| This is the news story that ran on the morning after her Columbus show(March 24,2006) in the Commercial Dispatch. Ruby Jane wows crowd, CBS crew By Steve Rogers and Kristin Mamrack Dispatch Staff If the annual Pilgrimage Tour of Homes in Columbus is supposed to start slow and build to a big finale - this year including the annual ball and a huge air show - don't tell Ruby Jane Smith. Monday night, the musical prodigy - at age 11, she's already an accomplished, poised singer and songwriter who is mastering multiple instruments - rocked a near-capacity crowd of some 1,000 people in Rent Auditorium during the annual musical to kick off the Pilgrimage. And the news is spreading fact. A CBS News crew here to do a spot on Smith may expand its coverage after just two days in town. “I was really impressed by her,” said, Amy Birnbaum, a producer with CBS News. “The concert was great fun and she's really talented, has a great gift,” Birnbaum said of the concert, which almost filled the auditorium in Whitfield Hall on the campus of Mississippi University for Women. “It looks like a really beautiful town,” she added of Columbus, noting the crew, unfortunately, hasn't had much time for sight- seeing and will be leaving today. “I wish I could see more of it.” Birnbaum said the program will air “in a few weeks,” but the network hasn't yet decided whether the young entertainer and her friends - the network is getting together with them before leaving today - will air on the network's morning program or evening news. Nancy Carpenter, director of Columbus Historic Foundation which coordinates the annual Pilgrimage, was beaming over what many described as one of the largest crowds in several years for the musical kickoff. “I was so tickled,” Carpenter said after the show. “Everyone really seemed to enjoy it and seemed to be having fun. |
“I think it got everyone really excited and that's what it's all about,” Carpenter added of the crowd, which often got caught up in Smith's hand- clapping, toe-tapping mixture of country, folk and blues, played through her award-winning fiddle skills as well as the guitar and other string instruments. Smith was accompanied by the Larry Wallace Band. Visitors shared the excitement. “She's unbelievable. We'd heard about her and decided to drive over but she's more than we expected. Makes us want to come back for more now that we've seen everything going on,” said John Chambers, who drove to Monday night's show from Tuscaloosa, Ala., with his wife Norma. “We've been to these before but tonight was energizing. You'd never know she was just 11. If this is just the start, we want to see what else you've got,” added Sue Harris of Starkville who has never done the Pilgrimage although she's lived in the area for six years. “We love old homes and friends had told us about your Pilgrimage and invited us down. We haven't seen any homes yet but tonight was a treat, just a very special treat. It's got us very excited,” said Kim and Fred Adams from Indianapolis, Ind. By Monday afternoon, visitors had been in from 12 states, according to Carpenter. Tickets and information on the Pilgrimage are available at the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center on Main Street in downtown Columbus, by calling (800) 920-3533 or visiting www.historic- columbus.org In addition to homes tours, other events today include the kickoff of the City Blocks tour from 5-6:30 p.m. on downtown streets, a musical presentation at 6:30 p.m. from the Jazz Caberet at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science in the Trotter Convention Center courtyard and the first candlelight tour at historic Temple Heights. Also featured on the candlelight tour is Lincoln Home. |
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| BLUEGRASS PRODIGY: Ruby Jane performs at an arts center in Columbus, Miss. Along with the fiddle, the 11-year-old plays eight other instruments and may be one of the South's next great bluegrass musicians. CARMEN K. SISSON from the November 13, 2006 edition THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR BLUEGRASS PRODIGY: Ruby Jane performs at an arts center in Columbus, Miss. Along with the fiddle, the 11-year-old plays eight other instruments and may be one of the South's next great bluegrass musicians. CARMEN K. SISSON Backstory: Fiddler on the youth By Carmen K. Sisson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor COLUMBUS, MISS. – Ruby Jane Smith is perched on a shaggy floor pillow in the middle of her sky-blue bedroom, suede-booted feet crossed, head tilted, and brows furrowed as she tries to remember the night she forgot what city she was in during a performance. It's understandable