Margaret McLeod Leef, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

James Froemel Learns The Art Of Lying

James Froemel‘s journey into storytelling has taken a lifetime. Last year, he worked with author, Liars Competition champ and professional storyteller Bil Lepp to hone his craft. Folkways Reporter Margaret McLeod Leef spoke with Froemel.

This conversation originally aired in the Jan. 26, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

From reciting Emily Dickinson in sixth grade to becoming “the biggest liar in West Virginia,” James Froemel’s journey as a storyteller has been shaped by pivotal moments and mentors. After studying theater and taking a break to focus on family, Froemel discovered professional storytelling through the award-winning performances of Bil Lepp. This sparked a new creative path, leading Froemel to win the Vandalia Gathering’s Liars Competition with his first tale.

Now a seasoned storyteller himself, Froemel recently worked closely with Lepp to hone his craft. It’s not the only thing the two have in common. Last year, Froemel received an invitation to perform at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. It’s a milestone Lepp knows well — his own career took off after his first invitation to perform there in 2000. Now, 24 years later, Froemel is following in his mentor’s footsteps.

Froemel recently spoke with Folkways Reporter Margaret Leef about his evolution as a performer and his mentorship under Lepp.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Leef: How did your love of performing start?

Froemel: In the sixth grade, we had to recite a poem for the class. I asked to recite Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody. Who are you?” It was only eight lines. The teacher said I could do it, but she could clearly tell I was just trying not to memorize much. She said if I was only going to do an eight-line poem, I had to make it a really special eight lines. I got up and did a whole scene based on those eight lines, and I got a wonderful response from the teacher and the class, which kind of gave me the theater bug.

Leef: What caught your attention when you first saw Bil Lepp perform as a storyteller?

Froemel: It was probably the first time I heard of someone being a professional storyteller. I thought, what is this? So, I looked into what Bil was doing and watched some videos. It looked like a lot of fun.

Leef: How did that experience inspire you? What did you do after seeing Bil perform?

Froemel: In 2014, I wrote my first liar’s tale and went down to the Vandalia Gathering. I jumped up and told my five-minute tale, and at the end, I was announced as the biggest liar in West Virginia.

Leef: What is a liar’s tale? And what is the Liar’s Contest?

Froemel: The Liar’s Contest is a contest that happens every year at the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, West Virginia. Anybody can come out and tell a tale. It’s really great in that folklife tradition of making art forms accessible. You just show up and sign your name on a piece of paper, and then they call you up, and you tell your tale.

Liar’s tales present something fantastic as though it were true. Most liar’s tales are told in the first person. Often, they’ll start with something really believable. A fun thing about it is that I always try to figure out where the lie begins when I listen to Bil’s tales. Some of my tales are close to true life, but everything is made up. People tell me they believe me until a particular point in the story. I tell them no, as soon as I opened my mouth, I was lying to you. None of that happened.

Leef: Can you tell me more about the first time you saw Bil perform?

Froemel: I first saw him live at the Liar’s Contest. Bil just had such a great way of engaging the audience. He told funny stories about West Virginia that dealt with culturally authentic quirks but in really positive ways. He was very comedic, and he was also such a great ambassador of the state. I really liked seeing that combination.

Leef: How did you end up meeting Bil?

Froemel: Our mentorship was through the West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program. Bil and I would most often meet through Zoom. Bil lives in South Charleston, and I’m in Morgantown. Much of our conversations were about why we tell these stories. I figured out what my voice was within storytelling—why was I telling stories, and what did I want to achieve out of those stories?

Bil was a really great sounding board when it came to working with me on my stories. He would point out technical issues and areas that were confusing or needed further exploration. I would go back and rewrite and then tell the tale again, and he would give more feedback.

He was a great guy to bounce ideas off of. He’s also a great laugher. Bil doesn’t laugh for free. You have to earn your laughs with him. You know you’ve got something good when you can get him going.

Leef: You mentioned that Bil sometimes acknowledges West Virginians’ or Appalachians’ quirks but in a positive way. I wonder if you also challenge Appalachian stereotypes in your stories and, if so, how you do that?

Froemel: I talk a lot about small town life and accepting differences. In the story I worked on with Bil, we wrote about a sign maker who made beautiful signs but was terrible at spelling. Every sign is beautiful but misspelled. It was about this idea that everybody in a small town finds their place, and you don’t have to be perfect. You can still get a positive reaction or experience if your community supports you.

The character is a wonderful sign maker. It’s just that he doesn’t spell very well. That’s the running gag, and it presented a lot of jokes within that one story. But it also conveyed that everybody in the town is accepted, no matter how different they are, and everybody is excited about anything happening there.

Something I loved about small town life was the participation. If we want a community, we all have to pitch in and make it. We must get excited about the Fourth of July festival and the Main Street parade, where we’ll get the same bubble gum thrown at us for the millionth time. We have to engage in these things.

Leef: What does it mean to you to be a storyteller? And speaking of Appalachia, a second question would be, what does it mean to you to be a storyteller in Appalachia?

Froemel: It is a very minimalistic art form. Being a storyteller in Appalachia is exciting because it is an area where folk arts are genuinely appreciated. It’s an amazing experience to be in the room with people who are so talented. Within West Virginia is a small community of storytellers. I’ve never been more than two degrees away from them. We know each other, and that’s common in folk art. You can go up to the greatest artist in a folk genre, and they’ll take the time if you ask them.

They will show you the banjo or the fiddle, for example. They want to work with you and share their art. They take that folk aspect of it, knowing that their art can only be passed down if we give it to someone else. There aren’t formal training programs for things like claw hammer banjo. It’s just people teaching one another this thing, and that’s true of storytelling. It’s just us going out and showing one another how to do this and engaging with one another in that way.

——

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Chef William Dissen Brings Appalachian Roots From Garden To Table

Food has a way of carrying our deepest memories, and for Chef William Dissen, those memories are seasoned with the flavors of West Virginia’s mountains. Now, at his James Beard-nominated restaurant, The Market Place in Asheville, NC, Dissen transforms those Appalachian traditions into award-winning cuisine.

This conversation originally aired in the Nov. 24, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Food has a way of carrying our deepest memories, and for Chef William Dissen, those memories are seasoned with the flavors of West Virginia’s mountains. Now, at his James Beard-nominated restaurant, The Market Place in Asheville, North Carolina, Dissen transforms those Appalachian traditions into award-winning cuisine.

Named “Green Chef of the Year” twice by FORTUNE magazine, Dissen has built his reputation on sustainable cooking practices and supporting local food systems throughout the Appalachian region. As a Seafood Watch Ambassador and member of the American Chefs Corps, he advocates for food policy and promotes sustainable American food culture nationally and internationally.

Folkways Reporter Margaret Leef caught up with the chef at Charleston’s Capitol Market, where he shared how his mountain roots inspired his debut cookbook, Thoughtful Cooking: Recipes Rooted in the New South.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Leef: You write about learning to garden and cook alongside your grandmother in West Virginia. What was a typical day with her, from picking vegetables to getting dinner on the table?

Dissen: One of my most vivid memories, just as a human but also as a chef, is growing up and being at my grandmother Jane’s farm in Sandyville, West Virginia. [My grandparents] lived up in the holler, and they had a nice house and garden right along the creek side. Their garden had bees to pollinate the garden, and they had a canning shed adjacent to the garden and a small barn.

One of my most vivid memories was peak summer, probably mid-August — you could feel the humidity hanging in the holler. And my grandmother said, “All right, Billy, go get some corn.” And I remember running out in the field and waddling back as a young kid, arm full of corn. And we sat on the front porch and shucked it. And she had a pot of salt water going on the stove, and we boiled it. I remember slathering it, probably with Country Crock, and putting some salt on it. And my head exploded off my shoulders, and it was like, I’ve never tasted corn before until this day. It was really inspiring because I felt like I learned something about food and connection to nature and why things taste a certain way when they’re grown locally, fresh and ripe. And that didn’t really hit me until later in life. It’s a moment I think back about quite a bit.

Leef: So, those experiences clearly shaped how you cook today.

Dissen: One hundred percent. Fast forward — I’m very fortunate — I went to culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and when I was there, 13 master chefs were teaching. To put it in perspective, there are only about 65 [master chefs] in the world. So, I was very blessed to have some of the best chefs teaching me. I remember this one French chef, and I won’t imitate his accent, but he said, “If you want to be the best chef, you have to use the best ingredients.”

At the time, he was using things like foie gras, truffles and caviar. As I formulated my palette as a chef and the recipe repertoire that I wanted to use, I had an “aha” moment, really regressing back and remembering that experience at my grandmother’s farm and thinking, “You know, if I want to be the best chef, I need to use fresh ingredients, because fresh is best.”

Leef: You’ve written your first cookbook. I’m wondering why it’s important to you to have written this cookbook. And also, why now?

Dissen: For years, I was trying to figure out what my story was to tell. Being from Appalachia, we’re all storytellers here, right? There’s a lot of written history and a lot of verbal history. But, for me, the story was about the connection to our community, to the heritage we have here in Appalachia, and to the connection we have to the earth.

I’m not a Greenpeace hippie by any means, but what I learned from my grandparents was about the importance of taking care of nature and taking care of your community. For them, they didn’t poison their fields with chemicals because they wanted to be able to till and grow. There were weeds in the fields, and they said, “Those weeds are good, we till them back into the field, they add nutrition into the soil.” Honey bees to pollinate the garden … These were things that I didn’t understand as a child.

If you look at that connection to nature, you realize it’s all very cyclical and connected. After my travels, educating myself, and finding my way back to Asheville and Appalachia, I started having these “aha” moments. I love city life. I love the energy, the noise in the city and the people. But when you get into the mountains, you can get lost in the woods and take a hike and listen to a stream or waterfall. There’s this connection you have that you don’t get anywhere else.

The beauty of Appalachia, really, was kind of calling me home. Finding myself back there, it felt like I had this story to tell people about that — from being able to travel around the world and travel around the country. People have these ideas of who we are as Appalachians — hillbillies or rednecks, we’re all related to one another … But I think when they get here, they visit and meet people like us. They realize that we are some of the best people around — in our culture, in our history — and our heritage is really deep.

