Bluegrass film/movie news Archives - Page 2 of 23

Paradise, A Town of Sinners & Saints – a bluegrass musical

Bluegrass lovers have known for years just how powerful film and television can be in getting the music in front of millions of people. From Foggy Mountain Breakdown in the Bonnie and Clyde movie in 1967, through Duelin’ Banjos in Deliverance in 1972, up to Man of Constant Sorrow in the O Brother, Where Art Thou film, both bluegrass performers and fans have see the profile of the music rise in popular appreciation. Likewise with television programs like The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction in the ’60s.

Western Europe saw a similar bump when the Belgian film Broken Circle Breakdown was released in 2014.

Now we have learned about a newly-completed bluegrass musical that is slated for release in 2023 called Paradise, A Town of Sinners and Saints. It contains 19 new songs, almost all performed in a bluegrass style, with the band intimately integrated into the cast of performers.

The film project grew out of a stage play by the same name, written by Cliff Wagner, Tom Sage, and Bill Robertson. Wagner is the music guy, and Sage and Robertson are former writers for National Lampoon. It’s a musical comedy with some elements of the cornball humor from the old Hee-Haw show.

On stage, it is set in a small town called Paradise, meant to be in eastern Kentucky, though that is never stated, with the townspeople trying to figure out how they might save their community and bring some life back into Paradise. Members of a bluegrass band were on stage with the cast, making the integration of the many songs into the storyline that much more seamless.

Whenever the creative team have staged it live, the response has been quite powerfully positive, but given the high cost of putting on a musical theater production, especially on the road, they have come up with the idea of making Paradise into a movie, in order to help promote the play.

That’s not as crazy as it sounds, according to Cliff Wagner, who wrote all of the music and much of the lyrics for the show.

“It’s really difficult to get a musical out there. Every time you put it on at a theater, it’s very expensive. Bill came up with the idea to make a movie in order to help promote the play. There’s a musical called Once, sort of based on Irish music, that did the same thing. They made a film and then ended up opening on Broadway with worldwide distribution.”

The film version of Paradise, A Town of Sinners and Saints has been completed, and had its first screening last week at the Charlie Chaplin Theater in Los Angeles to great acclaim.

But let’s back up a bit and find out a little more about Cliff Wagner, a legit bluegrass guy who has played music all over the US.

“I grew up with bluegrass in Greenwood, MI, and started playing banjo when I was 11. As a teen I was performing with BF Mims & The Delta Bluegrass. BF had grown up in a cabin with 13 siblings, and he taught me all about the music – Monroe, Jimmy Martin, Stanley Brother – all of its. By the time I left home I had the whole catalog learned. I went to Berklee in Boston, and I did play guitar, but at that time they didn’t do bluegrass at all. I learned a lot musically, which I still use today. I didn’t graduate – the final year was intense – but when I left I could read, had some theory down, and understood what music was about.

I played around some around Boston on banjo, guitar, fiddle, or dobro. Then I moved to New York and then to LA, and am now back in Boston.”

It was in Los Angeles that Cliff made his biggest mark in bluegrass, leading a popular group called Cliff Wagner & The Old No 7. They played a traditional bluegrass style but with original material, and they had a brush with fame in 2007 on a Fox TV competition program.

“Cliff Wagner & The Old No 7 was my last group in California. We performed on an ill-fated reality show called The Next Great American Band, and stayed on there for seven weeks. It was produced by the same people that did American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, but the network wasn’t really behind it. It wasn’t renewed for a second season, but having gone through that whole process really helped when we were writing the musical.”

Wagner tells us that the initial idea for Paradise was his, but that he couldn’t have done it without his co-writers.

“Tom and Bill have been friends for years. When I lived in LA, I went to Tom one day and said, ‘I’m tired of just going out and playing gigs. I want to put together a show – a variety show, with some music, some skits, maybe have some guests.’ So Tom and I started writing some things, and as we were working, he said, ‘This would be better if there was a story,’ and half way through it we realized, ‘I think we’re writing a musical.’

None of us had ever written something like this – we just took a swing at it. I had been doing some music directing at a theater, and I showed the director the finished script, and he loved it. We did the live show for the first time there.”

Of course there had to be some changes to the basic script and setting going from stage to screen.

“The way we did it on stage was to have the band on stage with the performers… they were part of the town. We used a different approach in the film with choreography, singing, backup singing, and all that. So we recorded the music first.

