John McCutcheon
October 18–20, 2019 @ Mountain Empire Community College
WISE, VA. The 48th Annual Home Craft Days festival kicks off Friday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. with the Opening Night Concert presented by the Pro-Art Association in conjunction with Mountain Empire Community College.
Seven-time Grammy nominee, John McCutcheon returns to the area to headline the concert. McCutcheon has been hailed ‘folk-music’s renaissance man’, as a master of a dozen different traditional instruments—most notably the rare and beautiful hammer dulcimer. In the past few years, he has headlined over a dozen different festivals in North America (including repeated performances at the National Storytelling Festival), recorded an original composition for Virginia Public Television involving over 500 musicians, toured Australia for the sixth time, toured Chile in support of a women's health initiative, appeared in a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in New York City, gave a featured concert at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, taught performance art skills at a North Carolina college, given symphony pops concerts across America, served as President of the fastest-growing Local in the Musicians Union and performed a special concert at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
This is all in his "spare time." His "real job," he's quick to point out, is father to two grown sons. But it is in live performance that he feels most at home. It is what has brought his music into the lives and homes of one of the broadest audiences any folk musician has ever enjoyed.
Alice Gerrard and Kay Justice open the show Friday night, along with local favorites Tommy Bledsoe, Rich Kirby, ToddMeade and Tyler Hughes. Gerrard is described as a talent of legendary status. In a career spanning some 50 years, she has known, learned from and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats and has in turn earned worldwide respect for her own important contributions to the music. Nominated for a Grammy in 2015, Gerrard is known for her compelling, eclectic songwriting, powerful, hard-edged vocals and her instrumental mastery on rhythm guitar, banjo, and old-time fiddle. A tireless advocate of traditional music, she has won numerous honors, including an International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award, a Virginia Arts Commission Award, the North Carolina Folklore Society’s Tommy Jarrell Award, and an IndyAward. In 2017 she was inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame along with Hazel Dickens. A film about her life and music ("You Gave Me a Song") has been completed and was shown at the Full Frame Festival in Durham, NC in April.
Kay Justice, of Wytheville, Virginia, is a long-time singer of Appalachian music, and her voice has been described as that of a ‘coal country angel.’ Justice grew up surrounded by music—both of her grandmothers sang at home and in church, one playing old-time banjo and the other pump organ and piano. Her own interest in traditional Appalachian music blossomed in the 1960s, and she began searching out older practitioners, learning often obscure traditional songs and ballads and to play old-time banjo. In the mid-1980s, she began singing, recording and touring extensively with the acclaimed singer Ginny Hawker. The duo taught traditional singing workshops at various music camps and recorded four albums together. She has apprenticed Helen White, of Mouth of Wilson, Virginia who performed last year at the 47th Annual Home Craft Days.
Tommy Bledsoe, Rich Kirby, ToddMeade, and Tyler Hughes are no strangers to the festival. Bledsoe and Kirby have extensive roots in Southwest Virginia’s old-time music having performed together with John McCutcheon as Rye Straw. The two have been instrumental in organizing music for Home Craft Days for over 40 years. In recent years, the two mentored Meade and Hughes, a younger generation of musicians and instructors for Mountain Empire Community College’s Mountain Music School, to take the reins of musical organizing around the festival. Combined, the four present over 50 years’ experience with the region’s music and its tradition bearers like Janette Carter, Uncle Charlie Osborne, and Ralph Stanley.
The 48th Annual Home Craft Days Opening Night Concert takes place Friday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. at the Goodloe Center on the Mountain Empire Community College campus. This concert is free and open to the public. A reception precedes the concert, beginning at 5 p.m. The festival continues all weekend long with performances and craft vendors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 20.
Category: Festival