2024 Lineup

Sheila Kay Adams and William Ritter
Sheila Kay Adams is the seventh-generation bearer of her family’s two-hundred-year-old ballad-singing tradition. Her  teachers were her great-aunt Dellie Norton, cousin Cas Wallin, and other kinfolks in the Wallin, Chandler, Norton, Ramsey, and Ray families of Sodom, North Carolina, who have so long been admired by ballad singers and collectors. She has recorded prolifically and performed at dozens of venues and festivals in the United States and Great Britain. In 2013, she received the National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. The North Carolina Arts Council honored her with the prestigious North Carolina Heritage Award in 2015. In 2020, Sheila and her daughter, Melanie Rice Penland, were awarded the North Carolina Folklife Apprenticeship grant; follow their project here. Sheila is an alum of Mars Hill University. William Ritter is a native of Bakersville, NC, and an alum of Western Carolina University.  He graduated with a degree in Technical Theatre, but spent most of his time in school studying the musical folk traditions of Western North Carolina.  In 2017, William  received his MA in Appalachian Culture and Music from  Appalachian State University.  William plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and other “string-ed things.” He is particularly interested in old mountain folkways, foodways,  humor–ever eager to swap lies, half-truths, tales and seeds.  William serves as Festival Manager for the Happy Valley Fiddlers Convention.  Recently, he has been performing regularly with Asheville musician, Tim McWilliams.  William is listed on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Traditional Artist Directory, and also received the 2019-2020 In These Mountains Apprenticeship grant to study under renowned ballad singer and storyteller Bobby McMillon.  William is the founder and owner of Song-to-Seed, which offers programming featuring Appalachian Heirloom Seeds, heirloom songs, and other traditional folkways and foodways. 

Bailey Mountain Cloggers
BMC were organized in 1974 by students at Mars Hill University (then college). The Bailey Mountain name is derived from the mountain adjacent to the college campus. This team carries on the tradition from an older championship team in Mars Hill called Bailey Mountain “Square” Dance Team. Today, the students who comprise the dance company, 25+ from 9 different states, come from various dance traditions, representing a number of ethnic and religious backgrounds. The Bailey Mountain Cloggers serve as ambassadors of goodwill for the college and the folk dance traditions of the Southern Mountains. During their 45-year history, the Bailey Mountain Cloggers have won 27 National Titles and performed throughout the United States and internationally in Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Austria, Ireland, Palma Mallorca Spain, Germany, England, France, Greece, Poland, Czech Republic,  Colombia, and the Netherlands.The Bailey Mountain Cloggers Folk Dance Company has established a national and international reputation for American clog dance excellence.

Bandana Rhythm
Rhiannon Ramsey is an eighth generation Madison County native. She began her musical journey at the age of six when she began taking fiddle lessons from Natalya Weinstein of Zoe and Cloyd. At the age of seven she became a student of Master Fiddler Arvil Freeman. He became her teacher, mentor, and dear friend. His long bow fiddle style is often recognized by others when she plays. Rhiannon made her debut at Shindig on the Green at the age of eight. She has continued to be a regular at Shindig on the Green, The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, and The Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival. Rhiannon has shared the stage with many amazing musicians while being a member of several bands including Little Creek, Rhiannon and the Relics, Bandana Rhythm, and The Stoney Creek Boys. Rhiannon’s fiddling can be heard on the documentary, The Spirit Still Moves Them, and on newly released singles from Dasher. Rhiannon continues to pass down the Appalachian music traditions shared with her as she teaches, performs, and records today. 

Laura Boosinger
Laura Boosinger has been studying and performing traditional Southern Appalachian music since she was a student at Warren Wilson College in the 1970’s. It was at WWC where she began to learn clawhammer banjo, learned how to call southern mountain square dances and attended Shaped Note Singing School with North Carolina Folk Heritage Award winner Quay Smathers. 

