The Crooked Road On Tour Featured at The Highland Center
Abingdon, Virginia – The Crooked Road On Tour will feature Gayheart & Freeman in performance at The Highland Center in Monterey, Virginia on Saturday, April 10 as part of the Highland County Arts Council’s Second Saturdays Concert Series.
The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail performances celebrate the traditional music that has been kept by families and communities of Southwest Virginia since colonial times. Settlers of this mountainous region since the 1700’s have brought various ingredients – a cappella gospel music from German tradition that lives in the Old Regular Baptist churches today; spirituals, emotive singing and a musical gourd we now call a banjo from African tradition; and ballads and fiddles brought by the Scots-Irish and English. Mixed together, these ingredients have produced one of the richest musical traditions on earth.
Willard Gayheart and Scott Freeman are consummate musicians, storytellers, teachers, songwriters and tunesmiths. Though grounded in old-time tradition, their music is adventurous and ready to roam the edges for new sounds and songs that fit within the tradition.
A talented songwriter, Willard Gayheart’s music is collected all over the world. He plays guitar and brings stories tell of his child home in eastern Kentucky. He will sing you a song about the Virginia beauty apple or tell a story about his Wayne Henderson guitar! He also is a gifted artist and his pencil drawings depict traditional mountain scenes and music.
Scott Freeman grew up in a rich musical area around Mount Airy and plays mandolin, guitar and fiddle. In addition to his work as a professional musician, Scott is also a traditional music instructor and lends his talents and smooth baritone vocal style to many bluegrass groups such as The McPeak Brothers, The Crowe Brothers, and The Mountain Home Bluegrass Boys.
Tickets are $10 and are available at www.highlandcountyartscouncil.org or via the Highland County Arts Council’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/HighlandCountyArtsCouncil. The performance will be presented in person and virtually per COVID guidelines.
The Crooked Road On Tour performances at The Highland Center are supported in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge, and the CP Jones Trust.
For more information, visit www.thehighlandcenter.org or call (540) 468-1922. For more information about The Crooked Road, please visit www.thecrookedroadva.com, call (276) 492-2400 ext. 2409, or email: info@thecrookedroad.org.
