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Event
Across The Blue Ridge "Old Sounds, New Trails" Concert Tour @ The Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC
The Blue Ridge Music Center and 88.5 FM WFDD Public Radio for the Piedmont have teamed up with Across The Blue Ridge Radio Show host Paul Brown for a series of roots and traditional music concerts in cities around the NC Piedmont.
Concerts will be presented in Mount Airy, NC (Andy Griffith Playhouse), West Jefferson, NC (Ashe County Civic Center), and Winston-Salem, NC (SECCA - Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts).
The shows will be hosted and emceed by Paul Brown & His Piedmont Pals (Terri McMurray & Craig Smith) and feature special musical guests. The Piedmont Pals and the guests bands - some of the most highly respected and critically acclaimed performers carrying on Blue Ridge Mountain Musical traditions - will present a show that highlights the musical heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains while at the same time looking forward to how these musical traditions and musical styles are being adapted and carried on by a younger generation of mountain musicians. A variety of mountain music styles will be presented and interpreted, specifically Old-Time, Bluegrass, Country Blues, Americana, and Folk.
The Across the Blue Ridge "Old Sound, New Trails" Concert Tour is funded in part by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.
Performers include: host & emcee Paul Brown & His Piedmont Pals (Terri McMurray & Craig Smith)with musical guests The Slate Mountain Ramblers + Stevie Barr & The Mastertones.
The Slate Mountain Ramblers, featuring fiddler Richard Bowman, have long been a staple both at fiddler's conventions and dances in the NW North Carolina and SW Virginia area. They are one of the finest family stringbands of the Blue Ridge.
Banjo picker Stevie Barr is a native of Galax, Va., and the son of a well known local musician and instrument builder & repairman, Tom Barr. Stevie is considered one of the shining stars of The Crooked Road: Virginia's Musical Heritage Trail. He has performed for Presidents, Governors as well as the Queen of England. The Mastertones are a talented group of young instrumentalists and vocalists that Stevie has put together to spread the old-time mountain music of Galax and the Blue Ridge Region to audiences throughout the southeast.
Paul Brown is well known in the region as a performer, collector, and interpreter of traditional music with special expertise in the Round Peak and southwest Virginia traditions of fiddle, banjo and song. Paul Brown is also a popular teacher of traditional music at camps and festivals, featuring the music's historical and cultural context. He is also known to a national audience as a newscaster, reporter and producer for NPR in Washington. He left NPR after 14 years there in 2013, and continues to produce news and arts-related stories for the radio network on a freelance basis from his Winston-Salem, NC headquarters. He is the creator of Across the Blue Ridge, which aired on NPR member station WFDD in the 1980s and 1990s and which received support then from the NC Arts Council for fieldwork and live presentation of traditional musicians.
Craig Smith is frequently called "the banjo player's banjo player". He's a California native with a stunningly deep understanding of the Bluegrass greats such as Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley and J.D. Crowe, and an equally impressive creativity all his own. A Grammy Award winner, Craig has played with Charlie Moore, Jim Eanes, Summer Wages, Boot Hill and Laurie Lewis. But he prefers to stay home in Winston-Salem, giving banjo lessons, playing music with friends, and performing each year at the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem.
Terri McMurray started playing ukulele in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin when she was about eight years old. Later, she took up guitar and old time banjo. Terri moved to North Carolina in 1982 to be near some of the great old time fiddle and banjo players and spent a lot of time learning banjo from Tommy Jarrell and Dix Freeman. She has played with many other great traditional players, such as Earnest East, Benton Flippen, Paul Sutphin, Fields Ward, Luther Davis, Verlen Clifton, and Kyle Creed. Terri was a founding member of the original Old Hollow String Band, along with Riley Baugus and Kirk Sutphin and has also been a member of the Toast String Stretchers and the Mostly Mountain Boys.
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LocationAndy Griffith Playhouse
218 Rockford Street
Mount Airy, NC 27030
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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