I have a band here in Boston that I play with, so we could save some money if I just recorded all the music in Boston with scratch vocals. We finished recording at the Boom Room (Kevin Jarvis’ place) in about two weeks while they were rehearsing for filming in LA. We got a soundstage, and actually used the set we had been using for the live performances and one additional one we built.

The film opens up in a coal mining town called Paradise. We never say it’s in Kentucky, but it might be. The coal mine has dried up, everyone is leaving town, and they are trying to figure out how to save the town. Then a preacher comes to town and says he has an idea for the town to participate in a reality TV show to find the most downtrodden, beat-down hillbilly town in America. The show is called Boom To Bust.

In the beginning of the second act they perform the show’s theme song. The final premise is that actually everyone in this town all sing and play music, and that eventually is what saves them.”

As a bluegrass guy, Cliff says that he didn’t want to have the music be similar to a standard musical.

“The music is not what is typically written in a musical. I wrote songs that are songs – they have verses and choruses that relate to what’s happening in the scene. The story is told through both the song lyrics and the spoken dialogue. Every time we have done the show live, we see people coming out of the theater singing the songs.”

So the obvious question is, “how did they raise the money for a feature length film?”

“Tom and Bill, with our producer Brad Wilson, basically found all the money to fund the film production. I had moved to Boston and we had just done a live show in Austin, when Bill called and told me, ‘We’re going to do a movie.’ They started with a GoFundMe page, and from that they found several people who wanted to back the project.

Justin Ward, our director, knew exactly what to do with each shot. He had the whole movie in his mind.

We filmed the whole thing in six days. Only two actors in the movie had been in the play. Everyone else hadn’t seen it before. But we put it together in less than a year, with two or three cameras the whole time.”

What’s next for the producers and writers?

“We have applied to some film festivals, and are talking to distributors. The screening last week was primarily for the investors, cast and crew, and a few others. It was the first time we had seen the finished product. There are so many ways to distribute a film now, so we are very hopeful.

The final edit is just under 120 minutes. There are some very traditional sounding songs, and some that are less so. But the entire score was played with bluegrass instruments, plus drums. It all falls pretty much into the bluegrass and old country realm. There’s one song that the preacher sings that is more of an uptempo gospel feel.”

Best of luck to Paradise, A Town of Sinners and Saints, and everyone involved in the production. There is a web site and social media pages for the film where you can keep up with screenings around the country. Let’s hope this project is successful, both in movie houses and live on stage!

Don’t Put Her Down – Hazel Dickens film by Julia Golonka

A new Julia Golonka film about IBMA Hall of Fame member Hazel Dickens takes its title from Dickens’ powerful anthem Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There, and explores how she, along with her musical partner Alice Gerrard, became the first women to front a bluegrass band, and reflects on the role of women in bluegrass today.

The short film – 32 minutes long – covers Hazel’s migration to Baltimore from coal country West Virginia, her activism for coal miners and working people, and the impact her upbringing had on her song writing. Lifelong collaborators and up-and-coming musicians share what it means to have bluegrass songs written from a woman’s point of view, and keep Hazel’s memory alive.

Golonka provides this background information …

“Until I came across the music of Hazel Dickens, I had not realized that up to that point I was primarily listening to men play bluegrass. I was listening to a playlist of covers of Long Black Veil, and when Hazel and Alice’s version came on, I was absolutely struck by her voice. I then found the Pioneering Women of Bluegrass album, and that’s when I really dove into her music. I was talking to a musician friend about her, and he mentioned that her nephew Buddy lives in Baltimore and is active in the music scene. I met up with Buddy in early 2017 and proposed my idea for this film and he was very supportive, and I finished the film in December 2021. Hazel and Alice were inducted to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in the fall of 2017, and that was the first big shoot I did for the film. I didn’t end up using any of the ceremony footage in the end, but it was still so inspiring to be there and see how many people have been touched by Hazel’s music.

After that shoot, I was filming with Hazel’s nephew Buddy and a few Baltimore-based musicians, and learning more about Hazel, and I really got going on the film in 2019. I was accepted to be a fellow at the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund at Johns Hopkins with this project, and that provided me with storytelling workshops, feedback, a great editing mentor who was familiar with Hazel’s music, and then I also received funding for the film from SZIF. This funding was absolutely essential and made the film possible. In the time that I was working on this film, I ended up having a lot more opportunities for shoots than I thought I would! I thought I would mostly be filming interviews and working with archival content, but multiple events came up throughout the last few years – Hazel and Alice inducted to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, Hazel’s induction to the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame, the release of Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, and the dedication of the Hazel Dickens Memorial Bridge. The fact that Hazel continues to get honored in the years after her death made me feel like this is a relevant time to make this film, and that the audience of Hazel fans is still growing.

