LISTEN: Marley’s Ghost, ‘Blind Fiddler’

Artist: Marley’s Ghost
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Song: “Blind Fiddler"
Album: Woodstock Sessions
Release Date: July 15
Label: Sage Arts

In Their Words: "'Blind Fiddler' is a song I learned when I first started playing guitar. I suppose the haunting, minor melody was part of the attraction, but the message has always had a profound effect on me. My dad was a strong union man — shop steward — at work and had his noise broken in the Long Beach Longshore man strike in the '30s.” — Dan Wheetman


Photo credit: Doug Plummer

STREAM: Bruce Molsky, ‘Can’t Stay Here This a-Way’

Artist: Bruce Molsky
Hometown: New York, NY
Album: Can't Stay Here This a-Way
Release Date: May 6
Label: Tiki Parlour Recordings

In Their Words: “I had the most intense and musically introspective time working with David Bragger's filming of me at the Tiki Parlour, David’s close and almost visceral camera work made the fiddle, banjo, and guitar pieces — and songs — very personal, even through the camera lens. It was a great experience.

The Old Time Tiki Parlour is on a mission to document old-time music in a meaningful and unique way — up close and without filters. It’s a delight to be part of this, along with all these great musicians they have on board!” — Bruce Molsky


Photo credit: David Bragger

A Right to Be Here: Amythyst Kiah’s Innovative Place in Tradition

On a cool November evening, the crowd of regulars filters in at the Down Home — Johnson City, Tennessee’s beloved listening room and bar. The performer waiting to the side of the stage is no stranger to this crowd, cycling between tuning her guitar and greeting friends as they make their way to their seats. When Amythyst Kiah takes the stage and the warm applause settles, she lays down a thumping bass line with her acoustic guitar. Soon, a few bright treble notes layer in, building up a minor chord that completes the gritty and skillful backdrop. Kiah begins to sing with a relaxed sense of ease and a steely intention, and the listeners lean in. “Ooh, Lordy, my trouble so hard / Don’t nobody know my trouble but God.” Though few audience members would know the song’s origin, the emotion moving in it is familiar and immediate.

Trouble was a familiar subject for Adele “Vera” Hall, a singer who learned African-American spirituals and blues in her family and community in rural Alabama. When Hall sang on record for folklorists John and Ruby Lomax in 1939, she had already endured the death of her husband — a coal miner who died in a gunfight more than a decade earlier. Hall made her own way, earning a living as a cook and washerwoman, and since her childhood days, she was known to be one of the finest singers in the area. When Hall sang “Trouble So Hard,” perhaps she knew that future generations of singers like Amythyst Kiah would put the song to good use, just as Hall had throughout her life. Of the hundreds of singers John Lomax documented for the Library of Congress, he remarked that Vera Hall had the "loveliest untrained voice [he] had ever recorded."

Praise from folklorists like Lomax is not what makes Hall’s singing so valuable. For those hearing Kiah perform, the testament is in the air and among them, a strong voice reaching back through generations to present a song that folks can still relate to.

Kiah is an important and innovative presence in contemporary traditional music. Describing herself as a “Southern Gothic, alt-country blues singer/songwriter,” Amythyst has a repertoire that honors tradition while crossing genres to illuminate many common threads. A theme of “vocal integrity” unites her varied influences which include Son House, Dolly Parton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Florence and the Machine. Accompanying her singing with guitar and clawhammer banjo, Kiah stands out among Southern artists, a uniqueness which has led her to perform at national venues such as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and on programs like Music City Roots. Amythyst released a solo record titled Dig in 2013 and her current project brings together traditional and original music set for a five-piece blues rock band — Amythyst Kiah and Her Chest of Glass. The group will release their debut EP in Fall 2016.

Tell me some about your upbringing in Chattanooga and how your first music came about.

I grew up in the suburbs, so I was close to the mall and all that — suburban sprawl kind of thing — that’s sort of where I grew up. I played basketball and did the typical suburban life stuff. But when I was 13, I’d been really interested in wanting to play an instrument for a while, and my parents wanted to encourage me to play an instrument, play a team sport, and make good grades — to be a well-rounded individual. Once I got my guitar, I started getting into writing and really getting into listening to music — a lot of rock, singer/songwriters, that kind of thing — and so, during that time, I pretty much dropped sports, transferred to a creative arts high school. I wish I could have gone there so much earlier, but I got there when I got there and it was a great change. I got really heavy into writing and playing music when I was in high school and I was a closet musician. I played a couple of talent shows, but I really just played for fun and I kind of kept to myself as a kid. 

Actually, my first performance where it was a large group that was very much validating my existence as a musician — other than my dad saying that he liked what he heard — I wrote a song for my mom … for her funeral. It was a few months before I graduated from high school that she died, so I wrote a song for her and sang it at the funeral. That was an eye-opening experience for me: Maybe I could write songs and people would actually want to hear them. I had a lot of good feedback.

We ended up moving to Johnson City when I was about 19, just to kind of start over. I transferred from the college I was going to in Chattanooga to East Tennessee State University and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do for my career. I didn’t really have a path. I just knew I was supposed to go to college. I was reveling in all these really cool classes like philosophy. I was really enjoying myself, but not knowing what I wanted to do. So I ended up auditioning for bands the next semester — the Fall before, I had taken a bluegrass guitar class and I didn’t know anything about traditional music. I just liked the idea that I could take a music class where they appreciated learning by ear because, when I took classical guitar in high school, what discouraged me was the fact that I had to learn how to sightread and do all the formations and all that kind of stuff.

