These pieces, by former reporters of our organization, are a look back at how The Picket covered the Appalachian Heritage Festival in honor of the 30th anniversary. No changes have been made to the original two articles.
Festival Gives Voice to Our Appalachian Heritage
By Amanda Morgan, Picket Staff Writer
John Lilly, master of ceremonies for the third annual Appalachian Heritage Festival, opened Friday night’s concert with a performance of the song “Peach Picking in George,” a quirky piece which, like the Heritage Festival itself, has everything from “geography and history to romance and yodeling.”
Lilly spoke intelligently throughout the evening as he not only provided the audience with some Appalachian history, but also much introductory information about the performers. He elaborated on Appalachian culture as a tradition in which “the creative process continues.” As the traditional music and language passes down to new artists, the younger generations will reinterpret and make additions.
Lilly played two songs–the first on the guitar and the second on the mandolin. The second piece, “Sweet Sunny South,” laments the Reconstruction era. With solitude and sharp prickly strings, Lilly presented a sad return to a home ever changed. Although appearing a bit formal in his tie, dress shirt and pants, Lilly set a mood of sweet memory, country living, love lost and the sacred hearth of home.
Author Lee Smith, a tall elegant woman from Virginia, read excerpts from her book Fair and Tender Ladies. Smith wrote the book in the form of letters written by her character Ivy to other female relatives and friends throughout the span of her lifetime. Having dedicated the reading to Dr. Linda Tate, co-coordinator of the Appalachian Festival and professor of English at Shepherd College, Smith additionally mentioned that she had Ivy born in 1900 in order to make the math easier for her when she correlated the story with American history.
The author read three letters, which contained so much color, humor and honest insight that the audience responded with great laughter and applause. Smith described Southern living through the eyes and words of a very honest growing girl. Ivy, who loves to read and learn, likes to have woodland tea parties with pancakes, Black-eyed Susan’s and fancy princess manners.
Contemplating love and courting, Ivy decides that she does want to fall in love and have babies, but not so many that she gets “titties as big as the moon.” After Ivy has a baby out of wedlock and her sister comments that she is a fallen woman, Ivy responds with the observation: “if you’re ruined then it frees you up some.” Smith’s written excerpts read aloud resurrects the oral tradition of written work meant to be read, and read in this case with a strong Virginian accent. The author provided the audience with the truth as vibrant and honest as “blood on the moon” and reminded the audience of roots, youthful imagination, the individual’s pilgrimage and the value of learning not only through poets, but through experience.
With a return to music, the stage filled with a vocalist trio of three women and the five-piece Lynn Morris Band. Although this montage of musical talent has recorded together, this was their first public performance. The signers – Hazel Dickens, Ginny Hawker and Carol Elizabeth Jones – have been highly acclaimed as some of the best female vocalists in bluegrass. The band consisted of banjo player Lynn Morris with Ron Stewart on the fiddle, Marshall Wilborn on the bass-violin, Pete Kennedy on guitar and Jesse Brock on the mandolin.
The band walked onstage playing, and with much energy, performed six songs and encore. Hazel Dickens appeared as the band’s matriarch with wise introductions to the music and quite and honorable air. Shepherd College awarded her with an honorary doctorate of Humanities last May. The harmonizing voices of the trio and the fiddle reminded me of music my Grandpa always used to play while smoking and talking about his next fishing trip down the river. The fiddle player impressed me the most with his ease with all the string crossing and tough staccato. The songs themselves told most often of love, lost, of home and of hope. Many songs had a lamenting, narrative quality, but without the sometimes trite “I lost my woman, my job, my beer, but I’ve got my dog” theme. The band generated enthusiasm and appreciation from the Frank Center audience.
After intermission, National Heritage Award recipient Walker Calhoun and the Raven Rock Dancers presented traditional songs and ritual dances of the Eastern Cherokee. In a somewhat awkward question and answer session, an unidentified man asked Calhoun questions about his Native American heredity, customs and life in the Big Cove community of the Cherokee Reservation in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina.
