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Birmingham native + Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell hosts America’s Forests show on PBS

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Chuck Leavell, a Birmingham-born musician, is best known for his role as the keyboardist in The Rolling Stones. What you may not know is that Leavell is also an environmentalist and host of America’s Forests on PBS—a documentary-style program about America’s most beautiful forests and how we can protect them.

Alabama-born music icon turned environmentalist

Born in Birmingham, Chuck Leavell has had a colorful career as a keyboardist for Dr. John, The Allman Brothers Band and eventually The Rolling Stones beginning in 1985. The Alabama Music Hall of Fame member and Birmingham Area Music Award winner has also worked with artists such as:

George Harrison
Eric Clapton
Blues Traveler
John Mayer
Miranda Lambert

Chuck Leavell hosts America’s Forests on PBS

In addition to his music career, Leavell is a tree farmer with a 2,500-acre tree farm and preserve in Macon, Georgia. As supporters of sustainable forestry and conservation, Chuck and his wife Rose Lane have two Georgia Tree Farmers of the Year awards under their belt.

As host of America’s Forests, Leavell focuses on forests across the country and highlights how sustainability creates a better world and community. From the Northwoods of Wisconsin to the Arkansas Delta, America’s Forests demonstrates the importance of keeping our forests beautiful and clean.

Check out America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell

Watch the first episode of America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell on PBS.

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URL: http://tinyurl.com/524w7ztw

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Best Bets: Chuck Leavell returns to Sacred Heart

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Chuck Leavell returns to Sacred Heart

Just over a year ago, Chuck Leavell — the keyboardist and vocalist best-known as a longtime performer with the Rolling Stones — visited Sacred Heart Music Center. He filmed a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” jointly with Duluth band Big Wave Dave and the Ripples, for an episode of the PBS series “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell.”

On Thursday, Leavell will return to Sacred Heart and reunite with Big Wave Dave for more music, a conversation about local forestry issues, and film screenings including the finished episode. For tickets and information, see sacredheartmusic.org.

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Keith Richards teases Rolling Stones will return with new music and possible gigs in 2023

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Keith Richards has teased new music is “on its way”.

The Rolling Stones guitarist was seemingly referring to new tunes from the Start Me Up legends in a new clip to his fans.

In a belated Happy New Year video message on Instagram this week, the Gimme Shelter rocker said: “Hi guys, here we are again.

“Wishing you all a belated Happy New Year and there’s some new music on its way and hopefully we’ll get to see you. You know? Anyway, let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

2022 saw the band continue to celebrate their 60th anniversary with their mammoth SIXTY tour, where they played UK dates, which included a return to Liverpool for the first time in over 50 years and two nights at BST Hyde Park.

The band – completed by frontman Mick Jagger and guitarist Ronnie Wood – also paid tribute to their late drummer Charlie Watts at their gigs, who sadly passed away in 2021 aged 80.

Speaking to the crowd at Anfield, the frontman said: “In 1962 we met a drummer called Charlie Watts and this is our first tour in England we’ve done without him, so we’d like to dedicate this show to Charlie.”

The Paint It Black rockers also began each gig with a slideshow of Watts throughout the years.

The Rolling Stones
 

Meanwhile, Ronnie Wood recently revealed that the late drummer is set to feature on the band’s next album.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column, he said: “We are recording the new album now and we are going to LA in a few weeks to carry it on and finish it off. Charlie is on some of the tracks and drummer Steve Jordan.”

Though the band released their Living In A Ghost Town single in 2020, the new album will be the first full length LP to feature new compositions since 2005’s A Bigger Bang.

URL: https://bit.ly/3jOLqOH

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Tom Poland: A Story Of Music, Trees, And Family

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On a January day in 2019 I met Chuck Leavell in Georgia’s geographic center. We met to write a magazine cover story. Our story would lead to a feature on his wife, Rose Lane, and later Chuck’s profile-interview for the James Dickey Review. Earlier, Chuck had written back-cover praise for my book on the Carolina bays. Two writers had come together. Now two sons of the American South are co-writing Chuck Leavell’s story of music, trees, and family.

Chuck Leavell’s keyboards and vocals grace the works of Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, John Mayer, The Black Crowes, George Harrison, The Indigo Girls, Blues Traveler, Train, Montgomery-Gentry, Lee Ann Womack, and many other artists. His work with the Allman Brothers Band is legendary. His piano feature on “Jessica” and Gregg Allman’s “Laid Back’s” “Multicolored Lady” endure as classics.