So I took that bluegrass guitar class with Jack Tottle, who is an amazing human being; it really meant a lot to be able to take that course because it changed my perspective on a lot of things. From there, I joined a Celtic band and did Celtic rhythm guitar and then I found my place in old-time music. That was around the time I learned about the Carolina Chocolate Drops — I had taken Ted Olson’s class about American folk music and was fascinated with the intermingling, how multicultural the music actually was. I think part of my hesitance to finding my place was that I’ve always listened to all kinds of different music, and sometimes, if you don’t see people like you, sometimes you wonder or people make you feel like, “Well, do I belong here?” I was having those kind of feelings with some people. I’d had lots of praise and lots of support, so I’m really grateful for that, but there were always those few little people who put doubts in my head about my presence.

Once I read about the history of this music and how Blacks and whites both played this music — that this is something that is integrally a hybrid — I was like, “Well, hell, I have just as much right to be here as anyone else!” From then on, I was just like, “I’m doing it.” Roy Andrade reached out to me and asked me to be in the first-ever Old-Time Pride Band because he heard my voice and felt like he really wanted me to be part of it, and from then on I just did old-time. I ended up switching my major, once they got it approved, to Bluegrass and Old-Time Country Music Studies, and I graduated in 2012. During that time, I picked up solo gigs alongside the school band stuff, so that’s all part of my transition from playing mainly contemporary stuff into solely old-time stuff for a while, and now I’ve transitioned back into doing contemporary stuff. But it still has that old-time, roots influence.

I really admire your music, because your personality is so evident in it and your own experience has shaped it. That’s so much a part of good music — period — but also traditional music. I was reading through your list of influences, and there wouldn’t have been a Sister Rosetta Tharpe or an Ola Belle Reed or so many of these figures if they hadn’t taken a step to put their own personality and experience in the music. You said you’re doing a lot more songwriting now and transitioning with your new band, Amythyst Kiah and Her Chest of Glass. Talk about that.

It’s interesting because, first of all, the guys in the band, they’re also part of another local band here called This Mountain and they’re an interesting mix. It’s kind of in the middle of folk and rock. They’re a hard sound to describe. They remind me of Radiohead — alternative rock with acoustic instruments in it. This Mountain asked me to open for them a couple of years ago at the Hideaway over here. That was my first time playing a solo show in Johnson City. That turned out really well, and then they asked me to play with them at a festival in Savannah, Georgia, called Revival Fest because two guys in their band weren’t going to be able to make it. So we got together, put together a 30-minute set, then we went and played in Savannah.

We were well-received and I thought, “This is pretty cool!” Basically, the music in this band, a lot of it is stuff that I played acoustic, but with electric arrangements. For our EP, there are three songs that I’ve written that are going to be on there, and then there’s some stuff that I’ve done that come straight from old-time. Not all of them transitioned over, but two big ones are Vera Hall songs — she’s really become one of my favorite singers. I’d like to take more of her songs and do more work with them. We do “Another Man Done Gone” and we do “Trouble So Hard” in the band. Obviously she sang a cappella and, as a guitarist, I always feel like I need to add some guitar stuff, so I added guitar arrangements to both of those songs. Then when I brought them to the band. At that point in time, they had mainly just been solely following me on what I do on guitar because I establish rhythm, bass line, and the riff. When they came in, they were kind of just following me, which is fine, but then we got to the point where it’s like, “Hey, what if we did the intro of a song with just piano or just drums?”

So I’ve gotten into arranging songs more because I have to remind myself that I’ve got other instruments here now. I don’t have to do everything. It’s nice because you get four different perspectives on the same song and it really opens you up in new ways, maybe trying things that you never thought you’d try before. But the way everything kind of flows right now is that it’s blues rock, but it’s also danceable — it’s like blues-dance-rock. I’ve gotten into writing songs in a blues style mainly because, for me, songwriting has always been very difficult. I can write a poem — I can write a short prose piece or a poem piece, but when it comes to putting it to music, I think of melody and chord arrangements first. That’s what happens when I listen to a song. Once I come up with the melodies, I’m like, “What the hell am I going to sing about?” because I feel like I’ve already expressed my feelings in this melody and in this song, so what else do I need to say? So that’s always been difficult. 

But, when I got into blues, I started realizing that this is perfect. The main focus is on the emoting, and you’ve got a few choice words to describe what you’re feeling. For me, I like singer/songwriter stuff and the storytelling aspect of that, but I guess my brain doesn’t necessarily work in telling stories. I more or less like to express feelings. With a song like “Hangover Blues,” I’ll create three verses and they tell a really short story. I don’t know if it’s an attention span thing or what it is, as far as words go. I feel like sometimes, if I write too many words, it might take away from the emoting of the music. It’s something I always struggle with.

That’s so characteristic of really good traditional songs like the blues that you’re talking about — that economy of words and expressing the feeling with your voice.

That’s where I feel most at home.

So much of your songwriting is about speaking your truth. You talk about writing for your mother and what a brave step that was. What kinds of emotions do you find yourself writing about now?

In the beginning, a lot of the stuff I would write about would be kind of along the lines of “me against the world.” Those aren’t songs that I’ve recorded because I wrote them years and years ago. But, as time has gone on — especially after playing old-time music — a lot of the songs I was drawn to were about loss and heartache, death … lots of things that affect us to the core as humanables. There’s something very cathartic about playing a really sad song because, when it’s finished, it’s almost like you’re dealing directly with something that’s kind of scary and that you know is going to happen at some point in your life. To go through all those emotions in song is the safest way to be able to experience those things. It’s almost like preparing yourself, reminding yourself that bad shit happens, but at the same time, you come out of the song, and you can appreciate what you do have a lot more.

