging in his office window, which is symbolic not only of his decision to become a conscientious objector to military service in 1969, but also of his friendship with the artist who gave it to him. Known by the moniker Ragtime, that Vietnam veteran and stained-glass artist from West Virginia said, “I want to be a part of Common Ground because there are people there who are walking the walk.”
Ragtime and Hisle served as American warriors during conflicts that were separated by four decades and thousands of miles. They express their pain and hope in the different mediums of stain glass and singing poetic songs. Since 2010, many veterans have participated in Traditions Week to share their experiences.
Hisle has a unique ability to articulate his feelings. Over two decades, he has shared not only poetic and recorded songs, but also been featured in a variety of video recordings. Only hours before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an embedded ABC correspondent first recorded him. There has been much footage since then which reveals Hisle’s evolving emotions and perspective, including an ABC follow-up interview in 2023, which asked him to describe his state of well-being. Hisle said, “I’m pretty good. I had to take care of some stuff though. It’s tough.”
Participation in Common Ground helped to encourage and validate Hisle’s journey through reentry stages and recovery from PTSD-related issues along a path which ultimately led him to be the co-producer and co-director of From War To Wisdom, a film released in 2017, subtitled “When The War Ends, The Real Battle Begins.” Hisle’s primary focus in the film is not necessarily an anti-war message, but rather to express the need to help warriors to readjust when they return home as veterans. Hisle’s story reveals both the veterans’ need for reentry support as well as the benefit of Common Ground on the Hill offering the special initiative as part of Traditions Week.
Hisle had served two tours in Iraq as a Designated Marksman. He had enlisted as a patriotic 19-year-old on September 11, 2001, immediately after seeing the planes hit the World Trade Center. After extensive training, only hours after he had won a talent show performing songs with his guitar, Hisle felt proud to be a grunt near the front of the March 20, 2003 Iraq invasion. His first tour of duty in Iraq did not dampen his sense of patriotic and selfless devotion to military service.
On his second tour that began in 2004, his Fox 2/5 Marine unit was stationed among a hotbed of insurgent activity in Ramadi. Fox 2/5 was targeted regularly by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the Marines had intense interactions with Iraqi civilians. Fox 2/5 removed suspected terrorists from homes that resounded with screams of women and crying children as the Marines left with the man whose head they had covered with a bag. Hisle’s sense of patriotic pride and purpose became confused; and he “didn’t feel the cause anymore.” Instead, he felt that he should be home with his high school sweetheart, who he had married after his first tour, and the son who had been born only weeks before his second tour began.
When he was able to put down his rifle amidst the regular fighting on that second Iraq tour, Hisle vented his frustration by picking up his guitar and singing songs he had written to vent his disillusionment. His music was captured on film taken by Mike Cerre, an embedded correspondent of ABC News Nightline, who earned an Emmy Award for his reporting, which had included Hisle winning the talent show on his first tour.
When Cerre was collaborating with Neil Young for the 2008 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young movie Déjà Vu, Young saw Cerre’s Iraq footage and asked Cerre to introduce him to Hisle. Young’s friendship, and the opportunities he gave Hisle to share a stage with him, expanded awareness of Hisle’s music. When Hisle first came with Ronstadt and the Santa Cruz River Band to Common Ground’s Traditions Week, he and Ronstadt had begun to work on a project which included many of their original songs. They toured together and eventually recorded and released “Lost in Holland in Concert: 2009-2011.”
A video interview when Hisle was in an earlier stage of reentry from his second Iraq tour was recorded in relation to the 2008 Déjà Vu release. A reporter asked him to talk about his song, “Killer.” Hisle said that a VA counselor he met with for PTSD treatment told him that “your problem is that you need to admit that you’re a killer.” Hisle said “that (h)issed me off and I went home and wrote the song.”
In ABC’s 2023 interview, fifteen years after the first recorded interview about “Killer,” Hisle was again asked to describe the significance of that song. He said, “Once you admit that you are a killer. . . that you did kill people. . . Move on. There’s not anything I can do about it. When you are going to war it’s unchangeable history.” Asked if he regretted serving as a Marine in Iraq, Hisle responded, “I’ve tried to regret it because I did terrible things… I don’t regret it. I’ve got to say it’s weird though…Its not regret; its something else…I regret that all that happened.”
