This Music Festival’s Goal Is Healing Appalachia, From the Inside Out (Part 1 of 2)

This weekend, September 21, 22, and 23, at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg, West Virginia, ascendant, down home country star Tyler Childers and his cohort will gather for an event begun in 2018 called Healing Appalachia. The benefit festival, put on by West Virginia based non-profit Hope in the Hills, will include performances by some of the biggest and buzziest names in American roots music: Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Trey Anastasio Band, Marcus King, Umphrey’s McGee, Amythyst Kiah and many more.

Healing Appalachia is just one of many such community-led, collective efforts born from within the region in recent years that is working towards effecting positive change while offering local, ground-up solutions to big, systemic problems. Their social media and website put it elegantly and succinctly: Their vision is a prosperous Appalachia, free from addiction. The opioid crisis has hit Appalachia, especially West Virginia and Childers’ home state of Kentucky, incredibly hard. When 26 people overdosed on one day in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2016, the mission for Hope in the Hills and Healing Appalachia was born.

At the time, Childers and his hardscrabble team were still climbing the music-industry ladder, building connections and community that would eventually grow and blossom into the multi-day event Healing Appalachia has become today. Childers’ friend and manager, Ian Thornton – who founded WhizzbangBAM, the booking and management company that represents Childers – together with festival program director Charlie Hatcher, Hope in the Hills board president Dave Lavender, and others took that tragic day in Huntington and turned it into an accretion point, around which they gathered and took action. Now, the festival has a local, annual economic impact approaching $3 million while raising thousands of dollars to be distributed to local, on-the-ground organizations and non-profits that specialize in addiction programs, recovery, support and healing for this long-oppressed region of the world.

We spoke to Ian Thornton and Dave Lavender for a two-part interview preview of Healing Appalachia, that dives into the work of Hope in the Hills and explores this grassroots music event’s community-first mission, that hopes to heal these music-steeped, underestimated communities in Appalachia from the inside out. Read our conversation with Ian Thornton below, read our conversation with Dave Lavender here.

Unable to attend the festival this weekend? You can donate to support the cause here.

Could you tell me a little bit about the background, the impetus, or the inspiration when you all were putting your heads together to make an event called Healing Appalachia. What was that like?

Ian Thornton: I’m very close friends with a fellow named Charlie Hatcher, who’s actually the festival producer for the event. The idea came to him first – you know, he tells the story better than I do – but he was on a fishing trip and got a call that yet another one of his friends had passed away from an opioid overdose. You know, we’ve all lost countless friends who we grew up with, went to school with, and I guess you’d say this one was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Charlie just kind of wanted to do something about it. He reached out to me and we got our heads working.

We’re not a recovery organization ourselves, right? But what we’re good at is the music side of things, producing events, working with musicians, playing music, inspiring people, bringing people together. That’s kind of how it was born. I talked to Charlie, who is friends with Tyler [Childers], too, and obviously this is something Tyler is very passionate about.

Tyler is also from Appalachia and he’s lost friends and family members, himself. The idea kind of spawned from thinking, “What if we do essentially a Farm Aid type of event?” The thought process was to have Tyler be the face of it and have all the efforts go towards recovery and the battle against the opioid epidemic here in Appalachia.

What I love about a cause like this is that the music itself is generative and restorative, and isn’t just a tool to generate interest or awareness. How do music and the arts play a role in a mission like this, in healing Appalachia, where the music can do the work as well as spotlighting the work? Do you agree or disagree?

IT: I certainly agree, and I think music is one of those things that ties everyone together, right? On a base level.

This one I think is in particular, it’s special because substance use and music are pretty closely tied together. A lot of musicians suffer from [substance abuse], and it’s part of the lifestyle, right? It’s part of what you see as “the rock and roll lifestyle” or whatever you call it. They kind of go hand in hand. We’re all more aware of it now, too, and we all know folks who have taken things to the extreme, then they’ve had to kind of pull back and get sober after feeling like they lost their way. We wanna show that sobriety and rock and roll – or whatever you want to call it – can live together harmoniously, just as easy as the party side of things.

A very good friend of mine, who’s no longer with us, Tom Morgan, he battled with sobriety for a long time. He was one of the guys that taught me my first chords on a guitar, right? And it got to the point, for him, where he couldn’t even go to shows locally, because they’re always at bars, right? Venues and bars are so closely associated that it can be difficult for someone who is in recovery.

I think that’s why the music side of Healing Appalachia, using music to bring awareness to this epidemic, really goes hand-in-hand. Even some of our performers – Trey Anastasio is performing this year and I think he’s over 15 years sober, now. Obviously with Phish, which is, you know, the jam band, you would assume, drug culture and everything else is associated with that. But, Trey’s only gotten greater in what he’s done with his musicianship. And, you know, Tyler even comments too that his artistry has improved and he’s been able to focus more on it since becoming sober and quitting drinking.

What is the importance of community and mutual aid to this mission, and how important is it that you all are not just people coming in from the outside, that you all have a stake in this – regionally and locally. Do you think that building community as you’re doing this is just as important as doing the work as well?

IT: Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, I think that’s where it has to start. You can look at things on these big levels and you can just get overcome or overwhelmed with how large the changes you’re trying to make are. At that point you get discouraged and you’re not going to do it.

Living inside Appalachia, we have heard all of the stereotypes. That we’re, you know, “Shoeless, toothless, drug-addled, fat…” We’ve dealt with these things and we’ve dealt with the oppression of the coal industry, of big money, of big pharma. All of this built on the backs of Appalachians.

I’ve always been someone who believes that you have to start locally. You have to have something that’s attainable. Something you can put your hands on and something that’s meaningful – it’s more meaningful to us because we’re in the fucking thick of it, right? I mean, Huntington, West Virginia, was almost the nucleus of the opioid crisis, and that’s the city I was born and raised in. We watched [everything] happen, the day there were 26 overdoses in one day due to a bad batch of heroin coming in. If you create something locally and have local people that are invested, what that does is it will not only grow the mission in and of itself, to help people become more aware. But one of my ultimate goals was always for someone else to see what we’re doing and it inspires them to do something in their region. Sometimes that’s all people need. They just need to be pushed over the hump to get the inspiration.

Do you have an idea of the scale of the economic impact of the festival, not only for your mission, but also for the area in general?

Yeah, so I’m going to refer to my fact sheet here. [Laughs] We’ve estimated $2.4 million in local economy spending in southern West Virginia and the Lewisburg area. That’s like hotels, gas stations, shops, restaurants, everything. On top of that, we donate money directly, too, and we pull a lot of volunteers from the region.

