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

Originally from Connecticut, Derek moved to Elk Park, NC in the spring of 2022 to continue exploring the singing traditions of the Bare family and the communities throughout Western North Carolina. With his work collecting and sharing these recordings, Derek is helping to shine a light on the stories and songs of a noteworthy community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina

Billy Edd Wheeler came to North Carolina from the coal camp of Highcoal in West Virginia.  As a boy, he began playing guitar and penned his first song “Paper Boy Blues,” about delivering newspapers at 5:30am, at the age of eleven. His archtop Kay guitar was purchased for fourteen dollars out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. He learned three chords from a coal miner and as they say, the rest is history. 

The Asheville music scene is known for its depth of talent, wealth of offerings, and sense of exploration. You might think this music scene has sprung up over the last 20 years during the city’s own renaissance, but Alli Marshall of the Asheville History Walking Tour is here to disabuse you of that notion. The tour winds for a mile and half through downtown Asheville and the musical history covers a wide range of sounds and styles, and as part of the experience.

The Happy Valley community lies between Lenoir and Blowing Rock along the Yadkin River. This fertile valley is so scenic and peaceful that early settlers gave it the name “Happy Valley.” The valley was home to General William Lenoir, for whom the Caldwell County seat of Lenoir was named. His home, Fort Defiance, is on the National Register of Historic Places, open regularly to visitors, and also hosts several public events a year.

You can hardly hear a set of bluegrass music without hearing a train song. Some are poetic like the Wabash Cannonball. “Listen to the jingle the rumble and the roar, as she glides along the woodland, through the hills and by the shore.”  Some tell tragic tells of trains running out of control.

Bobby McMillon passed away on November 28, 2021. His passing leaves a great void in the traditional music and Appalachian cultural landscape. Throughout the course of his life, Bobby took this awareness he gained from his grandfather’s passing and turned it into a legacy of collecting, performing, and friendships.

David Holt grew up in Garland, Texas.  He says “I grew up in a family of informal storytellers, and there was plenty to tell about our wild and wooly Texas forefathers. Storytelling was just a natural part of family life for me. I never thought about telling stories in public until I began to collect mountain music and came across interesting and unusual anecdotes from mountain folks. I began to use these stories in concerts and realized the power storytelling holds.

Of all the fiddlers in the fiddler-rich region of Western North Carolina, Arvil Freeman was a veritable North Star of Western North Carolina fiddling and traditional music as a whole. Arvil is likely the most heard “in-person” fiddler  and likely the most influential. On October 21, 2021, Western North Carolina lost fiddling legend Arvil Freeman.

Across Western North Carolina, people looking to learn to play an instrument or musicians looking to step up their game can enjoy many opportunities to learn in immersive settings. Many camps offer week-long packages of music instruction, food, and lodging. The whole package provides a chance for the musician to spend a week completely focused on the music. How great is that?

The English folksong “The Cuckoo,” often sung as a round or canon, celebrated the arrival of summer recalling the sights and sounds of English barnyards and meadows. Some scholars consider the song a parody and possibly too coarse for polite society. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264. The song evolved into a more poetic form and became part of the English folksong lexicon. Give a listen to this transitional version where “she never sings cuckoo ’til summer is near.” Now that’s old-time music!