So now, the new songs that I’ve written, they’re actually a little more lighthearted than the stuff I’ve written in the past. “Hangover Blues” is one that’s on the EP and it’s about recovering from a hangover, but also being like, “I had a damn good time and I would do it again.” That’s one of my more lighthearted songs. Then “Wildebeest” is inspired from the sort of quintessential blues theme of “My woman pissed me off and I want to get back at her.” It’s a jealous lover kind of song. That one’s got some little parts in there that are meant to be lighthearted and comedic, but at the same time, the title also ties into the idea that, even though we are human beings, despite living in I guess what you would call a civilized society, we still have these primal urges. It’s a reminder of the fact that we are animals. I feel like keeping that in mind — that we are susceptible to those things — I feel like expressing that helps check the ego a little bit. The idea that people don’t see that they’re part of nature baffles me. You can be spiritual and still realize that you’re also part of nature. But some people separate themselves from their environment and, when people do that, you see what happens: Mountains get removed, tree forests are cut down because people don’t see themselves within the cycle of life. Just because we have logic and cognitive thought doesn’t mean that we live above and beyond everything. We are, in essence, destroying ourselves by doing this. Songs like “Wildebeest” … I like to remind people that we’re very much part of something much bigger.

You can take this wherever you want to, but I’m wondering what you hope to accomplish through your music. You’ve talked about expressing your emotions and I think you represent a lot of communities in an innovative way, and also you are honoring these traditions and carrying them forward. What impact do you hope to make with your music?

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because music has always been something very personal. Sometimes it’s easy for me to get lost in my own brain and not necessarily think about the kind of impact that I’m having, but I’m thinking a lot more about that lately. For me, being a queer woman of color in Appalachia, pulling from these different roots-based ideas and then making these connections with electric music and traditional acoustic music and bridging the gap there, as an Appalachian person, I feel like I can bring a perspective to a wider audience and hopefully inspire people that look like me or love like me to tap in and be like, “Hey, this is really cool. This is something that I could do.” I just feel like, in a lot of ways, intersectionally, I’m the exact opposite of what would be considered typical for what I’m doing and I needed to see someone like that when I was playing music. I just feel like I want to, in some way, inspire other people. Their voice should be heard, and that contributes to the diversity of the people who are from our area.


Sam Gleaves is a folk singer and songwriter from Southwest Virginia. His latest record, Ain’t We Brothers, is made up of stories in song from contemporary Appalachia, produced by Cathy Fink.

Reclaiming Community: A Conversation with Tyler Hughes

In early February, the Empty Bottle Stringband made their debut at the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, Virginia, a hallowed ground for lovers of old-time and country music. A quartet of old-time musicians based in Johnson City, Tennessee, the Empty Bottle Stringband specializes in the lively, toe-tapping fiddle tunes that fill the floor with dancers at the Carter Fold, and the band is familiar with the musical family who gave the venue its namesake. When Tyler Hughes takes up the autoharp and introduces the Carter Family song, “There’s No Hiding Place Down Here,” the sounding rhythm is closely kin to the style of Mother Maybelle Carter, a living example of the sound that brought Southwest Virginia to the world’s musical attention. Hughes’s performance carries other ties to the cultural ground he’s standing on: in the clear, true tone of his singing, the stories that enrich the music, and the down-home humor that has brought laughter from generations of careworn audiences.

As a solo performer and member of the Empty Bottle Stringband, Hughes has represented Appalachian culture on stages across the eastern United States since his teenage years. Now in his mid-20s, he continues to live, teach banjo, and organize cultural arts projects in his home community of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Hughes is a graduate of the Old-Time, Bluegrass, and Country Music Studies program at East Tennessee State University and, during his time as a student, he performed extensively with the ETSU Old-Time Pride Band. Whether he is attending a board meeting for a community foundation, calling a square dance, or showing a local kid their first chords on the banjo, there’s a reverence of heritage evident in all of his work. The ties to Hughes's Appalachian heritage are collective — traditions of music and dance which work best when a group will put them to use, not admiring them from a distance, but participating in the present.

Tyler, tell me where you grew up, some of your family’s history there, and how you started to play old-time music.

I grew up in Big Stone Gap, in Southwest Virginia. I grew up in town, but on top of a mountain; we have a really beautiful view of Powell Valley from our front porch. I grew up in the mountains, playing in the woods, and I had some interest in music as a kid, but later in my teen years, I took up music more seriously. My family’s been here for several generations now, and my mom and dad were both raised here in Big Stone. My dad was raised in town and my mom was raised outside of town in Powell Valley in a little holler called Cracker’s Neck, which sounds like a really magical place and it was. My mamaw and papaw lived in Cracker’s Neck, and my papaw still lives there. Both of them were avid country music fans — and so is my mom — so I grew up listening to modern country, '90s country, but I also listened to a lot of older country like George Jones and Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. I was taught to appreciate all that. I remember going to my grandparents’ house, and my mamaw would get out her record player and her eight-track tapes and listen to those artists. My grandparents were a big influence on me and they were also big fans of the '90s line dancing craze so, when I was younger, they would take me out to line dances, and I would be part of their line dancing group pretty often.