Laura performs solo and with her duet partner Josh Goforth. Her latest recording, Most of All, with Josh Goforth has received extensive airplay throughout the US and the UK. Laura is featured on the album “Big Bend Killing, The Appalachian Ballad Tradition”, with artists including Sheila Kay Adams, Bobby McMillon, Alice Gerrard, Amythyst Kiah, Roy Andrade, David Holt, and Roseanne Cash. The album released in the fall of 2017, won a Grammy in 2018 for Best Album Compilation! Laura sang Tom Dula (Dooley) accompanied by the Kruger Brothers and Emma McDowell. Laura serves as a consultant to the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina. She is the “voice” of BRMT’s podcast Down the Road on the Blue Ridge Music Trails. In 2017 Laura was inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame. 

Image courtesy of Blue Ridge Music Trails.

Bayla Davis and Cary Fridley
Bayla Davis is an accomplished young banjo player who has teamed up with Cary Fridley as part of the Fine Tuned Project, “a new initiative that connects seasoned musicians with a select group of emerging artists in Western North Carolina.” Cary Fridley is an Appalachian singer, bassist, and educator from Asheville, NC. Her music has evolved to embrace all styles of traditional country, blues, folk, and jazz. She is a published songwriter, recording artist, and bandleader, singing and performing in western North Carolina for over 20 years. Cary teaches old-time music at three regional JAM (Junior Appalachian Musician) programs, Black Mountain, Haywood County and Buncombe County, NC, offers Traditional Classes for Adults at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, and is a member of the Adjunct Fine Arts Faculty at AB-Tech in Asheville, NC. She plays around Western NC solo and with her band Down South and also collaborates with friends in the bands Ghost Walks and Haywood Ramblers.

ETSU Old Time Ramblers
The Old Time Ramblers are led by Roy Andrade, and are an old-time strong band from the Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Program at East Tennessee State University.

Roger Howell & Friends
Roger Howell has had a life-long passion for mountain music. He grew up near Mars Hill, on Banjo Branch, surrounded by the music of older neighbors who played traditional banjo and fiddle tunes like generations before them. He first began to play the guitar at age ten, with the banjo coming a bit later and eventually the fiddle in his mid-teens. Roger developed a keen interest in the regional mountain music of the Madison County area, picking up licks and developing his fluid fiddle style from mentors like Tommy Hunter and Woodrow Boone. He is known these days as a “Walking Encyclopedia” of fiddle tunes. In 2017, Roger finished recording almost 700 tunes from memory—a “Memory Collection,” which is housed in the Ramsey Center’s Southern Appalachian Archives.  In 2015, the North Carolina Folklore Society honored Roger with the prestigious Brown-Hudson Folklore Award for his work in preserving and celebrating regional music traditions.

Jack Womack and the Mountaintoppers
“Fiddlin'” Jack Womack is an 18-year-old fiddle player. A Western North Carolina native, Jack has made it his mission to carry on the traditions of mountain music for generations to come, and has drawn acclaim from a variety of audiences for his authentic, yet intuitive playing style. First picking up the fiddle at the age of 11, Jack has studied under many local legends of traditional music here in Southern Appalachia, including Gary Mackey and Josh Goforth, as well as his current mentor, Roger Howell. Jack recently placed 2nd in the Southeastern Junior Fiddle Championships. Jack’s band features local musicians and they aim to play the music with the rhythm and tonality that it was intended to have, all while aiming to add a youthful element to each of their numbers.

Brandon Johnson & Friends
Brandon Johnson is a mountain musician from Asheville, NC. While a student at Mars Hill University (then College), he started his quest to learn the songs, stories, and styles of mountain music that he heard all around him. Friends and mentors in Madison, Buncombe, Caldwell, and Watauga counties shared their music with Brandon. Some of his chief mentors include Roger Howell, Bobby Hicks, and  Arvil Freeman. He’s taught in the Madison County JAM program and performed with multiple bands throughout Western North Carolina. Much of his career has been devoted to studying and sharing Appalachian music and culture, and he now serves as Executive Director of the Madison County Arts Council. An award-winning mandolin player, Brandon is also proficient as a vocalist and performer on fiddle and guitar. 

Lonesome Mountain Ears
Lonesome Mountain Ears is spearheaded by MHU’s own Gary Spence, a long-time teacher of guitar and banjo. In addition to Gary, the band is made up of Lora Sepion, Mike Bradley, Jack Womack, and Martin Beckman. 

