Eat More Possum: a Tribute to Mike O’Ferrall
Mike O’Ferrall was a bass player I met back in 1999 or 2000, when I played a gig in a fire hall in Marydel, Maryland. Mike was one of the organizers, a big-bellied self-described hillbilly in ovreralls and a baseball cap, whose passion for bluegrass, friendliness, and outright hilarity was contagious. We spent a good long time talking to Mike that day: he was the original bass player for Bill Harrell and the Virginians (here’s a picture of a much younger Mike), one of the more legendary second-generation voices in bluegrass music, and had a slew of stories about life on the road.
Later I came to know Mike better through the bluegrass-l, a list-serv I belong to. We agreed on just about nothing except for bluegrass music, but got along very well for the simple reason that we put our politics aside. We used to meet up at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival and Wind Gap, where Mike liked to get in the occasional dig that I was a “long-haired hippy”, which I would usually counter by removing my hat and pointing out that my head was typically shaved to a 1/4 inch. Whenever I traveled to Delaware to see Danny Paisley play in a church basement, I’d see Mike and his fiancee Pam dancing the jitterbug by the side of the stage.
Mike had fought off cancer twice before, and had just beaten the disease a third time over the weekend when a clot formed in his leg, and killed him. Everyone on the bluegrass-l is heartbroken: for once the bickering over “What Is Bluegrass Anyway?” has died down in favor of heartfelt tributes to one of the finest gentleman you could ever hope to meet.
Mike always signed his emails “Eat More Possum”, and in tribute to my friend I have done the same.
More on Mike here, here, and here.
Eat more possum!
