OFF WE GO DOWN VIRGINIA’S CROOKED ROAD!
Heading out on The Crooked Road
Two decades ago the tourism folks in my home state of Virginia were faced with a challenge: how to promote the relatively-unknown rural counties and small towns in the south-western region of their state. Searching for something these places had in common, they consulted people – and I was among them – who knew the region well and came up with an obvious answer – Country Music.
Out of this grew The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail , to which I recently paid a return anniversary visit, accompanied by my Virginia-based friend Sue Williams.
Launching ourselves down Route 221 from my former home town, Roanoke – its nickname “Star City of the South” inspired by the massive neon star crowning its landmark Mill Mountain – we arrived 40 minutes later in the small town of Floyd, where they were celebrating a 40th anniversary Friday jamboree in The Floyd Country Store
Our first stop — The Floyd Country Store
Not just music but clogging at the Floyd Country Store
Joining others in seats in the midst of concession stands, stalls and shops offering milkshakes, sandwiches, candies, cowboy hats and various souvenirs, we were soon foot tapping and swaying to the gospel, old-time and bluegrass music swirling from the stage as, on the dance floor below, clogging grannies metal toe-tapped their way around enthusiastically swirling toddlers. There were more pavement walkway fiddlers, banjo players and others to enhance the scene as we headed up over the hill to the Hotel Floyd .
Next came Galax , “The Capital of Old Time Music” and best known for its annual August Old Fiddlers Convention and the weekly-staged Blue Ridge Backroads Old Time and Blue Grass music show, which is beamed out live on Classic Country’s 98.1 FM to five states from the Rex Theatre, a local entertainment hub since 1940.
After a theatre tour, we dropped by Main Street’s Barr’s Fiddle Shop, a treasure house of guitars and other stringed instruments plus photos of such famous groups as the 1920s Hill Billies who played them, followed by visits to galleries crammed with impressive local arts and crafts, along the way learning how the area’s JAM (Junior Appalachian Musicians) programme is teaching traditional musical skills to the upcoming generations. Then, running out of time, we promised a future visit to The Blue Ridge Music Center crowning the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway high above town.
Sue in front of the Birthplace of Country Music Museum
A music festival in Bristol
But our ultimate goal was Bristol , nestled so close to the south-western Virginia state line that we felt compelled to stroll along the centre of vibrant State Street, one foot in Virginia, the other in Tennessee, before checking into the trendy Sessions Hotel , where we enjoyed music and cocktails on the roof-top terrace
Much of the next day was spent in the nearby Birthplace of Country Music Museum, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Full of live-action and even sing-along exhibitions, it pays tribute to the fact that, in 1927, Bristol was chosen by a New York recording studio as a base to discover and record the vast amount of country, bluegrass and other folk music emerging from the region. Known as the “Bristol Sessions” and the “Big Bang of Country Music”, they launched to the country, and later the world, such stars as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rogers and, indeed, old-time country and mountain music in general.
Rita Forrester overlooking a tribute to the Carter family
On Saturday evenings, many visitors then head about 25 miles north-west to mountainside Hiltons’ Carter Family Fold, known for its heart-warming gospel, old-time and bluegrass music jamborees accompanied by enthusiastic multi-generational clogging. Established 50 years ago by Jeanette Carter, the daughter of AP and Sara Carter – who, along with her sister Maybelle, are regarded as “The First Family of Country Music” – it was a frequent haven and performance venue for Maybelle’s late daughter, June, and her musician husband, Johnny Cash. Both the performance venue and museum are now presided over by Jeanette’s daughter, Rita Forrester.
Headed back northwards on the Crooked Road, we stopped off at historic and charming Abingdon, to learn more about regional music, arts and crafts at the Southwest Virginia Cultural Center & Marketplace and enjoy a tour of the renowned local Barter Theatre Led by actor Robert Porterfield during America’s financially-devastating 1930s Depression, a group of hungry, out-of-work New York actors came to the town offering to “barter Hamlet for ham”. Settled into a 1921 former vaudeville theatre, which they enhanced with stunning furnishings from Manhattan’s landmark Empire Theatre, they not only were well fed with everything from ham hocks and fried chicken to home-made pies, but they also soon began attracting both enthusiastic audiences and such fledgling stars of stage and screen as Ernest Borgnine, Ned Beatty, Patricia Neal and Gregory Peck, whose first job was as an errand boy borrowing props for the plays from the town’s residents.
