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10/5/26
Peep!
Sometimes when a serious injustice has been perpetrated, even a person who is customarily mild-mannered has to step out of character and break bad. I’m not talking about social injustice, as that subject is thoroughly covered in the news media. I’m talking about the violation of a musician’s right to sing and play music. The customarily mild-mannered person is me. Rest assured, I wouldn’t have carried out the threat I’m about to tell you about. So, please don’t stop reading in disgust when you get to that part of the story. Stick with me, and you’ll find out how I was arrested for singing.
For as long as I’ve been playing bluegrass music, there’s been a festival near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the mid-1970s, it was held at Black Horse Campground. Once, I saw Vassar Clements there, playing an electric fiddle that was so loud, everyone was covering their ears, and I mean everyone, even his band members. Vassar just kept smiling and playing while the sound-man was sitting behind his console, eating a sandwich. I think that was the last year for that festival. Maybe the bad sound was its downfall. In 1979, Joe and Lil Cornett started a new festival at Granite Hill campground. That one always had good sound and good bands. All of the originators of bluegrass except Lester Flatt and Carter Stanley played at Granite Hill, as those two had already passed away. The top second-generation bands and a slew of regional and local bands were there too. All in all, it was, and still is, a top-notch festival. Eventually, I developed my chops and helped put a good band together that performed at Graite Hill many times. But what I’m about to tell you about happened before that, when I had to pay for my ticket and expected to get my money’s worth.
At every one of those festivals, I reunited with my friends from various parts of the United States and Canada to jam and socialize. Our group of pickers always camped in the rough-camping area, so our boisterous jam sessions wouldn’t disturb the folks with the hundred-thousand-dollar motorhomes. It was sort of an unwritten rule that we rowdy folks could do as we pleased in that rough-camping area. In other words, if you wanted peace and quiet at night, you were supposed to camp with the motorhomes.
At some point, the festival crowd became large enough to warrant the hiring of a security company, in case trouble were to break out. I suppose you could say trouble did break out and the trouble was me. Late one night, while my friends and I were in the middle of a great jam session, one of those security guards, a young fellow, about five foot seven and not much over a hundred pounds, whose biggest worry a year earlier may have been his algebra exam, came up and said, “Excuse me, but you’ll have to stop making noise - there’s been a complaint.” Me: “What noise?” Rent-a-cop: “Those banjos and ukuleles and – you know, the noise you’re making.” Well, I had paid about a hundred bucks to get in the gate, and I was determined to pick as late as I wanted to. In those days, I was six-four and weighed well over three hundred pounds, so I could turn on the intimidation as needed. I said to the pseudo-cop, “Get out of here or I’ll throw you out, headfirst.” That kid took off so fast, he was out of sight in a heartbeat. We all laughed and resumed the jam session.
About thirty minutes later, as I was singing “Footprints in the Snow,” the State Police arrived. An officer, well-seasoned judging by the salt 'n’ pepper sideburns below his Stetson, got out of his car and tried to speak, but I was singing louder than he was talking. When I finished the song, the cop, who had been relatively patient as “Nelly lost her way” (a line from the song), reiterated the complaint. I started to argue that I had paid good money to get in, and all that, but it turned out that the trooper knew how to speak in a powerful voice too. He said to me, loud enough for everyone to hear, “One more peep out of you, and you’re going to jail.” Trying to match the cop’s volume, I hollered “Peep!” I went to jail.
Our cop and his partner, who had been standing-by in their car, handcuffed me and said they were carrying me to the Adams County Prison. Prison? Uh-oh. On the way, they talked about the evils of Willie Nelson, The Grateful Dead, and other musicians they thought to be drug addicts, assuming I was guilty of that habit by association. I tried to explain that bluegrass wasn’t like that, but they weren’t interested. At the Adams County Prison, they booked me for disorderly conduct and escorted me to my cell, handing me a blanket and a tin coffee cup, which I had thought was something only seen in bad movies. By then it was five in the morning, so I climbed in the bunk and went to sleep.
Meanwhile, back at Granite Hill, my best friend and soulmate, Debbie Jacobs, was waking people up, asking for money to bail me out. Mike Marceau put up the bail money and Debbie arrived at the prison at about six – and after I had just managed to get to sleep, what a nuisance! Thanks to my friends, from those prison bars I’d been set free. I can now legitimately write prison songs, even though I was only in the cell for fifty-five minutes.
Sorry to derail the train of thought, but before I tell you about my trial for saying “peep,” I just remembered another time my big mouth caused me legal problems. I got a ticket for some violation that I can’t remember, but I do remember that I was absolutely innocent. When I had my day in court, I was ready to argue my case when the judge looked at my hands, which were covered with scars from the sheet metal work I was doing in those days. The Judge said, “From the look of those hands, you must get in a lot of fights, right? Incensed, I said, “No, your honor, I work for a living, I don’t sit behind a bench all day." The next thing I knew, the gavel banged, the bailiff led me out, and I was coughing up three hundred bucks to the cashier. My lawyer friends tell me I was lucky I wasn’t locked under the jail for contempt, but I saw myself as another Josef K. in Kafka’s “The Trial.”
Back to the “peep” trial.
Really, I’m not a defendant often, just a couple of times. Well - maybe five or six.
At my trial for singing too loud (and saying “peep”), Joe Cornett himself testified that his rent-a-cops weren’t supposed to break up jam sessions and that he wanted the charges dropped. Thank you, Joe! My four-hundred-dollar bail money was returned with the Judge’s apology on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The policemen who had arrested me weren’t pleased, but that didn’t bother me.
Debbie and I left the courthouse and went to Chris Warner’s music store in New Oxford to talk with Chris and check out his instruments. He had a 1914 Gibson A-4 mandolin hanging on the wall with a four-hundred-dollar price tag. Done deal. Getting that mandolin almost made the whole experience worthwhile.
Photos:
1. Jamming in the rough camping area with Mike Marceau and others, 1983
3. Debbie & Me
3. The Gibson A-4 Mandolin
Tom Mindte
September 2026
Jamming in the rough camping area with Mike Marceau and others, 1983
Debbie & Me
The Gibson A-4 Mandolin