Like, the local high school basketball team will come and clean up trash. We’ve given more than $50,000 to local youth organizations in Greenbrier County alone. I think we had over 30 states and 6 countries represented last year in concertgoers.
It does make the point for you: You can have all of the apparatus and all the infrastructure, but if you don’t have the community, how do you take those numbers and turn them into something that means something to the people who are on the ground there in West Virginia? And involving them, too, right? Everything from the car lots to catering to cooking burgers out back.

To date, we have donated over $400,000 to recovery wellness organizations. That goes to over two dozen different organizations. We’re not a recovery organization ourselves, right? We’re facilitators. What we’re trying to do is give people that want to do that side of the work the means to do it. We don’t have this crazy application process for grantees. You don’t have to have a degree in grant writing to come to us. Tell us what it is you’re doing, tell us what you need. It could be needle exchange programs or money going towards Jacob’s Ladder, which is an organization for children that were born addicted. We try to hit all sides of it that we can, relying on donations as well as funds raised from the concert itself.

What bands, acts, or artists are you particularly excited about this year when you look at the lineup? It’s a pretty stout lineup!

To be quite honest, I’m pretty excited about the whole thing! When this started it was a small, one day event. I think we only had around 7,500 people show up to it. Last year, we had 16,000+ plus.

I’m personally pretty excited about Trey Anastasio and Classic TAB. I’m such a Phish fan, obviously, and can’t believe we’re having Trey play right before Tyler. I’m just really stoked about that! Also excited for Gov’t Mule, Isbell, 49 Winchester, who are cruising right now. And then, you know, keeping some local folks involved, too, your Kelsey Waldon, Charles Wesley Godwin. And Mr. Tommy Prime, who is fantastic and obviously, his father was an inspiration to a lot of these folks.

It’s really special to see some of these folks actually coming to us now. At first, you know how it is, you have to go beg people, “Hey… I’m doing this charity thing… You want to go play for free? We’ll get you in the local paper…” The “exposure” gigs, right? And now the pitch writes itself! The work that’s been done speaks for itself and people get behind it.

It goes back to the tie with substance abuse and music. You know, they go hand in hand. … I drink, right? It’s nothing that I’m personally [abusing], thankfully. But substance abuse is a thing that can get out of hand in the music industry.

Tommy Prine performs at Healing Appalachia 2022.

Let’s close with two questions and they feel very big, but don’t be alarmed: What does a healed Appalachia look like to you, personally? And what’s one thing that you’d like people to know about Appalachia?

IT: I mean in healing Appalachia, we just have to make it so that folks don’t feel trapped or alone. And to let them know, if it’s a battle they’re going up against, they’re not the first one to do it, even if it’s not an easy battle. It’s not going to be a mound to climb, it’s a goddamn mountain, right? So, having the availability and the resources in place so that when someone is ready to take this on, whether it be the first time or the 10th time, that they don’t feel ashamed or guilty about it. That they feel loved and like a human being.

Question 2, I think wherever you come from, rural, urban, or whatever, it’s the stigmas, right? I want people to know how those stigmas make an impact. The stereotypes of, “They’re fat, uneducated. They live in hills and don’t wear shoes, right?” The whole reason I do what I do, with Whizzbang in particular, I only work with acts from our region. And I do that specifically. When I started getting into all this, even before Tyler, just seeing the music that’s created here. We are not just one thing, right? Nobody is just one thing. You cannot judge a whole people by the bit of the iceberg that floats on top.

The stuff on top that’s the most visual, but you can’t judge a whole people by that. Appalachia is the most beautiful place in the country. Granted, I’m biased. I grew up there.

(Editor’s Note: Read part two, our conversation with Hope in the Hills board president Dave Lavender, here.)


Photos by Hunter Way / Impact Media

This Music Festival’s Goal Is Healing Appalachia, From the Inside Out (Part 2 of 2)

This weekend, September 21, 22, and 23, at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg, West Virginia, ascendant, down home country star Tyler Childers and his cohort will gather for an event begun in 2018 called Healing Appalachia. The benefit festival, put on by West Virginia based non-profit Hope in the Hills, will include performances by some of the biggest and buzziest names in American roots music: Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Trey Anastasio Band, Marcus King, Umphrey’s McGee, Amythyst Kiah and many more.

Healing Appalachia is just one of many such community-led, collective efforts born from within the region in recent years that is working towards effecting positive change while offering local, ground-up solutions to big, systemic problems. Their social media and website put it elegantly and succinctly: Their vision is a prosperous Appalachia, free from addiction. The opioid crisis has hit Appalachia, especially West Virginia and Childers’ home state of Kentucky, incredibly hard. When 26 people overdosed on one day in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2016, the mission for Hope in the Hills and Healing Appalachia was born.

At the time, Childers and his hardscrabble team were still climbing the music industry ladder, building connections and community that would eventually grow and blossom into the multi-day event Healing Appalachia has become today. Childers’ friend and manager, Ian Thornton – who founded WhizzbangBAM, the booking and management company that represents Childers – together with festival program director Charlie Hatcher, Hope in the Hills board president Dave Lavender, and others took that tragic day in Huntington and turned it into an accretion point, around which they gathered and took action. Now, the festival has a local, annual economic impact approaching $3 million while raising thousands of dollars to be distributed to local, on-the-ground organizations and non-profits that specialize in addiction programs, recovery, support, and healing for this long-oppressed region of the world.

We spoke to Ian Thornton and Dave Lavender for a two-part interview preview of Healing Appalachia, that dives into the work of Hope in the Hills and explores this grassroots music event’s community-first mission, that hopes to heal these music-steeped, underestimated communities in Appalachia from the inside out. Read our conversation with Dave Lavender below, read our conversation with Ian Thornton here.

Unable to attend the festival this weekend? You can donate to support the cause here.

Can you talk a bit about the impetus or inspirations for Healing Appalachia?

Dave Lavender: Hope in the Hills, our non-profit, was started in 2017, and then the first Healing Appalachia was held in 2018 as it took a minute for Ian Thornton, Keebie Gilkerson and Charlie Hatcher, and the other OG board members to get the all-volunteer non-profit going.

