There’s a moment in the movie “Don’t Get Trouble In Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Story” that takes place at Hall STEM Academy, a charter elementary in Minneapolis, where the three original band members show off banjos and their musical chops to engaged students.
The Minnesota connections don’t stop there. The documentary, now streaming for free on YouTube, wouldn’t have come to life without funding from state sources and the perseverance of a St. Paul filmmaker.
“It took me so long to get this over the finish line,” said director John Whitehead, a former senior producer for TPT, who relied heavily on the St. Paul-based Bush Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board for financing.
Whitehead’s journey started with a 2005 visit to the inaugural Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina, which just happened to be the same festival where the Drops’ founders — Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson — first met each other. Whitehead was drawn to the future stars and shot footage.
“Dom and Rhiannon were about 30 years younger than everyone else there,” Whitehead said in an interview earlier this week. “And they were really charismatic.”
Whitehead returned to the state in 2006, shortly after the trio had formed a band, accompanying them as they jammed at the house of their mentor, Joe Thompson, and busked on the streets. That was the same year he shot them at the Hall school and the Cedar Cultural Center. But he didn’t have any concrete plans of what to do with the footage. So he sat on it.
Then the Drops blew up.
In 2010, their album, “Genuine Negro Jig,” won a Grammy. They performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival and on “Prairie Home Companion.” The following year, they were touring with Bob Dylan.