At the 2023 Virginia Folklife Area, all eyes and ears are on Bristol
by Don Harrison
The Virginia Folklife Area at this year's Richmond Folk Festival will focus on the mountainous Southwestern border town of Bristol. That means fast cars, ingenious homemade wares, and sweet downhome music.
Split in two at the Virginia/Tennessee dividing line, Bristol is a place of legend. Countless books, essays and American Studies dissertations have been written about what happened here in 1927, when music producer Ralph Peer set up shop and first recorded seminal early country artists such as The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers; the results have been called “the Big Bang of Country Music.” Wynton Marsalis and the late Johnny Cash are two of many who have argued that any serious study of American music has to include these sounds. In 1998, the U.S. Congress proclaimed Bristol the Birthplace of Country Music and, in 2014, a state-of-the-art, Smithsonian-affiliated museum with that name was opened in downtown Bristol.
Bristol’s State Street, the main downtown strip, is also the border between Virginia and Tennessee. Photo: Pat Jarrett / Virginia Humanities
“These are people who are community-nominated, artists chosen by their peers in the greater Bristol region.””
But Katy Clune says that there's more than history going on in today's Bristol. Since she came on board last year as official state folklorist, the director of the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities has been doing a lot of field work in Bristol, which is in something of a quiet renaissance. The city was recently identified as an anchor community by Central Appalachia Living Traditions, an initiative of Mid Atlantic Arts, which invested $75,000 in folk and traditional arts in the area in 2023. The local steering committee leading the charge awarded most of these funds to musicians and craftspeople dedicated to sustaining, updating, and sharing Appalachian culture.
Those awardees will be front and center at this year's folk festival, Clune says. "These are people who are community-nominated, artists chosen by their peers in the greater Bristol region."
This year's Virginia arts and crafts area will consist mostly of awardees of these Greater Bristol Folk Arts & Culture Fellowships. Featured will be luthier KT Vandyke and instrument repair specialist Jackson Cunningham, who are also performing on the Virginia stage, and John Alexander, who makes poplar bark baskets and old fashioned toys. Visitors can also view the work of Anna Mullins, a documentary photographer who takes evocative photos of the southwest Virginia music scene. And there will be a pop-up museum of cast iron skillets and tools overseen by Katie Hoffman and Brett Tiller. Broom maker Erin Simons, weaver Jesse Halverseon and basket maker Amanda Sprinkle will also offer displays and demonstrations, as will fashion designer Stephen Curd. "He'll be bringing us into the current day with recycled and upcycle clothes he designs for his label Lavelle," Clune says.
"Bristol is not only an important place historically, it's also a dynamic region with a lot of youthful energy right now," says Jon Lohman of the Center For Cultural Vibrancy, which co-sponsors the Virginia Stage with the Virginia Folklife Program. He adds that "it's not always what we think of as traditional Appalachian art forms."
Tyler Hughes in front of the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, Bristol, VA. Photo: Katy Clune / Virginia Humanities.
On Saturday, the Center for Cultural Vibrancy's Virginia Folklife Stage will feature a special showcase called "New Sounds of Bristol," hosted by banjo and autoharpist (and recently-installed executive director of The Crooked Road music trail) Tyler Hughes. The showcase is slated to include a wide range of regional music makers, from Applachian dulcimer player Roxanne McDaniel to banjoist Pierceton Hobbs to hip-hop performer geonovah, from nearby Big Stone Gap.
Historic Variety
And how about some old time fun with a modern edge? On Saturday evening, the Virginia Stage will feature a special installment of Farm and Fun Time, a popular Bristol radio show that is also taped monthly for local public television (it recently won wider syndication to national PBS outlets). Elizabeth LaPrelle, together with her Virginia Folklife Apprentice Elsa Howell, will perform Appalachian ballads as part of the variety hour, hosted by Kris Truelsen and his house band Bill and the Belles. Multi-instrumentalist and dancer Linda Lay, last seen on the Virginia Stage with her band Springfield Exit, will also be featured on the mock transmission.
"The music we have here in Bristol isn't just music that is looking backward," says Truelsen, who is also the program director of Radio Bristol, the low-power station that broadcasts from the Birthplace of Country Music Museum and streams online worldwide. "There are a lot of really amazing musicians, both inside and outside the tradition, who are helping to keep the dialogue and narrative of this region's music and push it to the here and now."