The birth of the group is rooted in the events of 2016 – two historic things happened that year. In June 2016, central West Virginia got record flooding that killed 23 people. Shortly thereafter, the Huntington music scene, which was really getting built-up in a mighty way with touring bands, came together and raised more money in one night at the V Club than some big corporate fundraisers had in a couple weeks. I think all of us there saw a ragtag bunch of musicians could really make a difference banding together. Interestingly, Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps’ first New York City trip was that August as well, for a West Virginia flood fundraiser organized by our friend, Michael Cerveris, the two-time Tony winner from Huntington.

As that was happening in August 2016, Huntington, West Virginia, hit the world’s headline news with 26 overdose calls within four hours. It might have been a shock to the world, but we were all living around it in West Virginia so Ian, Tyler and Charlie Hatcher, Healing’s co-founder and show producer, knew how bad it was, and knew it was time to project the “bat signal” in the air, and unite their super friends in music to gather again and put on a show to help out the boots-on-the-ground folks overwhelmed and trying to assist in this opioid crisis.

One thing that struck me about the organization and the event is how y’all are from the region and building support systems, resources and pathways for folks from within the region – can you talk about the importance of mutual aid and community to the org and also the event?

DL: Everyone in the world knows the West Virginia theme song is “Country Roads,” but I would say the West Virginia and Appalachian motto is a song from Slab Fork, West Virginia-native Bill Withers. He wrote “Lean on Me” about being raised in the coal camp where you rely on your neighbors. Being from Appalachia, we know help is not on the way and that we are also better and stronger together.

For Hope in the Hills as a granting organization, we try to stay acutely aware of the ever-changing recovery ecosystem and fill the gaps where we can. For instance, I think the general public thinks of the opioid crisis as, “That’s the guy with the backpack at the recovery house.” Yes, true. But, the opioid crisis has created deep and wide fall-out – from historic numbers of kids in foster care (addressed by Barbara Kingsolver in her latest Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Demon Copperhead), to an overloaded prison system with non-violent drug offenders to many governments not wanting to fund harm reduction – even though they know through countless studies that it saves lives. Without harm reduction, communities are likely to get horrific spikes in hepatitis and HIV.

We try to put what funds we have into the gaps to provide a little help, but to also let folks know through our socials about some of these amazing programs happening across the region with things like camps for kids in trauma, and innovative recovery-work programs.

As for the event, I think that “Lean on Me” spirit is really palpable everywhere you look at Healing Appalachia. We’ve modeled ourselves in the spirit of using music to create social change, after Farm Aid. Healing is shining a light on a crisis that many choose to ignore. We’re highlighting amazing people who help daily to deal with that crisis. We’re inspiring attendees through the music, testimonials from the stage, and the dozens of service providers there, to go forth and be the change when they get home from the concert, wherever home is. And that home is widespread – last year we had folks from 38 states and 3 countries.

The message I hope the casual music fan receives in their heart and acts upon from Healing Appalachia is that the opioid crisis is not “us and them,” it’s just us. Last year, we lost more than 109,000 in the United States to overdose. Music is a powerful vehicle for conveying with love that message of empathy. Even if you haven’t lost someone personally to overdose, we lost Prince, Tom Petty, Whitney Houston, and a long list of beloved musicians to opioid overdoses. So I hope that at the very least the casual music fan who comes just to see some amazing bands, goes back home with an improved empathy muscle that allows them to lay down the proverbial stones and jokes and judgment they were set to throw at someone suffering from Substance Use Disorder and in active addiction.

For the recovery service groups coming to Healing – and this year we will have more than 40 from 13 states – I want them to know, that as Mavis Staples sings, “You’re Not Alone.”

That they hopefully will meet folks from organizations like them who are in the trenches everyday, doing the hard, tedious and often-unsung work of helping someone along their journey, and that they may pick up some best practices, some group to ally with, and some friends from across Appalachia who know their struggles and can be an encourager.

Do you have a favorite anecdote or story about a partner organization or individual or program that was particularly impactful, or a perfect representation of why you do what you do?

DL: At Healing Appalachia last year, Kenney Matthews, the ONEBox coordinator for Drug Intervention Institute was one of our main speakers. I’m typically running around taking care of a lot of back-end stuff at the fest, but I was out there with him before he went out. He was really nervous, but I hugged him and told him he was going to crush it. He did, and threw down this beautiful line about “the opposite of addiction is connection.” It really was electric, so real and so true. I was talking with my wife, Toril, after Healing and Kenney – who spent 15 years in prison – told her about running into a prison guard who knew him on the inside at the festival. The guard tells Kenney he never did think he would change and that he was really proud of him, and they both had a moment of healing at Healing. We’ve had LOTS of moments in doing this work and the fest is full of them, but I loved hearing both sides of Kenney’s story and its impact to spread hope.

How do you – either individually or as a group – see music and the arts (especially arts with regional ties, like folk and country music and folk arts) as part of these regional solutions to regional problems?

DL: In Appalachia, storytelling and music are so grapevine-wrapped in who we are, how we think, what we do, so connecting and teaming up with those artists who are using their music with intent and purpose is what we want to do.

As a group, Hope in the Hills, we’ve been building out a Music Is Healing program that has active music therapy programs in East Tennessee with Cecilia Wright (who plays cello with Senora May and who has her own band), and in Eastern Kentucky at ARC and West Virginia with Huntington-based music therapist Margaret Moore (a multi-instrumentalist folk artist who also teaches the Wernick Method bluegrass jams). She also happens to be an expert in forward facing trauma.

The inspiring thing is we are bringing folks like Cecilia and Margaret – with that intersectionality of professional musicianship and therapy – to team up with other regional artists of all genres and do sessions not only at drop-in centers and recovery houses but also at regular music festivals to spread the fact that music is therapy and can be tapped into to get on a higher spiritual plateau.

At Addiction Recovery Care (ARC) Centers in Eastern Kentucky, Margaret gets to work with world-class bluegrass artists Don and John Rigsby, long-time nationally-touring bluegrass artists who are sharing their music to inspire folks on their recovery journey. Through ARC, Don’s built out a studio in Lawrence County, Kentucky, where he is teaching some of the ARC guys the recording industry. Along those career pathway lines, at Recovery Points in West Virginia, Hope in the Hills (Dave Johnson and Charlie Hatcher) have been working with folks there who have in years past helped build Healing’s stages and do stage-hand and festival security work, get paid for additional festival work as a career pathway build-out as an employment option.

Hope in the Hills is also helping fund the WVU School of Medicine’s music therapy program at the opioid unit. We’re also contributing to the inspiring Troublesome Creek Stringed Instruments program with Doug Naselrod in Eastern Kentucky, where Doug is doing music therapy while also carving out recovery-to-work opportunities for his world-class luthier shop making traditional music instruments.