Nobody’s Darling String Band
Nobody’s Darling String Band consists of five Western North Carolina musicians. Barbara Benson on bass, Zena Rubin on banjo-ukulele, Maxine Herring on guitar and vocals, Dona Cavanagh on fiddle and vocals, and Hilary Dirlam on guitar and vocals.

Carol Rifkin & Friends
Carol’s music, dance and stories are engaging, filled with fiddle tunes and songs with themes more likely to reference hobos, moonshine, or the Great Depression than current events. She’s danced with Doc and Merle Watson (“That’s the best dancin’ I ever heard,” said Doc), Taj Mahal, toured with the early Green Grass Cloggers, recorded with Dick Tarrier, Roger Howell, David Holt, her fiddle mentor Arvil Freeman, appears in the movie “Songcatcher” and the British TV production “Down Home Appalachia to Nashville” with Tommy Jarrell and Aly Bain.  Her soaring voice is uniquely recognizable on stage and radio (WNCW/WSIF/This Old Porch) and more than 1,000 of her stories about mountain culture have been published in newspapers and magazines. With a lifelong love of roots music, fiddle contests and festivals, she co-founded and was Assistant Producer of LEAF. Recipient of two Bascom Lamar Lunsford awards for contributions to mountain culture (2013, 2016), she’s included in the 2023 Smithsonian exhibit “I’ve Endured, Women in Old Time Music.” At home she coordinates JAM kids of Henderson Co., teaches, plays, calls dances, hosts a weekly session 6-8 Wednesdays at Trailside Brewing and likes to kayak or run with Bud the Rocket Dog. 

https://frenchbroadvalleymusic.org/jam-kids/ 

John Roten
Roten has been the Master of Ceremonies at the Lunsford Festival for many years. He has also worn many hats with iHeartMedia but most often can be seen around the region in one his trademark cowboy hats. John was the host of the very popular Kiss Country Classics program, heard Sunday mornings from 8 until noon on 99.9 Kiss Country in Asheville, and was the host of Sunday morning’s WESC Country Classics in Greenville, South Carolina. Roten grew up in Western North Carolina and knows the regions and the people that live in these wonderful mountains.

Sourwood Ridge
Three Western North Carolina string band veterans make up Sourwood Ridge: Craig Bannerman (bass, vocals), Troy Harrison (banjo, guitar, mandolin, vocals), and Scott Owenby (guitar, mandolin, vocals). Each has an extensive musical history and a true love of performing traditional mountain music. They are regular performers in Western North Carolina and beyond. 

Southern Heritage
Southern Heritage was founded by Lunsford Award-winner Doug Phillips. This group of Madison County natives have met and played on Sundays for over twenty years in sessions affectionally known as “Sunday School.” In the past, Doug Phillips, Dr. David Robinson, Chris Carter and Dana Carter have formed the core of the group. Since the difficult loss of founding member Dr. David Robinson, Alex Robinson (Dr. Robinson’s son), will honor him by playing in his stead. Sammy Adams, son-in-law of Dr. Robinson, will join the group to honor his memory as well.

Suns of Stars
Orbiting around Asheville’s grateful music scene since late 2023, Suns Of Stars blends contemporary and traditional bluegrass with a high energy jam style. At its core lies the trio of Alex Bazemore (guitar), and Asheville’s own Jackson Chisholm (upright bass) and Johnny Humphries (mandolin), son of local Bluegrass legend Don Humphries. As Suns Of Stars has been gathering momentum they’ve picked up Alex Ball (fiddle/violin) and Gabe Epstein (banjo), both graduates of the ETSU Bluegrass program.  Suns Of Stars members are all hometown heroes in various musical projects around town which has led to great turnout at their shows. That, along with a massive song repertoire and growing list of original music make for a unique performance each time. 

Ballad Singers

Sheila Kay Adams
Sheila Kay Adams is the seventh-generation bearer of her family’s two-hundred-year-old ballad-singing tradition. Her  teachers were her great-aunt Dellie Norton, cousin Cas Wallin, and other kinfolks in the Wallin, Chandler, Norton, Ramsey, and Ray families of Sodom, North Carolina, who have so long been admired by ballad singers and collectors. She has recorded prolifically and performed at dozens of venues and festivals in the United States and Great Britain. In 2013, she received the National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. The North Carolina Arts Council honored her with the prestigious North Carolina Heritage Award in 2015. In 2020, Sheila and her daughter, Melanie Rice Penland, were awarded the North Carolina Folklife Apprenticeship grant; follow their project here. Sheila is an alum of Mars Hill University. 