if the past three years seem a blur. Between winning her first fiddle competition after only six lessons, taking the Mississippi State Fiddler title, and performing at the Grand Ole Opry, life's kind of busy these days. Particularly when you're only 11 and there's a disco birthday party to plan and Lemony Snicket to read. Yet if Ruby Jane's schedule seems unusually crowded for someone who still has stuffed animals, it's because she is something of a child prodigy - perhaps the South's next great bluegrass musician. "She's born with it - all it's got to do is come out," says Opry legend Jim Brock, who has been training her. "At the rate she's going, she's going to be a top-notch musician." Last night, Ruby Jane enthralled a hometown audience with a performance at the Rosenzweig Arts Center here. Clogs beating out a steady rhythm, flowered skirt whirling, she blazed through a few of the nine instruments she plays - fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harmonica, banjo, Dobro, piano, drums, and spoons - singing bluegrass favorites written long before she was born. Almost every performance results in invitations for others, adding to her crowded schedule. Monday and Tuesday nights are dance lessons, Wednesdays are the handbell choir at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Thursdays are violin lessons with Mr. Brock, and Sundays are the church youth group. Tonight, she's home - for a change. It's a rarity she and her mother plan to celebrate by snuggling in bed with cartons of greasy Chinese food and a movie. For all her accomplishments, Ruby Jane is still very much a preteen, from the turquoise feather boa and butterfly party lights draping her mirror to the Johnny Depp and Napoleon Dynamite posters covering her wall. Poised and polite, with a megawatt gap-toothed grin, she neglects to mention the slew of regional awards she's won or the CBS Evening News interview earlier this year, when Bob Schieffer called her "the next big news in country music." In typical Ruby Jane fashion, words tumbling faster than her tongue can shape the syllables, she recites a litany of musicians she admires. Not surprisingly, Brock - who's spent the past 50 years playing with some of the biggest names in bluegrass - figures prominently on that list. Since taking her on three years ago, he's become not only her mentor, but a surrogate grandfather. Their meeting was a combination of hard work and serendipity. Her mother, JoBelle Smith, took her to see bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent in concert. Before the performance, Ruby Jane went backstage to meet Ms. Vincent. The girl was carrying her fiddle, as she always does. Vincent dashed through a rendition of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and asked Ruby Jane to play it. She did - so well that Vincent asked her to perform it onstage. "I was sweating because she'd never played that song before," Ms. Smith recalls. "I was looking at her like, 'You can run if you want to,' but Ruby Jane got up there with a big old grin and played the fire out of that song." Brock was in the audience. "I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about her," he says. Four days later, Ruby Jane's mother called and asked him to teach her. "I'd taught in the past, but not in years," says Brock. "My house is small; I've got no studio. It's just a lot of trouble." He agreed to meet her at the Columbus Senior Center where he was performing. By the time she finished playing for the silver-haired crowd, Brock was scheduling her first lesson. "I went home and told my wife, 'I've got this little girl coming over,' and she said, 'I thought we said we weren't going to do this,' " he remembers, chuckling softly. "I said, 'Well, I'm going to teach this one.' " Within a month, he stopped charging her for the lessons. Since then, the young chanteuse has become beloved at the senior center. Ruby Jane says she has friends of all ages, from 2 to 82. "They just love her and want to talk to her for hours," teases her mother, as Ruby Jane blushes. "At Wal-Mart especially, they're like, 'There's my Ruby Jane!' " KID AT HEART: Ruby Jane sits on her bed with her fiddle and favorite stuffed animals. CARMEN K. SISSON Her mother credits her social ease with home schooling, which she says removed the limitations of generational constructs. An artist and photographer herself, Smith proudly admits that neither of them are conformists. From the moment she was pregnant, she tried to fill Ruby Jane's head with as many good things as she could, reading and playing classical music for her while she was still in the womb. She wasn't daunted either when Ruby Jane's father disappeared