I started playing music when I was about 12. I’d always had an interest in music — I was in chorus in school and in theater — but I really didn’t have an interest in traditional music until a little bit later, when I started taking guitar lessons. I started taking banjo not too long after that, and I attended a local camp here called Mountain Music School. I attended Mountain Music School in its second year, and it was there that I really got introduced to the region’s music — people like Papa Joe Smiddy — but especially I remember the Whitetop Mountain Band came one day and played for us, and Emily Spencer, who’s a really wonderful banjo player from Southwest Virginia, was one of the leaders of the group. I just remember seeing and hearing her play the banjo and I thought, “That’s what I want to do.” Emily’s playing really struck a chord with me, I guess you could say. At Mountain Music School, I learned how influential Southwest Virginia’s music is on the world’s music. I really had no idea about people like Dock Boggs or the Carter Family until I started going to Mountain Music School and hanging around the folks that helped organize the camp, like Todd Meade and Julie Shepherd-Powell and some other folks.

The Empty Bottle Stringband at the Carter Family Fold. From left: Ryan Nickerson, Tyler Hughes, Kristal Harman, and Stephanie Jeter.

One thing we’ve talked about often is how the women who shaped the music of Southwest Virginia, what a great impact they’ve had on both of us, and I know one woman we really admire and look to as an inspiration is Janette Carter, who established the Carter Family Fold in memory of her parents Sara and A.P. Carter. Why do you connect with Janette’s music and what does her life’s work mean to you?

I, unfortunately, never got to meet Janette, even though I’d been to the Carter Fold several times and played at the Fold, but I didn’t start going until after she had passed away. On one of my first trips to the Carter Fold, I bought Janette’s book, Living with Memories, and read it. I was just so impressed with her because she overcame so much. The Carter Family … the Carters were in no way rich, especially growing up in Poor Valley in Scott County, Virginia … so Janette really rose above the poverty that most people see in that region. She was a radio star as a teen and she came back home, married, settled down to raise her family and went to work at the local school — she was a lunch lady there. She still played. She played the autoharp and guitar and sang songs. She felt so strongly about her family’s influence on music and her father’s music that she wanted to keep this promise to him that she would help carry on the legacy of the Carter Family. She gave up her job and really risked pretty much everything to open their grocery store up as a venue, a concert hall. I think it really says a lot about how brave she was, as a person, because there was no guarantee that opening up a 20-by-20 grocery store and putting chairs in it and asking people to come out and pay to hear music would work, especially in a region that’s impoverished.

I do admire her for that. In an interview I’ve heard with her, Janette said, “One day I was working and I thought, ‘I have some talent and why don’t I use it,’” so she started putting on school programs and traveling with her music a lot. Another woman who has really influenced your work and music is Sue Ella Boatright-Wells; she is part of organizing so much of the region’s community music scene. Tell me about her.

Sue Ella Boatright-Wells is also from Scott County — she lives in Scott County today. She doesn’t play music, but old-time music fans who dig deep have probably heard of her father, Scott Boatright, who was really good friends with the Powers Family and Dock Boggs and the Magic City Trio; Scott played with several bands in the area. Sue Ella grew up with music in the home and, when she took her position at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, she wanted to use that as an outlet to help preserve that music.

Sue Ella has been an influential part of the Home Craft Days festival at Mountain Empire Community College, helping to get local artists and musicians to the campus each October to showcase their art and their music. She is the mastermind behind Mountain Music School, which was such a huge influence on me, and even today, Sue Ella works tirelessly to help support efforts by the Crooked Road and their Youth Music Initiative and the Junior Appalachian Musicians program, which is now in Wise County. She works very hard to see that those programs succeed and are able to expose children to the music, especially our youth here that probably didn’t grow up with this music. As in any rural area, money never flows freely in the form of grants or government funding for the arts, so it’s sometimes a pretty difficult fight to find funding and to find ways to make these programs go, but Sue Ella never backs down. She’s always got a plan and she always works extremely hard to see that these programs do happen and that they happen to the best of their ability.

I’m very, very lucky to call Sue Ella a friend. I’ve looked up to her for a long time and she was incredibly encouraging to me, coming along as a banjo player. After a few years of attending Mountain Music School, she asked me to come on and be an instructor there, and today I co-direct the program and try to do a lot of work with Sue Ella to see that these youth music programs happen. I do try to model my work after Sue Ella’s.

I guess most people wouldn’t think that organizing music or organizing dance and art, especially in the mountains … people probably don’t put the same value on that as maybe somebody who organizes a food drive or a fundraiser to build a park or whatever. They probably don’t see the same value in promoting the arts because that seems intangible. But advocating for local music and arts is such an important thing to do to build community. Unfortunately, we live in a time where technology, as great as it is, is diminishing our abilities to be together as communities — just humans, one-on-one — and to share experiences like music. That’s why I feel that it’s so important to continue to organize events and programs, especially for youth, to show that this music has continually brought people together for years and years and, hopefully, will continue to bring.

Tyler Hughes demonstrating flatfoot dancing at the Papa Joe Smiddy Festival. Photo by Dan Boner.

Speaking of community and music bringing people together … you’re a square dance caller and a prize-winning flatfoot dancer, so I want to hear about your background in dance.

I started learning to dance not too long after I started learning the banjo. Probably the first person that ever showed me anything was Anndrena Belcher; she was living in Scott County at the time and she’s also someone that I look up to. Anndrena really does see the true value of our own personal stories and songs, and she’s a really wonderful musician and writer and storyteller and dancer. She was the first person to ever show me any steps; I was lucky, I got to do several workshops with her around Wise County where we went out and taught other students to dance.

