Venues

In 1800 when the nation’s population was two million, 10,000 people passed each year through Abingdon on their way to the South, Southwest, and heartland, making ti the first, busiest, and most important of America’s frontier towns. One-fourth of all Americans have an ancestor who came here, most of them on foot. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, native Read more...

Historically the Clinch River served as a major avenue for settlement and opened up the area of southwestern Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Among other settlers, Daniel Boone lived along the banks of this river and took command of the forts in the area for almost two years before moving on in a trek that is commemorated by the Daniel Boone Read more...

Nine families have enriched the traditional music of Patrick County for over 200 years. In ancestry they are German, English, Huguenot, Ulster Irish, and African-American. These musical families are named Spangler, Bowman, Shelor, Boyd, Foddrell, Vipperman, Pendleton, Gwynn (Guynn), and Cockram. Making your own music is a powerful tradition here, and though small in population, Patrick County has provided the Read more...

Norton has produced important musicians for a century. Songwriter and ballad singer Kate O’Neill (later Kate Peters Sturgill) grew up here, began a string band in 1914, taught hundreds to play guitar, and was a pioneer on radio. Norton barber Byrd Moore was a premier country guitarist of the 1920s, recording with a half dozen prominent bands. Blues banjoist Dock Read more...

Patrick County is named for a fiddler, Patrick Henry, and is where the Piedmont Plateau meets the Blue Ridge Mountains. Settled in Revolutionary times, it has always been a musical place. Stuart, the county seat, is named for a string band leader who was also a Confederate cavalry officer, General J.E.B. Stuart. A singer, he was killed in battle at Read more...

The Carter Family (A.P., Sara, and Maybelle) grew up in Scott County, and began performing here. A. P. Carter was a composer, collector and arranger with a legacy of family and community music, and an ability to create songs that touched the human spirit. His wife, Sara Dougherty Carter, had a rich and expressive voice that made her a favorite Read more...

Western Grayson County has produced fine traditional musicians, performers at school entertainments, fiddlers’ conventions, and community gatherings for many generations. Among them was the old-time string band, the Rugby Gully Jumpers (Walter Henderson, fiddle, Estil Ball, guitar, and Wade Reedy, mandolin) recorded ni the 1930s by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Outstanding finger-style guitarist Estil Bal and wife, Read more...

America’s commercial country music began in a cotton mill in Fries in 1923. Mill hand Henry Whitter traveled to New York and recorded a hit, “The Wreck of the Old ’97”. In 1924 a second mill hand, Ernest V. Stoneman, went north to record. They were followed within months by two bands assembled by singer Kelly Harrell and banjoist John Read more...

Welcome to Franklin County, the eastern gateway to The Crooked Road, a journey through Southwest Virginia’s musical heritage that winds through the Appalachian Mountains for 265 miles. Franklin County has always been a cultural crossroads where black and white musicians shared ideas and learned from each other. The music they created is kept alive in frequent jam sessions and concerts. Read more...

Virginia’s traditional songs and melodies were carried westward along the Wilderness Road, spreading north to Illinois and other areas of the Midwest, and west to Texas and California. Civil War soldiers of both sides learned the song “Cumberland Gap” as well as other melodies of the upland south, and they took this traditional music to their homes. Radio and recordings Read more...

The traditional music of Dickenson County has a special sound. Based upon tones from the Primitive Baptist and “Dunkard” churches, this sound has influenced singers in the string bands of the region. The most famous of these singers is Ralph Stanley. With his brother Carter, Ralph Stanley created a band in 1946 that riveted the world’s attention on the coalfields Read more...

Much of America’s music was invented in Virginia, and Galax and surrounding communities have long been an epicenter for the keeping of historic sounds and the creation of new ones. Greenberry Leonard lived in the Old Town section of Galax and knew tunes he’d learned when Andrew Jackson was president. Leonard’s student, Emmett Lundy, born before the Civil War, brought Read more...

In 1927 the Victor Talking Machine Company sent a portable studio to Bristol, and music publisher Ralph Peer advertised for traditional musicians wishing to try their hand at recording. The test pressings of the resulting “Bristol Sessions” involved mountain string bands, gospel singers, blues artists, and vaudeville performers. Among those that sold best were recordings by Jimmie Rodgers and the Read more...

Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute &Museum si part of a local heritage rich with singers and musicians. The English scholar Cecil Sharpe collected ballads in Franklin County in 1916. County fiddler Posey Rorer and North Carolina banjo great Charlie Poole picked, partied, and even made moonshine here before starting their recording careers. The Ferrum fiddle and guitar duo William Lloyd Read more...

The Famous Fall Fling is a fun-filled street festival in Wise, Virginia that centers on the Big Glades, a beautifully landscaped community amphitheatre and live music stage. The Festival runs a lot of fine mountain music across the stage during the two days of festivities including many vendors of crafts, food, and kids activities. Read more...