Mother-daughter duo Emily and Martha Spencer return to the festival with their mountain music legacy in good hands
A native of Arlington, Virginia, Emily Spencer planted roots deep in the Appalachian mountains after marrying into one of the region’s most revered musical families.
“I grew up in Northern Virginia, but I always had an interest in music, especially mountain music,” she says.
The matriarch of the Whitetop Mountain Band, Emily will perform at this year’s Richmond Folk Festival virtual celebration with her daughter, Martha Spencer, who was raised in Appalachia surrounded by traditional mountain music and dance.
“I grew up in the middle of it,” Martha remembers. “Both of my parents, my uncle, my great-great-grandfather—everyone was a musician or a dancer. It was just a part of everyday life. I’ve never been without music really.”
The beginning
As a child in Northern Virginia, Emily studied violin, then guitar and ukulele before falling in love with mountain music. As soon as she finished high school, she hit the road.
“I always loved the mountains and music and that’s where I was heading,” she says.
She went to college first in the Shenandoah Valley and then at what is now the University of Virginia College at Wise.
“It was like a mecca. I was just coming here for the music and I’ve been here ever since,” Emily recalls. “I’ve been lucky to marry into a music and instrument-making family and to make it my life playing music and teaching in this area.”
The Spencer family music tradition goes back over 80 years—almost four decades before Emily left Arlington to follow the music into the Appalachian mountains. In the 1940s, a renowned fiddler and instrument maker named Albert Hash started the Whitetop Mountain Band. His brother-in-law, and Emily’s future husband, was Thornton Spencer, a master fiddler in his own right who descended from a long line of Appalachian musicians.
After Thornton and Emily married, they joined Albert in the Whitetop Mountain Band. Their children, Martha and Kilby, grew up playing and dancing along to the music in the family living room.
“I started dancing flatfoot first,” Martha says. “I was still in diapers, and it was just part of everyday life. At seven, I picked up the guitar, and after that, I learned fiddle and banjo and bass.”
While it would be an exaggeration to say Martha can play every instrument she picks up, she can play most string instruments almost instantly.
“I learned mostly by ear, but I can read notations a little,” she explains. “Mostly I just love the music and I know how to play what I hear.”
With seemingly limitless instrumental abilities and a voice that is full and capable of reaching deep inside each listener, Martha quickly became a fixture in the Whitetop Mountain Band. When her father, Thornton, died in 2017 at the age of 82, Martha’s brother Kilby took his place in the band.
While Martha, Emily, and Kilby spend a lot of their time playing together with the Whitetop Mountain Band, it’s not the only musical pastime for any of them.
Martha in particular performs with several bands at once, including Spencer Branch, which also features Kilby, as well as Unique Sounds of the Mountains, Old Time Country Roadshow, Whitetop Mountaineers, and the Blue Ridge Girls.
She also performs as a soloist and in duos; she was in the middle of an Australian tour with Whitetop Mountaineers duet partner Jackson Cunningham when COVID-19 hit.
A whole new world
“We’d left for Australia right before things got bad,” she says. “People were talking about it some, but it wasn’t a problem. We got there and within a week everything went bad.”
The tour was canceled, and the band had to scramble to get home. Since then, both Martha and Emily have been living the same life as most other people—staying home, avoiding others, and trying to transition their careers to a virtual world. “It’s hard up here in the mountains,” Emily explains. “The Internet isn’t always good but we’re making it work.”
It’s a tough adjustment in a region where music is normally a community affair marked by festivals, jams, and late nights playing together on porches and in living rooms. There are a few opportunities to play together outside with social distancing, but it’s not like before.
Emily and Martha, like members of the Spencer family going back decades, are also known for teaching traditional mountain music throughout southwestern Virginia and neighboring counties in North Carolina. Emily has taught music in elementary schools, string bands, colleges, and the Junior Appalachian Musicians, an after-school program in several counties in the mountains, for about 40 years. She is especially known for her work with the Albert Hash Memorial Band, a pioneering sting band and music education program in Grayson County schools. Since COVID, Emily has transitioned to teaching online.
“When we shut down in the spring, I was teaching dulcimer, and when we went online, they were already familiar with what was going on, so it went okay,” she says. “This is going to be a little bit different because I’m teaching banjo online. I’ve got one beginner and one advanced student so far. I’m not sure how that’s going to be.”
Like her mother, Martha is adjusting to teaching online. Also an instructor with the Junior Appalachian Musicians, she teaches traditional mountain music as part of a wide-ranging curriculum. “Just people learning traditional music,” Martha explains. “I teach fiddle and dance, but they offer cooking, different genres of music, crafts…. It’s been going online since April.”
Reflecting on several months of teaching and performing online, Emily concludes, “It’s different, but it’s better than not.”
Like most of us, they are trying to find the positives amid all the change. The upside of the remote-concert scene, Emily explains, is that she gets to see musicians she’d never been able to watch before.
“We play so much I haven’t gotten to see a lot of live shows, so I’ve gotten to see a lot more music virtually now. And it’s always good to learn something new,” she adds. “But it doesn’t really take the place of getting out and playing.”
Richmond Folk Festival
Martha sees a similar silver lining at this year’s Richmond Folk Festival—being able to watch more musicians than she usually does when she performs at the festival.
“I’ve played the Richmond Folk Festival four or five times and that’s my favorite part,” she says, “getting to see all the different performers and all the different genres of musicians.” Usually, she spends most of her time performing and teaching workshops. She looks at the schedule to pick out performers to watch when she does have free time, but she is never able to see them all. The Richmond Folk Festival virtual celebration will give her an opportunity to watch more of her fellow performers.
“There are good things about all of this virtual music if you look for it, but no, of course it’s not the same as playing in person, especially in mountain music where the energy between the musicians and the dancers is so much a part of it,” Martha explains. “But I think it’s good to keep people’s spirits up, and it can be a good way to reach out to more audiences.”
Mother-daughter team
Since Emily and Martha only live about five minutes from each other, they’ve been able to play together off and on throughout the summer. In a way, it’s easier to work with family than with other people, as Martha sees it, because you’re a lot more tolerant and understanding of your family.
Both mother and daughter write songs, and they play traditional tunes as well—what Martha describes as “just music passed down through the generations.” For the Richmond Folk Festival’s virtual celebration, they’re planning a mix of at least one original by Martha and several traditional Appalachian songs.
Even though Emily is the family matriarch, she knows her daughter’s talent and passion for the tradition well enough that she doesn’t tell Martha what to do when they’re working together.
“She might tell me more than I tell her,” Emily laughs. “It’s a collaboration and it’s rewarding for both of our kids to have taken up music. A lot of times it seems it’ll skip a generation so it is really rewarding to see them carrying it on because it is such an important part of life here.”
Read more about Emily and Martha Spencer
Emily and Martha Spencer will be one of the new musical performances live-streaming during the Festival, October 9-11 at RichmondFolkFesitval.org, the Richmond Folk Festival’s Facebook page, and the Richmond Folk Festival on YouTube