One shoot that stands out was going down to her hometown of Montcalm, West Virginia, to film the dedication of the Hazel Dickens Memorial Bridge on her birthday in 2019. Her nephew Buddy took us (myself and a production/camera assistant) to a jam with musicians that had played with Hazel, we heard stories from them, and we visited her grave. The film ends with the bridge dedication ceremony, which felt like the most beautiful way to honor her since so many of her songs are about home.

The film features interviews with Ginny Hawker, Dudley Connell, Ketch Secor, Karen Collins, Molly Tuttle, Avery Hellman, Tom Gray, and Buddy Dickens.

Throughout the film, scenes from Hazel’s life play out on a Crankie, a hand-scrolled panorama featuring cut paper and shadow puppetry. Since my film is a story about the past that looks towards the future, I was drawn to using this archaic form of storytelling and presenting it in a digital way. Baltimore has a very active Crankie scene, and I worked with papercut artist Katherine Fahey to create the Crankies for my film. There is one long Crankie scene in the film where Lost Patterns plays in its entirety, and that’s the only full song of Hazel’s we hear. I chose this song because Hazel mentions that she is most proud of her song writing, and that this song is one she is especially proud of.”

Some forthcoming showings ..

Albuquerque Film + Music Experience – Friday, September 16, 2022, 9:30am, NHCC – Wells Fargo Theatre, 1701 4th St. SW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102, (in-person screening) and through to November 18, 2022 (for online viewing) [this is the only virtual option currently scheduled)

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass – Friday, September 30, 2022. 7:30pm, Hardly Strictly Out of the Park, Sweetwater Music Hall, 19 Corte Madera Avenue, Mill Valley, California 94941

New Haven Documentary Film Festival – Saturday, October 22, 2022, 4:00 p.m., Bow-Tie Criterion Cinemas – Screening Room 8, 86 Temple Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06510

Reading Film Fest, Reading, Pennsylvania – Sunday, October 30, 2022, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Boscov Theater, 201 Washington Street, Reading, Pennsylvania 19601

To sign up for notifications regarding other screenings contact Julia Golonka, visit her web site.

Film Credits

Director / Producer: Julia Golonka
Assistant Editor: Madeline Becker
Consulting Editor: Kirsten Hollander
Director of Photography: Michael O’Leary, Julia Golonka
Composer: Connor Vance
Audio Engineer: Tim St. Clair
Archival Assistant: Clara Rieldinger

Hazel Dickens was born in Montcalm, Mercer County, West Virginia, on June 1, 1925, the eighth of eleven siblings in a mining family of six boys and five girls.

She was a bluegrass music pioneer – one of the first women to front a bluegrass band – and a songwriter who wrote of coal miners, unionization, hard times and feminism, among other topics.

During her lifetime, Dickens received many awards for her contributions to music. She was the first woman to receive an Award of Merit from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) in 1993 for contributions to bluegrass music. In 1995 Dickens was inducted into the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Greats and three years later she was named Traditional Female Vocalist award in the Washington D.C. area’s WAMMIE® Awards.

Notable among them are a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship and a 2008 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 from what is now Folk Alliance International.

She was among the first inductees into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

The DC Bluegrass Union established the Hazel Dickens Songwriting Contest in her name.

Julia Golonka is an editor and cinematographer with a degree in film from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has worked on several feature-length documentaries, including Anatomy of Wings and It’s Not Who I Am. She specializes in music cinematography.

Her work has been featured online by Rolling Stone, Relix and Bluegrass Today.

Bill Evans The Banjo In America coming to DVD

For nearly four decades banjoist Bill Evans has been offering a presentation called The Banjo in America, which condenses the 250 year history of our beloved banjo into a concert-length event. During these shows, which are part performance, part demonstration, and part history lesson, Bill plays a wide variety of musical styles on either historic/vintage or period correct instruments.

Given the difficulty of traveling with a dozen or more banjos, Evans has only been able to offer The Banjo in America on special occasions, or fairly near his home base, but he has recently announced that a combo CD/DVD package of this presentation will be available next month.

