The worst barb may be the serpent’s bite – but not for this young band.
When singer-songwriter Korby Lenker met Pentecostal snake handlers in West Virginia, the result had to be a story set to music.
Lenker’s award-winning tribute to charismatic Christian Punkin Brown, who died handling a three-foot rattle snake, is one the original tunes performed here March 27 by bluegrass band Barbed Wire Cutters.
“The content of a song, the thematic lyrical part, has to meet the musical component, which has to be inspired,” Lenker said. “Then I usually rework and rewrite.
“But ‘Punkin Brown’ was a song written in 10 minutes. The whole song was just there.”
In 1995, Lenker was an undergraduate student at Western Washington University in Bellingham when he met the snake-handlers who inspired the song that would become a Barbed Wire Cutters signature tune.
Other repertoire of the bluegrass group, widely regarded as one of the best in the Pacific Northwest, includes old-time standards like “John Henry” and “Tennessee Waltz,” played up-tempo on guitar, mandolin, dobro and bass.
Taking advantage of the recent resurgence of interest in bluegrass music, Barbed Wire Cutters has played Northwest venues that include Wintergrass, the Coombs Bluegrass Festival, Folklife and the Anacortes Arts Festival.
But the group’s roots were formed when Lenker transferred, for a semester, to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, to study old-time bluegrass – an interest that would lead him, four years later, to co-found Barbed Wire Cutters.
“I heard about a church called Church of the Lord Jesus down in MacDowell County,” Lenker said. “It was a snake-handling church, so I decided to make a foray over Labor Day weekend to see.”
Lenker had never before witnessed the dramatic religious practice, which grew up in some Pentecostal churches in southern and central Appalachia in the opening years of the 20th century.
Believers based the practice on Bible verses like Mark 16: 17-18: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
Like the church founders, the 2,500 or so current practitioners believe that handling snakes demonstrates faith, so bite-victims seldom seek medical attention.
Lenker was surprised to find the church parking lot full on a Saturday afternoon; he soon learned that he’d fortuitously picked the one weekend a year when snake-handlers from all over Appalachia convened.
“It was just lucky,” Lenker said. “It was like a homecoming for them.”
In the packed church, with live music pounding and everyone up and dancing, Lenker says it was both hypnotic and frightening to watch a worshipper pop open the top of one of the wooden crates piled near the altar.
Out of the box, stenciled with the homily “A believer is a doer,” emerged a three-foot viper.
“I was terrified for (the churchgoers),” Lenker said, “but it was a terrific adrenaline rush to watch it happen.”
After the service, Lenker was invited home with one family, an experience Lenker says made him more sympathetic to the people handling the poisonous snakes.
It also underscored the danger of the pursuit.
“They got the pictures out. It was like the family album: ‘This is when Ruby got bit, look how big her arm swelled up.’”
The photos of bitten body parts lent an air of cowboy machismo to the practice, he says.
“If you’re a Christian in good standing, you won’t get bit,” Lenker said. “If you get bitten, the Lord willed it.
“The best thing is not to get bit.”
After Lenker left, the surreal weekend merged with a true story he later heard about Punkin Brown, the minister who died in front of the congregation a few minutes after being bitten, to produce the vivid bluegrass tune:
“Punkin Brown, Punkin Brown, fate took you down, I guess the good Lord wanted you home.”
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The Barbed Wire Cutters sing traditional and original bluegrass songs, 8 p.m. March 27 at Island Center Hall, sponsored by the BI Park and Recreation District.
Judged “Best Bluegrass Band” at the 2002 Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Band Festival, the group features vocalist Korby Lenker on guitar and pennywhistle; band co-founder Bruce Shaw on mandolin; Andrew Simmons on bass and former Bainbridge Islanders Mike Grigoni and Chris Glass on dobro and fiddle, respectively.
Adult tickets are $10 advance, $12 at the door, and $7 for youth. Tickets available at Vern’s Winslow Drug and the Glass Onion, or may be charged by phone at 842-2306.
For more information visit www.barbedwirecutters.com.
