Returning to Western North Carolina, singer and songwriter Sarah Siskind found herself inspired in ways she never expected. “What started as a move to live a simpler life and raise my family among the mountains," she said, "soon became a full-blown discovery of self beyond being a musician, but a woman, a mother, and a human.”
After years in Nashville, where she performed her own music and wrote songs for luminaries like Alison Krauss, Randy Travis, and the indie band Bon Iver, she saw her homeland with fresh eyes. That new perspective was channeled into Siskind's latest album, Modern Appalachia (iTunes|Amazon).
She hopes its unique title serves as a question as much as a name. "What does Appalachia mean in current times?," her bio asks. Is "Appalachia" just a word or a living, ever-evolving way of life?
With "In the Mountains," the below tune, Siskind cuts through preconceptions about the region with sharp riffs from her electric guitar. At the same time, her soaring vocals tie us to our old time roots.
"When writing this song," she recently told Broadway World, "I let go of all thought process and just channeled what I felt being back in an environment where mountains, water, and nature-based quality of life are paramount. This song has become an anthem for me, for my return to the [mountains], my faith, and my need to discover who I am as a complete human."
At 16 years old Maybelle Addington, soon to be Carter, quit school and went to work. She joined a steady flow of girls who left the rural communities of their upbringing and went to the city in the 1920s. In her case, it was Bristol, where she started work at a hosiery mill, one among many factories opening in the foothills of Virginia and Tennessee. Mill girls, as they were called, bridged the agricultural past and the industrial present as they sought out wage work and made new technologies run. But they also carried an independent streak. Across Appalachia, mill girls soon caused trouble for many of their employers, as they demanded workplace rights and thumbed a nose at controlling bosses. But Maybelle wouldn't last that long in the mill. As she told journalist Bill Williams in 1968, she worked three or four days before quitting. "That done me in." In a few years' time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.
Born in 1909 in Scott County, Virginia, in a valley along Copper Creek at the base of Clinch Mountain, Maybelle grew up in a working family. Her mother Elizabeth, the household musician, raised 10 children. Her father Hugh Jack Addington at times worked as a carpenter, a farmer and proprietor of a general store. The children picked up music early and often entertained guests. Maybelle learned how to play her mother's autoharp when she was a young child. Elizabeth soon taught her how to pick the banjo. By the time she was 12, Maybelle was winning regional pickin' contests. Her brothers gave her a guitar, and before long that was her instrument of choice. Maybelle learned ballads, such as "Wildwood Flower," from her mother, who, she explained, "learned them from her mother before her, who had, in turn, learned them from her parents."
Dori Freeman was a newly single momma living in a small town when her first album dropped in 2016. "There was a bitter taste in her songwriting," said her publicist Devon Ledger, "that reflected the fiercely independent streak Appalachian women are known for and her own lack of patience for bullshit."
That bitterness resonated with a lot of folks, drawing attention from the back hollers of Appalachia to the bullpens of NPR and Rolling Stone magazine.
While Dori is now getting national acclaim, she still draws inspiration from her Galax, Virginia roots. A defunct roller rink near her childhood home sparked the below song.
“I imagined this character who’d been put on the back burner in her relationship and was just sort of wandering around in a dreamlike state trying to get her lover’s attention," Dori recently told Rolling Stone.
Her latest album, Every Single Star (iTunes|Amazon), includes wistful numbers like this one while also striving towards hope.
"Like I Do," a love song from a young mother to her child stands out. "Nobody's gonna love you like I do / 'Til I had a little baby, I never knew / That I could love someone like I love you."
Dori sings with a new joy that perhaps reflects changes in her own life. Since her first release three years ago, she's fallen for her drummer Nick Falk and gotten married. Today, she has a partner in music and in life, as the couple raise her daughter together.
If you ever doubt Appalachia's influence, just look at Che Apalache. Based in Buenos Aires, this four-man string band calls themselves Latingrass—a fusion of bluegrass and Latin American musical styles. With tight vocals and a distinct sound, their work reflects mountain cultures from Appalachia to the Andes.
In August, they'll release a new album. Produced by legendary banjoist and multiple GRAMMY-winning artist Béla Fleck, "Rearrange My Heart" will be a testament to musical and cultural exchange. You can actually pre-order it today via the band's IndieGogo campaign.
