Jackie Merritt has divided her interests between art and music for a good part of her life.
A visual artist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Merritt is one of the entertainers appearing at the 2025 Richmond Folk Festival Family Area presented by the Children’s Museum of Richmond on October 11 and 12. At the festival, she will be playing and talking about the bones she plays, but more about that a little later.
Merritt has taught painting on a college level for 20 years and has a lifetime of capturing faces and moments on canvas. Her interest in music started around the age of 27 when she first began playing with the band Hobart M. Cable Company and then with Blues Xchange, where she played bass for nearly 26 years.
Merritt, who lives in Hampton, and two bandmates, Miles Spicer and Resa Gibbs, created M.S.G. Acoustic Blues Trio, a Piedmont-influenced acoustic blues band in 2001 that has performed around the country. The group has recorded three full-length CDs and one EP. In 2017, their latest recording, THE FLOOD, received a First-round Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album. Merritt and Gibbs are also a duo called Jackie & Resa that performs the same type of music as the trio.
The music harkens back to early blues music which is similar to the rhythmic old-time music played in the mountainous part of the southeast.
In 2010, along with Gibbs, Merritt was accepted into the Library of Congress “Americana Women: Roots Musicians — Women’s Tales and Tunes” as part of the MusicBox Project collection. Five years later, she had an original song featured on the internationally acclaimed CD, “Blues Harp Women” that celebrated female harmonica players. In addition to harmonica, Merritt plays bass, ukulele, guitar and bones.
Playing the Bones
She learned about the bones at Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Barbershop, which was a famous Piedmont style music venue in Washington, D.C. It is now located in Riverdale, Md. “I learned how to play bones from Richard ‘Bones’ Thomas,” says Merritt. “He played with two hands. I didn’t find out until later about playing with one hand.”
Bones are considered to be one of the oldest instruments. According to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, Virginia, archaeologists have excavated bones (as instruments) from graves and tombs in prehistoric Mesopotamia and Egypt and also discovered images of musicians playing the bones on Greek pottery.
The Museum states that one of the first bones-playing minstrel performers in Virginia was Frank Brower, and the first documentation of him playing the bones in front of an audience is from 1841.
“I’m trying to carry on the tradition of playing bones,” says Merritt. “It’s not easy to learn, but once you do, it opens doors for people.”
While some performers do use cured animal bones, many prefer to use bones made of different types of wood such as maple, cherry or walnut. “Each of type of wood gives you a different sound,” Merritt says, noting you hold the two wooden strips in your hand and create a clicking sound. “You are like a drummer. You are keeping everybody in the pocket.”
When she performs at the Richmond Folk Festival, Merritt will demonstrate how to play the bones and the sound that bones made of oak or maple produce. “It should be lots of fun,” she says.
Jackie will perform on Saturday and Sunday from 4:15PM until 5:00PM. For more information on the Richmond Folk Festival Family area, visit the Folk Festival website.
