Little League Pictures

Reviews | Credits | Photos | IMDb

Hill stomp Hollar represents a year-long cinematic exploration into the world of Fat Possum Records and Mississippi Hill Country blues. Using a variety of film stocks, Hill Stomp Hollar records not just the musical performances, but also gut-wrenching tales of survival in the racist, sharecropping system of Mississippi.

A 60 minute documentary shot by filmmaker Bradley Beesley and editor Andrew Mayer, Hill Stomp Hollar premiers at the 1999 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX.

The film profiles bluesman R. L. Burnside and two of his musical cohorts of Fat Possum Records, a label started by twenty-something white kid Matthew Johnson. The musicians, masters of their style and weathered by their 70+ years of life, are generally illiterate, obstinate, and suspicious. Each seems unaware of the camera, offering insight into their lives and music. Together, they take the blues to new younger audiences, bridging the gap from Mississippi juke joints to concerts with the likes of Jon Spencer.

Fat Possum has garnered the attention of the music industry's major players, including their financial supporters at Epitaph Records. The label's key musicians-R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford have gained tremendous support among younger fans, including musical giants like the Beastie Boys, Beck and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Beyond simply recording authentic bluesmen, Fat Possum Records has gained a mixed reputation among blues fans who despise the label's attempt to fuse traditional blues with modern punk. While not battling record critics, the small indie label struggles with creditors, lawsuits, and their own lack of business acumen.

"Didn't mean to kill nobody. Him dying was between him and the Lord," R.L. Burnside recalls during an interview. In addition to surviving hard times and cotton fields, R. L. learned his blues from an acknowledged virtuoso, Mississippi Fred McDowell. R.L. still resides in Chulahoma, Mississippi in a small home with over 20 of his relatives.

"I was 58 years old when I first picked up a guitar. I can't read, write, or spelling nothin', but I can play this guitar when I have too," shouts T-Model Ford of Greenville, Mississippi. His early life was spent in and out of jail, including a stint on a chain gang for stabbing a man to death. At age 77 he recorded his first CD, Pee Wee Get My Gun.

"My Momma told me if I messed around and played the blues, I was gonna go to Hell," guitarist Cedell Davis recently remembered before playing a tune. Struck down by polio at age ten and bound to a wheelchair for life, Davis adopted a unique guitar style. He clutches a butter knife and slides it across his guitar creating his own bizarre brand of blues.




