As we've seen in the first three articles in this series, raising a brilliant young musician can be a formidable challenge for any parent. And when there are other children in the family, children whose talents don't include music, the challenge gets even bigger: parents must invest endless time and energy in the developing careers of their young musicians, while ensuring that their non-musical offspring receive ample nurturing and love.

In this fourth and final article, Lisa Holladay and Kathy Thile discuss their relationships with their children, and their children's relationships with each other. They also talk about the importance of heroes. In the acceptance and guidance of established musicians, a young genius can find true inspiration.

Lisa Holladay, mother of Ryan Holladay: How many bluegrass musicians have recorded with superstars like Earl Scruggs? Or appeared on the Grand Ole Opry not once, but ten times? Though he's just nine years old, Ryan Holladay is already a seasoned professional musician with a busy touring schedule and two CDs to his credit. His parents, Lisa and Mark, provide encouragement, love, and transportation to this young man, who may yet emerge from a spectacular childhood career as the quintessential bluegrass musician of his generation.

When we first got married, Mark listened to Tony Rice, and Newgrass Revival. That's what Ryan heard when he was little. Then he'd go down to Mark's dad's, who'd be listening to Flatt and Scruggs. That set Ryan off! He loved the traditional stuff! Lonesome River Band was - and still is - his favorite band. He listened to Blue Highway and Del McCoury. We started going to festivals where they were playing. One of the first was in Asheville, NC, and he got to meet them all. The next year we went back, and the LRB got him onstage and had him sing. Blue Highway had him up and he did 'In The Gravel Yard', then he did 'Snake In The House' with Del McCoury. We got to know them all, and they took an interest in him! Everybody wanted to help or encourage him in some way.

His first paying gig was at Winterhawk, in 1998. He got his banjo in December 1997; they presented it to him on the Opry. It was the Brian Friesen Award. Each year Deering Banjos and Orin Friesen, a DJ in Kansas City, give away a banjo to a talented kid that doesn't have one, in memory of Orrin's son Brian, who passed away. Mike Snider presented it to him, and then Ryan did 'Blue Moon of Kentucky'. And he's been on ten times since then.

Banjo is his main instrument, but now he's very, very good on the mandolin. He's playing Chris Thile stuff. Chris is one of his heroes. There's a competition for beginners here in Tennessee. We never enter Ryan in contests, but we didn't have anything to do that weekend, so we entered him. He wanted to do the banjo and the mandolin, and he won first in both of them.

Ryan's got a little sister [Hannah], and she's eight. It's hard with two, to make sure that the other one is getting what she needs. She's talented and entertaining, all in her own way. It used to bother Ryan, when people would ignore her. He would have her come and dance onstage, or he'd say, 'My sister Hannah's in the audience.' He wanted her to have her share of the spotlight. She doesn't seem to mind the attention that he gets. When he's signing autographs, she's okay with it. He's been doing it so long; she doesn't remember him NOT signing autographs.

Ryan goes to public school. I was worried when he started kindergarten, but I talked to the principal and the superintendent of schools, and they said, 'What he's doing is going to be a great part of his education.' His teacher's been great; she sends homework with us. He's been on the honor roll every time - A's in every subject!

He likes sports. He was playing T-ball and Little League - but last year he wanted to take the summer off. They were too intense, too competitive! But he likes to watch, and play with his cousins. He likes doing stuff that other kids do, but sometimes I think he pretends to be more interested than he really is. He's always been so mature. He doesn't like kids that get in trouble. He's very well-behaved, so he doesn't like it if anybody's acting up. There's a little boy in his class this year that he really likes. This is the first year he's had anybody in his class like him.

Right now, he's playing Nintendo. We didn't have one till recently. I'm not worried about it. When school first started, he went for a month without picking up an instrument. But during that time, he still listened to music. And when he picked [his banjo] back up, he was as good or better than he was when he laid it down. I think he needs to take that break!

When we started going places, my family was very against it. For one thing, we really couldn't afford it. We were taking Ryan to festivals just to expose him to the music. My parents would say, 'You shouldn't be doing this!' And I'd say 'We would be doing Ryan an injustice if we didn't let him pursue it, because he's so talented.' The day it quits being fun, we'll stop going.

This may be the first year that we actually have something to set aside. With all of our family traveling, a lot of [the profit] is eaten up, but I'm not gonna let 'em go by themselves! They need me to navigate, if nothing else. We're trying to set aside some savings for Ryan, so when he gets older, he's got something. I hope things continue to go this way so we can do that.

This weekend, we're going 950 miles away from home. That's a long way. I teach at a preschool. We're closed during summer, so I'm lucky. My husband works at a chemical plant, and they've been great about letting him swap time, or work overtime, so he can miss a day here and there. When we travel, we travel hard. Straight there, straight back.

My main goal is that he enjoys what he's doing, and that he doesn't let it go to his head. Somebody asked me how I do that, and I said, 'Well, we're blessed, because he's just a good boy.' Plus, he's got a little sister that will keep him grounded!

Kathy Thile, mother of Chris Thile of Nickel Creek: Bach… Mozart… Coltrane… Presley… Monroe. Chris Thile's name may someday be spoken in the same reverential tones as other musicians who soared over rules and boundaries to create something entirely new. A founding member of the groundbreaking trio Nickel Creek, Chris is also an elegantly innovative solo musician and composer. His parents, Scott and Kathy, have raised a young man whose approach to music is fearless and filled with joy.

When I was pregnant, we were really into Frank Sinatra, and that jazz guy from Brazil [Antonio Carlos Jobim] that did 'Girl From Ipanema.' Chris claims to remember that record either prenatally, or right after he was born.

