Bones Fest II

September 26, 1998 – Greensboro, NC
Hosts: Cowett Family
Summary    Original Story: None      Video Highlights

Bones Fest II was hosted by Everett Cowett’s   family   at Bur-Mill Park. Fortunately, the Rhythm Bones Society has   the   video of Everett demonstrating his bones playing for Roy Ackland, who worked for Fox 8 News

The fest was a one-day event, attended by four Cowett family members, Russ Myers, Tom Rice, Carl Hedrick, and me, Steve Wixson. I was the videographer for the day.

After some informal jamming and talking, Ev started the program with his story of learning to play the bones. Then, Ev asked Russ Myers to talk about the history of rhythm bones. His presentation was rich and enlightening with so much information about this pre-historical instrument. (Russ’s wife, Wilma, would opine that she lived with an “encyclopedia”.) After the history lesson, the attendees shared their personal stories of learning to play the bones. There was one common theme in all the stories: bbefore this bones fest, each person was certain

they were the only bones player in the country. The attendees then played his/her bones to music they had brought to the fest. The unique and fun aspect of the bones fest was that the style of bones playing was different for every person.

I was juiced up when I returned home and after kissing wife Janet hello, I went straight to my computer and found almost 100 pages of bones websites. Wow, I’ve got new friends.    Steve Wixson