A Minute in West Virginia with Charles Wesley Godwin

Welcome to “A Minute In …” — a BGS feature that turns musicians into hometown reporters. In our latest column, Charles Wesley Godwin takes us through West Virginia, a state that inspired much of the music on his notable new album, Seneca.

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Mountaineer Home Football Game
There’s no place like Morgantown, West Virginia on a football Saturday. I once heard that Morgantown accounts for one percent of the nation’s beer sales on game day. I have no idea if that’s true, but I like it. Make sure you don the ol’ gold and blue, haggle with a ticket scalper, bring a case of beer and you’ll be sure to get invited to join a tailgate in the Blue Lot. Afterwards, go fill up at Black Bear Burritos and continue drinking your face off with dozens of WV craft beers. A wise man once said, “They shouldn’t have played the ol’ gold and blue!” – the late, great, coach Bill Stewart.


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The Purple Fiddle
Tucked away in beautiful Thomas, West Virginia, The Purple Fiddle is putting on some of the best shows in the country almost every night of the week. If you want to experience a little piece of Appalachian heaven, go dance your boots off at a Purple Fiddle show. Then, be sure to take the weekend to enjoy Thomas & Davis, Blackwater Falls, Canaan Valley and Dolly Sods. The owner, John Bright, has his ear to the ground like no other. He was opening his doors to bands like The Avett Brothers, Greensky Bluegrass and countless others back when they were being passed over by comparable venues. The Fiddle has welcomed me ever since I got started, and I’m very grateful for that.


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Fly-Fishing
There’s no better place to wet your fly line than West Virginia. Of course, I might be biased, but West Virginia’s got some of the most beautiful trout streams and rivers in the world. Go fishin’ on the North Fork of the South Branch, Elk, South Branch of the Potomac, Dryfork, Cheat, Greenbrier, Potomac, Shenandoah, New and countless other rivers. Find yourself a nice little tributary and you can catch native trout all the way up the holler. Hell, come see me and we’ll fish Seneca Creek.


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Muriale’s Restaurant
One little-known fact outside of our borders is that West Virginia is home to a huge (by West Virginian standards) Italian population in north-central WV. Like a monument to their greatness, Muriale’s Restaurant stands in Fairmont right next to Interstate 79, calling all travelers to her great table. If Muriale’s could speak, I’d imagine she’d cry out her own version of Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus.” Something along these lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to try the meatball, the wretched refuse of your teeming states. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I will feed them well!”


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Seneca Rocks
Standing high above the land where generations of my family have lived and died, and the Native Americans before them, the rocks remind us all of how long the forces of nature have been at play. I won’t begin to act like I know the ins and outs of how it was formed, but I’ll just take geologists’ word for it that it took hundreds of millions of years. You can hike right up to the top of this crag and I promise it’ll give you a hell of a view. One so nice in fact, that I asked my wife to marry me there.


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Mothman Festival
Each year, on the third weekend of September, comes the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant. There’s music, there’s vendors, there’s the Mothman museum, there’s wild, ancient alien type dudes tellin’ all kinds of crazy stories. Go check it out. It’s a really fun time.


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Greenbrier Valley Brewing Co.
Just outside of Lewisburg, Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company is spitting out some of the best beer in the world. They’ve got something that’ll fit your taste no matter what kind of beer drinker you are. Bring your dog and enjoy a Devil Anse, Zona’s Revenge, Mothman or Wild Trail. While you’re at it, just take the whole week to enjoy Lewisburg, The Greenbrier, and all that is Almost Heaven. It’s gorgeous down that way.


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Live on the Levee
On the banks of the pristine waters (just kidding) of the Kanawha River, there’s a summer series of concerts in downtown Charleston every Friday night. For Live on the Levee, they bring in a bunch of killer national touring acts to put on a hell of a show for the good people. Thousands of West Virginians from high and higher come out to enjoy the music, the food trucks and spend a night on the town. Afterwards, if you didn’t get enough music to tickle your fancy at the Levee show, just cross the street to catch another show at The Boulevard Tavern.


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Country Club Bakery
Pepperoni rolls are a staple of the Mountain State. They were originally created as a lunch food option for the coal miners. Guiseppe “Joseph” Argiro sold the very first one at Country Club Bakery in 1927. The comfort food of all comfort foods is at your fingertips in small bakeries and gas stations all around the state, but if you stop by Country Club to a pick up a fresh dozen, you’re in for a treat. I feel a deep sense of sadness every time I’m looking for a proper gas station snack out of state. I don’t know how y’all make it without roni rolls.


