Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina
Website Opens Up Doors to Heart of Bluegrass
Bluegrass music was basically created in Nashville in 1945 when Kentucky native Bill Monroe asked North Carolina fiddler Jim Shumate if he knew of any powerful banjo players who could keep up with his up-tempo music. That is when Shumate introduced Monroe to the innovative three-finger banjo picker Earl Scruggs, who was also from North Carolina.
Scruggs melded quickly with the rest of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, which included Tennessee’s Lester Flatt along with fiddler Chubby Wise and bass player and comedian Howard Watts, who were both from Florida.
In other words, Monroe had all of the pieces of his new uptown-derived-from-backwoods style of American roots music in place except for that last crucial piece, which was the Tar Heel State brilliance that was Earl Scruggs.
Then, you can insert into that lineup the Florida roots music scene that produced both Chubby Wise on the fiddle and the bass playing and comedy of fellow Florida native Howard Watts. When you combine these five men from four different states on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in Tennessee, you get the world’s first bluegrass band.
The fact that bluegrass music had direct roots in four states went right along with the multiple post-World War II influences that also found their way into Monroe’s bluegrass mix, such as swing music, the blues, fiddle tunes, old songs of the British Isles filtered through the mountains, improvisation and more.
When you look into the history of music in North Carolina that led up to Scruggs’ direct injection into the birth of bluegrass, you realize that the depth of the music culture in the Tar Heel State goes back centuries.
The good news is that bluegrass and old-time music are alive and well in the Old North State and a great gateway to exploring this phenomenon in these modern times is the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina organization and their fabulous and user-friendly website and newsletter.
I am a native of West Virginia, which produced the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, the Goins Brothers, and fiddle legends Clark Kessinger and Ed Haley. After moving to Cincinnati as a kid, I was exposed to the history of “industrial bluegrass music” that bubbled up in southern Ohio when the Great Migration from Appalachia in the 20th century brought in folks from the mountains that brought their culture and their music with them.
Then, about 9 years ago, I moved to the High Country Mountains of Western North Carolina (WNC) and immersed myself in the legacy of bluegrass and old-time music here where the Blue Ridge Mountains morph into the Great Smoky Mountains as you travel west. The good news is the still-growing roots music scene in WNC that continues to produce excellent young musicians every day.
One example of the region’s love of roots music can be found in downtown Boone. Of all the historical figures that travelled through WNC over the centuries, the most famous statue on King Street in the downtown area of Boone is a brass park bench where visitors can sit next to IBMA Hall of Famer and hometown hero Doc Watson as he plays his guitar.
Much in the way that the Crooked Trail organization and website highlights the history and current live music venues one can find when visiting southwestern Virginia, the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina organization has risen up to do the same here in the Tar Heel State.
The Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina organization features Program Manager Brandon Johnson. A luthier and musician, Johnson used his organizational skills to win this job a few years ago and it has become a true labor of love.
You can find the impressive and instructional Blue Ridge Music Trails website at blueridgemusicnc.com. There you will find places to plan your trip to the highest mountains found east of the Rockies, find directions to live bluegrass shows, read articles on how to learn how to play roots music, find music instructors, learn where to find instruments for sale, locate workshops that will increase your skills and more.
On the website, you will also find articles explaining the many different styles of roots music found here in WNC including artist biographies. Most importantly, you can find a link at the website to the organization’s informative and entertaining podcast called “Down The Road” that is written by Johnson and performed by Laura Boosinger, an acclaimed musician and Director of the Madison County, NC, Arts Council.
The heritage of bluegrass music, old-time and country blues in North Carolina runs deep. Doc Watson and Charlie Poole made their influential music there, as did the aforementioned Earl Scruggs, Ola Belle Reed, George Shuffler, Raymond Fairchild, David Holt, Bryan Sutton, Bobby Hicks and many other great artists. Del McCoury was conceived here in his mother’s womb before they made their migration to Maryland. Tony Rice lived here, played here and died here. Balsam Range, Tray Wellington, Liam Purcell and Cane Mill Road, Songs From The Road Band, Town Mountain, Nick Chandler and Delivered, the Steep Canyon Rangers and many other bands are currently making their mark while based in North Carolina.
And, when it comes to the concept of live roots music festivals, Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s Mountain Music Festival began in Asheville in 1928, predating the first bluegrass festivals by almost 40 years.
As for Brandon Johnson, his road to the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina organization began in his hometown of Lenoir, NC. His entrance into bluegrass came from being a part of the Nickel Creek generation, which brought a lot of young folks into the genre the way Billy Strings is doing right now.
“Nickel Creek was my Beatles,” said Johnson. “I remember my family buying a couple of Nickel Creek albums on the same trip to a Barnes and Noble book store, which was everybody’s experience in the early 2000s. I loved Chris Thile so I began to play the mandolin and kind of backed into the genre. Now, I like the crusty old mountain fiddlers and stuff like that as well as digging into some older bluegrass these days. I’m still real hip on bands like the Punch Brothers, Crooked Still, the Infamous Stringdusters and Cadillac Sky, but I’m also spending a little bit more time with Bill Monroe, the Osborne Brothers and I have always loved Doc Watson. Then, when I got older, I played in bluegrass bands around Asheville and played some in Boone when I was in Grad school, and I now build my own violins.”