Specifically for Healing, we’ve leveraged the fact that we have a large audience to help train them on using Naloxone. Last year (the first year back after two years off because of COVID), we teamed up with the WV Drug Intervention Institute to have a Naloxone training tent that really broke down the stigmas of Naloxone with a festival spirit. Our buddy Joe Murphy got Gibson Gives involved and we loaded up swag bags with Tyler CDs, water bottles from Healing, and then additional swag from other artists.

Are there particular bands/artists/acts on the lineup this year you’re especially excited about?

DL: Gotta give crazy props to Charlie Hatcher and Ian Thornton for pulling aces and connections to reel in an insanely good lineup that includes 24 national acts. This is only our fourth Healing Appalachia, so to have Marcus King, Umphrey’s McGee, and Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule back-to-back-to-back – would be the envy of jam band festival in the world! Truly a guitar lover’s feast on Friday. And opening act Joslyn and the Sweet Compression is one of my favorite R&B bands out there.

I’m really knocked out that 49 Winchester (who’s up for Americana Group of the Year) are throwing down for two nights in a row hosting our Late Night Jam with some killer bands and songwriters on those bills.

As far as really impactful musicians and people in that recovery space, we feel beyond blessed to have Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit on Thursday as the headliner and then Trey Anastasio and Classic TAB on Saturday headlining with festival co-founder Tyler Childers and The Food Stamps. Isbell, who was on a recovery panel at SXSW 2022 with our good friend Jan Rader, has put in the hard work to become increasingly more comfortable and sure-footed in that space and has Weather Vanes fresh out — the album to prove it. That’s been inspiring to watch.

We’re over the moon to have Trey (who is 15 years in recovery) with us and bringing Classic TAB, after a full summer of Phish shows, and with the great news that his 40-bed recovery center Divided Sky Foundation is on the way to opening in Ludlow, Vermont.

As a West Virginian, I’m super stoked to get Charles Wesley Godwin back on home turf to do something so real. I think he could grow into the biggest thing out of West Virginia since Brad Paisley. His new 19-song album, “Family Ties,” drops the day after he plays Healing on Thursday.

Margo Price performs at Healing Appalachia 2022.

What does a healed Appalachia look like to you?

DL: The problems are many, but the power of collective hope is growing and change is in the air all over Appalachia.

A healed Appalachia spends its riches and resources on mental health and particularly on children, making sure they are loved, nurtured, yet independent, and have all of the coping skills needed. We are now in an era of record kids in foster care and, as we know, childhood trauma is a thread that runs through folks who suffer with Substance Use Disorder. So first order for a healed Appalachia would be a widespread movement and budget shift to help kids in trauma now.

A healed Appalachia is one that has abundant opportunities within a clear line of sight for everyone in the community. A healed Appalachia gives everyone a seat at the table regardless of their past.

I’m a big fan of Brad Smith, who along with John Chambers and others, helping launch and rebrand West Virginia as the start-up state, where we create a really robust small business economy that allows folks here to dream big and launch those dreams here, like Ian, Tyler and the WhizzbangBAM team have done in Huntington, building out a business that builds spiderwebs of creative economy supporting regional musicians and artists.

A healed Appalachia has ample and good-paying sustainable green-energy jobs that pay a living wage and that brings wealth and health and that are not destructive to our beautiful Appalachian Mountains and to the workers.

A healed Appalachia is one with nature, gardening, exercise and healthy lifestyles that bind us to our beloved mountains and valleys.

A healed Appalachia talks less about politics and more about community and being a good neighbor – as the wonderful new Tim O’Brien song, “Cup of Sugar,” suggests we should do.

A healed Appalachia is full of true forgiveness, grace and second chances for folks, making forgiveness not just an often-trotted out word in a book but something real and necessary to heal our communities.

I think that’s probably enough healing or I’ll have to send you a doctor’s bill… [Laughs]

(Editor’s Note: Read part one, our conversation with Hope in the Hills board vice president and WhizzbangBAM founder Ian Thornton, here.)


Photos by Hunter Way / Impact Media

LISTEN: Philip Bowen, “Anymore”

Artist: Philip Bowen
Hometown: Montgomery, West Virginia
Song: “Anymore”
Album: Old Kanawha
Release Date: August 18, 2023

In Their Words: “We really wanted to do this song as an acoustic/bonus track on the record. I wrote it with the intention of it being more bare bones, and I love how it turned out. The acoustic guitar, fiddle, and piano are all that’s needed, and I think musically, it really hits differently when it’s scaled back like this.” – Philip Bowen


Photo Credit: Jordan Becker

LISTEN: JD Graham, “West Virginia”

Artist: JD Graham
Hometown: Yukon, Oklahoma
Song: “West Virginia”
Album: A Pound Of Rust
Release Date: June 23, 2023

In Their Words: “Growing up in rural Oklahoma, I was surrounded by all things oil field. I used to watch my friends roughneckin’ the rigs before they were old enough to buy smokes. By the the time they were 18, they were chasin’ money and workin’ 80 hours a week or more. The relationships they had with friends and lovers took a back seat. Years later the regret set in and they started to look back at what they missed. The character in this song wants another chance at the love he left behind and wonders if she has moved on.” – JD Graham 


Photo Credit: Alex Chacon

BGS 5+5: Rodney Rice

Artist: Rodney Rice
Hometown: Morgantown, West Virginia
Latest Album: Rodney Rice 
Personal Nicknames: Munch

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I gravitated towards guitar and writing lyrics as a kid. It was never a conscious decision. It was something I started doing at a young age that I kept working on and carried with me through all my life events. By that time I went into record my first album writing and playing music was a part of my fabric, my identity, in my DNA. Jason McKenzie (longtime drummer of Billy Joe Shaver) helped get me into the studio for my first album which turned out to be a step change. After I recorded I never thought if people would want to listen to it. Another step change occurred working out of the Bomb Shelter in Nashville which provided a whole new experience by exposing me to a method of recording I hadn’t done before. 2” tape. Seemed fitting to send to vinyl and now I have my first vinyl record.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

This is a tough to select only one. My mind immediately goes to Dylan, Prine, Billy Joe Shaver. I have seen them play shows, front row center stage soaking everything up like a sponge. Equally important are artists I play with on stage and in the studio — they have a huge impact on me. I have been very fortunate to surround myself with great musicians.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I heard this discussion somewhere once before, but I can’t recall exactly. For me, I think it’s not a conscious hiding and I usually blend them together. Like in the last verse of “Get to Where I’m Going” where I sing “Loving someone who don’t love you back, puts a pain in your chest like a heart attack / Ain’t nothing left, there’s no point to stay. I played my part, so I’ll be on my way.” In “Every Passing Day” I start with “I got a lead act in a play, that I’m living today.” Yeah, I blend them. But sometimes when I use “you,” I am referring to someone else.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

