Across Indiana

The. On this musical trip across Indiana we found a place where the sounds of Jamaica filled the air and it's closer than you think. We get down to some good old bluegrass jam but. We hang out at the oldest bar in this state. Well take a look at the history of jazz in Indiana. And we'll head south for a night of music food in the fall and down by the river. This trip across Indiana news made possible by the annual financial support from viewers like you and by the following corporate sponsors. Hello who's yours and welcome to and across Indiana. That's guaranteed to set your tone

what happened and maybe even get some of the jumping off the soap and dancing around the living room before it's all over. Our first stop features a type of music not normally associated with the Hoosier state but if you happen to be searching for the reggae capital of Indiana look no further than South Bend. It's safe to say that Indiana isn't known. As a hotbed for reggae music. However the city of South Bend is determined to change this. Welcome to the South Bend reggae festival. Late in August every year the South Bend Airport is filled with the sights and

sounds of Jamaica. And reggae is a music genre rooted in Jamaican culture. Well before this festival started reggae came on to the music scene in the 60s and is often associated with the Rastafari movement. But my tolls were one of the first highly successful radio babes in their leader Frederick to Tabor is actually credited with inventing the name Reagan but the man who really made reggae what it is today. Is Bob Marley. Who turned a music genre into a way of life. Reggae music often represents broad social issues ranging from faith to injustice. But on this Saturday in South Bend it's all about peace love and unity.

White whatever color whatever they can see everybody feel so free now but it means that they're united in music. Yeah that's what I got today was pretty cool when music can break down barriers right away I show my music as a wonderful legacy. You can never hear the lyrics but everybody does think to the crowd that prompt brings everybody mind down I think that's one of the core unit. You see that's the power of reggae music. The groove is infectious the lyrics uplifting. And. Your body feels calm and your heart filled with happiness. One thing's for sure you know when you hear. The festival itself in bodies the music traveling through the air. Everyone gets into the spirit. You can't help but notice something special going on here. All right I'm here with the mayor Southend and he is enjoying his time at the reggae festival. Now tell me a little

bit about the festival How long has this been going on. This is the third year it's growing every year. You can see it's a really family friendly event worse telling us ourselves as the reggae capital of Indiana which she says is something that everybody should come out to check out sometime. Everybody even the president of the United States. You know John started this festival two years ago as a way to help raise money for hospitals and schools in Malawi Africa this is a fundraiser in Africa where I'm coming from I think going to court in Malawi. So there's a lot of drug realize you know the food water country the medicore diseases and not so you figured out that if you can since we're in America then unfortunately we're here and I want to read you know why not take advantage to the crowd and make an even man at home. I come in every year since he started and I mean every I got you know I'm from Africa and it's from my concreted donate to the hospital. I think it's a good thing going on.

There is something for everyone here at the reggae festival including fine Jamaican Caribbean cuisine. In fact some people can't wait to tell you about it. I think it's a good festival for everybody of all ages. Everybody around here kids family grown ups anything I heard off was nice nice. The food is great. I'd say some of. The flavor was good. Food is great. Obviously there is a good selection of spirits as well. We just found out that there's curry goat here what do you think about that. No go for me. No go no go. With you. To. The. But it's more than the food and fun that draws a crowd here a movement that represents the good in life maybe a peacefulness found only in a shared moment regardless of its definition. It's a feeling that is ever present in the world of reggae and for Hoosiers wanting to experience it.

South Bend is easier to get to than Jamaica. Thank you so. If you would like to help those in Malawi or to learn more about reggae festival visit South Bend at Reggae dot com. Now when Midwesterner Bill Monroe's unique brand of country music hit airwaves back in the 40s it was so different. They had to create a whole new musical genre and named it after his band The Bluegrass Boys. Since then Bluegrass has traveled far and with bands of musicians everywhere from the pubs of New Zealand to military bases in Iraq. We recently caught up with it in Kindle ville and found it had brought quite a few folks with us. Just got back from Iraq.

