Keeping Springville’s ‘colorful’ music spot alive
Story by Paul South
Photos by
Michael Callahan, Susan Wall,
Jerry Martin and courtesy of Local Color
In the late fall of 2016, Merle Dollar and husband Garry Burttram announced that on New Year’s Eve, their iconic music venue, Local Color, would take its final bow.
But Bobby Horton, legendary fiddler of the equally iconic Alabama bluegrass trio, Three On A String, was skeptical. Three On A String would play that “final” performance.
“I wouldn’t be surprised a bit of Merle and Garry reopen,” he predicted. “They love it too much. I wish they wouldn’t close.”
It turns out, Horton, like a musical Jeremiah, was a prophet.
“Bobby got his wish – sort of,” Dollar says.
Local Color is back, but without Burttram’s delicious cornbread cooked in a hubcap-sized cast iron skillet and chicken and dumplings. The wildly popular stage opens a couple of times a month, not as a traditional business, charging only a cover to pay the bands.
Dollar reminisced about Local Color’s 2016 final curtain that wasn’t.
“The patrons were mourning and grieving and crying, and the musicians were so nostalgic already. Really gloom and doom.”
The building was up for sale, with a buyer on the horizon, but after two months, Erick Smith of the rockabilly band Cash Domino Killers approached Dollar with an idea – a house concert. No food or drink, save what patrons would bring themselves, sort of like a covered dish dinner, or an all-day singing and dinner on the grounds, but with furniture.
Dollar ran the idea by her sisters, who with her own the building.
The response: Why not?
The result? A packed house.
“Everybody came in and brought their own food and their own beverages and just paid a cover charge at the door for the musicians, and we had a grand night.”
Fast forward a few weeks after that grand night. The expected sale of the building fell through. And it looked as though Local Color had danced its last.
Dollar and her sisters decided that Local Color deserved one last send-off, a last waltz, if you will. They called on their old friends, The Martini Shakers, another rockabilly act that had played the place for years. The response from the joyous crowd ignited another idea. The girls decided to host house concerts once or twice a month, getting the word out to Local Color die-hard regulars.
“We’ve had some remarkable crowds,” Dollar says. “And we’re just doing it at our leisure.”
Merle and Garry are retired now, traveling to Scotland and Disney World and keeping up with kids and grandkids.
And now, virtually every weekend, music again rings from Local Color. To be clear, it’s show business but no business.
“It’s strictly a house concert. I want to stress that it’s a non-business. The family is hosting different bands to come in. I get requests all the time from musicians to come in and play,” Dollar says. “We’re strictly a non-business.”
She added: “It’s just one of those magical things that just refuses to go away.”
Local Color looks and feels the same, except for the patrons who bring their own snacks, from popcorn and pop, to sacks of fast food, to gourmet munchies and bottles of Merlot.
But while the food brought from home varies with every patron, the reaction is universally the same to the Local Color house parties: “Why didn’t you do this sooner?”
“It’s been so heartwarming to know that people are so excited to come back again,” Dollar says. “It really was such a downer (when Local Color closed). Once it started buzzing through the musical community (about the house concerts) it was like, euphoria and ‘hallelujah’ and ‘Oh, boy!’ One person stopped me in the grocery store and said, ‘It’s about time.’”
Along with the music dates, it’s also a gathering spot for Merle and Garry’s family get-togethers, holiday dinners, baby showers and the like. And the family – through Merle and her cousins, Sylvia Waid and Peggy Jones, who form the Andrews Sisters-style Something Else Trio – provides the musical heartbeat.
“There would be no Local Color without ‘Something Else,’ Burttram says.
Dates are booked through July, but the spot remains for sale. “Three months, who knows what can happen in three months.”
Encore performances
The acts, jubilant to return to this intimate spot where the music seems all that matters, include The Cash Domino Killers – named for music legends Johnny Cash, “Fats” Domino and “The Killer” Jerry Lee Lewis, pay homage to the timeless tunes of the 1950’s. Through the, you’ll hear the sounds of The Million Dollar Quartet (Cash, Lewis, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins), The Drifters, The Tams and others. The band has played Local Color for years. Like Three On A String, it has helped define the venue as one of Alabama’s great small music spots.
Another fan favorite, The Dill Pickers, a musical comedy ensemble, also draws packed houses.
“They’re like a comet,” Dollar says. “They show up once in a blue moon.”
No place like ‘home’
Thanks to the bands, Merle and Garry and their families and fans, Local Color lives on.
“Even while it’s sitting there empty, it still has that aura, that mystical feel about it. There’s something about that. I don’t know what it is. People walk in and say, ‘I’m home.’”
The place still has flawless acoustics, so perfect that folks swear you can hear smiles from the audience, that sits in rapt attention, drinking in the music.
“You can hear them smile,” Dollar says. “You can hear them cry. You can feel it. It’s palpable. The emotional connection that you have with your audience, you feel it, they feel it.”
Local Color, it seems, has indeed taken on a life of its own, past what even its owners expected. Like The Little Engine That Could from children’s literature, it chugs on.
Says Dollar, “It’s a light that refuses to go out.”
As for the fiddling prophet, Bobby Horton, he’s overjoyed at Local Color’s revival. He compares the place to “a musical community center. Most people are so comfortable there, both players and people sitting there. It’s got that magic. You can’t build it. It just sort of happened because of Merle and Garry setting that atmosphere.”
Horton adds: “People are thrilled to be coming to that little ol’ place over there. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.”
And as for his prophecy?
“The blind hog found the acorn on that prediction,” he says. “I’m so glad it did.”