in her third trimester. She simply moved in with her parents and made her only child's life as rich as possible. "I thought literature and art and music and poetry were so important," she says. "I didn't know what she was going to do. I just knew it was better than sitting her in front of Barney." When she began showing an interest in violins at age 2, her mother convinced a local teacher of the Suzuki method to teach her, even though the training usually doesn't begin until age 3. Smith studied right alongside her - until Ruby Jane turned 5 and her skills surpassed her mother's. When she become fascinated with bluegrass at 8, her mother put aside her qualms and spent six months searching the state for anyone who could lead her down this new path. While Ruby Jane loved classical music, it didn't speak to her soul the way this wild, joyful slice of Americana did. It was raw and expressive, deeply emotional, and inherently fluid. "I can't predict and say I'm doing any of this right," Smith says of her parenting. "I just step out and do what seems right at the moment." *** Mother and daughter are at a crossroads again. Record companies are beginning to pursue her, offering contracts and advice. But at the heart of it all, Ruby Jane - reader of the Chronicles of Narnia, unabashed lover of chicken fingers and riding four-wheelers with her friends - is still young, too young for what's being offered. "I'm not selling her," Smith says, taking a batch of cookies from the oven. "I'm not putting that kind of pressure on her. It will come, just not yet." With cheerful aplomb, Ruby Jane says she doesn't mind waiting. She's writing songs, exploring jazz, studying Latin and Greek, and - oh, yeah, trying to read all of Shakespeare's plays "for the challenge." Every spare moment is given to practice, from 10 minutes to six hours a day. "I don't really have downtime," she says, without a trace of ego or regret. "I'm always trying to accomplish something or get something going." Taking a moment to recite her favorite poem from memory, Rudyard Kipling's "If," Ruby Jane pauses to reflect on the poet's admonition to treat triumph and disaster equally and dream without making dreams your master. "Every show there's something to improve on, but it's not all about hitting the notes right," she says. "I'd sit and play for hours." Indeed, her favorite word is "encore," and it's a good thing, too - a lot of people predict that the little girl from Mississippi is about to learn a new word: fame.Here's the NOVEMBER 13, 2006 article on RUBY JANE in the internationally published newspaper, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. click here for the link! |
| Ruby Jane was on the CBS EVENING NEWS April 13, 2006 click below: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/13/eveningnews/m ain1498224.shtml |
| see Ruby Jane on Marty Stuart's website...pics of the Late Night Jam at the Ryman http://www.martystuart.com/LNJ-2006-1.htm |
| check out the June 2006 issue of Y'ALL magazine! ...Ruby Jane puts Columbus on the map! |
| Did you catch this EXCITING NEWS? AMERICAN AIRLINES FEATURED RUBY JANE ON ALL 2006 SUMMER FLIGHTS ON THE "EYE ON AMERICA"IN-FLIGHT NEWS SHOW! |
| Monday, July 14, 2008 article on Ruby Jane with Willie (PHOTOS at www.stillisstillmoving.com) The Ruby Jane Show by Linda/www.stillistillmoving.com Monday, July 7th, 2008 .. Micah Nelson, Lukas Nelson, and Ruby Jane, on stage at Carl's Corner 7/3/08 Ruby Jane, a 13-year-old fiddler from Austin, has been playing with Willie Nelson and family at recent shows. Willie introduced her as "Sweet Ruby," at the Carl's Corner show, and her skills are very sweet and very kick-ass at the same time. She was a crowd pleaser, and plays like someone who has been playing the fiddle a lot longer than five years, as reported on her web site. And she didn't just come out and play on the gospel set near the end of the show, either, but she was there from the first strains of Whiskey River until the last strains of Whiskey River. Willie gave her lots of opportunities for solos, and she awed the crowd with her skills. She was great. See how focused she is in the pictures? That's how she was every night; her eyes never left Willie, except to acknowledge the applause from the audience with a smile. www.therubyjaneshow.com: Born on November 17, 1994, in Dallas, TX, Ruby Jane is one of the world's premiere junior fiddlers and a fast-rising star in country and bluegrass-Americana music. With deep familial and cultural ties throughout the South, especially Mississippi, where she lived after her birth until she was 12 years old, she now resides in Austin, TX, with her mama, when not traveling as a