Chef William Dissen’s debut cookbook is arranged by season and fresh, local ingredients.

*Photo Credit: John Autry*

Leef: I noticed the word “thoughtful” in the cookbook’s title. Can you tell me more about that? What do you mean by “thoughtful cooking?”

Dissen: It’s like peeling the layers of an onion back. There’s this idea of cooking with intention, right? Planning a meal out? We have a French term called “mise en place,” and it literally means everything in its place. But it’s also the prep you make, the things you cut and prepare as you want to cook in the kitchen.

What’s also thoughtful [is] thinking about who you’re getting your food from. How are they growing the food? Are you growing the food? What are you doing to take care of the earth? Are you doing things that help the community around you? And then, even bigger picture … I believe in sustainability very deeply, but I’m not out hitting people over the head with it. I believe we should implement those ideals into our day-to-day lives. Because if we want our next generation, and the generation after that, to have nice things like we have, we have to take care of them. And this idea that we can all do little things by eating and cooking thoughtfully. Go to the farmers market. Talk to the growers growing delicious and nutritious food and try it. Even if you’re scared of an ingredient, you know what? Be brave. Go out and try something new.

Leef: What would you say are the tastes of Appalachia? How would you describe what Appalachian cuisine tastes like?

Dissen: I was really fortunate — few years back, I got asked to do a TV show with this very famous chef named Gordon Ramsay. And he asked me to be an ambassador for his TV show, to show him through central Appalachia and the Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains. I took him out, and we went foraging, and we went fly fishing and cooked a lot of Indigenous ingredients and Cherokee dishes. After the show, we sat down and talked. He told me he had traveled the world ten times over. He said Appalachia reminded him of places like Tuscany, Italy, that are world-renowned for their cuisine, the heirloom ingredients, the heritage cooking techniques and the sense of place. He said he had never been to a place like this. He couldn’t believe the world wasn’t just putting us all up on a pedestal.

Leef: You serve Appalachian-influenced cuisine at your restaurant in Asheville, The Market Place. I’m sure people come to that restaurant because they are seeking a taste of home, and then you have people who’ve maybe never tasted some of these dishes or flavors. What reactions do you get from people inside Appalachia and people passing through from outside Appalachia?

Dissen: You know, I always joke the Appalachian “gateway drug,” or gateway ingredient, is ramps. People say, what’s a ramp? I say it’s like a wild onion, a wild garlic that grows in the forest. It’s not cultivated, and it only grows for a month of the year. We try to get it, pickle it, preserve it, and keep it to have that flavor throughout the year. People taste it, and they say this is a really delicious flavor, especially if you’re a garlic fan. Ramps are like garlic on steroids.

So there are flavors of wild food, foraged food and wild mushrooms. There are the flavors of campfire cooking and rich, hearty dishes that stick to your soul. Those are things that people talk a lot about.

Southern food [is] quintessential American cuisine. But Appalachia is the backbone of the South. And our cuisine really is wrought in our history and heritage. Not just of modern America, but also historically, of Native American cuisine, that hunter-gatherer background, and food of necessity.

Leef: I’m thinking about Thanksgiving. Obviously, in Asheville, that’s going to look different for a lot of people. I’m also wondering what some of the Thanksgiving dishes you have around your table are.

Dissen: I worked with Slow Food USA for one of my favorite ingredients. They have the Ark of Taste, where they preserve different heirloom ingredients. One of them is really near and dear to me: the candy roaster squash — this type of hearty squash pumpkin that was cultivated originally by the Cherokee of central Appalachia. It’s this long, banana-looking squash shape. And the flavor is really delicious to me. So, we love to make a candy roaster squash soup out of it. Roast it off slowly, nice and caramelized, and cook it slow and low into really delicious pureed soup.

I also love stuffing. Many people don’t like it, but I love good, crispy, chewy stuffing. And I love mushrooms. This time of year, a wild mushroom called a maitake, or a hen of the wood mushroom is in season. We love to roast it and fold it into our stuffing. To me, it adds a depth of flavor.

I also love soup beans and cornbread, which are quintessential Appalachian cuisine. But over Thanksgiving, just setting a meal together, and regardless of your background or culture, I think that idea of setting the Appalachian table and sitting with your family and sitting with your friends and sharing a meal is really quintessential to who we are as a culture and community.

——

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Chef Iocovozzi Brings A Taste Of The Philippines To Asheville

Asheville, North Carolina has an eclectic dining scene and one of its “hidden” gems is Neng Jr.’s. It serves elevated Filipino cuisine in a little restaurant that’s tucked away in an alley on Asheville’s artsy West Side. Folkways Reporter Margaret McLeod Leef visited and brings us this story.

This story originally aired in the May 5, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

The first thing I notice about Neng Jr.’s is its lively decor. There’s a green-tiled open kitchen, fire engine red countertops, and turquoise walls. Adorning the space are items from Chef and owner Silver Iocovozzi’s personal life — stuffed animals and well-worn books, trinkets from Iocovozzi’s mom for good luck, a quirky telephone in the shape of a red high heel and a vibrant painting of Iocovozzi’s husband, Cherry.

