This is the first in a new season of our Main Street NC series. In the coming months, we’ll be visiting communities across the state to hear from local leaders about the positives going on in their towns, and the challenges they face, from storm recovery to gentrification to job development. 

Nationally touring bands play regularly at the R.A. Fountain General Store in Fountain, a Pitt County town of just 400 people. Now the general store is no longer the only place to find music in this sleepy two-block historic downtown. A couple doors down from the concert venue, guitar maker Freeman Vines has set up his workshop in an old drug store. And the Music Maker Relief Foundation bought two more storefronts next to the Vines workshop to open a recording studio and photography studio to bring in musicians from across the South. Can music and arts be a revitalizing force in rural communities? WUNC visited Fountain and spoke with R.A. Fountain's Alex Albright and Music Maker's Tim Duffy about their efforts.