In 1982, Chuck began touring as keyboardist, vocalist, and musical director for the Rolling Stones. He tours with them to this day. “Without the continuity Chuck brings to us, the Stones would not be the Stones,” said Keith Richards.

Chuck’s history with the Stones goes back a ways. Chuck’s favorite Stones song to play with the band is “Honky Tonk Women.” He first heard the song while living in Nashville. “Man, I was riding down a road and a new Stones song came on the radio and blew me away. I pulled over to listen to it and went straight to the record store.” Today, he plays the song with the band. Life’s come full circle and within that circle is Chuck’s role as a noted environmentalist.

While riding a tour bus with the Fabulous Thunderbirds in the mid 1980s, Chuck studied forestry by correspondence. He and Rose Lane turned their 4,000-acre Charlane Woodlands & Reserve into a textbook tree farm. Conservation organizations recognize their work, praising them. Chuck is as comfortable on a tractor as on a piano bench. He’s the only two-time recipient of the Georgia Tree Farmer of the Year award.

In 1999, the American Tree Farm System selected Chuck and Rose Lane as National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year. The National Arbor Day Foundation, Georgia Conservancy, FFA, and other conservation organizations praise Chuck for his work. He sponsors a scholarship at the University of Georgia and sits on conservation boards and committees. Chuck’s book, Forever Green: The History and Hope of the American Forest earned praise acclaimed by the forestry and conservation communities.

PBS’s documentary series, “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell,” illustrates how vital public and private forest habitats are to our communities’ well-being and economic health. Chuck co-founded the Mother Nature Network, at one time the world’s most visited online network for news and information about the environment and responsible living.

The writing’s underway. This spring Chuck and I plan a walk through the iconic Capricorn Records in Macon. Music historians credit Macon’s Capricorn Records for creating the Southern Rock genre. Consider it hallowed ground.

Musicians and writers, artists each, harbor passions. It’s what makes them tick. Chuck’s passions include family, trees and music. Mine include family, writing, rock history, nature, nostalgia, and the American South. Wayne Ford of the Athens Banner Herald wrote, “Tom Poland is an inquisitive man who keeps an eye out for extravagant chunks of nature, disappearing cultures, and people who are salt of the earth. He has ridden those so-called back roads for years chewing foods, sipping drinks, absorbing stories and documenting his finds. Change is what Poland touches upon frequently.”

In 2018, Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom noting that, “His work is exceptional to the state.” The Order of the Palmetto is South Carolina’s highest civilian honor.

Together, Chuck and I will document the life and career trajectory of a Southern musician and conservationist. Chuck Leavell is from Birmingham, Alabama. Tom Poland is from Lincolnton, Georgia.

URL: https://bit.ly/3WCZDvs

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America’s Forests in Minnesota / Chuck Leavell in Duluth

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Famed musician Chuck Leavell visited Duluth on March 29 to record a performance of the Bob Dylan song “Like a Rolling Stone” with the Duluth band Big Wave Dave and the Ripples at Sacred Heart Music Center. The collaboration was for the closing segment of the 10th episode of the television series America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell. Embedded above is the full episode, which recently aired on select PBS stations, but not Duluth.

In the Minnesota episode, Leavell snowmobiles through a boreal forest, meets people who are restoring the pines along Lake Superior to their former glory, and explores what’s being done by the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to protect Minnesota’s moose population.

Leavell has been the primary keyboardist and music director for the Rolling Stones since 1982 and has also worked with Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers Band and others. Additionally, he is a conservationist, environmentalist, author and tree farmer. His TV series celebrates how forest habitats enhance the well-being and economic health of communities across the country. From architects to artists, from climbers to carpenters, each episode shines a light on individuals and their love and concern for the woods around them.

URL: https://bit.ly/3IMbF2x

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Screenings Held for Arkansas-Filmed Episodes of ‘America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell’

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Arkansas-filmed episodes of the PBS series America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell will be premiered in free, back-to-back screenings Thursday, April 21, in Fayetteville and Bentonville. These two half-hour episodes highlight what’s exceptional about Arkansas through interviews with an array of stakeholders in the forest culture and economy in regions around the state.

A screening event for the U of A campus community will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. April 21 in Vol Walker Hall. A public screening event will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. that day at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Registration for the Crystal Bridges event is available at: crystalbridges.org/calendar/april-film-americas-forests.

These screenings are presented through a collaboration between the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, Crystal Bridges and the producers of America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell. Each event will include a conversation with Leavell, as well as a short performance of music from his career. Each event also will include a screening of a 30-minute version of the documentary Chuck Leavell: The Tree Man, which shows how Leavell divides his talents between music, forests and family.

