What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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GET GREAT BRANSON DEALS sent directly to your phone! Text BRANSON to 82928 Message and data rates may apply. Text STOP to cancel. Go to taponitdeals.com/terms for privacy and terms. DECEMBER 22-28, 2019 WHAT'S UP! 7 # 7 Old School Music BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette F or many of us, Ed has come to represent the Ozarks of old," Kelly Mulhollan muses. "A time before generic electronic media- driven culture swept over our regional identity. I think a lot us feel a nostalgia for those simpler days." Mulhollan, who with his wife Donna is the musical duo Still on the Hill, is talking about Ed Stilley, who passed away June 12, 2019. Stilley lived way out in Hogscald Holler in Carroll County, and he was never known as a musician. But he made an indelible mark on the musical history of Northwest Arkansas. Stilley made musical instruments — not the slick, sensual kind made by Fayetteville luthier Bayard Blain, but something completely different. His were crafted from scraps and rusty leftovers — door springs, saw blades, pot lids, aerosol cans and "who knows what else," as Mulhollan puts it. He never sold them, never signed them. Each he gave away, inscribed with the words "True Faith, True Light" on the top. Most of the more than 200 recipients were children. To Stilley, the guitars and fiddles were nothing but a way to spread his faith. It was only when the Mulhollans first saw them they realized "we had stumbled on to one of the great American folk artists," Kelly says. Over the years, the Mulhollans became friends with the "unintentional inventor," and they began to dream of chronicling his life and his "vehicles for devotion" in a book. "First, we became amateur detectives," Kelly Mulhollan explains. They set out on a quest to document Stilley's instruments and found 50 of them. "He couldn't tell us where they were," Donna says. They also went through a couple of photographers and a couple of publishers who "didn't work out" before arranging an exhibit of Stilley's instruments at the Walton Arts Center during the Roots Festival. And that's when everything changed. Robert Cochran, director of the Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies at the University of Arkansas, walked in to the gallery. With Cochran's help, the result was "True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley," released by University of Arkansas Press in 2015. There was also an exhibit at the Old State House Museum in Little Rock and another at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. "Thanks to the Old State House and Shiloh Museum, school children have participated in workshops where they actually created simple cigar box instruments inspired by Ed Stilley's work," Mulhollan marvels. "That, along with countless newspaper, radio and television stories [meant] Ed Stilley's story has truly taken on a life of its own." The exhibit at the Shiloh Museum remains open through Jan. 11. "My goal from the start was simply to make Ed's work known to the people of Arkansas," Mulhollan says. "That happened, and so much more. It was a great privilege and joy to be able to share his work with the world." Maker, performers set the tune for Northwest Arkansas Courtesy Photo Donna and Kelly Mulhollan had a 25-year friendship with Ed Stilley, a musical craftsman who created instruments unique to his "true faith, true light." See Music Page 38