February 5, 2001

Hermitage, TN--Getting close to being done shooting for the film. Will Wall and I spent the last few days down in Tennessee with Jimmy and Mary Ann. Friday night was my 32nd birthday and Mary Ann made a great meal of meatloaf, potatoes, cornbread, corn, and peas. Then Jimmy, Mary Ann, and Will sang happy birthday. 

After doing an interview with Jimmy to fill in some holes in the story, we headed out with Jimmy’s hunting buddy Jay Hunter. We met a Jay’s garage where he was working on his tractor and jamming out to Jimmy Martin 8 track tapes. Then we headed down through the ravine, parked next to a creek bed, and Loretta Lynn, Jimmy’s favorite squirrel dog set out to tree us a couple of squirrels.

Didn’t take Loretta too long to tree some squirrels and Jimmy and Jay are both impressive shots. After a near miss, Jimmy hit one squirrel as it was jumping from one tree to another. Then Jay stuffed the squirrel in Jimmy’s pouch on the back of his jacket. Later Jay hit one and then we headed home.

Shooting footage of Jimmy walking around his farm. 
Photo by Will Wall.

That night Will and I accompanied Jimmy to a bluegrass conference at a hotel in Nashville. The lobby was packed with maybe 10 or 12 picking circles with hundreds of fans gathered around listening in. Folks seemed more than a little surprised with Jimmy Martin pulled up in his late 1970’s stretch limo with ‘Widowmaker’ striped across the front and ‘King JM’ engraved on the license plate. 

Jimmy walked into the place with rhinestones and all and walked up to a picking circle. The group keenly kicked off Freeborn Man and it didn’t take long for Jimmy to start smiling and before you knew it someone strapped a guitar on him and he took over from there. This same scene happened maybe 5 times over the course of the evening. At one point he was dancing and hollering up a storm as one band broke into Sally Goodin.

We spent the rest of the trip going through old still photos of Jimmy’s. He has a pretty amazing collection, many of which will be in the film

We’re now back in Chicago, trying to transcribe all of the footage we’ve shot, tracking down old film and audio recordings, and raising money for postproduction. Stay tuned.