Dee Dee Buckner
Dee Dee Buckner is an eighth-generation ballad singer from Madison County, who has carried on the tradition of her ballad-singing relatives, including her great-grandmother Dellie Norton and aunt Evelyn Ramsey. She is also the granddaughter of Morris Norton, banjo and tune bow player. She learned to clog around age 4 and at 8 was the youngest clogger for the Madison County 4-H clogging team. She is featured in the film The Madison County Project (2005).

Sarah Buckner
Sarah Buckner, a 9th-generation ballad singer from Madison County, has been immersed in music from a young age. She was featured as a toddler in “The Madison County Project” singing before she was fully talking. Sarah has continued to build on her rich musical heritage, talented in singing and playing multiple instruments, including the banjo, guitar and ukulele. She participated in the Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) Program for four years. As the daughter of Dee Dee Buckner and sister to Amanda Southerland, Sarah is also the niece of Denise Norton O’Sullivan and Donna Ray Norton. She is the great-great-granddaughter of renowned ballad singer Dellie Norton and the great-granddaughter of musician Morris Norton. Music has always been a central part of Sarah’s life and identity.

Aarionna Blu Clackler
Aarionna Blu Clackler is one of the younger members of the Appalachian ballad singers from Western NC. She is a 9^th generation ballad singer and comes from a long line of the more well-known musical families of the mountains in Madison County. She is the daughter of ballad singer Donna Ray Norton, granddaughter of singer Lena Jean Ray, cousin of Sheila Kay Adams and the great granddaughter to two of Madison County’s most renowned musicians, Byard Ray and Morris Norton. Aarionna has grown up listening to the old love songs mostly being sung by her mother and cousin, Melanie Rice Penland, as they travel around to different venues and states to perform.

Peter Gott
Peter Gott made Madison County his home in the early 1960s and when he moved here his passion for local music led him to seek out the gems of Madison County, like the Wallin, Chandler, and Norton families. He played a pivotal role in the fact that there exist recordings of the Madison County singers from the 1960s, as it was he who introduced folklorist and filmmaker John Cohen to the county. After performing for many years as part of the Cowbell Hollow Stringband along with his children and his wife, Polly, he turned his attention to teaching and to building traditional hand-hewn log cabins. He received the Lunsford Award in 2015.

Susi Gott
Susi Gott is a fiddler, singer, songwriter, tunesmith, Appalachian-style dancer, author and chef, who hails from Madison County, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Having grown up, like many of her early neighbors, in a log cabin without electricity or running water or any other conveniences, she is one of the few modern-day artists who has lived the texts of the songs she sings. With over 50 years of performance already in her pocket, Susi has played with such legends as Eddie Adcock, Mac Wiseman, Mike Seeger, Hazel Dickens, and Bill Monroe, among others. In the 1980’s, as an ambassador of American music and dance, she collaborated on tours of West Africa and South and Central America for the U.S. State Department. In 1997-98 she served as Assistant Director of East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass & Country Music Program. Throughout a 20-year stint of collaboration with European artists, Gott toured extensively for the Jeunesses Musicales de France, appeared in numerous theaters and festivals across Europe, and accompanied folk star Hugues Aufray at the Olympia in Paris. She also co-wrote the music for two televised films by Aline Isserman and won the 1996 bluegrass division of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest for her lyrics at MerleFest. You can hear her on over 20 recorded collaborations, or at your local ballad swap!

Dellene Norton
Dellene Norton is a 4th generation ballad singer. She is the maternal granddaughter of the late renowned ballad singer Dellie Norton. She has been singing all her life. Granny Dell taught her how to sing. She says: “At age 3, she would put me on her lap and sing to me.”

She has travelled to many states to share songs with people and has recorded in studios. “I love to sing. I believe it brings out the best in people. If I can make someone smile through singing, then I know I did something wonderful. When I hear recordings of my Grandmother Dellie singing the haunting ballads, I think of home. Home is Sodom Laurel, now known as Revere.”