			screenmag.com Fire-edited doc 'Hill Stomp Hollar' to screen at CUFF (Chicago Underground Film Festival) By Mark Paul One of the films in this year's Chicago Underground Film Festival was edited entirely in a Fire by i^3's Andrew Mayer. Mayer co-produced "Hill Stomp Hollar" with director-producer Bradley Beesley, a Norman, Okla.-based music video director on a budget of $20,000, raised from credit cards. If the budget had been bigger, Mayer might have been able to edit on a more modest device, like a $100,000 Avid, rather than the $1.2 million Fire, but it's the only editing tool at the finishing boutique. Mayer restrained himself from turning the one-hour documentary into a special effects extravaganza, but he did use the Fire for title treatments, maps, touchups to album covers and the audio mix.. "Hollar" documents Fat Possum Records, a label run by punk rocker Matthew Johnson and based in the Mississippi hill country, home to a distinctive blues style quite different from the Delta style well-known to Chicagoans. "The songs they play are very old, and they haven't changed much since the '20s and some go back further than that," said Mayer. The highlight of the film is a recording session that joined the established punk rockers of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with some of Fat Possum's traditional artists. Mayer met Beesley while editing music videos Beesley directed for Flaming Lips, an Oklahoma-based band Mayer knew from his earlier career as a rock guitarist. Mayer never traveled to Mississippi, but Beesley made monthly trips to Fat Possum's headquarters near Oxford over the course of a year. "Hollar" has done well in previous festival screenings. It won the Tom Skerrit Family Film Award at the Crested Butte Film Festival, which puts it in line for a time slot on the Independent Film Channel. The Great Plains Film Festival named it best feature documentary and it was first runnerup at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Mayer says that one distributor has shown interest in a theatrical release. "Hill Stomp Hollar" screens at 7 p.m. on Aug. 17 at the Village Theatre, 1548 N. Clark. The Austin Chronicle The subjects of Hill Stomp Hollar are Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside and the record label for which he records, Fat Possum Records. The resonances in the film extend beyond the simple twang of the guitar strings as the gritty struggle for survival of Burnside and the other Mississippi Hill Country bluesmen profiled in this film, Cedell Davis and T-Model Ford, is given equal footing with the financial and creative difficulties experienced by the tiny upstart label Fat Possum. The label, with support from heavy-hitters Epitaph Records, has released a number of these blues albums to a largely appreciative -- and young -- audience. But then in shades of what occurred in the aftermath of folkster Bob Dylan strumming his first electric notes back in the mid-Sixties, support among fans and critics faltered when the label teamed up Burnside with the modern punk rock sounds of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. It's a classic blues story full of ups and downs, triumphs and trials, poetry and pittances, melody and dissonance. Hill Stomp Hollar captures the unexpected grace notes that accompany the day-to-day realities. --Marjorie Baumgarten American-Statesman The embergence of Fat Possum Records performing artists By Gissela SantaCruz Austin 360 Published: March 18, 1999 So you think you know the Blues? Think again. Bradley Beesley's "Hill Stomp Hollar" tells it how it really is. This is a foot-stomping film about a small record lable's chase to find "real" blues: Gutbucket Mississippi blues. According to the film, the further you get from Mississippi, the worse the music gets. What is revealed are the conditions from which the blues are born. Hardships, poverty and lots of moonshine are the common binders for Fat Possum artists. The film focuses on R.L. Burnside, Possum's current headliner. What is amazing is how Burnside didn't dedicate his time to music until he was in his late 50s. (Even more so is how fellow Possum musician, T-Model, didn't pick up a guitar until he was 77.) This musical journey shows you the real side of the blues. The soul and pain of\ those who live in the northern Mississipie hill country shines through in its music, as well as this film. Under their living circumstances, it is obvious what helps these Mississipians get through the day: music and humor. If you're a bluesman, or woman, this is a must-see. Film.com Runner-up award Directed by Bradley Beesley Mississippi blues are two words that go together naturally, but the Mississippi blues known to most of the music audience belong to the Delta; Hill Stomp Hollar concentrates on the lesser known sounds of the Hill country, where a driving, trance-like blues tradition has found its form and generated legendary performers. Though at times this documentary comes across as a promotional tribute to the small blues record label Fat Possum Records and its young, white owners, the source of its strength lies with the old, black men who've lived the blues every bit as much as they've played it. The profiles here include R.L. Burnside, a farmer who rests onstage like a Buddha, pounding out ferocious licks, and T. Model Ford, a convicted murderer who picked up the guitar in his 50s and released his first album at age 77. There isn't any form to the film; it seems to pick up with one blues man and wander over to the next, only to put them together for a few interview encounters, but it works as a whole. And there are unforgettable moments, like watching Cedell Davis, confined to a wheelchair by polio, using a table knife to fret out a song, when the trance settles in; this is the closest possible experience to being there. Tulsa World Living Arts has a film worth hollarin' about By Thomas Conner World Entertainment Writer 6/11/99 Hearing the collaboration between noted Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside and current punk pioneers in the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was jarring enough. Seeing them in the studio together is downright jaw-dropping. "Hill Stomp Hollar," a film which premiered at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, offers up generous footage of the volatile experience, complete with Burnside's toothless grin and Spencer's hellish, guttural screaming on stage while never dropping his hand from the theremin. This documentary by Norman filmmaker Bradley Beesley focuses on Burnside for its examination of Mississippi blues. Not delta blues -- this is an intriguing glimpse of hill country blues, a particular style of playing that involved open chords and a guitar slide, as well as a certain perspective on life and roots. As Fat Possum Records president Clarence Matthew Johnson says midway through the film, "The further the blues gets from Mississippi, the worse it gets." "Hill Stomp Hollar" follows the growth of Fat Possum Records (which started with a $4,000 investment) through the lives of its artists -- hard blues acts like Burnside, T-Model Ford, Cedell Davis and Elmo Williams, and a quick run-down of its newest artists, from the noisy rants of Hazil Adkins and the contemporary blues of Robert Cage. Catch a screening of "Hill Stomp Hollar" at 8 p.m. Friday at the Living Arts Space, 19 E. Brady St. Admission is $5. The film is one hour long. For information, call 585-1234. http://www.auschron.com/sxsw/film.doc_comp.html




			Produced & Directed Bradley Beesley Produced & Edited Andrew Mayer Director of Photography Ari Palos Associate Producer James C. Johnson Executive Producer Jodi Clemens