But, what I’m here for is Iocovozzi’s popular Filipino creation — the adobo.

“To me, it is like a quintessential Filipino dish, and it evokes all those flavors,” Iocovozzi says. “I think a lot of people get their minds blown by it, and I love that.”

Inside the kitchen, Iocovozzi cooks in a high-powered wok over an open flame. The adobo is served with duck on the menu. But today, Iocovozzi makes the adobo with pork cheeks that he has on hand. The adobo sauce simmers while he prepares a bitter melon relish to set off the adobo. The dish has a uniquely Filipino flavor profile.

“I would say it’s really a kind of a tangy cuisine, lots of vinegar and lots of sour,” Iocovozzi says. “There’s a lot of tart aspects to it.”

Silver Iocovozzi, chef and owner of Neng Jr.’s.

*Photo Credit: Will Crooks/Courtesy*

The bitter melon, a spiky cucumber-looking gourd, is almost too tangy on its own. But paired with the rich and silky adobo, my mouth waters for more. The dish is an example of the taste and technical skill Iocovozzi is known for.

Neng Jr.’s was recently nominated for a James Beard award, and Iocovozzi was named one of Time Magazine’s Next 100 People to Watch. He traces the start of his cooking journey back to his mother. He has fond childhood memories of her cooking.

“She would sit down on the ground with this really heavy cutting board and tenderize meat and marinate it, and it was a really simple marinade. It was just soy and oil and garlic and onion and black pepper. But it tasted so good to me,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi and his mom loved the soy, garlic and onion flavors. His mom is Filipino, and his dad was from North Carolina.

“They met in Japan. My dad was stationed there; he was a Marine. My mom, a Filipino woman, was working in Japan at a karaoke bar. She was an entertainer,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi’s parents met and married, and his mom immigrated to the United States. His mom was the only person of color in her new family. Staying connected to her Filipino heritage was difficult.

“My mom was really seeking some comfort of home and realizing she couldn’t find that representation of Filipino food or cooking, or even that warmth of culture that Filipinos bring,” Iocovozzi says.

But she found a way to share her culture with Iocovozzi.

“I would go with her to the Asian market and get all these ingredients that she could tell me about and get excited about. Because I think that was like the little amount of representation that she could share with me,” Iocovozzi says.

It wasn’t until visiting Manila and Batangas in the Philippines that Iocovozzi fully understood his mom’s culture and the link between food and celebration. “I grew up between Manila and eastern North Carolina, where my grandparents lived. And [I] really had a lot of experience in Batangas. Batangas is coastal in the Philippines where we would go visit. And because we were in town, they would just bring a reason to have a fiesta and a big celebration around food,” Iocovozzi says.

Those fiestas often centered on butchering and cooking a whole hog. “This was the first time I’d seen a pig be sacrificed. A lot of the cookery in Batangas is no electricity, no gas, just fire. And to see the way … these people that are living in these provinces cook with fire and break down pig and really know how to kill a pig with their hands — it’s an experience I’ll never forget. And also understanding how much I can appreciate food and where it comes from,” Iocovozzi says.

Understanding where food comes from — and how to prepare it — was a quest that took Iocovozzi from the Philippines to the American South and around the world in the restaurant business.

He got his start in Asheville as a dishwasher in 2011 after a friend suggested he’d like the city. Soon, he attended culinary school in the area and worked as a chef at Buxton Hall BBQ — an Asheville institution — before eventually cooking at award-winning restaurants in Tokyo, New York and Grand Cayman Island.

In 2020, he returned to Asheville to build his own community around food. Within two months, he secured a building with a takeout window for what would later become Neng Jr.’s. When designing Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi was as intentional about the space itself as the menu.

“I just want to create a space that shows some representation for those that have been seeking it and know that it can exist,” Iocovozzi says.

At Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi created a space that welcomes people of all ethnicities, genders, and orientations — just like Iocovozzi’s mom made room for her culture when she moved to the States. “I’m putting myself out there and my heart,” Iocovozzi says, “It’s really a passion project.”

The exterior of Neng Jr.’s, located in a narrow alley in Asheville, has a brightly painted mural.

*Photo Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef /West Virginia Public Broadcastin*g

And it was also a way to honor his mom, whose Filipino nickname was Naneng.

“It’s an affectionate name for a young girl. And I don’t, you know, identify as that, but … Neng Jr.’s is an iteration of that nickname stemming from my mom’s nickname. Because I’m her mini-me,” Iocovozzi says.

Iocovozzi shares his story through Neng Jr.’s, embodying the flavors, warmth and joyfulness of home. “I don’t think of myself as just like a restaurant in Asheville. I think of Neng’s as a restaurant in the world,” Iocovozzi says. “It’s so important to be a Filipino restaurant in Asheville because the people need to know what this food tastes like. And also understand this level of hospitality that comes from a Filipino.”

The Filipino traditions in Chef Iocovozzi’s family history continue to shape the restaurant. Iocovozzi is in the process of building a stage modeled after the original karaoke bars in Japan, like the one where his parents met.

——

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia.