Produced in cooperation with David Bragger and Tiki Parlour Recordings in Los Angeles, the DVD is a 65 minute video of Bill’s lecture/performance, paired with an audio CD with full length recordings of the various pieces he plays, 19 in all.

Anyone with an interest in the history and evolution of the banjo, from its ancestral roots in the cultural memories of enslaved Africans, to its current iteration as a professional musical instrument used around the world should find this fascinating. Bill traces the history in both the design and playing styles of historic banjos, along with the music of the various periods that would have been performed on them.

Here is a brief teaser to offer a flavor of the DVD.

It isn’t difficult to imagine this video/audio set having a prominent place in the music libraries of colleges all over the world, or in any place where the cultural exchange that brought today’s banjo to its role of prominence might be explored. Likewise, it deserves a place in the personal collections of anyone who plays or has an interest in the banjo, regardless of style.

Pre-orders are available now for delivery on July 4.

Short Life of Trouble: The Legend of G.B. Grayson

Germain Media and Appalachian Memory Keepers have completed their film on G.B. Grayson, the blind, old time fiddler that some contend is the father of contemporary old time music, much as Bill Monroe was of bluegrass. Some think of him more as the grandfather of bluegrass.

Titled Short Life of Trouble: The Legend of G.B. Grayson, this short film tells the life of this iconic artist, whose brief career as a recording artist made a sizable impact on Appalachian music from the the late 1920s until today. Grayson died at 40 years of age in a tragic automobile incident in 1930, or he would surely have continued recording until his natural death.

G.B. wasn’t totally blind, but functionally so enough that music was the only sort of work he could do. He both wrote new songs in the style common to his day, and adapted many other old songs to the sort of pre-bluegrass string band music of the time. Many songs now standards in the genre are attributed to him, like Tom Dooley, Train 45, Handsome Molly, Short Life of Trouble, Going Down the Lee Highway, Omie Wise, Rose Conley, Banks of the Ohio, and Little Maggie.

Short Life of Trouble mixes interviews, narration, and dramatic reenactment to tell the story of this formidable musician. Discussions are included with Ketch Secor, John McCutcheon, and Ralph Stanley II, among others, sharing the history of this largely unknown artist whose contributions to our music have been so substantial. Running 39 minutes, the film packs a lot into a brief run time.

Directed and produced by Kelley St. Germain, the film has been accepted into multiple film festivals, and was awarded the Best Short Documentary prize at the Port Blair International Film Festival in India earlier this year.

You can get a taste in the theatrical trailer Kelley has prepared.

For more information on Short Life of Trouble: The Legend of G.B. Grayson, visit the film’s official web site. There you can see the film festivals where it will be screened, and will be able to find news should it be made available for home distribution.

Bluegrass Country Soul to be screened at 2021 Camp Springs festival

Talk about a family reunion!

This year over Labor Day weekend, the vintage classic, Bluegrass Country Soul, will be screened during the 2021 Camp Springs Bluegrass Festival – the very spot where the movie was filmed in 1971.

A lot has changed over the past 50 years. Camp Springs had fallen into disrepair and disuse, but the park was recently purchased by Cody and Donna Johnson, who have restored and updated the facility, adding a modern bathhouse, hot showers, a fishing pond, and a concession area. They have hosted a number of live music events since taking over in 2018, and are delighted to see bluegrass at the park once again.

Back in the 1970s, when the concept of bluegrass festivals was in its infancy, the great bluegrass impresario Carlton Haney held weekend shows at Camp Springs with his brother. That stage saw performances by all the creators of the music: Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, The Osborne Brothers, The Country Gentlemen, and all the popular acts of the day.

Carlton had hosted festivals in Virginia from 1965 to 1968, and the hubbub created from his Camp Springs festivals in 1969 and ’70 stirred filmmaker Albrt Ihde to travel to North Carolina with a crew to capture live footage in 1971. The rest of the country was largely unaware of the bluegrass festival phenomenon, and Ihde presented examples of the music and the bluegrass culture in his 1972 feature-length documentary, Bluegrass Country Soul.

In the film, we are treated to music from Earl Scruggs, The Lilly Brothers, Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, J.D. Crowe & The Kentucky Mountain Boys, Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys, Del McCoury & The Dixie Pals, The Country Gentlemen, The Osborne Brothers, Bluegrass 45, and The Bluegrass Alliance, which featured young superpickers Sam Bush and Tony Rice. Ihde also shot audience footage and interviews with Carlton Haney and a number of attendees.