Leavell may be best known as the keyboardist and musical director for The Rolling Stones, but he is also an educated and enthusiastic forestry advocate, conservationist and tree farmer. As host of the America’s Forests series, Leavell serves as the on-camera guide, traveling across the country to interview people who are passionate about the gifts provided by the woodlands and exploring creative solutions to complex problems impacting this important natural resource. The series is produced by Choose Outdoors and 42 Degrees North Media.

The production crew filmed the two Arkansas episodes in locations throughout the state in 2021. The episodes celebrate the natural resources and cultural heritage of Arkansas, which is nearly 57 percent forested, with almost 12 billion trees of diverse species growing on almost 19 million acres.

“Filming in Arkansas was truly an inspirational experience,” Leavell said. “The wonderful people we met across the state, the magnificent scenery and outdoor adventures, and the introduction to the many benefits of Arkansas’ forests all made our time in this beautiful state a true memory that I will always cherish.”

Chuck Leavell during the filming of the Arkansas episodes
Chuck Leavell, host of “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell,” tours the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design’s Build Lab during the filming of the Arkansas episodes.

The Ozarks episode features interviews with Dean Peter MacKeith on the U of A campus; Joe Fox, Arkansas state forester, while floating the Buffalo National River from Ponca; Hardy Wentzel, CEO of Structurlam Mass Timber Corporation, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson at the first U.S. location of Structurlam in Conway; and Becca Ohman, garden director, at Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs. While at Blanchard Springs Caverns, Leavell took advantage of the caverns’ unique acoustics to play mandolin with some local musicians.

The Delta episode features interviews with Kyle Miller, director of the Delta Cultural Center in Helena; Debbie Doss, founder of the Arkansas Watertrails Partnership, among the swamps of tupelo and bald cypress of Bayou DeView; Ross Whipple, landowner and conservationist, at Big Lake Hunting Club; and John Ed Anthony, chairman of the board, and Steven Anthony, president, of Anthony Timberlands, a family-owned company in Bearden. They also highlighted an ecosystem restoration project in the Ouachita National Forest to help recover the red-cockaded woodpecker. While at the Delta Cultural Center, Leavell played keyboard in a jam session with local blues musicians.  

The Anthony family has been in the timber business for five generations in south Arkansas. John Ed Anthony and his wife, Isabel, gave the lead $7.5 million gift for the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, a new research and education facility in the design phase for the Fay Jones School.

“These episodes demonstrate the virtues and value of Arkansas’ forests to a larger national audience,” said Dean Peter MacKeith, “and they highlight the incredible work being done by so many across the state in forestry, conservation, stewardship, economic development and innovative action for the greater good. To work with Chuck Leavell and the production team was truly special and rewarding.”

“The support we received from so many different people and organizations made our two episodes really special,” said Bruce Ward, executive producer of America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell. “From government agencies to the timber industry to conservation organizations, individual donors and the University of Arkansas, we were welcomed and provided all the resources we needed to produce these amazing episodes.”

These Arkansas episodes of America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell were made possible by funding provided in part by the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the Arkansas Department of Agriculture (Forestry Division), the Arkansas Department of Commerce, the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, the Arkansas Forestry Association (Education Division), STIHL, PotlatchDeltic, The Ross Foundation, Herren Hickingbotham, Chip Murphy, and Ross and Mary Whipple. They were produced in association with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service. 

URL: https://bit.ly/3vvRygR

Swamp

Swamp Boogie | Do South Magazine

Debbie Doss lifts the paddle head out of the latte-colored water and lets it rest on the kayak. Her bright vessel drifts smoothly, deliberately, like a horse let off its lead, past gargantuan trees in the flooded timber of Bayou DeView. Overhead, the azure sky is spattered with overhanging tree branches, grating the light into shards while echoing bird calls emote from every direction.

Debbie has paddled this route hundreds of times, but still, the sight of the place, the Sistine Chapel of the Arkansas Water Trails, never fails to take her breath away.

“Nature is my only religion, and the outdoors is my only church,” Debbie told me. “DeView is a very sacred one.”

If you’ve ever wondered what primeval looks like, you’ll find it on the Arkansas Water Trails, paddling routes that deliver a mind-bending view of The Natural State. It’s a scene you experience visually and viscerally – at once astonishing in its age and beauty and terrifying in its sheer size and mystery.

The mind plays tricks here as the chocolate water swirls and the silence overpowers you amid grove after grove of trees – cypress, tupelo, and various water-loving oaks. The oldest of them are easily 900 years old if that tells you anything. Put into context, Christian Europeans were still waging Crusades in the Holy Land when these ancients were saplings.