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New River Gorge
The New River Gorge Bridge sits 876 feet above the ancient New River. While driving across it, it’s sure to freak out anyone scared of heights. There is an annual Bridge Day festival where adrenaline junkies from all around the world meet up and BASE jump off of it. For those of us who are not so extreme, myself included, you can whitewater raft down the New River guided by Ace Adventure. After you’re done on the river, you can grab a bite to eat at Secret Sandwich Society in Fayetteville, and catch a show at The Grove.


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Snowshoe Mountain
Snowshoe is home to the best skiing on the east coast. Come November, the snow is already piling up and it doesn’t melt all the way until May. If skiing’s not your thing, you can take a snowmobile tour, ride the air tubes, enjoy the spa and catch a show in the winter village. If you miss the snow, don’t worry, you can still go mountain biking or enjoy some guided fly-fishing.


Photo of Charles Wesley Godwin by Ashley Stottlemyer

WATCH: Drew Michael Blake and The Belfry, “Cut and File”

Artist: Drew Michael Blake and The Belfry
Hometown: Parkersburg, West Virginia (Based in Nashville, Tennessee)
Song: “Cut and File”
Album: Blame The Miles Between
Single Release Date: December 7, 2018

In Their Words: “I think, like a lot of other people, I walk around in a delusion and most of the time I don’t really see it. For a long time I was under the impression that everyone knew better than me. I thought the girls I was in love with knew who or what I should be. I thought my peers or my elders knew what I should do better than I did. ‘Cut and File’ is about experiencing a moment of clarity where you see right through those delusions, and start figuring out that those answers can only come from within. When I first started playing in bands in my teens, it was me and my friends in an old barn turning up our amps, sweating through our clothes, and playing rock and roll. I think the feeling and the energy of those early days comes through in this video.” — Drew Michael Blake


Photo credit: Chad Cochran

LISTEN: Charles Wesley Godwin, “Coal Country”

Artist: Charles Wesley Godwin
Hometown: Morgantown, West Virginia
Song: “Coal Country”
Album: Seneca
Release Date: February 15, 2019

In Their Words: “This song is about the coal industry in West Virginia in the past and present. It’s my best attempt to articulate, through music, the mixed bag of good and bad that it’s brought to us. On one hand, it has given economic mobility to countless families, including my own, in the 20th and 21st centuries and it has contributed greatly to the economic strength of the United States these many years. On the other hand, it has also taken the lives of thousands of miners, scarred the land, and has a somewhat dark history of companies taking advantage of workers and violating their rights. This song was completely influenced by my father. He’d been crawling in coal for years when he was my age, so I just wanted to make something beautiful out of that sacrifice. This was the only way I knew how.” — Charles Wesley Godwin


Photo credit: Samantha Godwin

WATCH: Missy Raines, “Allegheny Town”

Artist: Missy Raines
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Allegheny Town”
Album: Royal Traveller
Release Date: October 5, 2018
Label: Compass Records

In Her Words: “I grew up in the Allegheny mountains of West Virginia, leaving home at 18 to follow my dreams. I didn’t realize then the cost of time away from loved ones – time you never get back. I wrote this song ‘Allegheny Town’ for my family, for those who went searching and perhaps more importantly, for those who stayed behind. This video offers a personal glimpse into my life from long ago with scenes and people who are no longer with us. ‘And I can hold you up, against the eastern sky, and we can try our luck, to never say goodbye.’” –Missy Raines


Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

After Struggling to Sing, Kathy Mattea Soars on ‘Pretty Bird’

Kathy Mattea’s latest album, Pretty Bird, is in many ways a continuation of the West Virginia native’s journey back to the simple Appalachian sounds of her homeland. Hints of the region’s acoustic roots have popped up throughout her Grammy-winning country career, best known to most folks for her signature song, 1988’s “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.”

With 2008’s Coal, Mattea leaned into the music of the West Virginia mountains like never before, singing about the complicated area export that is still a political hot potato in 2018. The acoustic evolution continued with 2012’s Calling Me Home, but Mattea faced an evolution of a different kind leading up to Pretty Bird.

A few years ago, Mattea suddenly discovered her voice was changing, and she couldn’t hit the notes she once found with ease. In this Q&A, Mattea explains how she worked through her vocal challenges with the eclectic group of songs she recorded for the new project.

