Sep 17
by Beth Newberry
A big ol’ party celebrating music from Eastern Kentucky is set to happen this Friday and Saturday in the heart of Louisvile’s urban, Clifton neighborhood. Read more
By Niki King
This February, I had the honor of seeing Saro Lynch-Thomason, an Appalachian activist and musician, perform Blair Pathways, a traveling multi-media show at Berea College that she developed to bring attention to the historic and endangered Blair Mountain.
By Beth Newberry
At the Appalachian Studies Association conference last year, I was talking to a student from Berea College, and I told him I was from Louisville. He asked, “How do you like it there?” which is how many conversations involving ex-Apps go—finding out where the others live and if it’s a viable place to live beyond the hills. Read more
By Niki King
BRISTOL Tenn./Va. – The moment the Gentleman of the Road tour announced that it would stop in Bristol this August, I emphatically decided I would go. It appealed to me for about a dozen reasons. Read more
By Beth Newberry
The video for the title track of 2/3 Goat’s EP Stream of Conscience features members of the New York City-based band standing knee-deep in a stream in the mountains of Central Appalachia. Lead singer and mandolin player Annalyse McCoy belts: “Stream of conscience hear my cry / I don’t want my hills to die.”
By Niki King
The HillVille spent an afternoon roaming the streets of Atlanta’s Cabbagetown, a historically Appalachian community, talking to old-timers and newcomers alike about the mountain ways that have manifested here. What emerged was the story of a people and a place in transition and a musical tradition that will not die.
by Marianne Worthington
Marianne Worthington, who reviewed the autobiography Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin and Benjamin Whitmer for The HillVille, interviewed writer Ben Whitmer about his role in helping Charlie Louvin tell the story of the Louvin Brothers in Satan Is Real. Read more
by Marianne Worthington
The first distinctive quality about Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers, Charlie Louvin’s autobiography with Benjamin Whitmer, published just months after his death last year, is the physical book itself. Readers who study this volume on an electronic reader will be denied all the corporeal pleasures of holding this cleverly designed book, which resembles a 10-cent pulp fiction classic (jacketless hardback), complete with enticing endorsements and outrageous artwork. In this case the artwork is the same as the Louvin Brothers’ 1958 classic album Satan Is Real (more on that a little later). Read more
By Niki King
In honor of our Roots ‘n Boots music issue, ex-App Oscar Parsons shares his story of how he got to be a fiddler in a bluegrass band in a flat, almost mid-western city miles away from his mountain south home. Read more
Did you miss our appearance on DJ Michael Young‘s radio show “Roots ‘n’ Boots” on WFPK last Sunday?
Fear not, the segment is now posted online for you to hear over and over again. Do we sound like you thought we would? Michael was a gracious host and led us in a great conversation about the similarities between our two platforms and our shared audiences. We also met The Country Gentleman, an icon of bluegrass radio programming, Mr. Berk Bryant who has hosted the program “Sunday Bluegrass” for more than two decades. We stopped short of asking for his autograph (Dude has a pompadour!).
Check out the interview over on WFPK’s Website and hear why we started The HillVille and what topics and stories we have planned for you!
Also, remember if you live in a desert of good radio, you can stream live both these good fellas’ shows from wfpk.org. “Roots ‘n’ Boots” is on each Sunday from 5-8pm and “Sunday Bluegrass” is on from 8-11pm.
The HillVille 