I mean seriously that's a little girly instrument. It's for those who've all come from retiring backgrounds we had a bit of thought to start with to decide who is actually the path from playing guitar show on being the last one among us was very keen to play the latticed. Let's do a trace of instrument. And me being the most secure in my manhood was it's quite heavy to get out of the mainland. This is Johnny Possum's good time. They've come from New Zealand. Kendall Ville Indiana for the tri state Bluegrass Festival. Let's have a little show we this not a big bluegrass scene in New Zealand as such. So for us learning bluegrass is quite a challenge. And said to come here and you know it's one of the hot of bluegrass country is a real honor for us. And they're not the only ones who come far. Yeah I just got back from Iraq in June stationed in Germany. Robert and his son Cameron chose this festival for a surprise reunion and went down to pick them up at Fort Wayne and brought him back

and totally blew my husband away all I was really surprised. This. Is just jam. A band from northern Michigan between a very unique instrument. It's called the hammered dulcimer. Origin probably from the Mesopotamia regional. It's one of the essence of the piano. Eventually. The other side gives it a softer tone if I turn it over to the. Louder louder tone. How many people here today have been to Nova Scotia.

Yeah I didn't make it count there but it looked at least it would be seven or eight thousand a year. The. Teams are on the skinny brother. I don't know how things are back home in Canada but when they play here people do. That dance. I do mean what you're seeing here in the. Song. You can't come and then I haven't come. Oh. You. Think. You've got what happens on the main stage and that's really important but what happens in the parking lot and that is just as important and you get everybody just just coming together and jamming what we're going to top last standing just over there at the moment. I mean he probably hit us planking and cedar. Come on I have a. Can of those probably. The best spell of rest festival around for jamming.

Mikey you can go here. There's another one right around the corner from us this purple for here is jammin right there. It was another jam right over there. So I mean you just walk a few feet away. And most of the entertainment is just as good as you get on the stage. Maybe I jam into my old Definitely yeah I would mess part of the whole festival. It's a very social form of music goes for all of the conversation and I'd be doing it. It's a great way to meet people. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. We go into a place where people don't know us from a bar site as soon as we stop playing it I look at music. Despite dental barriers not come up and talk to us my problems. Sapiens. Well it's 1963 and after many suggestions choices and family votes the name is slippery noodle was chosen and given a home in downtown Indy. Not that its location was anything new for over a century and a half it's been a

roadhouse a German club bus saloon a brewery a bordello complete with a murderous bar brawl and a butcher house with books in the basement. But above all else it's been the best darn place to hear blues and indie period. 6. Thank you. The slippery noodle Lin is keeping booze alive in the end. Located just past the circle in downtown Indianapolis the noodle has established itself as a blues landmark over the past 25 years. However the bar itself dates all the way back to 1850 and is the oldest bar in the state. We're kind of a long drawn out title that the entire titles oldest continuously operated bar in original building on original site. Which basically equates to we've outlasted every other bar in the

state. Now Yankee The current owner has been runnin the place since his father passed away in 84 and has transformed the modest bar into one of the Mid-West most popular blues clues. And it is a totally totally different place than what it was 16 years ago. You know I went from being a. A little hole in the wall part 2 to cure how and Carolyn and Josh they're working in the employee's world now. After 150 years of operation but little has seen its fair share of action throughout the Civil War era. He was used as a way station for the Underground Railroad data listeners what would sneak the runaway slaves in. And hide him out. Because until until Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation which was after the civil war it started it would still be fairly legal for a. Southern bounty hunters to come up basically see any black person walking around say you're a

runaway and take him so that we get him here hide him out and then get on trains over Union Station and take him up to us to Chicago to Detroit and then eventually on a friendly Canada. During Prohibition. The Brady Bill the gang's home now that the new. Year and the gangs are times the villagers ready gangs hung out here. To use this law for target practice you can see there are still two bullets. In the wall. Board time. The inn was even used as a bribe. Yes the end fell on hard times and an actual whore house robber opened up here. So these rooms are actually rooms for. Ladies of ill repute. The story has a two customers got a fight over one of the girls and one guy stabbed the other with a knife killing him left a knife sticking on the front bars he walked ran out and in 1953 the city shut the brothel down.