Since 1971, the film has been carefully restored and new, high-quality prints created for theatrical viewing. A copy is in the permanent collection of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, KY. It is also available on DVD in 4k HD widescreen format with Dolby surround sound.

On Friday, September 3, at 9:30 p.m., attendees at the 2021 Camp Springs Bluegrass Festival will enjoy a screening of Bluegrass Country Soul on the main stage, while they sit on the ground where the film was made fifty years ago.

Some of the same acts appearing in the film will also be performing on the festival this year, including Bobby Osborne and Doyle Lawson.

Further details and ticket information can be found online.

Marcy Marxer preparing to film All Wigged Out for TV

Marcy Marxer, known to bluegrass an old time music lovers from her long-running duo with her partner, Cathy Fink, has announced plans to film her one-woman show, All Wigged Out, for possible television or movie house distribution.

The show, which features a mix of storytelling, music, and comedy, is drawn from Marcy’s six year battle with breast cancer, just recently concluded with her final chemo treatment earlier this year. Her ordeal probably didn’t seem very funny at the start, but Marxer’s sunny disposition and will to survive has allowed her to find humor in even the most challenging times.

The title, All Wigged Out, came from an observation she made about the sense of community that unites people dealing with the life changing – or ending – struggle with cancer.

“There were times when the wig shop gals gave me more information than my doctors. So did conversations with other patients in the chemo room.”

The play was finished last year, with performances scheduled at a number of theaters, until COVID restrictions made that impossible. During that down time, she and Cathy revised the production for film, and are planning to capture it professionally in a small theater this summer with an eye towards a pay-for-view release during Cancer Awareness Month in October of 2021.

To raise the necessary funds, Marxer and Fink have launched a GoFundMe campaign, hoping to raise $100,000 to cover the production costs. That may seem like a big ask, but they have already reached one quarter of that goal, and feel confident that their many fans and friends all across the US and Canada will support this effort.

GoFundMe doesn’t allow campaigns to list the various premiums that will be given to donors, but those are posted on Facebook, and include copies of Cathy and Marcy CDs all the way up to private concerts and free streams of the premiere.

They prepared this video to explain the fundraiser.

GoFundMe allows for easy and secure donations to be made using PayPal or major credit cards. Since these donations are made through the Institute of Musical Traditions, they are tax deductible as well.

To see all the details or make a contribution, simply visit their GoFundMe page online.

Nu-Blu’s The Stories We Can Tell now on Amazon Prime and Tubi

The Stories We Can Tell, a live concert DVD released earlier late last year by North Carolina’s Nu-Blu, is now included with Amazon Prime.

That means that any subscriber to the Amazon Prime streaming service can watch the video at no additional charge. It is available now on Tubi as well.

The film mixes live stage performances from the band, led by the husband-and-wife team of Daniel and Carolyn Routh, with interviews of the two about their lives on the road. It was released prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, which called a halt to their 2020 tour on the west coast back in March.

The Stories We Can Tell runs one hour and eighteen minutes. Here’s a look at the trailer.

Nu-Blu also wants to remind fans of their Christmas-themed EP, Shine, released in 2017 for those wanting holiday bluegrass and acoustic music around the house.

A new album, Where You’ve Been, is expected early in 2021 on Turnberry Records.

Béla Fleck Throw Down Your Heart – free screening tonight online

If you’ve never watched Béla Fleck’s 2008 documentary film, Throw Down Your Heart, there is an excellent opportunity tonight (December 11), when it being offered as a free live stream on both Facebook and YouTube. Not only is it offered in its entirely at no charge, the screening with also include an introduction from Béla, and concludes with a Q&A with he and his brother, Sascha Paladino, who directed the film.

Throw Down Your Heart chronicles Fleck’s journey of discovery in western Africa, which he undertook to find out more about the history of the banjo, and to meet and play music with today’s artists who perform with African instruments with the same lineage. He spent several weeks visiting sites in a number of nations, and Sascha filmed most of the encounters with local musicians. Even when language was a barrier, music – and banjo playing – served as a willing translator.

Tonight’s free screening is in celebration of Béla having received a Grammy Nomination for Best Historical Album for this year’s comprehensive project, Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions. It includes the film on DVD, the audio CD Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3, and an outtakes CD, Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions Part 2, Unreleased Tracks. Also in the set is a new album with Fleck and kora master Toumani Diabaté called The Ripple Effect.

