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| The mountainous corner of southwestern Virginia is home to the Crooked Road, the state's Heritage Music Trail. Photos by The Washington Post. |
Virginia's Heritage Music Trail is a treasure trove of
traditional American music, reports Melanie D. G. Kaplan
(special to The Washington Post).
I arrive at the Marathon gas station in Stuart, Virginia,
just above the North Carolina border, to find a man eating
beans out of a can and a collection of animal heads peering
down at an understocked convenience store.
I am at my first stop on the Crooked Road: Virginia's Music
Heritage Trail - 400km of music venues in the Blue Ridge and
Appalachian regions of southwestern Virginia - and I don't
see anything that resembles a jam session.
But soon, a 70-year-old man named G. C., a third-generation
musician from town, brings his guitar over to the picnic
table outside the store. Then a fiddle shows up, followed by
a banjo.
One by one, grey-haired men climb out of pick-up trucks with
their instruments and amble over to the patio, home of the
Thursday night State Line Grocery Jam Session. And by the
time I leave, two hours later, I've fallen under the spell of
mountain music.
It's not the first time. Last year, I joined a friend for my
first bluegrass concerts and was drawn to the music so
suddenly that I had barely learned which instrument was the
mandolin before I'd bought one.
Now, after six months of lessons and calloused fingers, I am
bravely, naively joining the Thursday night crew in a corner
of Virginia where it seems that everyone plays a "git-tar" or
fiddle, and plays it well.
"There's music everywhere here," says Joe Wilson, one of the
architects of the Crooked Road, which was established in 2004
to support tourism and economic development in one of
Appalachia's distressed areas.
Wilson is a folklorist and the longtime director and current
chairman of the National Council for the Traditional Arts.
Earlier this month, he received a Living Legend award from
the Library of Congress.
"Americans don't know diddly about their music," he says.
Traditional American mountain music came about when the
African banjo and European fiddle met in Virginia, he
explains.
"Appalachian music has been the most accepting music -
whoever you are and wherever you are, you're welcome to play
it. It's the sound; it has a joy to it. It's working-folk
music."
It's also infectious. I can't keep up with the State Line
crew, but I want to sit here all night, next to G. C.,
singing from his songbook, and the banjo player,
simultaneously pickin', smokin' and drinkin' coffee. These
are folks who make good music with less effort than they make
conversation.
For them, it's just another Thursday evening, doing what they
do. But for me, it's the beginning of a whirlwind trip
exploring 188 miles (300km) of the Crooked Road and listening
to some mighty fine tunes.
The Crooked Road mostly follows Route 58, the longest roadway
in the state; this part of it is a two-lane mountain route
that passes idyllic farms, moseying cows, sparkling rivers.
The trail covers 10 counties, three cities and 19 towns,
including Floyd, Galax, Damascus, Abingdon and Bristol along
the North Carolina and Tennessee borders, then Norton and
Clintwood bordering Kentucky.
In every spot, nearly every day of the week, you're bound to
find a concert, a festival, a square dance or a jam. Take it
slow, and keep both hands on the wheel. As a local says, "The
roads are so curvy, you can almost see your tail-lights
'round the bends."
As I leave the jam on Thursday night, after 9, G. C. gives me
a stern warning about deer on my hour-long mountain drive to
a B&B in Floyd. "They'll jump outta nowhere, right in
front of your car," he says. "Be careful."
On Friday night in Floyd, there's no question that I'm in the
right spot for music. I show up early at the Floyd Country
Store for the Friday Night Jamboree. The store, celebrating
its centenary next year, sells everything from Carhartt
overalls to sweet potato biscuit mix and still records sales
in a steno notebook.
The show is held in the back of the store, but when the
weather's nice, pockets of music (and some nights, as many as
1000 people) spill out on to the street. An hour before the
first band, always gospel, I find seats saved, some with tap
shoes.
Woody Crenshaw, the store's owner, welcomes everyone.
"We have two gallons of blueberries picked in Floyd County
this week, and we're making fresh blueberry milkshakes!" he
announces.
