This week, Grammy Award winning oldtime singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Smithsonian Folkways recording artist Dom Flemons with renowned cowboy poet, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and archivist Andy Hedges recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View, Arkansas. Also, interviews with Dom & Andy.

“GRAMMY Award Winner, Two-Time EMMY Nominee, 2020 United States Artists Fellow- Dom Flemons is originally from Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife Vania Kinard and their daughter Cheyanne Love. He has branded the moniker ‘The American Songster’ since his repertoire of music covers over 100 years of early American popular music. Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor, music scholar, historian, and record collector. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones. Flemons was selected for the prestigious 2020 United States Artists Fellowship Award for the Traditional Arts category which was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He currently serves as a Governor on the Board of Directors for the Washington, D.C Chapter of the Recording Academy. In 2018, Flemons released a solo album titled ‘Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys’ on GRAMMY Award-winning record label Smithsonian Folkways and received a GRAMMY Nomination for ‘Best Folk Album’ at the 61st GRAMMY Awards. This recording is part of the African American Legacy Recordings series, co-produced with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.” - https://theamericansongster.com/about/

“Andy Hedges is a songster, reciter, storyteller, guitarist, and collector of cowboy songs and poems. The son of an Italian schoolteacher and a rodeo cowboy turned preacher, Andy was born in Lubbock, Texas, in the spring of 1980. He grew up in the small community of Tokio, Texas, where his family paid rent on an old farmhouse by looking after a few head of cattle. It was there that Andy fell in love with traditional music by listening to his father’s cassettes of cowboy songs.

“Andy’s vast and varied repertoire includes classic cowboy poetry recitations, obscure cowboy songs, dust bowl ballads, and blues. He also hosts a podcast, Cowboy Crossroads which features in-depth interviews with fellow musicians and poets. Andy has performed many times with folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the duo’s performance at the 60th Newport Folk Festival was named one of the ’10 Best Things We Saw’ by Rolling Stone.” - https://andyhedges.com/about

Together Dom and Andy explore the songs of the old west and often overlooked music of African American Cowboys in this rare and special performance.

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1975 archival recording of Ozark original fiddler Charley Richardson performing the tune “Gold Rush,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

Author, folklorist and songwriter Charley Sandage presents an historical portrait of the people, events and indomitable spirit of Ozark culture that resulted in the creation of the Ozark Folk Center State Park and its enduring legacy of music and craft. In this episode, Charley profiles our very own Ozark original cowboy poet Glenn Ohrlin with an archival recording of Glenn reciting the classic Wallace McRae poem “Reincarnation.”