Someone’s grandparents always seem to remember one, and sometimes you can still find the scruffs and scrapes of shoes and boots on the floors. But where’d those hoedowns go?
By Kate Lewton
Vermont’s barns are generally for cows, but years ago, with a spare Saturday night and a broom, plenty of them played home to a now half-forgotten art — the barn dance.
Someone’s grandparents always seem to remember one, and sometimes you can still find the scruffs and scrapes of shoes and boots on the floors. But where’d those hoedowns go? What were they like? And what did they do for small, rural communities?
The history of barn dances in Vermont is dynamic with movement itself. Many of the forms throughout local history have been European-inspired, influenced by early French-Canadian, Scottish and English settlers, with modifications throughout modernization. The dances spanned country styles: square, line, contra.
Some of the earliest 19th century dance events recorded in Vermont were called kitchen tunks or junkets. First mentioned in 1868 by a St. Albans newspaper, tunks entailed stripping the furniture from a farmhouse kitchen and bringing in a fiddler. Usually they followed a community labor or gathering.
Terry Bouricius, who went to Middlebury College in the 1970s, said he’s heard plenty of folklore about those kitchen tunks from his longstanding time in the Vermont dance community.
“People would have a dance in the winter,” he said. “You know, it is not harvest season, it’s not planting season — there’s downtime. The joke, and I don’t know if it is true or not, (is that) the fiddle player would stand in the sink so there would be more floor space.”
Though he never attended a tunk, Boruicius has gone to his fair share of community dances, especially ones focused on contra dancing — which involves partners in opposite lines, rather than in square formations. The gatherings came a little too late, roughly the mid-’70s onward, to be considered classic barn dances.
But they were an offshoot of the old Vermont tradition. Boruicius remembers dawn dances in particular — contra dances held with live music until the sun came up and dancers dropped.
“There were dawn dances in the community recreation gym in Brattleboro,” he said. “They would have a whole list of bands lined up, and they would start at like 8 p.m., and they would go till 8 a.m. with live music and people contra dancing all through the night. And occasionally there would be dawn dances in other parts of the state too.”
He remembers them as popular events, recalling that people were willing to travel for the hurrah.
“I lived in Charlotte at the time, and we would get a carload of people, and we’d drive, you know, 2 ½ hours to get to go dance till dawn and then take turns driving back ’cause we were all too sleepy to drive the whole way back,” he said. “I did that probably 10 times over the years.”
Barn dances played in small corners of communities for decades. By local accounts they appeared most popular in the 1930s-50s but remained a staple up into the 1970s and 1980s. Initially inspired by the western music of Nashville, many families operated small-scale bands that would travel around the state playing events, becoming something of local celebrities.
Daniel Cole, president of the Charlotte Historical Society, remembers how many people enjoyed the music of his father, Al Cole, when his swing band would play barn dances — and the dust they kicked up.
“They have north and south bays like just driving right into the middle of the upper floor,” the younger Cole said. “They’d clean it out, and that’s where they would have their dances. You just remember that when (it would) be kind of dusty because of hay and things in the barns, they would water the floor to keep the dust down.”
Local stardom wasn’t the only allure for the performers, as they would take home $8 a night, pretty good for local standards considering that was nearing almost a day’s work pay for some in 1950. But from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., they were expected to play no matter the situation, said Cole. Cold didn’t count.
“They would set up in a corner, and it was unheated. So if it was cold outside, it was cold inside, and they had what were called milkhouse heaters that they would place in front of the bandstand to try to keep them warm so they could play,” he said.
Cole’s father was a regular player at the Hen House in Underhill in the 1940s and ’50s. His music brought people together.
Jean Tarazewich is of a younger generation than Al Cole and a New Jersey native who relocated to Johnson in the 1970s. The culture shock was one of her first challenges.
“Everything closes at 5 o’clock at night, you know what I mean? It’s like, ‘Oh, my God. There’s like — the nearest McDonald’s is 50 miles away. The nearest traffic light was 50 miles away,’” she said.
She remembers asking a local boy about the happenings. There had to be something for young people.
“There was nothing. I remember asking him when I got up here, ‘What do you guys do for fun? You know, in Vermont?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, you know, we get in the car, and we drink beer, and we ride around, and we go to the quarry,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, gee, you know, my life is over.’”
But soon she’d meet a friend in school whose family hosted a weekly barn dance in Westfield.
“They would drive their bus from Jeffersonville with their band, and they would pick anybody that wanted to go to the barn dance on the way,” she said. “All you had to do is stand by the side of the road, and they’d pick you up. They didn’t charge you anything.”
The dances were really for all ages, she said. Teens like her could raise hell while parents swaddled babies.
“Remember the Neil Diamond song? You know, ‘Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, and everyone goes.’ It was called ‘Brother Love’s Traveling (Salvation) Show.’ A preacher would come to town, and they’d set a tent up, but barn dances were like that. Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, and everyone goes.”
That spirit helped create families and friendships in small towns across counties. You could meet your best friend’s uncle’s little brother’s wife at a barn dance, or something like that.
“There’s a bunch of people in the world, like my sister’s four kids, that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that night at that barn dance,” Tarazewich said.
“That’s how you did it back then,” she added. “Because how else would two girls from Johnson, Vermont, meet two guys from Orleans?”
Kathleen Meeks lives in Wardsboro on property with a barn her father built in 1947. It served the practical purpose of a place for milking, but the upstairs was for music and dances. Her family ran barn dances when she was a little girl and later in the 1970s and ’80s with the children as adults, known together as the Bills Band. It was her younger years when the barn dances felt especially meaningful and freeing.
“When we had the farm, you didn’t go and hang out with your friends or anything ’cause we had work that we had to do, and we weren’t allowed to go hang down in the village with some of the other kids that could just be down there raising the devil,” Meeks said, remembering young people rolling up cigarette packs in their shirtsleeves and racing cars. “We had to stay here and work. So to get to go off to a dance was pretty special.”
The same went for older folks, many of whom were farmers who rarely got leisure time.
Her wild times look different now, but Meeks keeps those memories close.
“I’m 77 now, so I don’t know how much dancing I would do, but I just loved the sound,” she said. “I love the smell. I love, you know, listening to people just laugh and have such a fun time. It was really great.”
So why did they stop?
Entertainment options have skyrocketed with new developments since the heyday of the dances. People interviewed also wonder whether a greater awareness of liabilities — like underage drinking, fire safety, equipment rentals — have contributed to the decline.
In some ways, the shows haven’t ended. Barn dances have become more folklore than fact in modern times, but they’ve been on something of a resurgence.
The Current in Stowe, the Martha Canfield Library in Arlington and Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne all hosted barn dances last fall. They have been the backdrop for benefits and fundraisers throughout the state. Singer Rik Palieri has put on the Great Vermont Barn Dance Show in Williston and Hinesburg for a number of years, which has found much success. Many families still host private parties in their barns.
More commonly what’s survived has been the culture inside the historic events if not their venues. Contra-, square- and line-dancing clubs and events are still happening in various capacities throughout the state.
In Montpelier, Contra Dancing is alive and well at the Capital City Grange, where dances are held on three Saturdays a month. Queen City Contra Dancing offers events about each Friday at the Shelburne Town Hall. In Guilford, the BroadBrook Community Center hosts a contra dance on the second Sunday of every month with live music and calling.
Dance or not, those barns still exist, some better kept than others. And the stories inside them don’t disappear — even for the red one slanting into the river and peeling its paint.
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship