John Cowan, "The Voice of New Grass", To Kick Off Ralph Stanley Museum Mountain Music Festival 2008

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center is pleased to announce that The John Cowan Band will perform as featured guests during the Museum & Center's annual benefit concert at the Jettie Baker Center on Clintwood Main Street. This year's special concert event, sponsored by Alpha Natural Resources, is scheduled for Friday, September 26th at 6:30pm, kicking off the Ralph Stanley Museum Mountain Music Festival 2008, which will offer events to the public all weekend long on September 26th, 27th, and 28th. Reserve your tickets early for a very special evening of regional music.

Bluegrass. Newgrass. Rock N' Rollgrass. True innovators defy easy categorization and John Cowan is the ultimate innovator. His ability to move easily between music styles and blend and bend genres into creative new forms has made him one of the most significant voices in acoustic music over the past thirty years.

After making a name for himself as one of the most in-demand vocalists in the early 1970s' music scene in Louisville, Ky., Cowan rose to fame when he became the lead singer for New Grass Revival. He and bandmates Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn introduced a new generation of music fans to an explosive, experimental brand of bluegrass.

After inspiring and entertaining fans for nearly two decades, New Grass disbanded in 1990. Cowan immediately gave chase to his creative muse following it all over the musical landscape with a series of critically acclaimed albums. The Evansville, Indiana-native wrapped his expansive voice around tunes that ran the gamut from rock to soul to blues and beyond. As the 21st century began he found himself circling slowly, inexorably back to the acoustic music that he knew so well. He began to surround himself with some of the finest acoustic musicians working.

When the current line-up of his band, Jeff Autry (guitar), Wayne Benson, (mandolin) Shad Cobb (fiddle) and Noam Pikelny (banjo), came together, he knew he was on to something special. The music began to take a natural, organic turn back to Cowan's acoustic roots.

"For me it's coming back to something I know really well," he says. "It's been a coming home of sorts. We've had this line-up of the band for over a year now and the response from the crowds has been overwhelming."

Tickets to the special concert event with The John Cowan Band are $20 and may be purchased from the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center by calling (276) 926-8550 or by visiting the website at www.ralphstanleymuseum.com. Early ticket buyers receive reserved seating, so purchase your tickets early!

The Ralph Stanley Museum Mountain Music Festival also offers regional music, storytelling, workshops, kids rides, crafts, vendors, an annual quilt show, and much more all day on Saturday and during the afternoon on Sunday. All outdoor performance events and workshops on Saturday and Sunday are free and open to the public, thanks to the support of festival sponsors Alpha Natural Resources, Equitable Resources, New Peoples Bank, Johnson Chevrolet, Mountain Empire Community College's Home Craft Days and Mountain Music School, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Thompson & Litton, and Ralph & Jimmie Stanley.

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. All proceeds from the benefit concert help to support the Mountain Music Festival and future programming and ensure that the collection is properly maintained.

Announcing: Passing the Pick and Bow Program This Summer

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center will offer free music lessons to students ages 10 to 18 as part of its annual Passing the Pick and Bow program. Classes this summer begin on Monday, July 7th and will last until Friday, August 8th. Lessons will be available in the towns of Clintwood and Clinchco and include clawhammer-style banjo, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, dulcimer, and singing for beginning and intermediate musicians. Stop by the Museum & Center today for your application!

The Passing the Pick and Bow program is able to offer these music classes free of charge for Dickenson County students thanks to the generous support of the Columbus Phipps Foundation, but adults are also invited to participate. To cover instructor costs, adults will be charged a small fee of $5 per lesson.

The Passing the Pick and Bow program in Dickenson County began in 2006 as a collaborative project between the Ralph Stanley Museum &Traditional Mountain Music Center and Appalshop of Whitesburg, Kentucky. With the support of funds from the Phipps Foundation and the Appalachian Regional Commission, the program is now in its third season.

Be sure to pick up your application form today to enroll in a first-class training program that is taught by talented local musicians and is based on musical styles found right here in southwestern Virginia!

For more information, contact the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center at (276) 926-8550 or aaron@ralphstanleymuseum.com.

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center is a private, nonprofit, 501(c)3 corporation. All proceeds from programs and services help to support general operating costs and special programs.

Presenting: Whitetop Mountain Band and Reel World String Band

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center will present the Roots of Appalachian Music: String Bands on Friday, May 9th at 7pm in Clintwood's Jettie Baker Center. Special guests for this event include the Reel World String Band and Whitetop Mountain Band. Reserve your tickets early for this rare opportunity to explore mountain music with some of the region's best performers!

The Reel World String Band is celebrating its 30th year of performing, and the fiddling and singing of the band has never been better. Their new CD, Live Music, has just been released. Originals of the band fill this CD with new found spirit. Bev Futrell's song about Bill Monroe and the environment “Where Kentucky's Blue Moon Rose” is a defining moment for this band so committed to the region, its music, and its
beauty. The creative edge of this new CD shows off a stylistic diversity. Keyboardist Elise Melrood's instrumental “Karsen's Reel” is highly arranged and ethereal. Sue Massek writes of Mother Jones' daughters in the union song “Cosby,” and Karen Jones swings with her playful lyrics in “Gone Camping”.

Not only has the band been in the studio for this latest release, but Reel World continues to perform throughout the region, collaborating with writers, activists, and other singer songwriters. The band is revered as a Kentucky historical treasure having been featured in Kentucky Women: Two Centuries of Indomitable Spirit and Vision, along with musicians Loretta Lynn and Helen Humes and numerous other Kentucky celebrities, giving credence to the band's longevity and contribution to the rich musical heritage of Kentucky. Since the beginning of the Reel World, the band has spread its southern musical roots to picket lines and folk festivals. In 1978, the band was booked at Englishtown Music Hall in New Jersey, and the New York Times, fascinated by the novelty of this "all-female group" from Kentucky, featured the band in an article "In Jersey, Five Women of Bluegrass". By 1980, the band was back in the NYC area playing at the Lincoln Center. They returned in 1985 to share the stage with David Bromberg after both had appeared at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

The individual members are as diverse as the musical styles they encompass. Sue Massek learned banjo from old timers in West Virginia and Kentucky after she hitchhiked from the Flint Hills of her native Kansas. The Sears guitar of Bev Futrell hung on the wall after her graduation from a Houston High School, but by 1977, while raising a family, she tuned it up and has been singing her songs ever since. Karen Jones, a Midwest Norwegian, adopted her southern home while attending Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. She was a country dancer and began her own dance troupe in Covington, Kentucky while studying fiddle with Guy Blakeman. Sharon Ruble, college buddy of Karen, studied clarinet as a youngster growing up in Henry County, Kentucky, and in the Reel World moved from wash-tub to acoustic bass. Elise Melrood, the latest member of the Reel World, mixes her Jewish roots with honky-tonk blues piano. She met the other members of the Reel World during a tour in Virginia and now plays full-time with the band since her move to Berea. With the energy of an old-time dance, the tight vocal harmony of Bluegrass singing, the infusion of American jazz and blues styles and lyrics that reflect the politics of a changing South, Reel World is an undeniable force in the folk music scene. All in all, Reel World String Band is the essence of Appalachian grit.

The Whitetop Mountain Band is a family-based band from the highest mountains of Virginia. Whitetop, Virginia is an area rich in the old time music tradition, and this band has deep roots in mountain music. The members have done much to preserve the Whitetop region's style of old time fiddling and banjo picking and are legendary musicians and teachers of the style.

At the same time, Whitetop Mountain Band shows are very versatile and entertaining containing everything from fiddle/banjo instrumentals to powerful solos and harmony vocals on blues, classic country, honky tonk, traditional bluegrass numbers, old timey ballads, originals, and four part mountain gospel songs. Shows also include flat foot dancing. The band is well known for their high energy and charisma on stage.

Whitetop Mountain Band has performed at many venues throughout the United States from festivals to concerts, competitions, and colleges. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, National Folklife Festival, World Music Institute in NYC, Carter Family Festival, Dock Boggs Festival, World Fair, Virginia Arts Festival, Floydfest, Ola Belle Reed Festival and Merlefest are a few of the many festivals where the band has performed. They recently were featured on the NCTA Crooked Road Music tour of California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, and in September 2007, members toured the United Kingdom and Ireland playing the Cornish Bluegrass Festival and Open House Festival in addition to venues throughout England, Wales, and Ireland. In January 2008, members of the band played at the Illawarra Folk Festival and Tamworth Country Music Festival in New South Wales, Australia.

The Whitetop Mountain Band is carried on today by Thornton Spencer on fiddle and Emily Spencer on banjo and vocals. Their daughter, Martha Spencer, is a multi-instrumentalist (guitar, banjo, fiddle, bass, vocals) and dancer with the band as well. Originally from Oregon, Jackson Cunningham plays mandolin, guitar, and vocals in the band. He grew up in a musical family and has performed in several bluegrass and old time groups from the West Coast to the East. Spencer Pennington, from Warrensville, NC, plays guitar and sings in the band. Spencer has been playing for over 60 years and has been in several bluegrass and gospel quartets over the years. Debbie Bramer, originally from Michigan, moved to Fancy Gap, Virginia in the early 90s. Debbie plays bass and dances in the band.

Tickets to this special event are $10 per person for general admission and $5 for student admission. For more information about the May 9th performance, or to reserve your tickets, please visit www.ralphstanleymuseum.com or contact the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center at (276) 926-8550.

The Roots of Appalachian Music Concert Series is made possible by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities was established in 1974 to develop and support public programs, education, and research in the humanities and to relate the humanities to public issues. The VFH promotes understanding and use of the humanities through public debate, group discussion, and individual inquiry. Principal activities of the Virginia Foundation include an internationally recognized Fellowship Program, the Virginia Folklife Program, the Virginia Center for Media and Culture, a statewide network of Regional Councils, and the Grant Program. The VFH is non-profit and non-partisan and receives support from private gifts, grants and contributions, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. For more information, write or call the Foundation's office at 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-4629, (434) 924-3296, or visit the VFH online at www.virginiafoundation.org.