Abingdon’s Barter Theatre, founded in the 1930s, is America’s longest-running professional Equity theatre
Among the Barter’s current productions is The Shawshank Redemption
The Wizard of Oz, now on at the Barter, is always a family favourite
In 1946, The Barter was named Virginia’s official state theatre, in 1948 it became the first regional theatre to win a Tony Award, and it is now America’s longest-running professional Equity theatre. In addition to nearly year-round productions on the main theatre’s Gilliam Stage (currently offering a choice of The Wizard of Oz and The Shawshank Redemption), and touring productions, it stages performances in the smaller Smith Theatre just across the road. This is where Sue and I saw Grandma Gatewood Took A Walk, the rousing two-actor, real-life tale of 67-year-old mother and grandmother Emma Gatewood, who escaped from a brutal marriage to become the first woman to walk the entire 2,190-mile, 14-state Maine-Georgia Appalachian Trail, which, by coincidence, runs through Abingdon.
We were tempted thereafter to overnight in the stately Martha Washington Inn & Spa next to the Smith Theatre but Sue’s hometown of Mountain City just across the border in Tennessee, was calling. Booking into a comfy, double-wide trailer known as Granny’s Place, complete with a white picket fence and front yard two-seater swing, its bathroom enhanced by a notice reminding us to “Wash Your Hands and Say Your Prayers Cause Jesus and Germs Are Everywhere”, we were soon immersed in this mountain community of 2,415 residents’ unique ambience.
For not only had Mountain City, founded in 1836, been a major music centre in the past, hosting its own 1925 landmark Fiddlers Convention, but its music heritage has inspired 11 mainly-music-themed murals throughout its downtown.
Enjoying Old Time Music at The Johnson' County’ Center for the Arts
The Mountain City mural depicting Tom Ashley playing banjo to his pony
Local artist Cristy Dunn creating the Tom Ashley mural
Among them are two devoted to 19th-century criminal Tom Dooley, one showing his local apprehension by Colonel James Grayson and the other of him playing his fiddle while seated on a casket transported by horse-drawn wagon to his hanging.
The famous folk ballad that his life and death inspired was first recorded in 1928 by local musicians GB Grayson and Henry Whittier even as another famous folk ballad, The House of the Rising Sun, was first recorded in 1927 by local musician Tom Ashley, who is depicted in another mural playing banjo to his apparently-appreciative pony. And fronting the buzzing Johnson County Center for the Arts is a statue to another famous local musician, Fiddlin’ Fred Price, while its impressive inside programme of live music, paintings, sculpture, pottery, weaving and more is presided over by executive director Cristy Dunn, also the creator of some of the murals.
Music lovers enjoying a porch concert during Mountain City’s Long Journey Home Festival
Sue and I bought several whimsical pieces of pottery and woven bags and vowed to return, perhaps from August 30-September 1, for the Long Journey Home Festival. Not only will Friday night feature musicians playing for tips plus savoury local food on offer all along Main Street, but on Saturday, there will be the unveiling of a new mural depicting the old-time medicine show that musician Tom Ashley travelled with, followed by a driving tour to his house where local musicians will play banjos in Tom’s clawhammer style on his front porch. Then there will be a Sunday night old fashioned sing-along at landmark Heritage Hall. You can’t get more Appalachian Authentic than that!
Check out the features in the current issue of Essentially America magazine. To subscribe visit www.essentiallyamerica.co.uk
Meanwhile, check out my new book of travel and lifestyle anecdotes, Goodbye Hoop Skirts – Hello World! The Travels, Triumphs and Tumbles of a Runaway Southern Belle.