Anndrena teaches dance not just to preserve or carry on the tradition, but simply to do what any kind of art is created for: self-expression. I thought that was very important and something that we shouldn’t lose when we are passing on these cultural traditions. So often in the region, we just talk about how endangered our way of life can be, and how some tunes and music aren’t getting played as much as they once were, and some dances aren’t being danced as much as they once were. It is important to preserve these arts for the historical aspect, but also for the self-expression and the social aspect. For a long time, one of my very best friends lived here in Big Stone Gap, Julie Shepherd-Powell, who’s a really wonderful banjo player and also an award-winning flatfoot dancer. She taught me a whole lot and she spent a lot of time with me at some workshops and, just on the side, teaching me different dance moves.

Julie Shepherd-Powell is also a fine square dance caller, and I know not too long ago you hosted a square dance in Big Stone Gap, and it was one of the first that had been held there in quite a while.

I started to learn to call square dances about two years ago. For a long time, I was head of a contra dance organization at East Tennessee State University, where I went to college. Along the way, we were having a lot of fun with contra, but we wanted to experiment with square dances because square dances were much more closely associated with old-time music, the music we were playing in the program. We looked around and we only knew a handful of square dance callers, and we found out that there was no young person within our immediate crowd calling square dances in Johnson City. So I took it upon myself to try to learn some and, today, I’ve probably mastered about eight to 10 dances. In December, I pulled together several organizations — the Big Stone Gap Parks and Recreation Department, a couple local business sponsors, Auto World, and the local grocery chain Food City all pitched in and several community members baked goods and food, and we all met here at an old Girl Scouts cabin. Some wonderful friends of mine, Bill and the Belles, came over and played the music and we had the dance and it was successful. The dance was well-attended: People were really receptive and supportive. Dance is a very important tool to get people together to socialize and share experiences about what’s happening in their community.

While we’re talking about Wise County, another woman from that area that you and I both admire is Kate Peters Sturgill, the great songwriter. Tell me why you sing her songs.

Kate was from Josephine, Virginia, a little coal camp just below Norton out in the county. She was a wonderful guitar player and singer but, more than anything, I love her writing. I’ve always said she was one of the most poetic writers from the region that I’ve ever come across. She really puts her passion for her home community into her writing — songs like “My Stone Mountain Home,” which I perform now. Kate is not an incredibly well-known artist — most people, if they’ve ever heard one of Kate’s songs, it’s probably her best-known gospel tune, “Deep Settled Peace” — but she wrote a whole handful of beautiful songs and many of them deal with our home county. She wrote “My Stone Mountain Home” about the mountain chain that runs down Powell Valley and between Appalachia, Virginia. She also wrote about the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, which has a lot of significance here. The book and the outdoor drama by that title, written by John Fox Jr., were based loosely on local people and events here in Big Stone Gap. The context still exists to have Kate’s songs sung and played here.

The Empty Bottle Stringband playing for the extras party for the film Big Stone Gap at the Trail of the Lonesome Pine outdoor drama. Photo by Sam Gleaves.

I really enjoy the way that you use humor on stage when you perform. That’s a real tradition in country music. Why do you think it’s important to be funny and entertain as you present this music?

I think that often, especially as old-time musicians and musicians who want to preserve early country music in the form it was created in, we sometimes forget that we’re pretty much the only ones who are thinking so deeply about the historical context of the way the instruments were played or even what the songs were saying. When we take those out to a wider audience — unless you are playing for a special audience that is there to have this historical significance explained to them — people are still coming because it’s music, and music is fun and entertaining. This music is light-hearted or it can be really deep and emotional, and I think people want to feel all of that.

I think the best way we can present the music, truly, is putting it on as a show, because that’s the way it’s always been done. People in the 1920s weren’t playing “Cottoneyed Joe” or “Turkey in the Straw” to historically preserve the tune from the way it was played in the 1860s. They were thinking, “This is fun, this is entertaining.” I don’t think that’s anything we should forget, especially if we want to bring old-time music to a wider audience. It doesn’t have to be as if we’re presenting a piece from a museum.

I love to hear you tell a good June Carter joke, but in closing, I know another female musician and songwriter we really admire is Ola Belle Reed, and she once said in an interview, “We all need each other, whether we know it or not.” I think that speaks so much to what community organizing is about and what old-time music is about. Being a community organizer and someone who has put old-time music at the center of their life, can you talk about that?

I think that’s definitely true. Unfortunately, we still live in a world where stereotypes get placed on everybody. We all do it, whether we mean to or not. When most audiences think of old-time music, they probably have in mind a hillbilly character or, perhaps, only white men playing it or it being associated heavily with Protestant faiths — the stereotypical images of Appalachia that are often portrayed. Often, old-time music probably evokes those same stereotypes to people outside the region, but the beautiful thing is that old-time music is just as diverse as the region itself and, as anywhere else in the country — or the world, for that matter.

Whether it be old-time music or pop music, music transcends the barriers that society places on all of us. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor or black or white or gay or straight; however you identify, music can touch us all and affect us all. If we aren’t brought together through some type of connecting bridge like music or dance or community events, then we may never know that we’re sharing the same experiences and how important it is — that we’re not alone. Often, I think we get bogged down as individuals in our lives but, by coming together through art, we find many others who are sharing those same feelings and can relate to us. When we relate to each other, there’s empowerment and there’s a healthier sense of community.


Lede photo by Kristen Bearfield.

Sam Gleaves is a folk singer and songwriter from Southwest Virginia. His latest record, Ain’t We Brothers, is made up of stories in song from contemporary Appalachia, produced by Cathy Fink. 