A large portion of my life was spent on whitewater rivers, but having moved to Colorado, backcountry skiing has been my activity of choice. Staying connected to nature helps keep my mind, body, and soul focused. What I mean by that, these activities in the wilderness are at times physically demanding (body). Conditions can be intense at times, cold and wet, but having to remain mentally focused on the dynamic of the situation (mind). All this taking place in a vast wildness backdrop where I am just a speck on a mountain or a drop in a river (soul). These skills are not lost upon returning. When life is challenging, uncomfortable, stay focused on the task at hand. I think you would find this perseverance in other independent artists. The industry is stacked against us but it’s not a determent. We are all just drops in a big river; we all start and finish the same but take different route over the course of in between.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Anytime I am playing a new song that I know the audience has yet to hear but somehow, they are singing along to it. I could be way off base, but my thought is “Man, I must have got it right this time!”


Photo Credit: Laura E. Partain

BGS 5+5: Logan Halstead

Artist: Logan Halstead
Hometown: Racine, West Virginia
Latest Album: Dark Black Coal

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Arlo McKinley brought me on stage at Fallsburg, I wasn’t even supposed to play but he just surprised me, pulled me on stage and put a guitar in my hand.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I realized this could be a career once I saw the support I was getting for “Dark Black Coal” and people were messaging me saying they’d pay to see me play. Before that, playing music was just a hobby.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

Keep your circle small, be loyal, work hard and do not be afraid to bet on yourself.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Most of the time I’m not hiding behind anything. I just try to be as honest about my life as possible. However, “Angel on My Shoulder” was a fictional song because I wanted to write a murder ballad.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I really just like to be outside. There are a lot less distractions, just me and my mind. It helps me to be as introspective as possible.


Photo Credit: Allen Ralph

LISTEN: Davisson Brothers Band, “I’m Good With It”

Artist: Davisson Brothers Band
Hometown: Clarksburg, West Virginia
Song: “I’m Good With It”
Album: Home Is Where the Heart Is
Release Date: April 28, 2023
Label: Rollin’ The Dice Records

In Their Words: “When we started the process to make the record, like I have stated before, we decided to reach out to some of our friends in the industry and wanted to collaborate with a couple folks. I set up a couple retreat-style writes and brought in a few artists. One particular write, we brought in a fellow West Virginian and old touring and hanging friend Sierra Ferrell. We go way back with Sierra, she has been sharing stages with us since she was very young. She had never done a co-write so we had gotten in the room with her and wrote a few things. We knocked it out of the park, we had intentions of getting her and Del McCoury to sing on a track with us together on a song we wrote with Sierra that Brent [Cobb] and [David] Ferg [Ferguson] really loved. The problem was we already had the studio booked and a couple dates to work with, but unfortunately schedules did not line up.

“We were determined to have a duet-style performance on the album. We decided to get in the writing room with our buddy Kyle Tuttle (Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway) and his partner Lindsay Lou and also invited our friends Rob McCoury and Paul McDonald. The chemistry and energy in that room was insane that day. Kyle ended up jumping out to write with Donnie on a track as we were winding down and Lindsay started belting out this melody with Paul and there it was… ‘I’m Good With It’ came to life. I knew then we had the song we were looking for. It also nods to our early years of touring around the jam band scene. Lindsay came in the studio and nailed her part, Rob McCoury played on the track as well. One of the musical highlights of the record for me.” — Chris Davisson, Davisson Brothers Band


Photo Credit: Clay Enos

WATCH: The Wildwoods, “West Virginia Rain”

Artist: The Wildwoods
Hometown: Lincoln, Nebraska
Song: “West Virginia Rain”
Album: Foxfield Saint John
Release Date: February 17, 2023

In Their Words: “While on tour in July of 2022, we had a couple of days off between performances in West Virginia and after sleeping in our little old RV in Love’s Truck Stops for the entire month prior, we decided to rent a campsite so we could easily explore the beauty of the state. Unfortunately, we were met with heavy rainfall for the entirety of our stay, and with many roads being blocked off around us, we found ourselves secluded and alone at the little campground. To pass the time, we worked on writing some tunes, and this was when our song ‘West Virginia Rain’ was born. At its core, the lyrics of the song are mainly about how personal tribulations can cause one to have difficulty seeing the beauty in the most beautiful aspects of life. At the time, we thought that the recording of our newest album Foxfield Saint John was complete, but upon finishing ‘West Virginia Rain’ and arranging harmonies, we knew that we had to add it to the album. Upon our arrival back to Nebraska in September after the tour was complete, we went back to Hand Branch Studio in Omaha, Nebraska, and recorded the final track of the project.” — The Wildwoods


Photo Credit: Chad Lemke

Acoustic Guitarist (And Instagram Star) Jake Eddy Is Still Mesmerized by Music

Jake Eddy is among a new generation of bluegrass musicians who are making a name for themselves on social media. Jake’s videos on Instagram and other platforms garner thousands of likes and even more views thanks to his technical skill, wit, and charisma. But Jake is not a mere internet sensation. His bluegrass roots run deep through his family in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where he grew up playing with local traditional music legends. While touring with the Becky Buller Band, he made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry stage, which led to Jake and his brother Carter accompanying bluegrass/jazz/klezmer mandolin legend Andy Statman on the Opry. Jake stays busy with a full teaching schedule in addition to his time on the road with Andy, his own band, or as a solo act. BGS caught up with Jake to learn more about his early interest in bluegrass, his experiences in music school, and his upcoming Yamaha custom guitar.

How did you get into playing music?

Eddy: My grandpa was a picker, and my mom played, and I had two cousins that fiddled on the Opry back in the ‘70s on my dad’s side. So it was just kind of the usual thing for bluegrass people from my region. I was just surrounded by pickers and wanted to be one.

 

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When did you start on the guitar?

Banjo was really my very first when I was a kid. I started working on guitar simultaneously. Because of the technique, or maybe the lack of technique, being taught by old-timers around here, playing the banjo became uncomfortable and a little bit painful, and I could feel like it just wasn’t the best fit for me in the long term. I still do play banjo on some sessions and stuff like that, but as far as touring, playing banjo, it’s not in the cards for me. I prefer to play guitar anyway, so it’s okay.

