Down the Road on the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina

Inspired by his love of traditional Southern music, Wayne Erbsen moved to the mountain South in the early 1970's to learn from the masters of old-time and bluegrass. In the more than forty years since, he has become a leading teacher of traditional music himself, while carrying on a busy career as a performer, radio host, and documenting the history of Appalachian music. A conversation with Wayne...

The historical production portrays the arrival of Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto in 1540, the participation of the Cherokee in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and the removal of the Cherokee from their ancestral lands on the Trail of Tears in 1838. Unto These Hills honors some of the most revered Cherokee heroes, including Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee alphabet, Junaluska, the wise leader, and...

Susan Pepper first came to Western North Carolina in 2003 to attend the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College. She moved to Asheville in 2004 and in 2005 moved to Boone to pursue a master's degree in Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University. There she found a community of musicians that helped her connect to the music and traditions in the Boone area, particularly one of her main...

Richard Beard, a luthier on the Blue Ridge Craft Trails, is never away from music for very long. When he’s not building instruments in his Rutherfordton shop, he’s often playing music. And when he’s not playing or building, he can be heard hosting the radio show “Celtic Winds” on WNCW FM. Richard Beard’s family has been in Western North Carolina since the 1700s. His early years were spent in South...

The Traditional Artist Directory, located on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area website, blueridgeheritage.com serves as a vehicle to promote artists found along the Blue Ridge Music Trails of NC. This week we want to introduce you to Michael Reno Harrell. Just seeing Michael Reno Harrell would be hard to forget. His trademark long, white hair and glasses cut a striking figure. But for those ab...

The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area serves as the steward of the living traditions of our region, protecting and promoting the outdoor landscapes, heritage agriculture, Cherokee culture, craft and music in Western North Carolina. The Traditional Artist Directory, located on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area website, blueridgeheritage.com serves as a vehicle to promote artists found along the...

The NC Musician Murals Project began as a casual arrangement between artist Scott Nurkin and the owner of Pepper’s Pizza in Chapel Hill. Nurkin would create portraits of renowned NC musicians to cover a blank wall in the restaurant in exchange for “free pizza for life”. Today, Nurkin’s murals on nine buildings from the mountains to the Piedmont celebrate the transcendent, influential, and groundbr...

The roots of the banjo go back to West Africa. Early versions of the instrument came to the Americas with enslaved people. In the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina, the banjo took a strong hold, and along with the fiddle, formed the foundation of our traditional music. Today, the banjo is as present as ever across Western North Carolina. Not only is the banjo played here, but it’s al...

The Farmers Federation Cooperative, an organization focused on sharing progressive farming methods and creating a thriving agricultural market in WNC included music as essential to the endeavor. Farmers Federation annual picnic gatherings held in many counties throughout Western North Carolina featured Appalachian music as a chief draw for attendees. The picnics featured a diverse range of music t...

Fiddle music is a richly layered tapestry that runs through the core of Western North Carolina. The passing down of the traditions (or styles), and instruments is ever present. In 2020 North Carolina native and traditional musician, Jason Cade recorded his “Byard Ray Dozen Series.” A collection in tribute to the legendary Byard Ray of Madison County. The core of the story is the multigenerational...

Cultures around the world face the problem of losing their traditions when younger people don’t take interest in their heritage. But among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, an exceptionally dedicated generation of young tradition bearers, men and women in their twenties and thirties, are both learning and teaching the culture of their ancestors. One of the most prominent members of this genera...

For more than a hundred years, folklorists and other scholars have been visiting the community of Beech Mountain, North Carolina. Perhaps the most prolific collector of the community’s music and stories was himself a native of Old Beech. In the 1960s, Jack Guy began selling mountain handcrafts and folk toys to tourists, helping local artists make a living through their heritage crafts. He operated...

It’s not unusual for traditional musicians to influence artists in other styles, and that kind of cross-pollination was especially common in the 1960s and ’70s, as pop and rock musicians mined the depths of old-time, blues, and other folk styles. But few traditional musicians of that era had quite such a long, strange trip into the world of pop culture as North Carolina’s Byard Ray and Obray Ramse...

The Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina and southwestern Virginia have produced legendary bluegrass and old-time guitarists. Presley Barker is the newest member of the lineage of virtuosic flatpickers inspired by Doc Watson. Presley first started to learn the guitar in 2012, when he was only seven years old. It didn’t take long for the traditional music community in his native Nort...

While Earl Scruggs is often credited as the originator of bluegrass banjo, he was actually an innovator within a broader tradition of three-finger banjo playing. Predating bluegrass, it was made famous by banjo players from the hills and mountains of the Carolinas, all of whom had their own personal takes on the style. In addition to Scruggs, these pioneers included Wade Mainer, Smith Hammett, Snu...

In Jackson County, North Carolina, the Queen family has long played, sung, and shared the music of their native home. The matriarch of the Queen family was Mary Jane Queen. Her father, James Sylvester Prince, born in 1876, was known as a great banjo player. Mary Jane also absorbed many old songs from her singing grandmothers, and one of her brothers was said to be the first person in the Caney For...

It all began when David Holt was a college student at UC Santa Barbara. At a campus concert, he heard Ralph Stanley play the clawhammer banjo, the driving style Ralph’s mother played. After the show, David approached Ralph and asked him, “where can I learn to play the banjo like that?” Ralph told him, “You’ll have to go back to the Southern Mountains where I grew up. Go to Virginia go to North Car...

Fiddler Lillian Chase is young–she was born in 2003–but she is the steward of a centuries-old musical tradition of her native Blue Ridge Mountains. Raised in a family that has been living in the mountains for six generations, Lillian had an early ear for Appalachian music. At the age of four she decided that she wanted to play the fiddle, and two years later, began to learn the instrument. Now an...

Back in 1969, while still a college student, Joe Sam Queen, grandson of legendary dancer Sam Love Queen, was asked by the town of Waynesville to call a square dance on the streets of downtown. The square dance became the Smoky Mountain Folk Festival and this Labor Day weekend, in 2019, it celebrates 50 years.

It’s not unusual for a mountain musician to be a part of several different musical traditions. A Blue Ridge fiddler might play in a mountain swing session on Friday night, sit in with an old-time band playing for a square dance on Saturday night, and sing in the church choir on Sunday morning. In this respect, Carley Arrowood is in good company. But Carley stands out in her youth: few artists as y...

Recent years have seen a blossoming of interest in mountain music among musicians who were born in the 1990s and 2000s. Among the youngest of this cohort, North Carolina fiddler Rhiannon Ramsey epitomizes a blend of great musical chops and continuation of mountain traditions. Her native Madison County is famously musical, a place that the early ballad collector Cecil Sharp referred to as “a nest o...

The husband-and-wife duo of Natalya Zoe Weinstein and John Cloyd Miller perform under their middle names. Zoe and Cloyd represents not only the partnership between Natalya and John, but a coming-together of two families’ musical traditions. Natalya is the daughter of a jazz pianist, and the granddaughter of a Russian klezmer musician. She herself plays klezmer and classical as well as mountain mus...

Bluegrass banjo player Raymond Fairchild of Haywood County, North Carolina, embodies the spirit of originality found in many of the best mountain musicians. He has always done things his own way. His “Fairchild” style has gained countless admirers over the course of a long music career. Raymond has played many times at the Grand Ole Opry, and recorded more than 20 albums—two of which have sold mor...

In 1941, the famed folklorist and field recorder Alan Lomax, along with two colleagues, recorded a banjo player from the Blue Ridge Mountains named Bascom Lamar Lunsford. One of the songs he recorded in 1941, “Swannanoa Tunnel,” tells a very local story about a universal theme – the human cost of progress.

The music of the Southern Appalachians is a melting pot of diverse styles and people. Settlers from the British Isles and Germany came here in the 18th century with their string music and balladry, shaping the sounds.