Asheville Luthier Honors Family Trade With Environmental Focus

Elizabeth ‘Jayne’ Henderson is a notable luthier who is following in the footsteps of her father, famed guitar builder and musician, Wayne Henderson. Jayne is maintaining the family tradition, but doing it her way.

This story originally aired in the Jan. 28, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On a recent afternoon in Rugby, Virginia, Wayne Henderson is in his workshop alongside his daughter, Jayne Henderson. Wayne checks out a guitar Jayne recently built.

“Let me look at it and play on it a little,” Wayne tells Jayne. He plays a few cords. “Very nice sound and tone.”

Wayne Henderson tests a guitar his daughter, Jayne Henderson, recently built in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia. *Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Coming from Wayne, this is high praise. Wayne has made guitars for everyone from Vince Gill to Eric Clapton. He charges about $5,000 for a new handmade guitar, but they can fetch much more on eBay and other secondary markets.

He taught his daughter, Jayne, to build guitars, though it was not something she learned growing up. Jayne said back then, she was not interested in hanging around her dad’s shop. There were too many other people vying for his attention. It wasn’t uncommon for fans to hang around.

“I wanted to be special. I wanted to feel like he was my dad and not Wayne Henderson, this is the guy that everybody just reveres and thinks is just the coolest,” Jayne said. “I was like, I don’t want anything to do with this because I don’t want to have to stand in line for my dad’s attention.”

So Jayne followed her own path. She attended college and earned a master’s degree in environmental law and policy. However, she soon realized her nonprofit salary was insufficient to pay off her student loans. So she asked her dad for help.

“She said she had this loan, student loan going on, I guess like all kids that go to school do,” Wayne said. “And she said, ‘I’d love to pay this loan.’ And said, ‘I see what your guitars bring. Would you make me one that I could sell on eBay?’”

But Wayne had another idea.

“I told her, ‘What you need to do is make it yourself.’ I told her, ‘I’ll help you. I’ll give you my best wood. It’ll be one of my guitars, which means it’s got to be done exactly right. And I’ll probably make you do stuff over,’” Wayne said.

Jayne was reluctant at first.

“When I started that first guitar, I thought it’d be terrible. I’m like, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ Because, you know, they sell for a lot of money on eBay, and I gotta pay back these law school loans,” Jayne said. “And what happened was I just, I loved it so much, and I got to stand next to him instead of in line to be the next groupie or whatever. I got to stand there with him, and he showed me how to do things.”

Working side-by-side with her dad, Jayne began to develop a common interest with Wayne. “It was the relationship that I got that I never really got to have growing up,” she said.

Turns out, Jayne had a knack for building guitars. That first guitar sold for $25,000, putting a hefty dent in the loans. It wasn’t long before Jayne was hooked. Within about six months, she quit her environmental nonprofit job to build instruments full-time. But Jayne didn’t leave her environmental convictions far behind.

Typically, guitars are made from imported woods like Brazilian rosewood and mahogany. They’re not always environmentally sustainable. But Jayne makes hers from locally sourced and reclaimed wood. She also makes ukuleles from smaller scraps of wood that might otherwise be discarded.

“My passion lies more in preserving the natural world. I want to do that. I get to use this platform to push the things that I like,” Jayne said.

Jayne gets wood from a few different sources. One is just around the corner from her home studio in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s called Scrounger’s Paradise, a 50,000-square-foot wholesale wood shop filled with stacks of flooring, decking, tile and furniture.

Jayne Henderson inside Scrounger’s Paradise in Asheville, North Carolina, with owner Mark Olivari. Mark keeps tabs on the wood Jayne might like and shows her when she visits.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

On a recent visit to Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne greets owner Mark Olivari as she walks inside, past the stacks of cut and planed wood that come from all over the world. Mark keeps tabs on wood that he thinks Jayne might want. He directs Jayne to a stack of wood in the back corner of the warehouse.

“Is that beautiful or what? That’s original chestnut before the blight came into North Carolina,” Mark said.

Jayne likes the wood. She said it reminds her of white oak. Jayne taps the wood to see if it has a good tonal quality.

“It doesn’t ring quite like Brazilian rosewood, but the density is really similar,” Jayne said. “This stuff has more of a bell-like [sound].”

Choosing the right wood is just one part of Jayne’s process. After visiting Scrounger’s Paradise, Jayne returns to her home workshop, where she uses a jeweler’s saw to carve an abalone shell to make a pearly decorative inlay on a guitar neck. Jayne is known for her custom inlay. It is one part of how she meticulously designs each instrument for the individual who will play it.

An abalone shell sits on Jayne’s work bench with a photo book of her work. Jayne often reaches for her pink polka-dotted pocket knife when carving wood for a guitar.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“I like getting to know people. I like to hear their stories — where they’ve walked, what they’ve done. I love that. So I really try and focus on the person, the human that is asking you for something,” Jayne said.

Each guitar takes a little over a month to build. Jayne said making guitars has become more than her livelihood.

“I don’t do this because I want to make a guitar. I do this because I can’t not do it. And because it brings me so much joy to use my hands, and this is the way with which I can do it. But I love that I get to do something that makes somebody really happy,” Jayne said.