A Story Should Be Sung: Saro Lynch-Thomason on Ballads and Purpose

On a hot August day in 2011, a long line of demonstrators were crowding the shoulder on the road that winds up Blair Mountain in Logan County, West Virginia. The protesters were speaking out against the threat of mountaintop removal coal mining that endangered the historic site where, 90 years before, 10,000 men and women had taken a violent stand for a working union and human rights in the coalfields. Against the reverberations of history rising up from that mountain ground, Saro Lynch-Thomason stood behind a megaphone and taught the crowd the refrain of “Hold On,” an African-American spiritual and mainstay during the Civil Rights Movement. Adapted for that moment and that struggle, she sang, “We’re gonna march our way to Blair and we’ll meet with our comrades there. Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on.”

Saro Lynch-Thomason sings with purpose. A large part of her singing repertoire and life’s work is Appalachian ballads — the narrative songs which helped an immigrant people remember their homes and histories in a strange land. Noted North Carolina ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams, one of Saro’s mentors, often tells of the older singers calling all the ballads “love songs,” despite storylines riddled with murders, jealousy, and bittersweet, complicated feelings. Whatever they are called, these ballads tell the truth. Set far apart from high-brow popular music, these songs tell the people’s history, brought over time from farmers’ fields and kitchens to concert stages and digital online archives.

In an age when music is most often consumed singularly — and through earbuds — a generation of young singers, including Lynch-Thomason , are committed to learning songs in person and valuing the stories that surround the music. Reviving the old “knee-to-knee” style of sharing stories line by line, Saro collects songs from mentors older than her and her age peers, then adapts the pieces to her own experience. In turn, she teaches workshops that continue to circulate this way of learning. Lynch-Thomason’s work with contemporary media and visual art also serves the mission of rejoining the music with its historical context. She co-produced the multimedia CD and educational resource Blair Pathways; wrote and illustrated Lone Mountain, a children’s book on Appalachian culture and mountaintop removal mining; and has recorded a beautiful solo album of unaccompanied ballads, hymns and group songs titled Vessel

Saro, could you tell me some about your first experiences with singing and what drew you to unaccompanied singing, in particular?

I was raised in a church that had a strong children’s chorus, so I grew up with a certain amount of unaccompanied singing in a religious atmosphere. I was raised Unitarian Universalist, and we had a very charismatic chorus director who exposed me to a variety of music styles, including shape-note singing. That was a big influence on me as a kid and, at the same time, my father played a lot of British folk revival music in our house and my mother played a lot of music by contemporary female balladeers — like Sinead O’Connor and Loreena McKennitt — and that music really struck me.

So I learned a lot of ballads growing up, just on my own, by myself, not knowing anyone else, as a kid, who liked to do that. Both of my aunts had been active in the folk revival and taught me a few ballads growing up, too.

I’m wondering, when you were young and learning some ballads — and as you continue to learn ballads today — do you think of them visually? I know you’re a visual artist and illustrator, so I was wondering if those two arts are connected for you.

Yes, definitely. I was raised doing a lot of art and had the intention of being an artist as an adult. When I’m singing ballads, I’m always visualizing the story in my head and I use that a lot as a memorization technique, as a way to stay rooted in the story and know what verse is coming next. In some ballads, I see myself as a character, especially when the ballads are in a first-person perspective, and I feel myself taking on and exploring the emotions and the attitude of that character. But, in other cases, I try to take a step back — especially if there are several different characters in a story. I take a step back and try to use my body in a voice that’s setting the scene for the story, and not be a character, specifically, in the story.

Speaking of singing and how it involves the body, I love your record Vessel, which you put out in 2013. I love what you said, that “with each transfer, the song is refitted and molded to the character of the singer.” So I was wondering if you could talk some about that and making that recording.

My CD Vessel is called “Vessel” because these songs, through the fact that they’re transmitted from person-to-person, sort of take on their own character and life. A lot of singers, including myself, feel like we’re vessels — we’re housing these songs until they pass on to the next person. In a way, we’re holding these songs that have their own spirits. So there’s a balance that you have to find between putting yourself in a story and also letting the story tell itself, and letting an audience or letting listeners interpret the song and take the song into themselves and let it be about their own story and their own narrative.

And Vessel, as my first CD, was an attempt to do honor to ballad singers I had learned from — including Sheila Kay Adams and Bobby McMillon and many singers who are long deceased — who told such beautiful stories and expressed themselves so beautifully … like Texas Gladden and singers from archives who we don’t know that much about. My ballad “True Thomas” comes from a woman named Becky Gordon from Catshead, Sugarloaf, North Carolina, and I don’t know much of anything about her, but she had this beautiful song that wasn’t collected anywhere else.

Speaking of your collecting and how you learn from mentors in North Carolina … why do you think it’s important to learn these songs in person, in addition to studying recordings, but also building these relationships with singers?

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the broader oral tradition around ballad singing, which is what we say about those ballads, what we know and what we share about them, the stories we connect to them. Learning face-to-face with someone, you get to understand so much about them and empathize with them when they tell you how they connect to that ballad and what they have learned from that ballad.

Ballads are intensely personal and intensely public at the same time, and one song can carry so many different stories, depending on who you ask and how they’ve interpreted the song. And so, I think largely learning in what is sometimes called the knee-to-knee style is a practice in empathy and in deep listening to someone else.

I agree, for sure. Can you talk about how ballads, in part, have lead you to North Carolina and how you identify your home there with singing, and also the role of place in this ballad-singing tradition that you’re part of?

I was raised in Middle Tennessee, and a lot of my mother’s family is from East Tennessee and has been in East Tennessee for several hundred years. So I was raised with a big connection to the Blue Ridge Mountains and being in those mountains a lot. I decided to move to North Carolina after college to connect to what I had heard was a vibrant singing community in Western North Carolina, which turned out to be true.

