Kenny & Amanda Smith
New Single Resurrects a Lost Classic Bluegrass Song By Richard Hefner
The great 1970s Song “Million Lonely Days” by the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys Becomes New Again
The IBMA Award-winning duo of Kenny and Amanda Smith are no strangers to West Virginia. Amanda is a Mountain State native who was raised near Parkersburg. The husband and wife team met in Huntingtin, West Virginia when Kenny was performing with the Lonesome River Band one night at the Mountaineer Opry House. The former is a winner of the IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year award and the latter is a two-time IBMA Guitarist of the Year honoree.
A couple of years ago, Kenny and Amanda Smith were asked to be a part of the instructor team of the acclaimed Allegheny Echoes Music Week held every June in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, created and run by West Virginia roots music legends The Bing Brothers along with writer Kirk Judd.
While there, not only did the Smiths get to experience and soak up the natural wonders of Pocahontas County, one of the most rural and beautiful sections of the whole Appalachian Mountain range, where the headwaters of eight rivers originate, they also got to meet local bluegrass legend, Richard Hefner.
Hefner, as you will read in the article on page 14, was born and raised in Mill Point, West Virginia, located 10 miles from Marlinton, where Allegheny Echoes Week is hosted at the facilities of the Marlinton Motor Inn. Hefner is known for his amazing albums recorded in the 1970s by his band The Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys. On the group’s 1973 recording titled Million Lonely Days, you will find a great set of pure mountain bluegrass music filled with drive and heart and that old lonesome sound. That is especially true with the project’s title track, which is nothing short of a lost bluegrass gem.
When Kenny and Amanda watched Hefner’s Master Class performance at Allegheny Echoes, something clicked when the 79-year-old banjo picker and singer kicked off the song that he wrote over half a century ago, “Million Lonely Days.”
“I was living in Pocahontas County when I wrote it, about a mile from where I grew up,” said Hefner. “We were just trying to write some songs for our album and I wrote a couple, including an instrumental tune named after my home area of Mill Point. With ‘Million Lonely Days,’ I got most of the words from an old poem that I found in a really old book. I changed some of the words around in it, talking about our Allegheny Mountains here in southern West Virginia. There are a lot of good words in that song.”
The texture of “Million Lonely Days,” especially its faraway-sounding chorus, reflects that feeling of being on the road and away from family and loved ones during a time in history before the interstate highways were built and completed.
“I remember that it was raining and so they brought Richard’s Master Class inside and we were really paying attention to the music and that is when we first heard that song,” said Amanda Smith. “We were sitting there and listening and when he hit that chorus, we both looked at each other and we knew we loved it right away. When you hear the song, you don’t expect the chorus to sound like it does, and that is what makes it special. We were going to record it for our previous album, but it didn’t exactly fit. Richard had already ok’ed us doing it and everything, and now it is our latest single.”
The Smiths decided to tweak the song slightly to make it fit their sound and make it a touch more modern, and Hefner was good with that idea. “We took Richard’s song and added some chords to it,” said Kenny Smith. “Not that the song needed it, as it didn’t need any more chords. But the changes we made are subtle. Amanda is singing his melody on it, and we just changed some chord voicings to make it sound more like us. After we recorded it, we brought it to him when we saw him at the Cass Railroad Days Festival, which also happens in Pocahontas County.”
“We were in the parking lot and we put the CD in our car’s player and said, ‘Hey Richard, listen to this,’” said Amanda Smith. “We were holding our breath, thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, please don’t hate it.’ But, he loved it. He just smiled, and I can’t remember what he said because I was crying. It was just a really sweet moment. It works when we play it in our shows instrumentally, as well. It almost sounds like a Del McCoury tune or something. We played it onstage for the first time not long ago and it definitely went over good live.”
Along with Kenny on guitar and vocals and Amanda on lead vocals, the “Million Lonely Days” single also features Calib Smith on banjo, Cory Piatt on mandolin, and Kyle Perkins on bass.
A part of the charm of “Million Lonely Days” is that it pays tribute to a truly picturesque area of the world, with Hefner’s home Allegheny Mountains mentioned in the chorus. What is cool about Kenny and Amanda finding the song and recording it is that Kenny took the time to explore the deeper areas of Pocahontas County where the tune was born.
“When we came to Marlinton for Allegheny Echoes, I knew that there were mountains near there that had the red spruce trees on them that were used to build some of the best guitars ever made, and I know some modern-day guitar builders that told me those trees were up there,” said Kenny Smith. “It was either Tim Corbett, bass player for the Bing Brothers (and director of the Fly In Bluegrass Festival), or Tim Bing that told me that Mike Bing, who runs Allegheny Echoes, had done years of forestry work in Pocahontas County. So, one of the first things that I said when I first got there was, ‘Mike if we have any free time at all, can you take me up there where those red spruce trees are living.’ Mike said, ‘Absolutely.’”
Then, soon after, Kenny along with Tim and Mike Bing got in a vehicle and made the trek up the mountain. While walking amongst the living and breathing trees, Smith allowed himself to think about all of the great and historic bluegrass music that was played on guitars with red spruce wood on them, and it became a bit of an emotional trip for Kenny, realizing the full circle of the experience.
“Those red spruce trees grow best at about 3,000 feet in elevation and above,” said Kenny Smith. “Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, C.F. Martin and his dad would take a trip every year through the mountains in Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia and they would buy all of those red spruce trees. A lot of that ended after World War II after they turned a lot of those mountains into State and National Parks. So, when I walked among them that day, it was pretty surreal. I had tried to see them in Gatlinburg but they were always busy at the Ranger Station there. They would get these forestry books out and show me the photos of the tree, but that was not what I was looking for, as I could always look in a book on my own. But, Mike Bing knew exactly what they looked like and where to find them. When we went to the top of the mountain, I felt it, because that wood was a part of the sound of those pre-war Martin guitars and the great and historic music that they made back then.”
Oh, the night is so cold, and there is no one here to hold, far away and all alone, Allegheny is my home – “Million Lonely Days”
More information on shows and upcoming releases can be found at www.kenny-amandasmith.com.