Here’s a look at the documentary trailer.

Tonight’s live stream can be seen on YouTube and Facebook starting at 7:00 p.m. (EST).

The Mountain Minor music videos and soundtrack now available

As they celebrate the release last week of their audio soundtrack, the producers of the recent film, The Mountain Minor, have released a number of video snippets from the movie, featuring the cast performing songs included on both the CD and the screen.

In the movie, writer and director Dale Farmer, shares the history of life in the Appalachian region, told through the device of tracing an old fiddle through several generations of owners and players. What especially sets this film apart from others in its genre, is that instead of trying to teach actors to play or mock playing old time mountain music, he hired skilled musicians and taught them how to act.

The result is a story told through music, which has an appeal to anyone who appreciates mountain tunes and songs, or just loves a good story of multi-generational rural families.

Since its initial release, The Mountain Minor has become available on DVD and Blu-ray, and is also offered through streaming services like Amazon and Vimeo. The soundtrack can be ordered as an audio CD, or through the popular digital resellers like Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify. All can be purchased from the film’s web site.

The producers have agreed to share a couple of the videos with our readers. This first is the fiddle classic Old Jimmy Sutton, featuring Asa Nelson on fiddle, Elizabeth LaPrelle on banjo, Warren Waldron on fiddle, Judy Waldron on guitar and dance calling, and Cecil Gurganus on fiddle.

And here is Coming From the Ball, also known as Don’t Get Weary, Children, from Uncle Dave Macon. It is played by the same basic group, with Hazel Pasley, Amy Cogan Clay, Jonathan Bradshaw, and Asa Nelson providing vocals

To learn more about The Mountain Minor, visit the film’s web site online.

Southern Gospel – new film to feature bluegrass Gospel music

We heard some news this week from our Hollywood insider, the one and only Rhonda Vincent, about the theatrical film she had told us about a few weeks back. She had a chance to appear in this project on screen, along with the Rage, but their shoot was cancelled when the remnants of Hurricane Sally blew through Nashville and flooded the set where the scene was to have been filmed.

The film in question is titled Southern Gospel, and is still in production. It will tell the true life story of a rock ‘n’ roll star in the late 1960s, who after dealing with multiple frustrations in the music industry, decides to give it all up to follow his childhood dream of becoming a preacher. Producers describe the film as “music driven,” and it will feature ten new original songs played in country and bluegrass Gospel styles.

One of those was written by Rhonda’s daughter, Sally Sandker, though she is sworn to secrecy as to which one for the time being. But Sally will appear in the film playing the guitar in the scene where one of the actors sings her song.

Another song comes from Victoria Burchfield, daughter of bluegrass/country artist Wanda Vick Burchfield. Victoria also will appear in the movie, along with her mom and dad, in two song scenes.

Southern Gospel is being directed by Jeffrey Smith, starring Max Ehrich in the lead role. The actor had a heartthrob part on the daytime hit drama, The Young and The Restless, and was in the series, Under The Dome. He has also been in the news of late as the love interest of pop singing sensation and former Disney kid, Demi Lovato.

Rhonda also tells us that the Rage version of Sally’s song, played as an old time Gospel bluegrass number, has been earmarked for the movie’s soundtrack, and may yet be included in the film.

Southern Gospel producers have not released any still images from production, but Wanda did get a snap of she and Mark, along with Sally and Victoria, costumed for their number.

While talking with Rhonda, she also revealed that she will be included on this year’s Dolly Parton album, A Holly Dolly Christmas. She plays mandolin and sings harmony with Dolly on Christmas On The Square.

And she and The Rage are currently in the studio finishing up a new project as well. She told us that she “spent a day and half on one song. The most challenging song to sing of my entire lifetime.”

Can’t wait for that!

She and husband Herb are completing work now on their big upcoming show, Rhonda Vincent – Christmas in Branson, running from November 10 through December 20 at the Andy Williams Theatre in Branson, MO.

“Along with the music, I am writing and creating skits to tell the story of Jesus’ birth. The guys and I will be ‘acting’ in the skits. Should be a great time.

We’ll have a nativity scene, along with a creative celebrity 12 Days of Christmas, to emulate the theme of 12 Days of Christmas from my Christmas Time CD.”

A lot of exciting news there!