Participation and testimony of Ragtime and Hisle validates that Common Ground’s Veterans’ Initiative at Traditions Week has been a special place for both Persian Gulf and Vietnam Veterans to be heard. Hisle’s story shows that Common Ground also has been therapeutic. Hisle’s testimony on Common Ground’s website, “thanks for saving my life,” is not hyperbole when considered that nearly ten times as many veterans of the war in Iraq have committed suicide than the number who were killed there in combat.
Common Ground on the Border in Arizona
During Common Ground’s first thirty years, programs have been offered occasionally at geographic locations considerably distant from its Westminster, Maryland hub. The first sister organization was Common Ground Scotland, running from the late nineties into the new millennium, founded as a result of Michael’s extensive touring in the United Kingdom. Since 2014, Common Ground on the Border has promoted an annual event held in Sahuarita, Arizona, just south of Tucson, Arizona, about 50 miles from the Mexican border city of Nogales. The event, offered in cooperation with that community’s Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, includes participation in local music and cultural activities as well as participating in local humanitarian service projects.
Michael initiated this event after meeting Michael Ronstadt of the Santa Cruz River Band and learning about the Green Valley Samaritans, who since 2005 have been providing water, food and medical assistance to migrants who risk their lives in the desert when they seek refuge in the United States illegally, with no systemic provision of food or water. Common Ground on the Border operates from a location near the 30,000 member Tohono O’odham Nation, whose 2.9-million-acre reservation begins just twenty miles west of the Sahuarita area, and straddles 62 miles of Mexican border. Tribal land rights and litigation probably will preclude a border wall from ever being completed along that section of the Mexican border. Michael notes that “some would argue that the sheer ruggedness of the mountains there precludes the need for a wall.”
Michael traveled to Sahuarita in January 2024 to be among a group of 200 registrants who experienced Common Ground on the Border. Having visited the borderlands in January 2024 and annually since 2008, Michael has observed the human consequences of “antiquated American immigration policy.” He does not propose a specific solution. As a musician who is quiet social activist, without the hubris of a politician, Michael opines that “as people on the planet, it’s our job to get the issue fixed.” He expresses frustration that the immigration issue has been a “political football that is thrown back and forth by our representatives, some of whom seem to know very little about the issue.”
This year, the Common Ground participants saw a premier of the film “Shura,” an Oscar-qualifying documentary which explores both the life-threatening conditions suffered by immigrants and the extent of the service of volunteers. It features Shura Wallin, a spry octogenarian who has dedicated her life to saving the lives of migrants who she finds after they have crossed the border illegally. Reviewers credit Shura with shedding light on the tragic human consequences of what is happening in the borderlands region, as it also explores the kindness of one human being to another.
The next Common Ground on the Border event in Sahuarita, Arizona is scheduled to occur January 16-18, 2025. Individuals who may be interested in participating are encouraged to look for updates at Common Ground on the Hill’s website.
Winners of 2024 Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention.
The June 2, 2024 Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention sponsored by Common Ground on the Hill included not only an in-person competition, but also a separate contest for virtual participants who submitted from five states.
The 2024 winners of the in-person contests were: Intemperate Reelers, best band; Todd Clewell, fiddle; Michael Riedman, guitar; Christopher Curran, banjo; Emily Day, mandolin; Julia Gabriel, vocalist; David Kilby, special performer; and Eli Gorby, young performer. The virtual winner for fiddle and guitar, Micah John, competed from Massachusetts. Other virtual contest winners were Jakob Wiswesser for banjo, and Damian Gadiyak for guitar.
In addition to the virtual competition of the Deer Creek Fiddlers Convention, Common Ground on the Hill’s virtual summer programming included participants from 22 states and Australia who shared in on-line activities to study and enjoy traditional, roots-based arts during Traditions Week. A second Traditions Weeks attracted nearly 300 participants to the classes, concerts, dances, and other activities on the campus of McDaniel College.
Common Ground Concert Series
Common Ground Downtown is a concert series offered in partnership with the Carroll County Arts Council. The 2024-25 winter concert series open with Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen on October 5th; The Seldom Scene on November 23rd; Bruce Molsky on December 6th; and Walt Michael & Co. on December 20th. As anticipated 2025 engagements are committed, details will be available on Common Ground’s website.