The program is presented as a public service. The principal aim of the program is to discuss in an objective and nonpartisan context issues of concern and interest to citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Virginia Foundation, its contributors, or its supporting agencies.

Presenting: Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center and the Jettie Baker Center will present Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers on Saturday, March 15th at 7:30 p.m. at the Jettie Baker Center in Clintwood. This event is the latest addition to the Music Along the Crooked Road concert series, which brings together the best in regional old-time, bluegrass, and gospel music to create wonderful evenings of culture and entertainment.

At his age, some artists would probably be content to take the triumph of two consecutive years of top industry awards as the equivalent of a gold watch and chain, but that’s not Larry Sparks’ style. Named as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Male Vocalist of the Year in 2004 and 2005—and as winner of both Album of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year honors in the latter for the star-studded 40—the legendary veteran debuted his latest album, The Last Suit You Wear, on May 1, 2007. Wrapping his warm yet mournful voice around a choice collection of new songs and showcasing his distinctive, muscular guitar picking with the help of a crackerjack core band and a sprinkling of carefully chosen guests like Del McCoury, country piano legend Hargus “Pig” Robbins, and IBMA Hall of Honor member J. D. Crowe, The Last Suit You Wear makes a powerful case that, when it comes to Larry Sparks’ music, the best is yet to come. As one rising young bluegrass artist put it recently, “if the IBMA were to give an award for just being ‘The Man,’ Larry Sparks would win it every time.”

A musician by the time he started high school, Larry Sparks stepped into the history books and into the heart of the music when he began making appearances as the legendary Stanley Brothers lead guitarist before graduation. With the death of Carter Stanley in 1966, he became Ralph Stanley’s right-hand man, moving into the Clinch Mountain Boys’ all-important guitarist and lead singer role and carrying on the Stanley sound even as he began to make his own contributions. Three years later, he formed his own band, the Lonesome Ramblers, and quickly became favorite of the growing audience in the “Bluegrass Belt” that stretches from the Mississippi River through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and on across to the powerhouse bluegrass area around Baltimore and Washington, DC. Developing his bluesy, signature guitar licks and resonant, soulful voice into the building blocks of a traditional, yet immediately identifiable personal sound, he produced a steady stream of gripping albums, culminating in a pair of late 70s masterpieces: John Deere Tractor, which made instant classics of, among others the title track, Allen Mills’ “Love Of The Mountains,” “The Girl At The Crossroads Bar” and Keith Whitley’s “Great High Mountain” (personally handed to Sparks by its writer), and Larry Sparks Sings Hank Williams, which revealed Sparks’ profound affinity not just for The Drifting Cowboy’s legacy, but for the enduring simplicity of classic country sounds.

While “progressive” sounds dominated the bluegrass scene in the 1980s, Sparks remained true to his singular artistic vision, training younger musicians in the discipline of the Lonesome Ramblers sound. His perseverance was rewarded early the following decade, when he released another gem for the ages in Silver Reflections (1991). The album created another set of instant classics, including “Tennessee 1949,” “Blue Virginia Blues” and “Don’t Neglect The Rose,” and as traditional bluegrass began to make a comeback, Sparks’ lonesome sound and sternly personal approach to music and career drew new and renewed admiration. By the end of the decade, he could look back on such highlights as appearances on Ralph Stanley’s star-packed Saturday Night, Sunday Morning; on Austin City Limits’ 1995 “Bluegrass Special,” where he was teamed with Stanley and fellow Clinch Mountain alumnus Ricky Skaggs; and at the 1997 Bill Monroe memorial show that resulted in the CD/DVD release The Legend Lives On: A Tribute To Bill Monroe—and by the middle of the next, the homage paid by generations of bluegrass and country stars on 40 had finally helped to carry him to the prominence he’d long deserved.

Don't miss your opportunity to see the one and only Larry Sparks live at the Jettie Baker Center on March 15th. Admission to this event will be $15.00 per person.

For more information about upcoming events in the “Music Along the Crooked Road” series, or to purchase tickets, please visit our website at www.ralphstanleymuseum.com, call the Museum & Center at 926-8550, or call the Jettie Baker Center at 926-8694.

Dr. Ralph Stanley To Serve on Birthplace of Country Music Alliance's Artistic Council

Dr. Ralph Stanley is one of several members of a newly established artistic council for the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance’s cultural heritage center.

For more information, visit TriCities.com.

Congratulations, Dr. Ralph!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Ralph!

From all your friends at the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center, we'd like to wish you a very happy birthday!

Virginia Legislature Honors Dr. Ralph Stanley

Congratulations, Dr. Ralph, on your commendation from the Virginia legislature! For a brief article highlighting this honor, visit TriCities.com.