Aubrey Eisenman brings Bluegrass to Stable View
by Pam Gleason
On Saturday, August 23, three bands from Asheville, North Carolina will come to Aiken to play at Stable View for the newly created Aiken Summer Bluegrass Festival. The bands include Holler Choir (“a distinctly Appalachian group” led by Clint Roberts, a singer-songwriter and guitarist originally from Brevard, North Carolina); Songs from the Road Band (“A dynamic bluegrass ensemble known for their compelling blend of Americana, roots, and folk music”); and Aubrey and the Clydes, featuring Aubrey and Justin Eisenman on vocals, upright bass and guitar with John Duncan and James Kylen on fiddle and drums respectively. The bands will set up on the mound on the cross country course in front of the pavilion, and attendees are encouraged to bring a chair or a blanket to sit on the grass, or listen from the comfort and shade of the pavilion, where there will be refreshments available for purchase from the Bistro. (Seating will not be provided for the event, however.) Gates open at 3 p.m. and the music will start a little later and is expected to go until about 8 p.m.
The idea for the event was conceived last year in a conversation between Aubrey Eisenman and Barry Olliff, who owns and runs Stable View along with his wife Cyndi. Aside from being a musician, Aubrey is a professional eventing rider. She runs her business, Eisenman Equestrian, out of her training stable, Christmas Farm, located in Asheville. She often comes to Stable View to compete, and even spends several weeks there each winter. Barry loves bluegrass music (Aubrey says he and Cyndi even met at a bluegrass concert) and when he found out that Aubrey had her own band, he asked if she could help make a bluegrass festival happen at the facility. She was more than happy to take on the project.
“Aiken has all these equestrian venues that are great crossover for hosting music events, because there’s space,” said Aubrey. “That’s all you need, is space. You have Bruce’s Field, and there used to be an event at Highfields, and there are actually good connections between horse events and music festivals … if you think about it, you can tie them together – there is a lot of connective tissue. About 90% of the people who come to hear me play are horse people.”
Aubrey has both a talent for music and a love of horses in her DNA. Her mother, Mike Dickhart, currently a realtor in Aiken, is a horsewoman. Her father, Alan Cohen, is a professional musician and music producer.
“I grew up with a horsey mom and a musical dad, so my dad was in the basement producing albums and records, and my mom was at the farm. So I would either be listening to music recordings, or in the barn with my mom,” she said.
In high school, Aubrey played cello in the orchestra and did some musical theater, and when she got into bluegrass she transferred her skills “pretty easily” from the cello to the upright bass (“It’s similar, but bigger.”) On the equestrian side of the ledger, she was a working student for the legendary eventing rider Denny Emerson at his farm in Woodstock, Vermont. And to complete a different aspect of her life, she served in the Marine Corps. (“I did that right out of college – I like hard things; I just like pushing myself.”)
Aubrey’s husband Justin Eisenman is a music professional and a mainstay of the Asheville music scene –in addition to singing and playing guitar, he has his own full-service shop where he repairs and makes custom guitars. Their two young children, Oden and Pearl, inherited the musical gene rather than the equestrian one: both play violin and piano, and, just 6 and 8 years old, are already entering fiddling contests.
Aubrey says that the equestrian side of her life and the musical side are completely separate.
“What makes it work for me, is that they’re so different, so it is a really good balance. One is very grounding and demanding –you’ve got to be at the barn every day and you’ve got to show up for it. And the other is more flexible and creative: Am I in the mood to sit down and do this? Horses are so hard, and eventing is such an arduous thing. Music was always just a nice, and now it’s a creative thing I can share with my husband. They’re completely different bandwidths.”
Making music and making horses share some commonalities, however. For Aubrey, one of the great things about being a horse trainer is the process of getting a horse that knows nothing and transforming him into a competition partner. Music is similar in some ways.
“In music I love the creation,” she said. “Starting from just an idea, and then building it into this beautiful creation, whether it’s a song or an album, and then having a finished product that you can share with people. I love connecting people over songs and I think the community around music is really great too.”
Buy tickets in advance for the Aiken Bluegrass Festival through the Stable View website (svagatheringplace.com) and find Aubrey and the Clydes on Spotify and all the popular music outlets.