It has been fourteen years since Jayne built the first guitar with her dad. She no longer needs Wayne to oversee her work, but she often does her finishing work in his workshop in Rugby, Virginia, where she spent weekends growing up.

Jayne Henderson begins work on a guitar neck.

*Credit: Janie Witte*

“My stamp in my guitars has ‘EJ Henderson,’ where my Dad’s says ‘WC Henderson.’ They both say ‘Rugby, Virginia’ on them, and I never changed that,” Jayne said. “No matter where I move, it’ll always say that because my heart’s here, and my dad’s here.”

Wayne is proud of Jayne’s work and appreciates it all the more as a luthier.

“I’ve just always had that interest, you know, in guitar making. And you can imagine your youngin doing it, too. There can’t be nothing much more exciting or better than that,” Wayne said.

Sometimes, when Jayne visits, Wayne coaxes her to play music together. Though, Jayne said she’s not the musician, her dad is.

Back in Wayne’s studio in Rugby, the father-daughter duo tune their instruments and play “Freight Train,” a song written by North Carolina musician, Elizabeth Cotton. Wayne plays a guitar Jayne made for the songwriter and guitarist Doc Watson, another North Carolina musician who was also a close family friend of the Hendersons. Doc died a week before the guitar was finished.

“This is a guitar she made for Doc. It’s made out of white oak,” Wayne said. The white oak is the first sustainable wood Jayne used to build a guitar. According to Wayne, Doc said using environmentally sustainable wood for his guitar was just fine.

Jayne plays one of her dad’s favorite instruments — a ukulele she made for him as a birthday gift. The ukulele has special meaning for Jayne.

“The present was, ‘Look what you did for me,’” she said. “You know, ‘See what you showed me, that I can make something really special and that’s just ‘cause of you.’”

As “Freight Train” ends, the chords linger briefly in the shop. Each strum tells a tale of family legacy, sustainability and heartfelt dedication to luthiery and to each other.

Wayne Henderson and his daughter Jayne Henderson outside of Wayne’s shop in Rugby, Virginia.

*Credit: Margaret Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

——

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

North Carolina’s Amy Ritchie Shares Her Love For The Art Of Taxidermy

For some people, taxidermy – preserving and mounting dead animals – can seem a little bit creepy. But for others, taxidermy is a serious art form that’s growing in popularity. One expert practitioner in Yadkin County, North Carolina enjoys sharing her work with others.

This story originally aired in the May 28, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

I felt a little apprehensive as I walked up to Amy Ritchie’s workshop in Hamptonville, North Carolina. Especially after hearing the message on her voicemail.

Ritchie’s confident voice was bright and clear on the recording. “Hi! You’ve reached Amy of Amy’s Animal Arts. I’m probably skinning a bobcat or sewing up the neck of a giraffe. Please leave me a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can stop and pull off the rubber gloves.”

Ritchie is an award-winning taxidermist. Her studio is located in her four-bay garage. It’s large, bright and airy…with about 150 deer antlers hanging from the high ceilings. Everything is neatly organized. On one side, power tools hang on a wall next to shelves filled with paints and adhesives.

Over 150 deer antlers hang overhead in Ritchie’s studio. One by one, they will be paired with their corresponding deer capes (the head, and neck of the deer), which are stored in Ritchie’s freezer.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef*/*West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The other side of the studio is a veritable zoo. A few giraffes, lions, armadillos, bears, coyotes and foxes in suspended motion. They seem so vital, I couldn’t help but reach out and touch them. They felt soft and real.

“I’m really passionate about taxidermy,” Ritchie said. “I think at my core, I just love it. It’s what I was meant to do.”

Ritchie grew up in rural North Carolina, homeschooled by her mom. She said that gave her plenty of time to follow her interests.

That included animals… particularly dead ones.

“When I was 13, I found a roadkill snake and wanted to turn it into a belt,” she said. “I asked mom if I could have a knife from the kitchen to skin the snake and she said, ‘Just please wear gloves so you don’t get a disease.’”

It was a king snake with a white-chain pattern. Ritchie taught herself how to skin and tan it.

“I was able to find the information online, how to use glycerin and some different products from just the pharmacy to be able to tan that…And there I was… [wearing a] snakeskin belt,” she said.

Ritchie admitted she was an unusual child with unusual interests.

“I like being unique. I mean, why be like everyone else? And I never have been.”

Ritchie said her dad also supported her interest in taxidermy. He had a second job delivering newspapers early in the morning.

“He would find all the fresh roadkill,” Ritchie said. “So that’s how he would bring home raccoons and possums and things for me to practice skinning.”

When she was 16, Ritchie’s dad encouraged her to enter a national taxidermy competition. Her entry was a red squirrel mounted on a bed of leaves as if it was sleeping. Ritchie competed in the open division. And even though she was a novice, she walked away with third place.

She’s gone on to win many awards over the years. Now at 36, she’s a highly skilled taxidermist in demand. She makes her living mounting animals for hunters and collectors.

Ritchie continued our tour. She showed me what she was working on.

”We got some of the actual messy stuff going on. This is a wild boar someone brought in just yesterday.”

The bones and bulk of the meat had already been removed. Ritchie started by preparing and tanning the hide. She grabbed a knife.