Elizabeth LaPrelle with her apprentice in ballad singing, Elsa Howell. Photo: Pat Jarrett / Virginia Humanities.
Farm and Fun Time is a homage to a legendary live radio show originally aired on Bristol's WCYB in the 1940s and '50's. The program helped to establish the storied likes of Flatt & Scruggs, The Stanley Brothers, and Jim & Jesse, among others. When Truelsen revived the show concept for Radio Bristol eight years ago, his first guests were none other than Ralph Stanley and Jesse McReynolds. It was a torch passing, he says. "That kind of history was important to us in relaunching the program and doing a modern, updated version."
F&FT has since featured performers ranging from Del McCoury to the Mavericks to the Ingramettes. The whimsical, fast-moving show also offers up—in the style of those old-time radio hours—a farm report, heritage recipes, and live jingles for the likes of Permatile Concrete Products, Eastman Credit Union, and The Bristol Hotel, written and performed by guitarist Truelsen and the Belles (fiddler Kalia Yeagle, banjo player Aidan VanSuetendael, and bassist Andrew Small).
"I think that it's a perfect fit to bring a little bit of Bristol to the folk festival," Truelsen says. "Downtown Bristol is really thriving right now, the growth is unheard of. It feels like the renaissance of our small town coming into itself again and really owning what we've had here all along."
Start Your Engines
No serious exploration of Bristol can leave out auto racing. "The Bristol Motor Speedway is the fourth-largest sports stadium in the United States and the tenth-largest worldwide," says Pat Jarrett, media specialist for the Virginia Folklife Program. While NASCAR races the speedway, “the world’s fastest half-mile,” the adjacent Bristol Dragway is nicknamed “Thunder Valley” for the roaring engines. "It's impossible to talk about the culture of the greater Bristol area without mentioning motorsports."
The Fleenor family of Bristol—Chris, Tammy and their children Holly, Blaine and Anna—will be at the folklife area to talk gears, tread and Bristol motor history, while showing off a twenty-foot-long rear-engine dragster. "They're a great family who've been racing for decades," says Jarrett. "The kids were raised in the drag pits."
Caption: The Fleenor family, from left Anna, Blaine, Holly, Nick Wishon, Roy and Libby Waller of Rural Retreat and Chris Fleenor of Bristol photographed at the Bristol Dragway in Bristol, Tennessee on Saturday, 8/26/23. Photo by Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities
Beyond Bristol
The Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage will also offer plenty of musical fare from other parts of Virginia and beyond. Piedmont blues guitarist Gail Caesar, from Pittsylvania County, will also perform, as will Virginia Folklife perennials such as Whitetop Mountain's Martha Spencer and the Wonderland Band, Christchurch's Sherman Holmes (performing with gospel singer Cora Harvey Armstrong and an all-star Richmond backing band) and the Legendary Ingramettes, who will also conduct a workshop—"Virginia meets the Virgin Islands"—with Quelbe music specialists Stanley Jacobs and the Ten Sleepless Nights, one of this year's featured main stage artists.
VFP veteran Danny Knicey, from Loudoun County, will also return this year to duet with Chinese dulcimer virtuoso Chao Tian, and the honky-tonk stylings of the Wild Ponies, led by Martinsville's Doug and Telisha Williams, who will help to close down Saturday's offerings with a set of infectious country twang. After a long absence from the festival, Grayson County luthier and guitarist Wayne Henderson will also do a set. "Wayne hasn't performed a whole lot lately," says Lohman. "So it will be special to have him this year."
Rodney Stith. Photo: Dave Parish.
Petersburg neo-soul singer Rodney Stith will perform on Sunday, just before the Ingramettes close it all out. "We've never had anything like him," says Lohman. "He's an exciting young artist bringing back that classic Al Green kind of sound, and he'll be bringing his big band."
There will be another first for the Folklife area, which Clune and Lohman each call the "gateway" to the Richmond Folk Festival. "We will have our own beer sales this year," Clune says. "This is our second year in our new location on the hill as people enter, and we're just getting comfortable up there,” adds Lohman.
Maybe a little too comfortable. With all that it has to offer—plus beer—festival visitors may just decide to set up camp at this year's Virginia Folklife Area, and never leave.