“All of the trails have their own characteristics, and each one is different and unique in its own way,” Debbie says. “Some of them are more open and some of them, like DeView, are actually a river, so you do have current. It’s generally slow-moving, but you do have current.”

“At Grassy Lake, which is near Mayflower, it’s a green tree reservoir, which also has cypress. But there’s really no current at all because it’s an impoundment. You still need the trail because you’re still going through a whole lot of flooded timber and stuff.”

There is literally no other place in the state quite like the marshy, swampy environs of the Arkansas Water Trails. Designated by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and currently numbering fourteen statewide, these trails give paddlers an up-close view of time frozen in place, by turn majestic, eerie, natural and alien. The visitor is just one of a cast of thousands here, among the birds, insects, fish, frogs, turtles and who-knows-what sliding and slithering under groves of lily pads and around the bases of trees.

“We’ve got other places, like down at Arkansas Post, where it’s more marshy and open and where you can see alligators and things like that,” grins Debbie, who never met a reptile she didn’t like. “Generally, they go the other way.”

The Arkansas Water Trails can be found throughout the southern half of the state, with additional trails as far north as Marion and Poinsett counties. More are being considered for inclusion in the state’s collection and even more are waiting to be discovered.

“There’s a lot of places to paddle that are just great that are not yet official water trails,” Debbie says. “I’m working with the Game and Fish Commission on some, which all seem to be in the eastern part of the state right now. We’re working with one called Wapanocca over close to Memphis that is a nice little lake paddle that we’re going to add to the state water trails.”

“We’re also looking at places to paddle up on the Black River, which comes out of Missouri on the eastern side of the state and joins the White River near Newport. And in the southwest and western part of the state, Sulphur River is one that people should check out.”

If the system has patron saints, it’s undoubtedly Debbie and her husband Cowper Chadbourn, who have been crucial activists for creating the trails and overseeing certain routes. Following the spring 2021 snowstorm, they paddled the most popular trails to check for damage and inspect the reflectors and signage nailed to trees that mark paddlers’ route.  

“They’re all in pretty good shape now,” she says. “We checked out the main ones that get the most use here in Central Arkansas, which is Grassy Lake and Bayou DeView and Wattensaw Bayou. Those are all good to go.”

“Over the years as people have gotten used to the trails, we’ve had fewer issues with sign removal. We still get some a little bit every year during hunting season. There’s some competition to get out to the duck holes and people will sometimes take signs down. But we always go out after the season’s over, just to make sure that you can still find your way around the trails without any problems. Everything is looking pretty good, so far. We’re ready for spring.”

Arkansas’ Water Trails represent some of the last remaining enclaves of Arkansas wilderness. Once covering as much as a third of the state, these ecosystems were fed by seasonal flooding of the Mississippi River, blessing Arkansas with some of the richest soils on earth. However, this very flooding made large-scale cultivation impossible in many areas and so began a decades-long effort to tame the land for habitation and agriculture.

Over time technology allowed that very thing to occur, with state and federally funded reclamation programs. Arkansas gained millions of acres of rich farmland at the expense of the flood-flush-fortify system that helped create and nourish it in the first place.

Bayou DeView, and places like it, might have disappeared altogether were it not for a battery of conservation groups – Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, The Nature Conservancy, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and others – that have worked to bring them under protection.

Debbie has gone so far as to found the Arkansas Water Trails Partnership to promote and protect these untamed spaces, providing benefits for generations. The group works with various partners to develop public paddling trails throughout the state, creating well-mapped accessible day and overnight trips in a variety of settings and for all levels of paddling experience.

“It’s a perfect thing for a novice just learning to paddle,” she says. “There are certain things you still need to learn just for safety, but as far as skills in the boat, people with rudimentary skills can get out there and do just as much as anybody else. Adrenaline is the attraction for whitewater sports, but this is endorphins and serotonin. It’s a place where you can go and be enclosed by a natural experience.”

Adventure Awaits
The Arkansas Water Trails includes 14 routes, each with its own flavor and mood.