When did you decide to make a career out of music? Or did it just sort of happen?

Yeah, it was pretty natural. I did the family band thing a little bit when I was real young. And then I got a call to go play banjo for Melvin Goins when I was in middle school. That experience was awesome, like going to bluegrass school. It was really crazy and had some great and terrible things both going on. But it was really cool because my parents let me go on the road under the condition that I would bring an adult with me at all times. They had played music so they were hip to what it can be like on the road. The deal ended up being that my grandpa would chaperone me on the road. So he came with me, and on the first show, Melvin had this blowout with the bass player, and the bass player quit. And I tell Melvin, like, “Hey, my grandpa is a bass player.” And he filled in on one show with us and got offered the gig. So we actually were both in the band for two years together. It’s a great memory, and it grew me up really fast, but it was cool.

That’s a great story. It’s hard to explain to other people what that experience is like as a kid. All the good and bad and how much you learn.

You can imagine. You know, those old-timers. It’s a different lifestyle.

How long did you play with Melvin?

I think it was two years. I think I got hired when I was 14. I think I was in 7th or 8th grade and probably quit when I was in the 10th grade or something like that.

Did you end up going to music school?

Yeah, I did music school for a little bit, and I was a horrible student. The usual, playing a bunch and giggling a bunch, but not going to class a whole lot, and just decided that it seems silly to me that a lot of the really great players I knew at music school were not doing very well at school. And a lot of the so-so players were passing with flying colors. So it just started to seem silly.

It’s definitely funny to go to school to theoretically get a job that you already have.

Yeah, man, that was the thing. They would get on me about attendance, and I would be like, I’m playing gigs. And I get it that you can’t bend the rules but I figured it wasn’t a fit for me.

 

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Where were you going?

I was going to Ohio University in Athens. It’s this little, cool, artsy, open-minded kind of bubble in Ohio. And OU Music School, in my eyes, was a place for a lot of your local music educator-type people, but it also had this population of disgraced jazz players from CCM, which is a bigger school in Cincinnati. So there were some good players floating around, but just a weird scene.

Were you studying jazz then?

Technically the degree was Guitar Performance, maybe? Or guitar something. But yeah, I was in the jazz track, so all my ensembles and all my instructors were jazz players, and I had played that music a bit before. I learned things in music school, but if given the opportunity again, I don’t know if I would have gone that way.

You’re playing with Andy Statman now, right?

Yeah, a bunch. Man, it’s cool. I assume you’re hip to Andy’s playing because, like, all the mandolin nerds love him. He’s the coolest. I hired him to cut a couple of tracks that I wrote, and we ended up really hitting it off and we hung out some and decided to do a couple of one-off shows. And it just snowballed into doing some tours. Andy is Orthodox Jewish, so he doesn’t work weekends, so our touring is limited in some ways. But we’ve gotten to play quite a bit and we’re about to go out again in the spring, it’s looking like, and we got a record coming out on his label, so, yeah, some things happening there for sure.

What’s the material you play like?

Andy’s a huge Monroe buff, so there’s a lot of nights where we’re playing things like “Evening Prayer Blues” or “Tombstone Junction” and all these Monroe tunes, but they can quickly take a musical turn and he’s a pretty deep musician. It’s definitely traditional material, but it’s through the lens of a pretty free approach, I think is the way I’d put it.

What was your practice regiment growing up? How do you think you got so technically good?

I’m sure in a lot of ways my brain is totally broken and that’s why this has worked out for me. I think a lot of musicians are that way. I think if I was completely normal, I’d probably just like music in a hobbyist, healthy way. When I was a kid, I hesitate to put a number on it, but I’d say when I was really into soaking up everything, I was probably playing eight or 10 hours a day. That’s before school, after school. I would try to skip a class here and there to play, or I would skip lunch or I would fake sick at a gym and go get the guitar. I was always working an angle to be playing more. And then after school, playing until bedtime and playing gigs with the family band on the weekend.

It was an extreme focus on picking. I think I was lucky just being exposed to music a bunch. I worked really hard at it, but my parents made it seem cool and made it seem accessible. And I think that plays a pretty big part as well, right? There are still some days where I’ll go in my studio for eight or 10 hours with the metronome on full blast just going crazy in there. And then when it’s done, you feel totally drained. I feel like my brain is melted. That’s not how I tell my students to practice. I tell them to do something that’s manageable and that’s part of their normal routine. But I’m certainly not following that advice.

 

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I’ve always felt like if somebody wants to get that good, they’re going to do that regardless of what tools they have. You can’t really convince someone to be that obsessed with it.

Yeah, man, I think so. It’s a blessing and a curse kind of thing. But I still feel a ton of amazement and wonder by the guitar and by music. And that’s the secret thing you can’t teach anyone. I still think music is so mesmerizing and just so damn cool.

You’ve been working with the Yamaha custom shop on a guitar. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, I don’t have it in my possession yet, but I have a prototype that’s really good. I played some of their prototypes at the Fretboard Journal Summit in Chicago last year. I thought it was a good guitar and one of the better ones I played there that weekend, which was really surprising because Yamaha doesn’t historically have a huge reputation in the bluegrass world. So they called me and sent one and then they had me come down and play at IBMA. It’s just one of those luck things. Bumped into the right guys and it kind of snowballed. I went out with Jordan Tice and filmed some promo stuff for a new model and demoed the guitars. I think my custom’s going to be done any day now. They’re cool, man. And they’re not cheap guitars — these are nicer models. They’re not trying to be old-sounding guitars by any means. It’s modernly voiced and it’s cool.

 

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When you say these guitars are “modernly voiced,” what did you mean by that?

In one sense it sounds new. It doesn’t sound particularly dry and woody like an old guitar might, but it’s really slick and it’s loud and it’s balanced. It’s great up the neck. It has a little more sustain than something like my old D-18. Talking about guitars is kind of like talking about wine tasting or something. It’s hard to explain.

Yeah. I always find the word choice very funny and completely arbitrary.

It means nothing but you can hear the differences when you play them. They’re really fast. When you play the note, it’s right there. It has good attack. It’s super-even and balanced. Those are the main kinds of things I like out of my D-18. But it’s a different voice. I think when the demos and stuff come out, it’ll make more sense when people can hear it.

What did you go for in your custom model? I feel like people are always really specific with custom instruments and I have no idea what I would ask for on something like that.