musician, actress, or model. Ruby Jane exhibited a strong connection to music as early as age one and began classical violin instruction at age two. At age eight, she was introduced to the sounds of Americana music in Santa Fe, NM, leading to a complete devotion to old-time and bluegrass music. Subsequently, she began old-time fiddle lessons, which included the study of its unique bowing techniques, archaic tunings, and depth of expression. After only six fiddle lessons, she won first place in the first fiddle competition she entered, beginning a run of victories and increasing notoriety that continues today. She was granted an apprenticeship by the Mississippi Arts Commission at age eight to apprentice with Charles T. Smith, one of the last great Mississippi old-time fiddlers. For the past three years, she has competed in dozens of prestigious music competitions and performed with many bluegrass and country greats, including Marty Stuart, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Asleep at the Wheel, Rhonda Vincent ("The Queen of Bluegrass"), Mike Snider, Jesse McReynolds, Jim Brock, James Monroe, Carl Jackson and many others. In 2005, at age ten, Ruby Jane acted in her second film, contributed an original song to a film soundtrack, performed as the youngest invited fiddler in the history of the Grand Ole Opry, played at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop three times, and won the National Beginners Fiddle Championship (which ranked her first nationally under twelve). She was also a subject of artist James Patterson's state-commissioned, permanent photography exhibit at Mississippi's Jackson International Airport; her image hangs alongside Eudora Welty and Marty Stuart. Also in 2005, she won Second Place on the mandolin in the National Beginner Country Musician Competition, performed and modeled clothes for Project Alabama in New York's fall fashion week, and won a second consecutive First Place in her category at the TN Valley Fiddle Convention in Athens, AL. At the 2005 International Bluegrass Music Association convention, she was invited to perform as "Kids on Bluegrass". IBMA invited her again in 2006 and 2007. Ruby Jane is featured in a documentary about her legendary fiddle instructor Jim Brock. She also contributed to the film's soundtrack. In October 2005, at age 10, she won First Place in her category and then won the Fiddle-Off at the Mississippi State Fair Southern Championship Fiddle Contest, establishing her as the Mississippi State Fiddle Champion of 2005 for all age groups. She was the youngest state champion in the competition's history. In 2006 alone, media outlets and programs including the CBS Evening News, American Airlines In-Flight "Eye on America" News, Christian Science Monitor, W magazine, British Vogue, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and award-winning publications in Russia and Australia have featured stories about Ruby Jane. Selections from her eponymous first full-length album are played on bluegrass radio in the United States, Canada, and the Australian Radio Network while she continued to perform regularly around the U.S.A consummate performer, when asked what to identify a single highlight of 2006, she mentioned playing on stage with Marty Stuart at "Marty's Late Night Jam at the Ryman." For more information about Ruby, visit her websites (she has three): www.myspace.com/rubyjanesmith www.youtube.com/tigerlovesmith www.therubyjaneshow.com article by Linda /florenceem@aol.com/ www.stillisstillmoving.com |
| For the Benefit of Mr. Kite, article by Margaret Moser, Austin Chronicle, May 19, 2008, see Austin Chronicle archives for photo “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” was my mom’s reaction to the news that this week I was writing a recommended for the Candye Kane fundraiser at Antone’s next Thursday, May 29, and planning to attend the one for Van Wilks on June 8. Not that she hadn’t heard of benefits – we’d just completed one at Antone's for my brother Stephen – but rather that she was amazed at their proliferation. It feels true that Austin’ s favorite pastime in the music community is supporting itself through benefits. In a town where most bands and musicians are struggling with outside jobs and their art to make a living, when someone needs help you can’t keep the players away with a stick. Or a bow. That’s how a 13-year-old fiddle whiz named Ruby Jane got my attention. Actually, her mother got my attention first by sending me an email about Ruby Jane. With that name filed away, I perked up at Stephen’s benefit when Ray Benson strolled in with a sassy young brunette brandishing a fiddle. “My problem is I can’t find enough places to play,” she’d complained to Ray earlier. Ray bade her to join him at the benefit, just for fun, much like she’s been at Asleep at the Wheel's gigs. Next thing you know, Ruby Jane’s onstage, accompanying Ray before an atypical Antone’s audience of benefit angels, playing and singing her teenage heart out on classic tunes such as “Mind Your Own Business.