In history. Good little provides patrons with a good experience unlike. Any other. Anybody can go drink anywhere. But when you walk in here there's a certain you know you're sitting at the same bar that people drank at 150 years ago and they're just something cool about that. With two stages and separate the noodle gives you the ability to explore the many nukes and create. Anything. Whether you're simply looking for a good meal or just a big tan this flipping in has it all. We do believe seven nights a week always covers a whole lot and you've got the delta blues of course borders cargo borders West Coast Swing blues but as far as blues night in a night out in the world when you want a place in town.

Over the years the new has attracted many notable me you'd never know who might run into going Joel came through the place. He walked in the door first thing to do and looked at me said Hey you look like Bill and you'll be here today I'm sure and he just came on by him and then he had a big entourage with him the waltz and they figured out it was Billy Joel. Don't have the celebrities to enjoy this but. If it gets to. The. Legendary musicians Freddie Hubbard Wes Montgomery and Louis Armstrong all used to play on Indiana Avenue when it was lined with 33 jazz venues. But when desegregation caused an exodus of the area the clubs disappear. Now a few men who lived and worked on the avenue have made sure that its history doesn't share the same fate. Tour Madam Walker theater on Indiana Avenue and you'll meet local historian Tom Ridley

I came here to kid. I feel like you know on this day Tao seems on the top form just five years old when the bucket was built. Tom remembers the days of segregation but Indiana Avenue was the center of black culture in Indianapolis most of the musicians that came over. They were great because they had a good experience they got older guys told them what they knew because those high schools and music teachers them out in the early days you know you had groups that were confined to the black. Clubs of. Integration and people would start moving out different poncy. We're knocking on the avenue. To remind people of where he was. There's a couple buildings walk with one of them and there's one down the street but most of them.

Ninety five percent of them are grown. I wanted to get a sense of what it had been like since it was had been shut down a long time. Shortly before its demolition in 1963 the famous Cotton Club was the subject of a series of images by Jasper target for Duncan sheet. He recognized the importance of recording the crumbling buildings and fading musicians of Indiana Avenue like his friend scrapper Blackwell scrapper and his partner Leroy Carr topped the black music charts in the 1920s and 30s. But after only one died in 1935 scrapper was left to make a meager living playing on the avenue and the eyes and ears of Duncan Sheen scrapper was still just as fascinating in 1960 as he had been decades before he was still as good as he ever was. He was in his late 50s then. So I decided that here I think my chance to do something interesting in the recording area of me and I didn't have. A

buck to spend on a studio so I tried him in the basement of my house. Toward the end of the session he said you know you've been whistling there. He says do that. So that turned out to be a that track would be used in the record player genic guy he was partly Indian very characteristic looking and he had a wonderful Letteri skin that would photograph beautifully. So I was able to get some very successful pictures of scrapper who died on Fortunately in a shooting. Before he could become again a famous person in the world. This night from what I understand is called the legends of Indiana Avenue. A few blocks from the ave concerts like this at the Indiana Historical Society. Good musicians who used to play with the greats of their generation a chance to play for the next generation. I work with a lot of guys around the city that time David Baker

who is the world. You know I work with David when he was playing trombones. You. Have to he had problems with his lip. I went to a gig and he told me that David was playing and I could imagine what David could have been playing but he was playing the piano and I'm playing in a club that I'm really young and I was old enough in clubs. And so we're saying we're doing this rock n roll stuff and I noticed the music sounded different. And I look over and there's a white fella plan a piano. And he has honest hats and their cigarette hanging out his mama's right now I will tell you how Michael. And I sure didn't expect to see a home he call my homeland on NBN Avenue and I heard he played all of them. That would not be like. Many of the legends are gone but those who remember Indiana Avenue share the music that made it great and people are still listening.