They're also touring the U.S. this year—from Galax to Anchorage—so if you like this tune, check out Che Apalache's calendar. And let us know if you see them in person!
Musical legends Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard are revered as pioneering women in bluegrass. Their partnership directly inspired Naomi Judd, Emmylou Harris, Tim O’Brien, and even Bob Dylan. But in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, they were just two women with prodigious musical talent and a shared love for the old songs of the Appalachian countryside.
The joy Hazel and Alice found playing together is captured on newly unearthed recordings—Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, 1965-1969 (iTunes|Amazon), out September 21, 2018 on Free Dirt Records. Across 19 tracks, the duo sings the classic country of The Carter Family, The Louvin Brothers, and Jimmie Rodgers and even contemporary hits from the period penned by Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard.
Among them is this unique rendition of a gospel classic, sung in a way I've never quite heard.
Alice shared the below reflection on this formative period—when she was a single mother of four and Hazel was still working retail. It's so lovely, I've shared it below in its entirety.
Also, if you're near the Washington D.C. metro, you can hear more from Alice and see her perform during the album's release show on September 22 at 7:30 P.M. The event will be at my former church—All Souls Unitarian Church, 1500 Harvard Street N.W.!
"Recently, in the process of trying to clear up and get rid of some of my 'stuff,' donating it to the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC, I ran across, in the depths of a closet, a box of 7” reel to reel acetate tapes, some labeled and dated, some not. Among them were several practice tapes of Hazel and myself from roughly around 1966 when we were trying out new material. I’ve moved a lot since 1966 and I carried these boxes with me. Probably for a while I consciously knew I had them, and then at some point they became just a couple more boxes to move without paying attention to the contents. They did not live in temperature controlled climates, they had to endure the heat and cold, and probably the best that can be said is that I didn’t play them so the acetate remained fairly intact. Until I ran across them a few months ago and decided to give a listen. Memories came flooding back, it was so many years ago, so much water under the bridge…I was surprised at how good we sounded even back then. It was a time of experimentation and creativity for us."
"These songs were recorded in my living room, probably with the old Tandberg that I still have. Lots of throat clearing, kids running in and out, page turning, mistakes, some out-of-tuneness, both vocal and instrumental (we never used tuners back then), we stopped, we began again—we were practicing amid some chaos most of the time. At that point I was a single mom with 4 children, and Hazel was working a full time job in a retail shop."
"These recordings are not pretending to be studio quality and were certainly not meant to be distributed to the general public. I wasn’t even thinking then in terms of documentation. The recordings were meant for Hazel and me to listen back to, to see how we were doing. But with encouragement from a number of friends including Hazel’s nephew Arnold Lee Dickens, Laurie Lewis, Cathy Fink and Joe Dejarnette in particular, I decided there might be some interest in the music and these particular few moments in time. So take off your stereo hi-fi, pitch corrected, no-background-noise-or-distortion listening ears and give a listen. It’s Hazel & Alice unplugged, un-produced, unaccompanied (except by ourselves), warts and all, wailing our hearts out."
New classic country—that's what you might call this tune. From Vivian Leva's forthcoming album of the same name (iTunes), "Time is Everything" was recorded in the mountain town of Floyd, Virginia, but it harkens to Nashville's golden age, when artists like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton were giving popular country an Appalachian spin.
Though Vivian categorizes her music as Americana, this Lexington, Virginia native acknowledges that her mountain heritage has influenced her. "The biggest role it’s played has been through the community," she recently told Vents Magazine, "I met every person who played on the album over the years at Clifftop, an annual Appalachian music festival in West Virginia."
It's impossible not to compare Vivian to female musicians from our region, but this tune also reminds me of one from Bobby Goldsboro, a male crossover artist who was raised in southern Alabama. Though his 1968 hit "Honey" had the kind of full orchestration that was popular back then, its lyrics and cadence share a defeated quality and mournfulness with "Time is Everything."
Or, then again, maybe I've just been drinking too much moonshine. Both songs are below. Do you hear a resemblance? And what do you think of Vivian's new song?
Time to flex those vocabulary muscles: Is a "luthier" A) one of Lex Luther's henchmen, B) someone who makes string instruments, or C) a Lutheran using a silly nickname?