“We have to take this meat off. And so I’ll hold the knife and work it. Down like this… it’s fascinating and kind of satisfying to slowly shave this off,” she said.

Ritchie is small, just over five feet tall. She wrapped the exposed hide tightly on the edge of her work bench and scraped the knife along the boar’s hide in rhythmic motion.

“I have to press down with this knife and shave this down,” she explained. “So, big job right here.”

At this stage, the hide was stiff and unwieldy.

“It’s hard. I can’t even fold the hide. By the time I’m done, it’ll be soft and I can. It will not take up as much space in my freezer.”

Amy Ritchie braces herself against a workbench as she shaves meat off of a wild boar hide before she wraps it tightly in a bag to store in her freezer.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The freezer. It’s the part of the tour I was most curious about. Ritchie has seven chest freezers. She opened a freezer lid, and I pulled out one of about 50 gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Inside was something called a deer cape. It was compact. It felt like a frozen roast.

“Yeah, it’s just the skin, and it’s the head and the shoulders of the deer and wrapped up really tight.”

After Ritchie treats the hide, she crafts the animal shape. She carves muscles, veins and bone mass out of a foam mold like a sculptor. She sands the mold, applies adhesives and wraps the skin around it. Then she smooths out irregularities before sewing it up with artfully hidden stitches. She uses glass eyes.

“You got to detail the eyes so that they look realistic,” Ritchie said. “So they have expression… those things that separate, you know, just hide a similar from an artistic taxidermist.”

Ritchie says when she was starting out, she didn’t know many other women in the field. But she says that’s changed in the past few years. And she’s helping to train a new generation through her Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Ritchie is also training a new generation through an apprenticeship. Ritchie introduced me to her first apprentice, Mariah Petrea as she helped Petrea carve a foam mold with a deer mount. They’ll sand and apply adhesives before pulling a deer cape onto the form.

Mariah Petrea carves a foam mold to make the shape unique to the deer cape that she’ll wrap on the mold with adhesives.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Petrea started out as a customer. She came to Ritchie’s workshop a couple of years ago to drop off a deer to be mounted and the two hit it off. Mariah was a little uneasy with the work at first.

“Being an animal person myself, I was like, ‘Oh, my heart’s going to get in the way. Will I be able to clean this cat? Because it looks like my pet cat in a way just a little bit bigger,’ and you get to come to terms with things,” Petrea said. “What’s lying there, it can’t feel anything. And after you do it once, it’s just a motion you go through.”

Now Petrea works part-time with Ritchie and hopes to start her own taxidermy business. She says her favorite part is breathing life into her subjects.

“It has been amazing how you can make a piece of foam with some clay look realistic,” Petrea said. “And that is the start of everything, just taking something that looks lifeless and making it look realistic. When you saw it out in the woods or a picture.”

Like Mariah, most of Ritchie’s clients are hunters who bring in deer trophies or bobcats. Ritchie says she rarely hunts — though she doesn’t have a problem with it as long as the animals are legally obtained.

“I’m here in the South where really, if you haven’t seen a deer head or know what taxidermy is, you know, how are you even a Southerner?”

But Ritchie’s most prized mounts are from a trip she made to Africa. It includes the head and neck of an adult giraffe looming over ten feet tall in her studio.

Hunting giraffes is controversial. Ritchie says the animal was an older male that was beyond breeding age and had been attacking younger giraffes. She also has a mother and baby giraffe that were donated by a zoo after they died of natural causes.

Amy Ritchie poses with a baby giraffe donated by a zoo after it died from natural causes. Ritchie enjoys sharing her animal menagerie with others, especially kids who haven’t been able to see some of the animal types before.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Ritchie enjoys sharing her collection with others, especially kids.

“They come in here and they’re like wow, mom and dad, what’s that? What’s that? And I love to tell them, it’s, you know, this animal that you’ve never seen before,” Ritchie said. “And it really gets you more up close than you would even in most zoos… And how many kids get to pet a baby giraffe?”

Ritchie says she’s constantly looking for new ways to expand her craft. More active poses, more detailed scenery. She says part of the pleasure for her is the transformation. Like when she turned that snakeskin she found on the side of the road into an eye-catching belt.

“I think the fascination with just thinking, wow, that would have just been thrown away. And I have done something with something that would have rotted. And maybe that’s why I like taxidermy so much,” she said. “The idea that you can make something from nothing.”

For Ritchie, it’s more than just preserving animals. She enjoys sharing this art form… whether it’s with her clients or with people who just stop by to marvel at her studio.

Amy Ritche’s truck reflects her enthusiasm for her art form. It is unmistakable in Hamtonville, NC, complete with a specialized license tag.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Amy Ritchie sewing a bobcat.

*Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

A taxidermy African Porcupine.

*Margaret McLeod Leef/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

——

Communion Wafers And Apple Butter Inspire Chefs’ Work At Lost Creek Farm

At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. Including a curious appetizer that's a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods.

At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. The foods served are rooted in Appalachian traditions.

Recently semi-finalists for the prestigious James Beard Award, Lost Creek Farm was an outlier in a category typically reserved for conventional restaurants.