In the past decade, you’ve stripped away a lot of the instrumentation from your music to explore more acoustic sounds. Over the past few years, you’ve also had to relearn how to use your singing voice. Did that experience of first stripping away layers from your music help prepare you to later rebuild your voice?

It felt like that, only much more extreme. I didn’t have a choice except to strip away. When I tried to do it the way I always knew how to do it, it wouldn’t work. So, I didn’t know when I began this process if what I was experiencing was the beginning of the end of my singing voice, or if it was just a shift, just a change. For instance, the transition in my chest voice to head voice, not to get too technical, had gone down a half-step after I went through menopause. So, my body has been singing the same songs in the same keys for many years and would just go for the way it knew to hit a certain note, and it wouldn’t happen. I went, “What is going on?”

Was there a physical problem with your voice or was it just part of the process of getting older?

Really, it was the latter. There was nothing wrong with my voice except that it felt wrong because it was unfamiliar. So, it wasn’t like an injury or anything like that. I got to hear Kenny Rogers during this time. He was on his final tour and he was like, “Look, I have no voice left, but I love these songs, and you guys love these songs. So, I’m coming out to sing them for you one more time.” He’s very open about it and I thought, “Yeah, I can’t do that. I’m not wired that way.” If I can’t sing in a way that I feel like I’m really expressing myself, I will have to stop. I knew this about myself. So, I thought, “OK, I’ve got to answer the question.”

Who was there with you as you went through the process of relearning your voice?

Once a week, Bill Cooley, who has played guitar for me for 28 years, would come to my house, and we’d just jam in the afternoon. We’ll just brainstorm, because sometimes, in that open-ended time, that’s when the creative process happens and surprises happen. I said, “Bill, I’ve got to get to know my voice. I’ve got to experiment around and bump up against the edges.” So, I started throwing out songs that were really different than anything I’d ever done. They were God-awful in the beginning, but it started to open up.

You’ve recorded with Tim O’Brien many times, and he’s also from West Virginia. What were you looking for from him as a producer on Pretty Bird?

I realized during this process that I needed to make another record. The songs I’d put together were all so crazy different from each other! I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do “Pretty Bird” and “October Song” and “Mercy Now” and “Chocolate on My Tongue” all on the same record and make it hang together. I’m just chewing on this and chewing on this. Then one night, I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning and said out loud in bed, “Tim O’Brien has to produce this record! He’ll know exactly what to do!” I’ve heard Tim do jazz-flavored stuff, blues-flavored stuff, bluegrass stuff, mountain stuff — all that. He does it all from a deep understanding.

I definitely see you being drawn to documenting the way of life in West Virginia as well as the music. What’s prompting you there?

When I was growing up, I was completely eaten up by music. But there wasn’t a lot of formal training around me. So, I would learn whatever I could from anyone who would teach me. My friend’s dad had a bluegrass band and he’d jam with me. I did community theater and I did folk music in my church. We had a little folk mass thing. Choral music in school, but there was nobody around to teach me the roots music of my place. So, that woke up in me in a big way later in my life. That last album, Calling Me Home, was about that sense of place that exists in Appalachia that has been lost in so much of the rest of the culture.

Most of my family lives back in the same basic area that we all grew up in and that our parents grew up in. Cousins, second cousins, third cousins now living just a few miles from where our moms were born. So, there is a sense that the contour of the land, the mountains, the river — all of that is like a member of your family. Bill, my guitar player, he’s from Southern California, and he was like, “Kathy, why don’t people move out and move away for jobs and stuff?” I’m like, “Bill, it’s not that simple.” You don’t leave your family. You don’t leave the nest, basically. And there’s a whole exodus of people to Detroit to work in factories and stuff when all the mines shut down. There’s a whole culture of displaced people that pine for what that is and come back home eventually.

I think of it as being an expatriate, you know? Even though I moved to Tennessee when I was 19, I think of myself as a West Virginian who lives in Tennessee.

Getting into the songs you chose, let’s start out with Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now.” Why does it appeal to you right now?

As we had this election, and it was very contentious, and there was all this tension and polarization and all the cultural stuff was going on, I just found myself listening to that song. I pulled it out and I would listen to it every day. So, one day I said, “Bill, I’ve been listening to this song, and it really gives me a lot of solace. It’s really different than anything I’ve ever done but I want to try.” I wanted to sing that song because in a time when people are polarizing, it’s really great to say, “I have pain. I have angst. I am scared. I am upset, and I need help from some place bigger than me.”