Arkansas Post Water Trail (Arkansas County)

Bayou Bartholomew Water Trail (Ashley, Jefferson, Lincoln counties)

Bayou DeView Water Trail (Monroe County)*

Crooked Creek Water Trail (Marion County)

Cut-Off Creek Water Trail (Drew County)

Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge Water Trails (Union and Ashley Counties)*

Grassy Lake Water Trail (Faulkner County)*

H Lake Water Trail (Arkansas County)

Islets Cove Paddle Trail on DeGray Lake (Clark County)

Lake Ouachita | Rabbit Tail Water Trail (Garland and Montgomery counties)

Little Maumelle River Water Trail (Pulaski County)*

Robe Bayou Water Trail (Monroe County)

St. Francis Sunken Lands Water Trail (Poinsett County)

Wattensaw Bayou Water Trail (Prairie County)*

* Arkansas Water Trails Partnership Trail

 
To learn more:
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission: agfc.com/en/explore-outdoors/wildlife-viewing/water-trails/

Arkansas Water Trails Partnership: arkansaswatertrails.com

URL: https://dosouthmagazine.com/swamp-boogie/

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Judge Saves Christmas Tree but Larger Issues Remain

Judge Saves Christmas Tree but Larger Issues Remain

By Bruce Ward

 

The dispute between federal agencies and Wild Earth Guardians takes place against a backdrop of larger issues that extend beyond their on-going lawsuit and should deeply concern the public. A U.S. District Court this week resolved part of the uncertainty by approving an agreement that will, among other things, let the U.S. Forest Service harvest the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree. My organization, Choose Outdoors, the primary non-profit partner in the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree project, is grateful for the common-sense clarification.

 

But as a neutral party to the lawsuit, I believe that while both sides in the case make good points, they’re failing to remind the public of the enormous troubles facing national forests – issues that really should unite people who care about our natural place our public lands.

For decades, I’ve traveled to Washington, D.C. and advocated for several forest-related policies such as supporting outdoor recreation and reducing wildfire hazards. Repeatedly, I’ve seen well-intentioned people dive so deeply into the weeds that they fail to resolve the more serious issues that led to the disputes in the first place. Two key problems in particular stalk this court dispute:

  • All U.S. public lands agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, have been unconscionably underfunded for decades.
  • Catastrophic wildfires have become more common and have grown in both frequency and intensity across the region, requiring the U.S. Forest Service and other public lands agencies to spend more of their already limited resources (both money and staff) on fighting the flames.Climate change unfortunately is very real and already may be drying out the Southwest’s ecosystems, worsening the fire dangers.

The lawsuit in question illustrates what happens when forest advocates look at only part of the overall problem – a variation on the law of unintended consequences.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said their scientists would conduct studies to determine how many Mexican spotted owls (a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act) live in the Southwest’s national forests. The research also was supposed to determine if commercial timber cutting and even prescribed burns hurt or help the owls’ populations. More than six years ago, Wild Earth Guardians sued the agencies because the feds never finished those studies. This September, a federal judge excoriated the agencies and issued a sweeping order that seemed to halt any timber-related project on national forests in the region.

Yet the U.S. Forest Service’s response – that it lacks funds to do the studies properly – also has merit. For decades, Congress and several presidential administrations have given short shrift to the U.S. Forest Service, and other public land management agencies. The extra burden of coping with climate change means all the agencies are falling further behind on their legally obligated jobs — including forest health and endangered species. Some facts:

  • For more than 10 years, the U.S. Forest Service’s inflation-adjusted budget essentially has stayed flat; for 2017, it was about $5.67 billion. But last year, Congress cut the agency’s funds to $4.7 billion – a $938 million drop (or roughly 17 percent).And this year, the administration’s budget envisions cutting the 2019 Forest Service discretionary funding (which covers items like campgrounds and wildlife studies) by another $486 million from 2018 levels.
  • That decrease would mean the agency’s multi-billion-dollar list of deferred maintenance projects will just grow longer. For example, if Congress restores just the amount that the administration wants to slash this year, the sum could cover the $264 million the administration seeks to cut from the U.S. Forest Service’s capital and maintenance fund and enable the agency to address its enormous backlog of poorly maintained roads, bridges and other structures. In addition, the sum would replenish the $15 million for wildlife habitat management that the administration also wants to cut.
  • Meanwhile, the costs of fighting wildfires now consume more than half the Forest Service’s entire budget. Yet in 2018, the agency’s Wildland Fire Management budget (to pay for forest fire prevention) fell to $2.495 billion, a decrease of $708 million (or about 28 percent) below what Congress gave it in 2017.
  • Most scientists expect that the number and intensity of forest fires will worsen as the climate warms, too. On that point, green groups and most scientists likely agree.

I believe Wild Earth Guardians’ supporters want to protect threatened and endangered species but I also know the U.S. Forest Service really is cash-strapped and struggling with competing priorities. Regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome, it’s critical that both sides work together for a greater good.

What our national forests truly need are our combined voices to call attention to the increasingly troubled future of all our public lands.

Bruce Ward is president of Choose Outdoors. https://www.chooseoutdoors.org/

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