CROOKED ROAD REVUE
Virginia, North Carolina
Old-Time
Winding for over 200 miles across the mountains, ridges and valleys of southwestern Virginia from the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge to the coalfields, US Highway 58, known as the Crooked Road, passes through some of the most musical places on earth. For generations, the tiny rural Appalachian communities scattered along its length have produced an abundance of extraordinary traditional musicians. Keepers of an historic musical legacy with roots in the meeting of the African banjo and the European violin during colonial times, they have created and passed along old-time, bluegrass and mountain gospel sounds that have profoundly influenced the development of American music.
Some of the artists from the small communities along the Crooked Road are legendary: the Carter Family, Ralph and Carter Stanley, the Bogtrotters and Dock Boggs. A black string band that dazzled Chicago for a generation, Martin, Bogan and Armstrong (who was a long-time resident of Detroit, played at the Great Lakes Folk Festival and was a recipient of the National Heritage Award Fellowship), were from Big Stone Gap, in the coalfields.
Famed musicologist and collector Alan Lomax called Grayson County and its environs, "the nation's richest breeding ground for traditional music." His comment is apt. Four of the musicians whose recordings got the country music industry started in the early 1920s were employed at the same cotton mill in tiny Fries, in Grayson County: Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman, Kelly Harrell, and John Rector. The outstanding artists appearing on this tour link the past, present, and future of deeply-rooted American traditions. They represent the thousands of area musicians, singers and dancers who love their home grown music, and make it every day in family kitchens, workshops, jam sessions at the local Dairy Queen, community dances, sings and musical gatherings of every conceivable variety.
The Crooked Road Revue was organized by the National Council for the Traditional Arts, who assembled a number of musicians from the Crooked Road area for a two-week tour in the western United States. The "Music From the Crooked Road" tour celebrated the vibrant, living musical culture of Southwest Virginia where making music is, and always has been, an integral part of life. The Great Lakes Folk Festival is proud to bring a taste of that tour to East Lansing this year: National Heritage Award Fellow and Appalachian guitar master Wayne Henderson, old-time fiddle and banjo masters Kirk Sutphin and Eddie Bond and a young keeper of ancient mountain ballads and songs, 19-year-old Elizabeth LaPrelle.
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