If you said B, you're right! And you should probably get yourself to The Birthplace of Country Music Museum for their special exhibit—"The Luthier's Craft: Instrument Making Traditions of the Blue Ridge."
Running through March 4, 2018, this interactive exhibit gives you a chance to touch, play, and learn about string instruments. Some of the greats are featured—like Wayne Henderson who made his first guitar from a dresser drawer and has since sold to Eric Clapton, Doc Watson, and Brad Paisley. Fiddle makers Audrey Hash Ham and Chris Testerman are front and center too along with banjo maker Johnny Gentry and dulcimer maker Ernest Combs.
“'The Luthier’s Craft' offers an inside look at the work of master craftspeople," says Jessica Turner, the museum's director, "carrying on the instrument-making heritage while also bringing innovation to design and decoration and creating functional works of art.”
Can't make it to Southwest Virginia? Don't worry. Here's a great tour of Wayne Henderson's workshop you can watch from anywhere. In it, he talks about some of the famous people he's met and shows off a guitar made, in part, from cow bones!
Dori Freeman's new album, Letters Never Read (iTunes/Amazon), is full of delights. With transcendent melodies and gentle ballads, it's inspiring rave reviews from big publications like Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Spin, which called it "subtly inventive."
That sounds about right. Her opening songs verge on pop country but retain just enough old time flavor for this Galax, Virginia native to roam between genres. The understated "Cold Waves" pulls from singer-songwriter traditions to reveal the melancholiness of motherhood. "Over There" is pure old time gospel. Dating to at least the 1930s, it lends irresistible lyrics:
Well, I met ol’ Satan through the door
I hit him on the head with a two-by-four
I’m gonna wear that starry crown over there!
"Appalachicana" is how Pierce Edens describes his music, mashing up our region's name with Americana, a broad genre that conjures images of dirt caked boots and whiskey. It's a fitting moniker. On his latest album, Stripped Down, Gussied Up (Amazon/iTunes), Edens' roots are apparent. His drawl is distinct—not that generically Southern affectation we hear from some vocalists–but instead an honest to God product of Western North Carolina, where he was raised and where he recorded his newest tracks.
But an Appalachian inflection is just Edens' starting point. As a kid, he was also a fan of that seminal 90s music—grunge. Listening to his growling snarl while immersing yourself in the album's borderline gothic mood, you might think Pearl Jam and Ralph Stanley had a love child. The sound isn't simply gritty. It's downright aggressive, and it pushes mountain music in a new direction, one that's bound to spark opinions.
What do you think of this doleful number? Please leave a comment below.
Last week, I did a short reading during the launch of The Collected Writings of Joe Wilson. (An advocate for traditional arts, Joe put mountain music on the map and also had one of the sharpest wits in the region.)
Lots of folks celebrated Joe's life that night, some with prose, others with songs. Among them was a woman introduced as Joe's favorite vocalist, Linda Lay. She sang some downright honorific tunes but apologized the whole time, saying she was fighting a respiratory problem. When I shared a clip from the event over on Facebook and Twitter, she left this comment, "Oh how I wish I had not been sick. My voice was barely above a whisper."
Now, Linda's whisper is some twenty-thousand times better than my best singing, but I was still curious to hear what her pipes could really do. This would be a good time to sit on something sturdy or maybe lean against a wall. In the below clip, Linda's voice is running so hot and hard it might just blow you over.
This number was shot at the The George Washington Hotel in Winchester, Virginia, where Linda, her husband David, and the rest of their band, Springfield Exit, frequently perform. Have you ever caught them there? What do you think of "That Was Then and This is Now"?
As if she hasn't given us enough over the years, Loretta Lynn is inviting us into her home at Christmas. In this wonderful new video, she shares home movie footage from her family's holiday celebrations, and it's all set to the tune of her classic tune "Country Christmas."
Judging by clothes; decor; and some big, big hair, these clips date as far back as the 1980s. They're married with new footage, which, according to Rolling Stone, was shot "at the rustic Cash Cabin recording studio north of Nashville" where John Carter Cash, who produced Loretta's latest album accompanied her on guitar.
Del McCoury Band and The Fairfield Four deliver a perfect tune to get you and your goblins in the Halloween mood. Recorded for the All Star Bluegrass Celebration II, this one's become a contemporary classic.
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