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- It was just a handful of songs, but like Sarah Jarosz, Ruby Jane stands at the doorway of adolescence, just a few steps into womanhood. Her unfettered style derives from a pure youthful love of music that has yet to see her with a broken heart or a rotten experience with a record contract. Despite her complaint to Ray, her Myspace page is packed with gigs. And some of them are benefits. |
| links to recent articles! in Austin American-Statesman Here is the link to the "Your Neighbors" tv special on Ruby Jane on News8 Austin! This story ran on Ruby Jane Day in Austin, July 24, 2008! |
| Ruby Jane article in Austin American Statesman this is an excerpt from the article in Austin-American Statesman, for complete article, see below link. Five alive! Old is new again with these Austin musicians Belleville Outfit, Ruby Jane, the Dedringers, Dustin Welch and the Fireants putting a fresh spin on tradition. Thursday, August 21, 2008 Ruby Jane By Michael Corcoran The Austin music community is a village that has raised Charlie and Will Sexton, Warren Hood and Carrie Rodriguez, among others. In the last year the closeknit musical family has taken in 13-year-old fiddler Ruby Jane Smith, who regularly sits in with everyone from Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel to Bob Schneider and the Scabs. "I've got a lot of father figures," Ruby Jane says as she sits outside the RV that's home to her and her artist mother, JoBelle Smith. Besides her advanced skill on the violin, Ruby Jane seems older than 13, displaying a maturity you'd be lucky to find in high school seniors. The plan last year was to drive across the country, from Pensacola, Fla., to San Diego, with home-schooled Ruby Jane playing fiddle wherever she could and JoBelle selling her arts and crafts. When the mother and daughter hit Austin in September, they headed straight to the Continental Club, which JoBelle Smith used to visit on roadtrips from Dallas when she was a student at Southern Methodist University. Dale Watson was playing and he invited Ruby Jane, who always has her fiddle, onstage for a couple of songs. That night the daughter asked her mother "Can we live here?" and they parked their Winnebago at the Pecan Grove Park on Barton Springs Road. "It was the first day of the ACL Fest," says JoBelle Smith, who had raised Ruby Jane without a father in Columbus, Miss., where JoBelle's family was from. "We saw all these people walking down (Barton Springs Road) and wondered what all the commotion was about." A year later, Ruby Jane will be playing ACL Fest, as a member of Asleep at the Wheel, whose frontman, Ray Benson, now manages her. "I don't get nervous playing in front of big audiences," says the teenager, who's a bit of a ham. After all, she once performed in front of 60,000 people with Big & Rich on an ABC special coinciding with the CMA Awards and had a blast. Having debuted on the Grand Ole Opry at age 10, Ruby Jane was a fairly well-known prodigy in Nashville, where her fiddle instructor, Jim Brock, had been a top bluegrass sideman before he retired back to Mississippi. "We were offered record deals," JoBelle says, "but there seemed to be a lot of pressure involved. Like, if Ruby Jane didn't sell a million records, she'd be dropped." The Smiths were also in talks about being the subject of a reality show on CMT, but that also didn't feel right. "I just want to keep getting better," says Ruby Jane, who has her own band and bills her act as the Ruby Jane Show. She's been taking voice and guitar lessons and has started writing songs with Bill and Ruth Carter (Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Crossfire"). "My ultimate role model is Dolly Parton," says Ruby Jane, who started playing violin at age 2, after being transfixed by an Itzhak Perlman performance on PBS. "She a huge star, but she's also a great musician. I look at all the great songs she's written and I realize that I've got so much to learn." And she and her mother feel that Austin, where sharing and nurturing trump clawing and competing, is the perfect place to study. (Ruby Jane's next Austin show is Friday at Waterloo Ice House, 1106 W. 38th St. therubyjaneshow.com) for complete article, http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2008/08/0821xlcover.html |