That Pizza Place was our very first exposure to live bluegrass. My husband was building his piano tuning business, and John Moore's mother was a piano teacher in town. Scott told me we should go see her son's band play. Well, I thought it was the most horrible suggestion he'd ever had! A bluegrass band? I thought he'd lost his marbles! He approached it from a different angle: 'Mrs. Moore is an influential teacher… maybe we can get some of her students to use me as a tuner!' So we went, and it was SO much fun. On our 'date nights', we'd take Chris and set him up in a high chair. He'd watch the band, and we'd talk.

We had music on all the time. In those days it was really hard to get bluegrass records, but we found a Flatt and Scruggs Greatest Hits tape in a drugstore bargain bin, and we just about went nuts! We bought Chris that tape and he played it all the time when he was about three.

Chris had weekly lessons when John was in town. He had to practice every day before he could go outside and play. When we were really on top of things, that's how it was! We let Chris enter contests, and that would provide a goal.

When he was a little kid, just learning, we'd sit down and I'd gauge how he was feeling. Some days he'd have more ability to stick to something than on other days. At only five, they're different from day to day! We'd get through two measures of some little fiddle tune, and that would be all he could do before he was gonna just lose it. There were other days when things went really well, and he'd be excited and interested. We'd go for however long he could do it.

When he was a little older, he set himself up with a little star chart with his songs on it, and he'd do the song, then grade himself. I still have one where he wrote, 'Pritty Good!'

By the time he was 11, he was playing music for his own enjoyment so much that he didn't really practice. He knew what he was doing, and he had his own goals for contests and performances. At that point, we didn't worry at all. He's got a lot of self-discipline.

I did things like… well, this is awful! Before he got up in the morning, I'd put on a mandolin record that he really liked. I'd come downstairs, and by golly, he didn't even know why he was doing it, but he'd be going for the mandolin! It was just seed-planting that I'd do.

There was a festival every other weekend, it seemed. Chris was always in a state of excitement because he'd just been in that environment, or he'd be practicing a tune to show his friends. It was a wonderful situation. I can't emphasize how important that was! There were a lot of kids - the Shankmans, the Witchers. The little festivals are such a great nurturing ground.

John, who is 18, used to play mandolin and bass, and he was very good when he was a little kid, but he didn't pursue it. When I look back at tapes of John when he was eight, it just blows my mind. He was very talented, and also very smart; he saw there was no way he could compete with Chris. He went through a period of resisting practicing. We could see he was in bit of a bind, so we just let him gracefully fade. It was very, very intense when John was 9, Chris was 10 or 11, and everywhere we went, there would be this incredible stir created by Chris. People would look at John, and [say] sympathetically, 'Oh, I'm sure you're very good, too!' We could see it wasn't a very healthy situation. So he turned his attention to other things.

John is absolutely wonderful with computers. He's really brilliant in math. Daniel, who is 12, is musical too. He plays mandolin, but he'd rather play with his friends. Daniel is a happy-go-lucky kid who is everybody's best friend. People take a number to play with him. Chris and John are very close friends now. There's a lot of years between Daniel and Chris, so Chris is the big hero brother to Daniel.

When Chris was six, he went from kindergarten into second grade because they didn't have enough room for him in the first grade class. At the end of the year, the principal said, 'We don't know what to do with Chris next year… your choice is to put him in third grade, or let him do second grade again.' It had been really difficult on him to be pushed ahead like that. Academically he was fine, but emotionally, it was tough. We watched his personality undergo a metamorphosis. He had been crying himself to sleep a lot. Over the summer, he lightened up and was happy again. We got our kid back! So we thought, 'To heck with this; we'll just homeschool him.'

People used to give us advice about making sure he was well-rounded. They'd say, 'Something could happen to his hands, and then where would he be?' Byron Berline played football in college. He told us, 'Don't ever discourage Chris from playing sports! And don't worry about his hands.' Chris got to play sports and that was important to him. He was into baseball; he got to do Scouts. He did break his arm at one point, roughhousing with some friends. Lucky for him, he could continue to play. He went to festivals and contests with his arm in a cast! At one point, I realized that Chris isn't a musician because of his hands; he's a musician because of his mind. That's the way he relates to the world - through music. So we stopped worrying about hands.

We were very relaxed about homeschooling. If there was ever a conflict, we would have put the music first, because I never saw any reason why some academic subject was more important. This sounds terrible, like I'm a bad mom! But he was such a natural musician that it would have been like strangling him if you wouldn't let him do his musical thing. When he did go into an academic setting in college, he was a straight-A student, a natural learner.

He went through three semesters, and then the Nickel Creek album was released, and he dropped out. He couldn't tour and do the college thing, so he decided to do the music thing. And we supported him. If he wants to do college, he can do it some other time. He was, of course, studying music. Now he gets composition lessons from Edgar Meyer down in Nashville. He's really, really working on his education quite hard!

When John Moore and those guys took an interest in Chris, and talked to him on a serious man-to-man basis about music and instruments and stuff, that was the best. That validated Chris at a very early age, and made him feel like he could take himself seriously. In bluegrass music you can meet the top performers. They befriend the little kids, and the little kids look up to them. They are your big heroes.

Deepest appreciation to Amy O'Brien, Carolyn Vincent, John Cleveland, Louise Rice, Karen Watkins, Vicki Shankman, Louise Krauss, Lisa Holladay, and Kathy Thile for their participation in this story. -C.W.

As promised, here's a link to "Sowing The Seeds Of Bluegrass," a sort of companion piece for the series you've just read. I wrote it for the November 2002 issue of Newsgrass, the mouthpiece of the Memphis Area Bluegrass Association.