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The Bascom Lamar Lunsford Mountain Music Festival is the only one that Lunsford allowed to carry his name. In 1928, Lunsford started the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville as part of the annual Rhododendron Festival. The festival was such a hit that the local newspaper declared it should be an annual event. The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival is the oldest continuing festival in the nation and became a model for the National Folk Festival and other festivals that followed.

As soon as the crops are canned, frozen and laid by for the fall, communities in Western North Carolina gather to sing shaped-notes from the Christian Harmony songbook. Now, over 129 years since the first shaped-notes were sung in the Dutch Cove, singers still gather to heist a tune and enjoy the riches of a D.O.G.

Jeremy Pinnell seems to find himself most comfortable in settings filled with high degrees of difficulty. Find out about his life story and his remarkable third album in this episode of Southern Songs and Stories.

The English folk song “The Cuckoo,” often sung as a round or canon, celebrated the arrival of summer, recalling the sights and sounds of English barnyards and meadows. Some scholars consider the song a parody and possibly too coarse for polite society. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264. The song evolved into a more poetic form and became part of the English folk song lexicon. Give a listen to this transitional version where “she never sings cuckoo ’til summer is near.” Now that’s old-time music!

Everybody and everything has a story. What is her story, what is his story? Did you ever wonder about the cautionary messages in the fairy tales? Folklorists will tell you that story plays a very important role in human culture. Stories were used to preserve history, to teach the young important cultural lessons, and to provide entertainment

Do you know the legend of Tom Dooley? Do you know he was a real person and lived in Western North Carolina? Do you know he was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang? The ballad “Tom Dooley”, originally recorded by Frank Proffitt in the 1930’s or 1940’s became a nationwide success in 1958 when The Kingston Trio released their recording of the song.

An event and book signing brought Author Michael Almond to the campus of Isothermal Community College, which gave WNCW the chance to turn it into a Friday Feature Interview. Michael is a retired Economic Development Attorney here in North Carolina. Michael told us all about his first published book, The Tannery - a fictional story based in Wilkes County in the early 1900s that has to do with race and murder. The interview originally aired Oct. 22, 2021.

There are numerous outlandish Appalachian tales about hunting. This story, William learned from luthier and family friend, Ray Dellinger.

A lighthearted tall-tail about a fast car and even faster gas station attendant. Bruce Duncan “Utah” Phillips (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His album, Good Though!, recorded in 1973 received outstanding reviews which included, “Daddy, What’s a Train?” and “Queen of the Rails”.

Saving the Birds is a wonderful spring story for young and old about youth activism. A native of West Virginia, Donna Marie Todd trained in classical vocal performance at the renowned Peabody Conservatory of Music with Metropolitan opera soprano Marilyn Cotlow and now writes and performs a unique combination of original story woven with artful song.