Finally last fall musicians from all over the world converged on Bloomington for the Lotus Festival and at the time we asked many of them what they thought might be the best kept secret in our state when it came to musical venues. Their answer the Blue River Cafe in tiny Milltown. Now let us not have any secrets from you out there. So why don't we join producers Jim Erik Chris and Caleb behind the lens as they journey to a place that's off off off. This place is way off the beaten path. Did we mention this place was way out there. Only about 900 people live in Middletown and we've driven past most of them were going to look for the Blue River the Blue River Cafe with the Blue River. Yes. Wow. And policing allow you to do if you got it. I think you I think you have the whole downtown pays homage to those staple rural life. Fission and Lane endures. So you look like you've been laying outdoors.

No no no we way there's a sign over the river in the middle an unexpectedly large structure that looks like it was built before a blink and could even grow. Operation Blue River Cafe is underway. As it happens it's just about truth for the home of the Blue River café was built in 1868 by the Knights of Pythias an odd group of fellows. But not. Felt. That large was next door. I met a woman in her 80s that said her high school prom was here in 1920 and it was a Tea Social and they had a curtain the windows. It was at 2:00 in the afternoon but they had to curtain the windows because it was illegal for anyone to see them dancing from the street. Now the current owner Debbie Woods knows prime real estate when she sees it. After all she picked a future husband Mark when he was hitchhiking and the couple has been inseparable for some 30 years.

A house fire in Colorado forced Mark and Debbie to move in with her folks near Louisville where a persuasive mom showed them clippings of reasonably priced properties in the Milltown area. And so they stayed. Devon Roldan colon area arts it's all of the new university taking the top prize for graduating at the head of her class. My water is a great big cleaver. I keep threatening to take out in you know not since The Sopranos has a cleaver been so well served for I kid you not this was the best restaurant meal I have ever had. And then. Changes the menu every six to take advantage of all the fresh how this sense where in a very rural area I have great access to many different farmers. How to keep us from being bored. You know part of it is to keep me from being bored. And that's the charm of Blue River for the every man ness of the place is everywhere. Paintings from two southern Indiana women both in their eighth decade cover the laws. And the bar is made from an old boy out in the stairs. You know I was taken

out of the woods with horses by Amish. We planed wood and installed it here and it's it's Indiana red oak sassafras Cherry poplar walnut. They lead to a second floor rich with the aura of the pities. The people where only those who knew the secret code could enter in costumes worthy of Harry Potter meets Attila the Hun. Watching continental drift. It's a little ditty about Jack and Diane. Only it's Jack and Diane 25 years after. The Mon cam version. This falls counter. To such oddly named as the mystic tomato the troubadours of divine bliss. And Earth mamas danced. For here at Blue Ribbon originality is alive and well. You know he makes he makes a place for a very eclectic artist and very niche artists who you know who are going to go on a big stage in a club and that's where we fit in.

Sure enough. But it's family. For after the doors closed down in the late night the entire staff sits down for dinner together. We've all become just one very large family and we help each other out all the time. As you might imagine the Blue River Cafe is developing quite a loyal following. Still. Not sure we expected this. We have a customer who asked our permission to have her ashes. When she dies placed in an urn on one of the speakers upstairs. Because this is where she wants to spend eternity. And so it goes. As we conclude this junket type like to leave you with this thought. If there's one thing we've seen it's that you find some of the most interesting people and the most unexpectedly colorful events where you least expect them. So here's your mission jump out of your comfort zone and go someplace this week that you never even thought you would all expect a full report next time we go across

Indiana. Michael S.. I'm. On. To. This trip across Indiana was made possible by the annual financial support from viewers like you and by the following corporate sponsors. On our musical trip across India. We found a place where the sounds of Jamaica fill the air and it's closer than you think. We get down to some good old bluegrass jam and. We hang out at the oldest bar in the state. Well take a look at the history of jazz in Indiana. And we'll head south for a night of

music food and bogged down by the river.