04 Storytelling Festivals

Storytelling Festival

Athens, AL October 23-24, 2015

Storytelling Festivals are held all over the country in schools, churches and outdoors in large circus tents. This article describes our experience at the festival in Athens, Alabama. Athens is on I-65 half-way between Nashville and Birmingham, a hundred miles from each city.

Probably the largest storytelling event is the National Storytelling Festival held the first weekend in October in East Tennessee in the town of Jonesborough. Several thousand attend this festival every year. Five large circus tents are set up in the downtown area. Attendees shuttle among the tents to listen to their chosen tellers. Each teller will perform for forty-five minutes to an hour, three or four times a day. Each of their performances is different.

Storytelling Festivals are not the nostalgic reminiscences of old folks rocking on the front porch or war stories increasingly embellished every time they are told at the old codgers table over morning coffee. The “tellers,” as they are called, are professional entertainers, close cousins to stand-up comedians. Their genius is taking everyday situations and making them hilariously funny. Other stories are loosely based upon actual events and relationships and some are totally fictitious flights of fancy, like Bil Lepp, whose stories have no basis in reality whatsoever.

Some tellers are also outstanding musicians and song writers, interspersing their tales with songs. A couple of the best tellers are retired ministers, but maybe that should not be so strange after all. That is not to imply that ministers are prone to bend the truth to augment a point, but that they draw energy and affirmation from an appreciative crowd and respond creatively. A look at each teller’s website reveals an exhausting schedule of a hundred to more than two hundred engagements a year, many of them with school children as the audience.

There is a YouTube link below for each of the tellers in the Athens Festival. Listening to all of them in one sitting may require too great a block of time, but the entertainment derived from listening to one or two, should generate enough motivation to eagerly return for more. Don’t miss the Andy and Bil’s duet at the bottom of this page.

The Athens Storytelling Festival, like many others, is held in a circus tent adjacent to the courthouse on the town square. The tellers for this year’s event were: Andy Orfut Irvin, Michael Reno Harrell, Donald Davis, Carmen Deedy and Bil Lett, all in the top ten list of “tellers.”

Thursday night is called Tellers Olio when each person takes about a 20-30 minute set. Friday and Saturday, each teller has 45 minute sets. Each person performs twice each day. The daily schedule was:

9:00 – 11:15 First Session I

11:15 – 1:15 lunch

1:15 – 3:00 First Session II

5:30 – 9:40 Second Session

Donald Davis grew up in the Western North Carolina mountains and his stories are usually set there.
He is a graduate of Davidson University and Duke University Divinity School. He is a retired Methodist minister, a former chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Storytelling Association and a guest host for the National Public Radio Program “Good Evening.”

Take a few minutes and enjoy a story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH_EpidWTxA

Carmen Deedy is an award-winning author of children’s books. She was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in Decatur, Georgia, where she still lives. She has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. This YouTube video, “A Voting Booth Built for Two” is a story about her Cuban parents in America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1K1UOaAiw8

Michael Reno Harrell is from East Tennessee, but now lives in North Carolina, not far down the road from Donald Davis. He is a superb guitarist and song writer as well as storyteller, winning awards for both music and stories. “Southern Suggestions” is a typical Michael Harrell song, filled with downhome musings that resonate with most of us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6uNXtOirs8&index=2&list=RDeKEZHRMRzw8

Andy Orfut Irwin is another Georgian. He grew up in Covington. His website describes him as a storyteller, humorist, singer, songwriter, musician, whistler, and walking menagerie of sound effects and dialects. His favorite character is his 85 year-old widowed aunt Marguerite, who has recently become a physician, because she was tired of the bridge club and the garden club. Andy is especially mesmerising for children. Here is a sweet lullaby “The Light Went Away.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A2CXMm4sC0

Now meet Aunt Marguerite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A2CXMm4sC0

Bil Lepp is king of the Liar’s Club. His outrageous tall tales defy any semblance to reality, but are guaranteed to keep an audience laughing. Bil is a West Virginian and a Methodist minister. It is impossible to imagine him being serious in the pulpit, or even having a cursory acquaintance with truth. His trademark hangdog, T shirt and ball cap persona elicits laughs even before he opens his mouth. He is one of the most popular tellers and headlines any event in which he is a part. He performs frequently at the National Storytelling Festival. His family often travels with him. They were with him in Athens. Andy Irwin commented that Bil’s children were “Road Schooled.”