Yeah, I went with things that I knew were good. I think a lot of people, when they get a custom build, they have the tendency to try to be cutting-edge or to be a smarty-pants about it and be like, “Oh, I want this certain type of wood from this certain type of tree with the grain like this.” I just went for a mahogany guitar, spruce top. It’s really simple and lightweight. I think you can get carried away wanting a special guitar more than you want a good guitar. There’s no inlay on it. And I really pushed them for a double pick guard. I don’t know if they’re going to go for it because a lot of the aesthetic stuff is controlled by the guys in Japan. But fingers crossed. I’m excited to get it in my hands. If it’s anything like the prototypes, it’s going to be pretty sweet.


Photo Credit: Madison Thorn

Bluegrass Memoirs: Jackson, Kentucky Bluegrass

[Editor’s note: Photos by Carl Fleischhauer]

On Monday August 7, 1972, with fresh memories of Maritimes old-time and bluegrass, I drove from New Brunswick to New England to join my wife and kids, who were house-sitting for my in-laws in Norwich, Vermont. 

On Thursday the 10th I headed south. A fourteen-hour drive brought me to Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of my friend and partner in research, photographer and film-maker Carl Fleischhauer, then employed at West Virginia University. We’d known each other for twelve years. (Our stories are in Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words, 1966-86 [U of IL Press 2001]). We were about to embark on fieldwork.

During the preceding year, when I began planning for the book Bluegrass: A History, I asked Carl to help me think about photos. In addition to documenting bluegrass festivals and other venues he, with Sandy Rothman, had recently looked for traces of earlier days in a field trip to the old Monroe home in Rosine, Kentucky. Now, we made plans for our own field trip. Carl would take photos. I would make notes and do interviews. 

We spent that Friday in Morgantown looking at Carl’s photos and films and listening to LPs as we prepared for the research. At the end of the evening, my notes say,

Did some picking.

Early Saturday morning we piled in my new Toyota with our gear (cameras, tape recorder, axes, tent, sleeping bags) and headed southwest, crossing into Kentucky from Huntington, WV and snaking down through the mountains to Jackson, the seat of Breathitt County. Three hundred miles; we arrived around 2 o’clock.

There we headed just outside of town for Bill Monroe’s Second Annual Kentucky Blue Grass Festival. When I went to Canada in 1968, Bill Monroe had one festival a year at Bean Blossom in Indiana. Now he was running a bunch in other states, as were other artists. Festivals were the big news in bluegrass music in 1972. We sought to document the bluegrass festival experience.

Later others would write about this, like Bob Artis (“An Endless Festival” in Bluegrass [1975]) and Robert Owen Gardner (The Portable Community [2021]). Here’s how my notes from Jackson begin:

West of town on main hwy, down short steep road. Paid camping & Sat. fees, never did pay for Sunday. Parked & walked down to the stage area — tent set up, natural amphitheatre, uncovered stage, bad sound. Lots of cops around on Saturday.

Made contact with Pete & Marion Kuykendall, and agreed to move in next to them to camp. Set up tent, attempted to speak to Monroe but he was busy coping with the Goins Bros. problem of being hassled by the cops for drinking. Later Kuykendall said that cops had asked Monroe for $ (3 or 6 hundred) and he had refused to pay off so they were taking it out in fines. Lots of racing around on Sat. with flashing lights et al, but they stayed away on Sunday.

Listened then to IT’S A CRYING TIME, hot & exciting Japanese bluegrass band. Then back to Kuykendall’s bus/home whatall. Thunderstorm; discovery that cassette recorder didn’t work on batteries because plug distorts switch; got it running eventually. Oldest Kuykendall girl Sam/Ginger comes in with bass player of above-mentioned Japanese band, then leaves. Kuykendalls are a bit worried about this but Carl & I both notice later that a number of young girls (McLain girls, for example) are hanging around, with this group.

Dinner with Kuykendalls. Frank & Marty Godbey come in and are around for the rest of the evening. Mostly we sit & talk, though I went down to the amphitheatre to catch Jim & Jesse and the Japanese bands. Came back, then returned to catch Monroe. Afterwards listened to picking group in tent near us. Did mainly Emerson & Waldron, Newgrass Revival, Bluegrass Alliance, Gentlemen, etc. Chromatic banjo. Noisy night in Carl’s tent, as sessions went on late and busses started early. I got a spider bite.

Bill Monroe (center) and the Blue Grass Boys at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Bandmembers include Monroe Fields, bass; Jack Hicks, banjo; Joe Stuart, guitar (hidden); Monroe, mandolin; and Kenny Baker, fiddle.

I’d known the Kuykendalls since 1966. Pete, a 1996 inductee to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, was a musician, record collector, producer, publisher, and, since 1970 owner-editor of the first and leading bluegrass monthly Bluegrass Unlimited.

Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday August 12, 1972.

Pete and I had already been corresponding about bluegrass history when we met on Labor Day weekend 1966 at the second Roanoke Bluegrass Festival. Subsequently, I visited the Kuykendalls in Virginia where Pete encouraged me to write for the then all-volunteer magazine he would later own. I began with a review of the festival, published the following January — the first of eight articles I did for BU in 1967.

Photo made by Pete Kuykendall’s son Billy with one of Carl Fleischhauer’s cameras. Carl is seated at left with two other cameras on the table. This photo was made at the time of Neil Rosenberg’s (top of head above stove) interview of Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, at left, is Pete’s wife and Bluegrass Unlimited co-manager Marion Kuykendall.

By 1970 Pete and Marion were running BU full-time; I’d done an article for them earlier in 1972 (eventually I would write a monthly column) so we had been in touch recently by mail and phone. Conversations with Pete were never brief! He loved to share the business scuttlebutt and he had plenty since they were selling the magazine at festivals every weekend and had just launched BU’s own annual festival. 

I think this may have been the first time I met the Godbeys. From Lexington, and before that, Columbus, Ohio, they had been following the bluegrass scene for a decade. Frank is a musician who is still performing these days. By 1972 he and Marty had begun writing and publishing photos in BU. For them, as for me, hanging out with the Kuykendalls was a good way to keep up on the bluegrass news. People were already talking about starting an industry association, though that — the IBMA — wouldn’t happen until 1986. Pete was one of its founders.

Neil Rosenberg (facing camera) interviewing Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, with an air rifle, is Pete’s son Billy Kuykendall.

With the growth of the festivals came clubs, newsletters, and magazines. Bluegrass enthusiasts (many of them musicians) followed their favorites to festivals and other venues. Paths crossed; networks grew. The politics of bands was a favorite discussion topic.