Talking about place in these songs … even though a lot of these songs go back hundreds and hundreds of years, people’s experiences — and, I believe, their physical landscape — changes how they interpret a song and what the song is for. I think there is a way that you can hear the landscape in these songs and, of course, the topic matter of the songs themselves is often about the experiences in the mountains and that connects to experiences that my own family has had and contemporary experiences, too — anything from out-migration from Appalachia to digging ginseng to opposing mountaintop removal. This is a contemporary tradition, and what I’m compelled by is when that sense of place and attachment to this region becomes expressed in these songs in a way that other people can empathize with and understand.

That’s really well said. Tell me about your identity as an activist and how this kind of cultural preservation and singing that you do is tied to your work in social justice movements?

A big connection point for me, coming to Appalachia, was learning, really in college, about social struggles in Appalachia and about mountaintop removal mining. I started to learn in college about the West Virginia coal mine wars and fights for union rights and safety rights for coal miners and that really intrigued me, especially because I was raised in a social justice-oriented household. So I became interested in how people in this region had fought for their rights and how they had used music as a part of that.

Part of what’s intriguing about Appalachia, as a place and how it is viewed by the rest of the country and the world, is that it's a very historicized place — it’s a place that is put in the past. What I love about ballad singing and traditional music from the region is that it can educate so much about Appalachia’s rich and diverse history and it is used as a contemporary tool to express Appalachia’s current situation and its people. Something that I really enjoy doing as an educator and as a ballad singer is doing workshops specifically on Appalachian movement songs, mostly for the reason that it brings people up to date on Appalachia!

Yes, I struggle with some of those same things out on the road and I think it’s important work you are doing. What about your teaching, workshops, and also the Asheville Community Sing that you lead?

I mentioned a little earlier that, as a kid, I was raising myself to be an artist and through whatever I’ve done, it’s always been about stories to me, whatever media I’ve been working in. I like to lead workshops and performances that focus on a theme, like Appalachian movement songs or women’s stories in ballads. My goal is often to give people a sense of history, a sense of our heritage through song, but also to give people confidence about these traditions being a part of their lives and being a way for them to express their stories and to not feel stuck with the stories they’re given, but to feel that they can change them and keep on the oral tradition that way.

The Asheville Community Sing … that’s a monthly event that I’ve been running since 2010. I started the Sing when I moved to Asheville because I wanted to build a traditional singing community around me — kind of a selfish thing! What I wanted to do was build an environment where anyone was welcome, where everyone felt like they could sing as much or as little as they wanted, and share these fantastic traditional songs, most of which were designed for group singing.

So much singing in our contemporary culture is focused on work by singer/songwriters that is not designed to be sung in groups. I wanted to create a space where people felt empowered to sing and, in order to do that, you need to provide songs that are easy for people to sing together. We sing work songs and sea shanties and hymn songs and union anthems and all sorts of songs that people can feel confident doing together.

You talk about how the ballads still have this contemporary relevance, and I know you sing some recently composed ballads. Also, you compose tunes — I know you wrote a beautiful melody to that text of “True Thomas.” So you’re both performing old material and bringing new material into the present?

Different folklorists and singers have different ethics around how much to change a song or not change a song, and I’m basically of the opinion that, if it’s a good story, it should be sung! I think that the most important work that these songs do is to help people connect to their own emotions and their own narratives and to affirm their own experiences. If I connect to a song, but it’s not quite saying what I want to say, I’m all right with changing it … as long as its history is acknowledged in the process.

I found this text of “True Thomas,” which is the only American variant of this particular ballad that I’m aware of, and I just thought it was too precious to not bring back, so I put a melody to it that felt appropriate. There are other times when I have taken a song and politicized it or taken a song and made it much more personal.

A song I like to sing a lot is called “I’m So Glad Today I’m Ready,” which came out of the archives at Berea College when I was studying some there. This song was originally from the perspective of a woman who is going to Heaven and how glad and ready she is to go, and I changed the song to be, instead, about going back to the Blue Ridge Mountains and going back to the New River, which flows through Asheville and has sustained me and given me water. Those are the places I want my body to return to when I pass on. I wanted to keep the spirit of the song, but make it about where I feel rooted and what my story is in Appalachia now.

I think both those stories are important. It’s odd to think about, but perhaps 200 years from now, some folks are going to be referring to singers like you and me as the ancestors who were singing these songs. So we’re constructing these stories and other people can take them or leave them and whatever is relevant will stick.

Ballads are so functional. People sang them in their homes while they worked or were rocking their children or passing the time on long journeys. People really held dear that history and that singing of the ballads. What role do ballads and singing play in your life — what function do they serve for you?

I think, at my core, these songs, what they help me do is emotionally process my experiences. I was teaching a workshop recently on women’s stories in ballads, and something that came up from a lot of people is that there are songs on pretty hard topics for women that many of us enjoy singing by ourselves, but would not share in a group because the content can be disturbing. And, yet, we sing these songs all the time by ourselves because they help us process our experiences. I think that’s a big resource that these songs can provide.

They also help me connect to my fellow humans in that magic way that, when a group of people are sharing vibrations in a room — making vibrations together with their voices — we learn to immediately connect with each other no matter how different we are or how much we might agree or disagree politically, et cetera. When we share our voices, we learn to connect so quickly … and you can think about that from a practical perspective or a spiritual perspective, but that’s another way that these songs help me in my daily life.


Sam Gleaves is a folk singer and songwriter from Southwest Virginia. His latest record, Ain’t We Brothers, is made up of stories in song from contemporary Appalachia, produced by Cathy Fink.

