During my time spent as some sort of folklorist, this was most intelligent thing I ever heard one of our subjects say. He was older black man who played a one-string type of guitar. He'd put two nails in the side of his house, about 3 feet apart, string a guitar string on there (about the equivalent of what you'd use for the A string on a six-string guitar), and play it with a medicine bottle.

There are some who think this was the beginning of the slide guitar method, many years ago.

The sad thing was that this guy had no real talent or folkloric stories to tell. He was just another piece of meat to the folks who were doing this so-called research.

We spent days with this guy, filming him and his wife as they went about their daily life, and left that piece of nowhere with him just as dirt poor as he was when we got there. Then we spent a fortune editing and mixing that film and film score, trying to make him someone he wasn't. But, most of all, trying to make money on the film.

The folks in charge bitched at me when I used some bird sounds from birds that weren't indigenous to the area. We had to keep it real, you know.

Folks actually go to college and get degrees in this, you know. One of 'em is running your National Endowment for the Humanities right now. Oh, and he was the guy who was in charge of this whole deal mentioned above.