Calhoun sang beautifully as his family of dancers performed dances honoring the hunting of bears and beavers and in honor of the autumn corn harvest. During the beaver dance, the unidentified man and Dr.Tate played tug-of-war with the representational beaver attached to the rope. The dancers swung sticks at the beaver, emulating the hunt. Tate seemed to enjoy participating.
Overall, the evening presented a variety of art from Appalachian culture which ultimately left the audience with an identification of Appalachian home, memory, custom and love.
Appalachian Festival Brings the Mountains to Foothills
By Rachel Kidd, Picket Staff Writer
For the past six years Shepherd College has been hosting the Appalachian Heritage Festival. This year the festival was alive with many different performances as well as multiple workshops, where people could interact and learn from the artists.
The festival started on Friday, Sept. 28 with outreach activities among the community in the morning and afternoon, followed by a show case concert. Everything was kicked off with the host for the night, John Lilly, and a moment of silence for the attacks on America. But things picked up pace when he pulled out his twelve string acoustic and started playing two songs by Jimmy Roger.
Not only did he sing along to the songs, but he also yodeled. The concert had more than just music though. It also showed eased George Ella Lynn, acclaimed poet, children’s book author and novelist, as well as three students from the local community, Sarah Butler 6 grade, Teal Pindall 6 grade and Laurel Wollcott 6 grade, reading their prize winning poems entitled, “Where I’m From.” The performers this night were the yahoo, playing the best of West Virginian old-time music, and Patent Pending, a bluegrass band that mixes blugegrass with elements of gospel and “tight harmony vocals.”
There was also an impromptu flat footing performance by Jan Scopel and Kim Fony during one of the Yahoes songs. The trio invited anyone to dance if they like and Jan and Kim took up the offer willingly. The trio shared the music of West Virginia with the crowd, and really made an impact on at least some students. Sophomore Adam Clark stated, “These guys are so talented I wish I could pick a guitar like them.”
Throughout the day on Saturday there were jam sessions on McMurran lawn and numerous workshops along German Street. The first event of the day was a community sing, which has been a favorite event among the community. It is one of the events that the coordinators try to have at the festival each year. The singing was followed by a flatpicking guitar workshop at the McMurran Hall and after that an introduction to flat fotting and clogging in the Shepherdstown war memorial building. The flat footing and clogging seems to be a great success with a turnout of about 35 people all interested in learning how to dance as rhythmically as Jan and Kim from footnotes.
Jan and Kim were not the only dancers teaching a workshop at this festival. There was also a contra dance with Ponteen at the Men’s club, followed by the Yahoes at McMurran hall with the workshop “Fiddlers and Fidling in WV.”
According to the festival coordinator Rachel Meads, the highlight of the festival is the workshops on Saturday and the access to the artists. “Students feeling excitement and enthusiasm about the music they hear at the concert can access the artists and ask them how to play it and where it came from. Most places you can see the artist preform, but your access to the artist is very limited.”
Saturday night there was another showcase concert featuring John Lilly once again as the host, as well as Footnotes Dance Group and Ponteen Appal-Irish Band. There was a little bit of trouble before the performances about finding a bouzouki, but all was solved and the show went on.
The footnotes took the stage and danced a style that intertwined Native American Cherokee dance style. Playing along with the dancers was Shepherd College’s own Anne Outterbridge on the fiddle. This is the first time that a Shepherd student has actually participated in the festival as a performer instead of behind the scenes. Ponteen was the last show of the festival. Their unique blend of music is a collage of Appalachian old-time tunes and intricate Celtic music. Each musician plays his own individual and unique instrument, of which there are many. Tim Pence plays the fiddle, bouzouki and cittern, while Don Dransfield handles the Uilleann pipes, the high pipes, whistle and guitar, and sings. Tim Payton plays the rhythm guitar and leads vocals, and Elizabeth Destiny plays the bodhran, and Irish drum and the keyboards,
This festival was a great success, according to Rachel Meads, because it shows the West Virginian culture and the regional culture while dispelling the misconceptions about the West Virginian way of life and makes people feel connected to the region they live in.
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