Inside Appalachia

This week’s episode is all about ballad singers and storytellers. If you’ve listened to Inside Appalachia over the past year, there’s a good chance you’ve heard music by Anna & Elizabeth. This week on Inside Appalachia, co-host Mason Adams sits down with Elizabeth LaPrelle, who grew up in Rural Retreat, Virginia. She and her husband Brian Dolphin moved from Brooklyn back to southwestern Virginia just before the pandemic hit. As longtime performers and new parents they took to Facebook Live, posting weekly livestreams of lullabies and stories. We’ll also hear about a song called “Tom Dooley,” which was first released shortly after the Civil War. It resurfaced 60 years ago, when it topped the Billboard charts. It had everything: A love triangle, a grisly murder, a manhunt, and a hanging. Folkways reporter Heather Duncan is a native of Wilkes County, North Carolina, where the song unfolds. Recently she set out to explore why ballads like Tom Dooley, based on real tragedies and real people, have such staying power. And we’ll hear from a contemporary ballad singer Saro Lynch Thomason, who uses the tradition of ballad singing in protests and marches.

This week on Inside Appalachia, we listen to an encore episode about places in Appalachia that are drawing visitors and newcomers, sometimes at a cost. The region needs new residents to drive economic prosperity, but an influx of buyers can also squeeze out lower income people and put stress on community infrastructure.

West Virginia’s New River Gorge was recently designated as a National Park. That change will likely attract even more visitors — but it will also cut hunting rights in part of the park.

Even with these changes, there remain stalwarts across Appalachia, places that hang on even as the world around them transforms, including a restaurant in downtown Roanoke that has remained open more than 90 years.

We also remember Russell Yann, the longtime owner of Yann’s Hotdogs in Fairmont, who passed away earlier this year. “If there was a fire in the community, usually when the firefighters got back to the station, there would be hotdogs and drinks for them,” said Marion County Sheriff Jimmy Riffle, who worked for Yann for over 20 years. “If you’d gone in there more than once or twice. He would remember your order. Customers would just come in, sit down and we knew what they wanted.”

These stories remind us how the things that we’re passionate about can touch others, build community and create memories that outlast individual lives.

The story of Appalachia can’t be summarized in one book, one article or one movie. Our region goes beyond just ill-considered stereotypes.

This week on Inside Appalachia, we’ll learn about people who are digging beneath the surface, telling authentic stories about life in Appalachia. From a woman who’s helping write a new TV show about the opioid crisis, to a community theater company in Harlan County, Kentucky that produced a play called “Shift Change.” It confronts racism, and neighbors who stand on opposite sides of politics. In this episode we’ll hear from writers, playwrights, filmmakers and storytellers who confront the complexities of life here in Appalachia. They share why we should be proud of these complexities, and be willing to learn something new about Appalachia — even those of us who live here.

The natural world can be a source of food and medicine along with a place to escape and unwind. There are people who know plants like they’re old friends, complete with stories and histories. These experts can also help guide us to recognize how plants can even help us in times of need.

In the latest episode of Inside Appalachia, we’ll meet a man who makes wooden turkey calls. However, these aren’t ordinary turkey calls — they’re hand-crafted and feature intricate paintings.

“Truthfully, I never called myself an artist, ever,” said Brian Aliff. But now, through a twist of fate, his turkey calls have become collectors’ items.

Also on this week’s show, if you’ve spent any time floating on rivers, have you ever come across someone using a handmade wooden paddle? Some paddlers, like Christine Vogler, swear by them. 

“For some reason it feels like you're more part of the water,” said Vogler. “Working with the water moving with it. It… feels more spiritual somehow.”

We’ll also travel to some of the most beautiful spots in Appalachia to find wildflowers — Dolly Sods and the Canaan Valley of West Virginia. But are these places becoming too popular?

We’ll hear those stories and more in this week’s episode of Inside Appalachia. 

When people talk about Appalachian music, banjos and fiddles are often the first things to come to mind. But what about hip-hop? Hip-hop lives all over, including in small towns and hollers across Appalachia. In this episode of Inside Appalachia, we’ll meet hip hop artists in southwest Virginia. Folks like Geonoah Davis, aka geonovah, who discovered rapping by way of poetry. “I always wanted to sing, but I was also a really shy kid,” David said. “Then poetry became an outlet for me to get my feelings out.”

And we’ll hear why herbal remedies are experiencing a renaissance. But those remedies have been a tradition in Appalachia for centuries. “Appalachia used to be the pharmacy of the United States,” said Crystal Wilson, who grows herbs on her farm in East Tennessee. “That’s always been part of who we are here. We just forgot it.”

We’ll also learn how Blenko Glass, a historic West Virginia artisan business, based in Milton, West Virginia, managed to stay open during the pandemic by retooling a mythical monster into art.

Those stories and more in this week’s episode.

The pandemic continues to inspire more people to go outside. One result? They’ve found more baby animals. This week on Inside Appalachia, we’ll hear how everyday folks have helped rescue a record number of baby owls.

And we’ll meet a woman who moved from L.A. to rural West Virginia. “It’s very wild here. It’s like the Wild West except we’re east of the Mississippi,” said Margaret Bruning, who’s now learning to raise and shear sheep.

June is Pride month. We’ll listen back to a fabulous story from 2019 as With Good Reason producer Cass Adair takes us on an audio tour through the history of Roanoke’s Queer scene with those who lived it.

Over Memorial Day weekend, airports across the country reported the highest numbers of people flying in more than a year. As more of us are dreaming once again of flight, we thought this would be a good time to listen back to an episode of Inside Appalachia that originally aired last summer. We’ll hear stories about flight: legendary aviators, fighter pilots, and a plane ride that didn’t quite go as planned.

Our Inside Appalachia team recently won several awards for our reporting. This week, we’re listening back to some of these stories, including one about the John Denver classic, “Take Me Home Country Roads,” which was first recorded 50 years ago in 1971.

“There was this overall mood of homesickness, not just for West Virginia but for our country. The song was born into that,” said Sarah Morris, an English professor at West Virginia University who is writing a book about “Country Roads.”

And we’ll learn how indie pro-wrestling in Southern West Virginia was able to keep going through the pandemic — with drive-in shows. We’ll also hear about two Welsh storytellers and their fascination with Appalachia. We’ll listen back to those stories, and more, in our special awards episode of Inside Appalachia.

This week we're revisiting an episode of Inside Appalachia that features children's authors in and from our region. We'll hear Cynthia Rylant, who wrote "When I Was Young In The Mountains," David Perri, author of "Messy Larry," and Bil Lepp reading from his recent children's book "The Princess And The Pickup Truck," and Lyn Ford, a professional storyteller and children's educator, telling a story she wrote called "The Old Woman and Death." And while these stories were written for children, like many children's stories, these stories have messages for all of us, including grown-ups.