I love it because it’s not a “You, you, you” song. It’s an “I’m looking at this, and I don’t know what to do, and I need some help from something bigger than me.” Mercy doesn’t come from me. It’s a kind of grace that comes in from somewhere else. And I thought, “Man, how lucky am I? I get to sing that song every night.” The interesting thing is my audience doesn’t know that song. So, I get to bring that song to a whole new group of people. That’s been a really satisfying experience.

I hear a similar theme in “I Can’t Stand Up Alone.” It has a real gospel flavor with The Settles Singers backing you up. It seems to me that it would speak to the community that you’ve been leaning on during your issues with your voice.

To me, “I Can’t Stand Up Alone” is like the straight-at-it gospel version of “Mercy Now.” “Can’t Stand Up Alone” is like, “Honey, you need the Lord!” [Laughs] I love the contrast of two different approaches to basically the same thing. I’m not very overt about it, but a lot of the process of this was really praying. I felt like I was praying a prayer and feeling my way in the dark over and over again.

You start the album with “Chocolate on My Tongue,” which is an ode to the small joys in life, and then you go right into “Ode to Billie Joe.” It’s such a left turn. Tell me about that juxtaposition.

Hey, I’m not pretending that all that stuff makes sense! [Laughs] I love “Chocolate on My Tongue.” It’s so playful and, for me, to have gone through such a struggle with my voice and to come out with something that light and playful — and to allow myself the freedom to do that, was such a gift.

Then, “Ode to Billie Joe,” to me, is like a familiar, old friend. Those of us of a certain age know that and have memories of that song growing up. I found that when I went to sing it, that there’s this low end — this low register in my voice that was always there, but never this rich. When I found that, it was the moment I turned the corner from thinking of my voice as something diminished to seeing that it was opening into something new that was beautiful. I was astonished by how that song brought that about in my voice.

The last song on the record is “Pretty Bird” by Hazel Dickens. You’re singing it a capella. That had to be a vulnerable experience given all that you’ve gone through.

I have loved “Pretty Bird” for a long time and I wanted to do it on my last album. I lived with it. I wrestled with it. I danced with it. It’d pin me down, and then I’d pin it down. I could not find my way into the song. I could not sing it. I could not make it come out. I think the reason is that if you tighten up at all, it will just die in your mouth. It won’t work. I couldn’t pull back enough.

One night, [my husband] Jon is on the road and I’m home alone. I’m taking a shower before I go to bed that night and I just start singing that song. I’m like, “Oh my God! I don’t know! I think I’m singing it! I think this is happening!” But I’m soaped up now and I’m soaking wet. So, I keep singing, and I rinse off and dry off. The whole house is buttoned up for the night and my cell phone is plugged in downstairs. So, I grabbed the landline and I called my voicemail and I sang it into the voicemail so I have a record of what I did — so I’d know which key I was in and where it lay and explore from there. The next thing, I was like, “OK, I’ve got it.”

I haven’t done it live very much. So, it is still super vulnerable. I’ve been making myself pull it out and do it in the show because it’s the title song for my record. It feels like taking all my clothes off. But it’s like, “Well, you’ve been through a process, and what you’ve learned, Kathy, is that it’s not about perfection. It’s about being real.” This is as blatant a demonstration of that as I can give people. You just have to trust that they’ll get it.


Photo by Reto Sterchi

STREAM: Frank Newsome, ‘Gone Away with a Friend’

Artist: Frank Newsome
Hometown: Haysi, Virginia
Album: Gone Away with a Friend
Label: Free Dirt Records
Release Date: June 29, 2018

In Their Words: “Frank’s voice has to be heard to be believed. His a capella gospel singing will stir the soul of the believer and nonbeliever alike. I’ve seen it happen and felt it myself the first time I heard him and every time since. I don’t know of any voice that exists like his.” – Jim Lauderdale, producer

“We at Free Dirt have been fans of Frank Newsome’s singing for some time. Frank’s deep Appalachian roots and utterly captivating voice hooked us all from the first listen. When Jon Lohman from Virginia Humanities got in touch some time ago to talk about how to spread Frank and his story out to more people, we knew we wanted to be involved. We’ve prided ourselves on releasing the best—both young and old—of roots music and beyond for over 10 years now, and we’re thrilled to finally get a chance to help Frank’s voice get heard by a wider audience.” – John Smith, Free Dirt Records


Photo credit: Morgan Miller