Photo credit: Sarah Morgan

LISTEN: Howdy Forrester and John Hartford, ‘Home Made Sugar and a Puncheon Floor’

Artist: Howdy Forrester and John Hartford
Hometown: Hickman County, TN
Song: "Home Made Sugar and a Puncheon Floor"
Album: Home Made Sugar and a Puncheon Floor
Release Date: January 15
Label: Spring Fed Records

In Their Words: "Brand new release of a set of home recordings made by John Hartford and fiddling legend Howdy Forrester. This recording preserves a repertoire of many rare, old Hickman County, Tennessee, tunes that Howdy had learned as a boy from his Great Uncle, Bob Cates. Hartford plays banjo, Forrester fiddles, and the two share informal discussion about the tunes and their sources." — John Fabke

LISTEN: Kathy Kallick Band, ‘I’m Not Your Honey-Baby Now’

Artist: Kathy Kallick Band
Hometown: Oakland, CA
Song: "I’m Not Your Honey-Baby Now"
Album: Foxhounds
Release Date: November 19
Label: Live Oak Records

In Their Words: "Playing in a band with fiddler Annie Staninec for the past eight years has greatly increased my awareness of old-time music, and some of that has worked into my songwriting. This is actually a modern tale, but the old-time approach adds some drive … and attitude. The song also might reveal the fondness that both Annie and I have for Dr. Seuss." — Kathy Kallick


Photo courtesy of the artist

LISTEN: Moonsville Collective, ‘Big Jimmy’

Artist: Moonsville Collective
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Song: "Big Jimmy"
Album: Heavy Howl
Release Date: October 30
Label: Rock Ridge Music

In Their Words: "My wife turned me on to Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry a long time ago, and they are always in and out of my CD player. Brownie once prefaced a song saying how most blues songs are about woman, whiskey, or money, and from here the idea of 'Big Jimmy' started mulling around my brain and fingers. I don't have much money or the best of looks, but I do have a woman. Jimmy kind of came in as this threat to the things I'm trying to hold on to and, in the vein of classic, dark-humored country tunes, he succeeds. The repetitive 'Yes, sir!' line in every verse is a nod to one of my favorite old-time tunes called 'Hot Corn, Cold Corn,' which I picked up from an elderly, fiddle-playing pharmaceutical driver from Los Osos, CA. Some of the songs on the record were harder to record than others, but 'Big Jimmy' came pretty easily. Matt, our mandolin player took over a lot of the instrumentation on the first couple of verses which came out so well. It really gives the song a warm, shiny feel. We've always enjoyed playing fun, fast songs that folks can move and smile to. It becomes less about us or the tune, and more about the energy that is shared with us and our fans/friends. We always enjoy it." — Corey Adams

Instructions: Slap your knee or tap your toes on this one. It deserves it.


Photo credit: Martin Franco Vielma

LISTEN: Mipso, ‘Bad Penny’

The New South is a hot topic these days, in certain circles. Younger generations are dragging older traditions into the 21st century whether they want to come or not. With their upcoming album, Old Time Reverie, North Carolina's Mipso is on the case. It's their third release in five years, and their first since adding fiddler Libby Rodenbough to the roster last Spring, turning the once-trio of Jacob Sharp, Wood Robinson, and Joseph Terrell into a foursome.

As Terrell tells it, “The process of adding Libby to the band was a great re-education for us. It changed the way we thought about writing and arranging. Libby can definitely hang at a bluegrass jam, but she's really a student of old-time and Irish music — two old traditions where the fiddle isn't just a melodic garnish. It's a rhythmic force on its own.”

Of one cut, in particular, Terrell says, “'Bad Penny' is an example of how we've learned, or started to learn, to incorporate some of that old-time feel. The song is basically my answer to that age-old question, 'What if you were haunted by Abraham Lincoln's ghost? And what if he chased you around New York?' You could say it's a thought experiment. My Abe ain't happy.”

Tour Dates

August 21 – Winston-Salem, NC – The Garage
August 22 – Knoxville, TN – Barley's Knoxville
August 23 – Nashville, TN – City Winery Nashville
August 26 – Owensboro, KY – International Bluegrass Music Museum
August 27 – Lakeside, OH – Lakeside Chautauqua
August 28 – Lexington, KY – Natasha's Bistro & Bar
September 3 – Cheraw, SC – Theater on the Green
September 4 – Carrboro, NC – Cat's Cradle (seated show)
September 5 – Carrboro, NC – Cat's Cradle
September 6 – Strasburg, VA – Appaloosa Festival
September 9 – Northampton, MA – Iron Horse Music Hall – with Kristin Andreassan
September 10 – Somerville, MA – Thunder Road Music Club & Restaurant – with Dan Mills
September 11 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge – with Dan Mills
September 12 – Washington, DC – Gypsysally's – with Dan Mills
September 13 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live – with Dan Mills
September 17 – Ashland, VA – Ashland Coffee & Tea – with Skylar Gudasz
September 19 – Charlottesville, VA – The Southern Cafe and Music Hall – with Skylar Gudasz
September 20 – Charleston, SC – The Charleston Pour House – with Skylar Gudasz
September 22 – Athens, GA – The Foundry
September 23 – Decatur, GA – Eddie's Attic
September 24 – Asheville, NC – Isis Restaurant and Music Hall (seated show) – with Front Country
September 25 – Asheville, NC – Isis Restaurant and Music Hall – with Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys
September 26 – Wilkesboro, NC – Carolina In The Fall
September 27 – Greensboro, NC – Doodad Farm


Photo credit: D.L. Anderson