Before there was a workshop, there was a pocketknife. And before there was a years-long waitlist, there was a teenage boy on a porch in Grayson County, Virginia, scraping curls of wood off a slab of spruce. Wayne Henderson didn’t have a band saw or a luthier’s bench, just a pocket knife and good instincts….
In 2012, I participated in the Heritage Tune competition at the Union Grove Old Time Fiddler’s Convention. The competition is open to musicians of any age who have competed in one of the festival’s twelve instrumental competitions. I competed in the Mountain Dulcimer category, so I was eligible for the Heritage Tune competition. One prize…
Go to any Old Time jam session in the area surrounding Galax, VA (“The World Capital of Old Time Music”), and the tune “Cripple Creek” will be played before night’s end. This melody has echoed through the hills and hollers of Appalachia for generations, becoming a staple in bluegrass and old-time music. Its lively tune…
Stompin’ 76 was a landmark festival that, for one long weekend in 1976, made Bluegrass the center of the musical universe. Like New York’s iconic Woodstock festival in 1969, the event is legendary. Over 100,000 attended the event. Most attendees parked miles away—some on Interstate 77, more than eleven miles away—and walked up country roads…