User Reviews

Don't Get Trouble In Your Mind has a number of good things going for it.First, the director spent 8 years traveling with the group he profiles, the Carolina Chocolate Drops trio, and stays with them as they work, meet others, and build their audience, even at several points avoiding the profusion of talking heads that can plague such a documentary by just having us hear them on the soundtrack while we continue to watch the musicians.Second, the film takes the time early on to educate us about the history of the banjo instrument (going back to Africa and slave times) and the neglected tradition of the black string band, as represented by one of its elderly survivors (Joe Thompson) a tradition which many of us listening to white bluegrass are ignorant of.But, inevitably with a tightly knit music group, the story shifts to the tensions that develop over the years: a male-female relationship broken up by the woman's attraction to a man outside the group, a disenchantment by one of the men about straying from the local roots of their music by constantly travelling far and wide.In this respect the film becomes all too reminiscent of those cookie cutter Behind the Music episodes. Except for no drugs.But the chance to spend an hour and a half sharing the work of these artists makes it all worthwhile.