Minton Sparks brings rural back fence humor to TRC

Release Date: 5/23/2002. Expired: 6/1/2002

She’s called an innovative, grassroots raconteur and a down-home performance poet. But whatever one wants to call this amazing Nashville storyteller, it’s a sure bet DualTone recording artist Minton Sparks will paint her supper table word pictures from straight out of the old rural South when she appears along with two-time national harmonica champion Glenn “Wailin’ Wood” Woodland in Performance Hall at The Renaissance Center 7 p.m. Saturday, June 1.

Sparks breathes life into characters like Trella, who at the ripe old age of 91 up and leaves her husband after 65 years of marriage. There’s the story of the flawed revivalist guest preacher, and others from rural Tennessee and Arkansas as she gives us a glimpse into their sometimes sordid but always colorful lives.

Sparks said she knows all of the characters she speaks of, some of them distant relatives while others are born from memories of stories she’s heard from her family. The truth lies somewhere in the telling, and Sparks comes by her noble craft naturally.

“These characters call me across back fences of time and remind me where I came from,” said the married mother of two and former Leonard Bernstein Fellowship poetry teacher. “I come from a family of storytellers so it’s just basically passing down the stories, and I’ve been a poet all my life so it’s just a melding of being a poet and storyteller.”

When Sparks takes the stage donned in one of her late grandmother’s old house dresses, a hat and a pocketbook that looks like it was just grabbed in a hurry rather than planned, her characters come to life. The costume, she said, is just a natural progression.

“It began as a theater piece for my brother’s theater,” Sparks explained. “When my grandmother died I got a lot of her old clothes and in the theater piece I was a church member and wore one of my grandmother’s dresses.”

Although Sparks’ stories are deeply rooted in the rural South, she said she is finding that people everywhere can relate to and appreciate her many characters and the bonds of family that weave through her tales. She said the feelings and emotions her stories conjure up are universal.

“It’s an amazing connecter point, especially with people in the South,” Sparks said of her live stage performances. “But I just got back from New York and people did the same thing up there. There are some people from Ireland who have been following me so it must just be some sort of common denominator around family.”

Other common denominators in Sparks’ stories are the strong, southern women who, despite hard times, heartache and the male dominance of the times, survived to establish rich traditions that live on today. Sparks said those women are her favorites because they were the “underdogs.”

“The women in my family are really strong women and a lot of them have encountered amazingly difficult situations,” she said.

In her debut DualTone project, Middlin Sisters, Sparks takes her listeners to rural Tennessee where strong women like Nina, Trella, Fay, Thelma, Virginia and Gertrude become the subjects of witty, moving and bittersweet impressions of country back-roads life.

“I feel like I’ve been lent their spirits as I tell their stories,” Sparks said. “I feel like I knew them better after I wrote poems about them than before I wrote them.”

She said she is always amazed that people find her stories funny.

“I think the truth is funny to people,” she said. “You all know these people and maybe that’s why it’s funny. The first time people started laughing at me I was surprised because they (the characters) seemed dark to me. I hope what people get from my show is that they can hear stories of strong southern women who traditionally might not have been such strong characters but when you tell the stories of their lives, their amazing backbone is a part of this country.”

Sparks said she is often approached after a performance by people who want to tell her their own stories. She said sometimes she will take those stories, as well as her own family stories, embellish them a bit and soon they become part of her show.

Married and the mother of a 6-year-old and an 11-year-old, Sparks is a graduate of Vanderbilt University with a master’s degree in Education in Human Development Counseling, and served for two years as community director of Magdalene, a non-profit residential community serving women with criminal histories of drug abuse and prostitution.

Awarded the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship in 1998, Sparks taught poetry in the Tennessee high school system offering classes funded by the fellowship. From 1990 to 2002, she served as adjunct professor of Psychology at Tennessee State University in addition to teaching several classes in Women’s Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University.

Sparks has appeared on National Public Radio’s Weekend All Things Considered and the internationally syndicated WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, which is heard in more than 13 countries as well as cybercast on the Internet.

This month Sparks returns to the studio to lay down more stories, using what she calls the “tons” of characters yet to be unveiled. Entitled This Dress, the CD will be released in the fall and is about all of the characters that have worn a special dress through the years.

Sparks will appear in concert 7 p.m. Saturday, June 1, in Performance Hall. Tickets are $10 adults, $8 seniors and $5 children under 13. Also on the program is Glenn “Wailin’ Wood” Woodland, a two-time national harmonica champion.

For more information or to purchase tickets call The Renaissance Center at (615)740-5600.

The Renaissance Center is located at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 minutes west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Events - Concerts and Recitals page for more about musical performances.

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