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By Emily Patrick
May 15, 2024 Edition
Tucked away between what’s soon to be the old Greenville Town Office Building and the old Hammond Lumber Storefront sits an unassuming wood carver’s shop owned by multitalented artist and entrepreneur Joe Bolf. Though I’m a Greenville native, I’d never stepped foot inside Bolf’s shop until recently, but what better time than on the cusp of his 50th Anniversary of being in business in the Moosehead Lake Region? I only wish I’d stopped sooner, not just to admire Bolf’s enchanting artwork (which had me immediately enamored), but to meet Joe himself.
As the Editor made small talk with Joe upon entering his studio, I wandered around, being pulled in this direction and that, charmed by the versatility and depth of Bolf’s wood carvings. Slowly but surely, the gravity of the artist himself pulled me into his orbit and we sat down in the back of his shop for an interview.
The back room smelled of woodfire and sweet tobacco and was filled with tools, odds and ends and wood shavings. Across the table, Joe’s quiet manner and kind but perceiving eyes had me feeling silly while I opened my laptop to take notes.
As I started asking questions, however, at first feeling much like a schoolgirl working on a class project, Joe’s eyes would light up when I touched on certain subjects: the name of his first band (it was The Saints and The Prince of Darkness, if you were wondering), or being a beach bum a lifetime ago with his late wife in St. Augustine, Florida, where Joe learned to carve and his sweetheart declared that’s what he would do for a living.
As our conversation went on, my feeling of inferiority melted away. I wanted to glean all I could from Joe in our short time together and share it with you, our readers.
To get to the root of Joe’s artistry, I wanted to start at the beginning. The story of the last half a century, as Joe tells it, is something out of a Jack Kerouac novel. He was raised in Pennsylvania and majored in music at East Tennessee State University. His aforementioned band (forgive him for the name, he relayed with a smile he “wasn’t a Christian” then), recorded in Nashville and was even played on the radio. He recalls the experience was pretty “heady” at the time, and he thought music was going to be his future.
He blames the rise of the Beatles, however, for the decline of “The Saints,” as they put Joe’s favorite instrument, the saxophone, straight out of style. Everyone knows there are only two things you can do with a music degree: play or teach. Teaching was out of the question for young Joe, so he did the next logical thing- he became a crane operator in a steel mill.
Heavy equipment didn’t fuel Joe’s artistic fire, so his ever-supportive wife suggested he look for something different. They traveled around the country on a motorcycle for a while until they ran out of money in St. Augustine, Florida where they were fortunate enough to get a job picking up litter around a campground. As luck would have it, their campsite was across from “the wood carver” who taught Joe the trade, and the rest is history?
Not quite. Add to Joe’s resume “Credit Card Debt Collector” and “Accountant” before he opened his wood carving shop in Greenville in 1974. At the time, he says he was the only “Gift Shop” in Greenville aside from the old Indian Store, which is hard to imagine. Back then, Greenville was a logging community. Joe says when the timber industry started dying, he was going to Chamber meetings and there was talk of promoting tourism in the area to keep up with the changing economy. Joe says the “Greenville” we know today was very much planned, and as far as the changes he’s seen over the years, “Most of it’s been for the best.” Except, he laments, the loss of the old Cabbage Patch restaurant.
As the community growing up around Bolf has changed, so has the man himself. Joe is well-known in the area for his carvings, but these days he spends much of his time working on his ministry: putting the Bible, word for word and verse for verse, to rock music to create a compilation that is borne out of equal parts musical talent and deep faith. As Joe puts it, he spent his whole life being a wood carver full time and doing music on the side. In contrast, now he spends his summers carving and his winters recording the Bible in a way that only Joe Bolf can.
I asked Joe how he went from a rising rock star in a band with The Prince of Darkness in its name to a man of such deep faith. As Joe recalls, it started in 1973 when Comet Kohoutek passed close to the sun and caused quite a stir on the third rock from the sun in its wake. Some religious groups, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses, saw the comet as a sign of the End of Days. Joe says, “[It] got me thinking about what happens if we die,” and, “If I end up going to Hell, I want to know why.” Around the same time, a hippie friend of Joe’s handed him a copy of the King James Bible and said, “Don’t laugh until you read all of it.”
This revelation struck me as especially poignant in the wake of the recent Total Solar Eclipse and Aurora Borealis, caused by severe solar flares, both of which have had me more reflective than usual these days. I trust I’m not alone, and so:
Joe’s bible recordings can be found on thebiblerocks.com and, as it’s a ministry, the recordings are absolutely free to anyone who signs up with an email address on the website. My meeting with Joe left me feeling good, and his music is sure to do the same. Of all the characters I’ve met in the Moosehead Lake Region who make this area the colorful tapestry it is, this former-rockstar-turned-Christian-wood-carving-chainsaw-wielding-saxaphone-playing…artist, has truly carved out his place in our community, and our hearts.
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