Over the course of the festival, I made note of gossip about the always changing bands. Ricky Skaggs had just left Ralph Stanley — there were rumors about where he was headed next. Was Bill working to get Ralph Stanley on the Opry? Some thought so. The II Generation was said to be splitting up. Stories were told of bluegrass festival camp followers. 

At this Jackson, Kentucky festival were a bunch of bands that had been appearing at Bill Monroe’s other 1972 festivals — Monroe, Jim & Jesse, Flatt, Reno & Harrell, the Goins, Ralph Stanley — mature musicians who’d been working with this music for a substantial period of time and who stuck close to the early models of which they were, often, the authors. Classic bluegrass, one could say. 

What the audience didn’t hear was the kind of stuff we’d heard from the jammers late Saturday night, like “One Tin Soldier,” The Bluegrass Alliance’s cover of a song popularized in the film Billy Jack. Their bluegrass version, with Sam Bush’s lead voice and Tony Rice’s harmonies and guitar work, was a hit, a big step on the road to newgrass.

The Japanese bands were new to the scene. Japanese bluegrass began in the early sixties. In 1971, Bluegrass 45 came from Kobe, Japan, with the sponsorship of their label, Rebel, to tour U.S. bluegrass festivals. They made a big hit at Monroe’s Bean Blossom festival with their showmanship and musical savvy. This year they were back, along with another Japanese outfit, It’s A Crying Time.

Visiting from Japan, the band It’s a Crying Time performs at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Band members include Eiichi “Ei’ Shimizu, banjo; Kazuyoshi “Kazu” Onishi, mandolin; Satoshi “Sato” Yamaguchi, guitar; Akira “May” Katsumi, bass.

Monroe had booked the Japanese bands as a novelty, something you couldn’t see just anywhere in the bluegrass world. As I mentioned in my field notes, I found It’s A Crying Time’s music “hot & exciting,” and I was not the only one in the audience reacting this way. They came to the attention of Lester Flatt, who, after watching them rehearse, invited mandolinist Kazu Onishi to join him on stage at his final set. 

Backstage moment at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Akira Katsumi, Kazu Onishi,
Lester Flatt, and Akira Otsuka. Otsuka was Kazu’s friend from the Japanese scene, a member of the Bluegrass 45.

This video comes from the Bluegrass 45’s appearance at Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs festival:

They are announced at the beginning of the video by emcee, writer, and DJ Bill Vernon. Vernon was here at Jackson, as I learned Sunday morning when I went down to the early morning gospel show. Pete Kuykendall introduced me to Bill there, and we had a long chat about the politics of the bluegrass industry. I wrote in my notes:

A very loquacious and complex person.

At that morning’s gospel show, the music came to a stop as a fundamentalist preacher began his sermon. At that point, I noted:

Bill Vernon cut out from the morning sermon, he’d had enough…

During the preacher’s sermon at the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. Bill Monroe (wearing a black suit) is seated in the audience area at left.

I stayed and heard some good music, noting:

The gospel section’s high point was when the Goins Bros. did “Somebody Touched Me” and Eleanor Parker came on stage & started clapping hands and singing; Monroe caught on and came up to join in too.

During the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. When the Goins Brothers band performed “Somebody Touched Me,” they were joined on stage by Eleanor and Rex Parker and Bill Monroe. Eleanor and Bill joined the Goins trio at the main microphone while Rex sang and played mandolin at the “stage right” microphone.

This kind of spontaneity, which gave festivals their appeal, was not there all the time. Jim & Jesse, I wrote, had:

A good show, with Jim Brock sounding especially good, but … a cut and dried quality to it all.

Describing Lester Flatt and his Nashville Grass, I concluded:

To me the whole band sounded tired, lackluster.

But Flatt’s final set was enlivened when It’s A Crying Time mandolinist and tenor Kazu Onishi came on stage to sing “Salty Dog Blues” with him. 

During my times around the stage area, I had a chance to talk with Monroe and with some of the musicians I’d gotten to know during my years as a backstage regular at Bean Blossom, like Birch Monroe, Joe Stuart, and Roland White.

I arranged with Birch, who was busy helping Bill run the festival, for an interview, to take place later in the week at his home in Martinsville, Indiana.

Joe Stuart offstage at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.

Joe told me about his experiences playing bluegrass in Canada with Charlie Bailey. He’d even appeared in Newfoundland.

Roland, whom I’d known since his days as a Blue Grass Boy, was now playing with Lester Flatt. He told me they were working solid, playing festivals every weekend.

Here’s what I wrote about the audience:

Audience — bluegrass die-hards from Ohio, Ky., D.C., Carolinas. Few freaks. Appear to be about 50% campers, 50% local people. Certainly no more than 1500-2000, on Saturday, though figure of 3000 was bandied about. Bill moved his Ky festival to Jackson from Ashland this year because the turnout at Ashland was dropping. Fact, bluegrass ain’t as popular in Kentucky as it is elsewhere — Ohio, D.C.

Audience on the hillside natural amphitheater at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.

The festival closed with a finale, orchestrated by Monroe. At the first festivals in the mid-60s, which were created to honor Monroe, such events were somewhat spontaneous, but by now, seven years after the first one, these events were highly ritualistic. By the time it happened, I noticed that the Kuykendalls had left. They were not the only ones.

The finale performance at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. At the center, in white suits, are Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt. Here are a few of the other performers, left to right: Curly Ray Cline (on the ramp), Melvin Goins (guitar, facing camera), Kenny Baker (fiddle, white hat, wearing a suit), Joe Stuart (just behind Baker, partly hidden), Buck Ryan (fiddle, white belt), Jack Hicks (banjo, white hat, wearing suit), Paul Warren (fiddle, white hat, at microphone), Vic Jordan (banjo, facing forward), Ralph Stanley (banjo, dark suit, hidden behind McCormick), Haskell McCormick (banjo, in profile), Monroe and Flatt with Don Reno (wearing white) partly hidden behind them, Raymond W. McLain and sister Alice McLain (hidden behind Flatt), Jesse McReynolds (mandolin, wearing striped jacket), Ruth McLain (bass, behind McReynolds), Raymond K. McLain (guitar, no hat), Roland White (mandolin, white hat), Rex Parker (mandolin, striped shirt), and Monroe Fields (leaning on van).

We packed up soon after and headed west for Lexington. I was hoping to interview J.D. Crowe.

[To be continued]


Thanks to Akira Otsuka and Carl Fleischhauer

Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Neil V. Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg.

Edited by Justin Hiltner