She has recently started singing ballads again because she doesn’t want to see this great heritage end. “I feel it is an honor to keep the ballads and perform them as my grandmother did. I’m only one of a few in our family that is keeping the ballads alive.”

Donna Ray Norton
It’s hard to imagine a deeper musical heritage than Donna Ray Norton’s. Hailing from Revere (also known as Sodom Laurel) in Madison County, she is an eight-generation ballad singer, the granddaughter of fiddler Byard Ray and Morris Norton, daughter of singer Lena Jean Ray, and cousin to Sheila Kay Adams and many other prominent Madison County musicians. Norton is a highly regarded member of the younger generation of Madison County ballad singers and storytellers. She was featured in the documentary Madison County Project and was recently featured on the Grammy-nominated album Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition. Norton has performed at several regional festivals and venues, the Berkeley (California) Old Time Music Convention, the North Carolina Museum of History, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC. She received the Lunsford Award in 2005 and received the Key to the City of Hickory for her contributions to musical heritage. She will be the Master of Ceremonies at this year’s ballad swap.

Susan Pepper
Steeped in the musical traditions of western North Carolina, Pepper is a ballad singer and multi-instrumentalist who lived for a number of years in Boone and now calls Jackson County home. With a master’s degree in Appalachian Studies, Pepper has worked in many capacities with the JAM program and continues to lead workshops in traditional music, ballad singing and storytelling. Pepper also produced an album of NC ballad field recordings and wrote a play about Jackson County native and ballad singer Ethel Brown called A Singer Needs a Song. She is also a co-producer and featured performer in the Appalachian music film The Mountain Minor.

Analo Phillips
Analo Phillips was born and raised and still lives in the Laurel section of Madison County, North Carolina. He learned ballads and hymns from the old folks growing up, and is a veritable encyclopedia of local history and genealogy. View a video about Analo here.

Melanie Rice
Born in 1971, eighth generation ballad singer Melanie Rice Penland was lucky enough to grow up in Sodom Laurel during the Folk Revival Movement of the 1970s. Melanie has been singing on stage since the age of three and started singing ballads regularly at local festivals at the age of eight.  Although Melanie has learned most of the ballads from her mother, Sheila Kay Adams, she was fortunate  to have spent time with such ballad singers as Evelyn Ramsey, Brazil Wallin, Dellie Chandler Norton, and Cas Wallin. In 1994, Melanie Rice Penland graduated from Mars Hill University as one of the school’s first students to minor in Regional Studies (now Appalachian Studies), and later went on to receive an MA in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University. Melanie and her mother were awarded the North Carolina Folklife Apprenticeship grant in 2019.

William Ritter
William  is a native of Bakersville, NC, and an alum of Western Carolina University.  He graduated with a degree in Technical Theatre, but spent most of his time in school studying the musical folk traditions of Western North Carolina.  In 2017, William  received his MA in Appalachian Culture and Music from  Appalachian State University.  William plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and other “string-ed things.” He is particularly interested in old mountain folkways, foodways,  humor–ever eager to swap lies, half-truths, tales and seeds.  William serves as Festival Manager for the Happy Valley Fiddlers Convention.  Recently, he has been performing regularly with Asheville musician, Tim McWilliams.  William is listed on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Traditional Artist Directory, and also received the 2019–2020 In These Mountains Apprenticeship grant to study under renowned ballad singer and storyteller Bobby McMillon.  William is the founder and owner of Song-to-Seed, which offers programming featuring Appalachian Heirloom Seeds, heirloom songs, and other traditional folkways and foodways.

Amanda Southerland
Amanda Southerland, a 9th-generation ballad singer from Madison County, continues a rich family tradition of music. As the great-great-granddaughter of renowned ballad singer Dellie Norton and the great-granddaughter of musician Morris Norton, Amanda’s lineage is deeply rooted in musical heritage. Her mother, Dee Dee Buckner, and her aunts, Denise Norton O’Sullivan and Donna Ray Norton, have all contributed to her musical background. Amanda has been performing since she was 13, showcasing her talents at various festivals and appearing in the film “The Madison County Project.” Dedicated to preserving her family’s legacy, she actively passes down the art of ballad singing to her son.