On the educational side of Johnson’s road to being Program Manager, he went to Mars Hill University and then achieved a Masters degree at Appalachian State. Johnson eventually became the Director of the Bluff Mountain Music Festival in Madison County, located outside of Asheville. Combining his music education and administrative skills, and under the tutelage of Executive Director Angie Chandler, Johnson joined the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina staff two years ago.
Johnson’s main job is to provide the much-needed creative content for the organization’s impressive website. Along with Boosinger, he puts together the aforementioned “Down The Road” podcast edited for audio by the staff at WNCW-FM radio station located in Spindale, NC. Once the podcast is ready to roll, you can listen to it on the Blue Ridge Music Trails website, on WNCW-FM radio station at wncw.org, and in syndication around the globe where you find podcasts.
One recent “Down The Road” podcast featured a tribute to the recently-deceased WNC music legend Arvil Freeman. While Freeman did some big road runs with national bluegrass bands in his younger years, he mostly stuck around his house and taught bluegrass and old-time fiddling to literally hundreds of students in the WNC mountains, which is why music fans in other parts of the country may not have heard of this superb artist.
Unselfish musicians like Freeman who have the gift and temperament to teach music to others are real asset to a community, a region or a state. With Freeman instructing so many students, the old ways of bowing the fiddle were passed on and many new musicians have benefitted from his generosity.
“The podcast about Arvil was an honor to do,” said Johnson. “Arvil’s death in October of 2021 was a tough stretch of time for us as Laura has played music with him for years and I took music lessons from Arvil as well. And, I would take my little boy up to see him and hang out with him. Right now, I am actually building a copy of his primary fiddle. Arvil was a good friend of mine so I was happy to be able to celebrate his life a little bit with our podcast.”
Freeman chose to avoid endless touring as a professional musician, which enabled him to create his musical Diaspora. “There were a number of great musicians from around here like Arvil that could have been out on the road but didn’t want to do that, which I have always admired,” said Johnson. “Arvil is a prime example of the difference a teacher can make. If you have heard live music in Asheville over the last 50 years, you have probably heard Arvil Freeman. When you consider the number of people that he taught, his impact on the bluegrass and old-time scene is unbelievable.”
Laura Boosinger agrees. “Arvil was one of those players that was somewhat transitional between old-time music and bluegrass,” said Boosinger. “Sometimes people would say, ‘Well, he’s just a bluegrass fiddler,’ but that was far from the truth as he did play some bluegrass styles, but he also played old-time fiddle tunes. His bow arm was unreal. He was basically a long-bow player. Instead of a lot of short, choppy tones, his notes were all long and smooth. Arvil played with a lot of people including the Stanley Brothers for a short while, and he could have stayed on the road full time. But, he wanted to stay here. Still, while sticking close to home, Arvil also had that 13-year run playing at Bill Stanley’s BBQ and Bluegrass club in Asheville, playing six nights a week while working as a butcher during the day. Mainly, though, he taught a huge number of students who would go on to be top-name players.”
The cultivation of young talent is essential to the notion of keeping bluegrass music alive far into the future. Another way that the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina facilitates this idea is by supporting and spreading the word on the wonderful Junior Appalachian Musicians program. Also know as JAM, the organization was created in Sparta, NC, by the late Helen White. Now, JAM is in the good hands of Director Brett Morris and hosts 50-plus bluegrass and old-time jams, workshops and music lesson sessions for young people in four states, including North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee. There are 20 weekly lesson sessions, open jams and workshops in WNC alone.
There are states, areas and regions that do not have a musical pipeline such as the JAM program to fuel the growth of young folks in the Appalachian roots music scene, but it is spreading out more by the year.
“To me, the importance of the Blue Ridge Music Trails is to give visibility to these small communities who have all of these music traditions that have organically remained viable,” said Boosinger.
The Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina is an initiative led by the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Partnership, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.
The overall goal of the project is to preserve music traditions that are unique to the WNC region. Good things are happening, current generations are making their own mark in the culture and bluegrass and old-time music will always be a part of the plan.
“I think our website is really great at showcasing live events,” said Johnson. “The main thing that we want to do is to promote live traditional music and to get people to live traditional music events. When you go to blueridgemusicnc.com, one of the first things you will see is a calendar. You can scroll over that calendar and see what is happening on any given day. Over the ten-year existence of Blue Ridge Music Trails, I feel like we have heightened the profile of live traditional music in western North Carolina. I think some folks have a certain perception of music coming ‘from out of the hills,’ which it does, but maybe in not the way they imagined. Our goal is to guide them to the real thing.”
To make sure folks are in-the-know when it comes to the traditional music that is humming along right now in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the website takes the time to vet every venue.
“What is cool about this website is that Laura and I know what the real deal is, so we have developed an authenticity proofing system that looks over gigs and jams and workshops before they get onto our website,” said Johnson. “So, our page has become a rubber stamp for authentic Western North Carolina traditional music. But we not only promote live shows, we promote regular jams as well. Our bi-weekly newsletter is really good at keeping folks up-to-date with upcoming events, and please check out our Facebook page as well for news and current podcasts.”
Johnson feels fortunate to be in this rewarding line of work. “It is kind of a dream job, really,” said Johnson. “If you had told me when I was 22 that I would be doing something like this now when I am 33, I would have been pumped.”
Along with the concise and informative email newsletter, Blue Ridge Music Trails organization also offers a book for sale called Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina: A Guide to Music Sites, Artists, and Traditions of the Mountains and Foothills written by Fred Fussell with Steve Kruger. For more information on everything mentioned above, please go to blueridgemusicnc.com.