Lost Creek Farm isn’t a restaurant. Costello and Dawson aren’t hosts and waiters as much as they are stewards and storytellers.

Folks come from all over for a taste of their cuisine and knowledge, including Yo-Yo Ma and the late Anthony Bourdain. But it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from because dinners at Lost Creek Farm are about connecting with community.

In fact, two community experiences from Costello and Dawson’s childhood inspire their work at Lost Creek Farm. Costello and Dawson typically kick off dinner events with a curious appetizer that’s a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods: communion wafers topped with apple butter. The combo is symbolic of the farm-to-table dinners themselves.

James Beard Award semi-finalists chefs and storytellers Mike Costello and Amy Dawson welcome guests at a dinner event.

Memories Of Making Food As A Community

As I arrived at Lost Creek Farm the birds were chirping and the sun was shining over the rolling meadows. After being greeted by Costello and Dawson, they took me on a tour of the farm.

While visiting the chickens, Costello told me about some of the projects they’re working on.

“We’re building a fruit orchard,” Costello said. “There were some apple trees here on the farm when we moved in, some pear trees. A lot of wild fruit. A lot of wild blackberries, elderberries, raspberries, those kinds of things.”

Costello and Dawson have lived on this land for six years. But it has been in Dawson’s family for close to 150 years. Dawson learned a lot about working a farm when she visited her grandparents.

“Growing up, my family always had a big garden. And we always would can. And so most of my summers were spent essentially doing food prep,” Dawson said. “If you live on a farm, you just do food prep all the time, and food preservation.”

When Costello and Dawson inherited the farm, it had been neglected for years. They devoted themselves to getting the farm back in working order. The couple raise meat rabbits and laying hens. They forage for foods in the surrounding woods. They raise vegetables from heirloom seeds entrusted to them by community members. And they’ve got their fruit orchard.

Costello took me below the vegetable garden and chicken yard to the orchard. “A lot of these trees that we have down here are regional varieties,” Costello said. “Apples we grafted yesterday — we grafted 21 trees that will go into the orchard — we’ll plant them later this year.”

The couple will use these apples for a few different things, including apple butter. Dawson described the apple butter as caramelized and tastes sweet. Costello likes to play around with flavors and often adds bourbon and sage to hit some fiery and herby notes.

For Dawson, making apple butter takes her back to her childhood. “Apple butter is one of the first memories that I had, like, as a family — it being kind of a community, like it wasn’t just my family that did it,” Dawson said. “It was friends and, you know, extended family would come and make the apple butter in the fall.”

Places are set and ready for dinner at Lost Creek Farm where heritage-inspired Appalachian cuisine will soon be served. As folks dig in, chef Mike Costello will talk to guests about the stories and cultural significance behind each recipe.

The seasonal ritual of making apple butter helped Dawson understand the connection between food and community. It’s a daunting task to peel, core, and chop bushels of apples, and then stir them for hours over heat before canning.

If ever an event called for community effort, it is one like this one. Time spent cooking with large groups of neighbors and friends is as social as it is productive.

Dawson isn’t the only one of the couple to grow up with memories of cooking in community.

Costello grew up in Elkview, West Virginia, and he often accompanied his grandmother to Emmanuel Baptist Church to make communion wafers. “I have a lot of fond memories of when I was a kid, my grandmother and the other elderly women in the church making communion wafers on Thursday and Friday mornings for Sunday service,” Costello said. “She would take my brother and I down there on those mornings, and we would sort of watch all these women rolling out these big sheets of dough and making these communion wafers.”

As an adult, Costello had put the wafers out of his mind, until he discovered his grandmother’s recipe. “When my grandma died, I got her recipe collection. And I found this recipe in there for those communion wafers,” Costello said.

For him, the significance of this recipe has little to do with religion. “We did not go to church with my grandma on Sundays,” Costello said. “I never had any sort of idea of the religious significance of them, I just thought they were this tasty kind of snack. I kind of had forgotten about them.”

Discovering the recipe brought back memories for Costello. “What came to mind for me was, you know, that image of all those women making those communion wafers, and how it sort of represented to me, the first memory that I have of people, here or anywhere else, making food as a community,” Costello said.

Mike Costello and Amy Dawson top communion wafer crackers with homemade apple butter for a dinner event. The couple serves story-rich, heritage-inspired cuisine at their dinner events, including these two recipes.

Two Food Traditions Merge

In their work today, Costello and Dawson have merged these two traditions and are sharing them with others. Last year, they made an online video tutorial of how to make the wafers. In a playful exchange, they note how curious people think it is that the two snack on communion wafers.

But the wafers are more than a simple snack. In the video, Costello and Dawson explain the significance of the wafers.

“People who know us or are familiar with our work know we like to hone in on the stories behind the food that we make. That’s what makes these communion wafers so special to us,” Dawson said in the video.

In the recipes for both the apple butter and wafers, there is one ingredient that isn’t tangible but is just as important as the others.

It’s the group effort aspect of these recipes — the shared ritual of making food together. For Costello, this is especially true for the communion wafers. “I love to put those crackers on a plate, to open our events,” Costello said as we walked. He later explained more as we wrapped up the farm tour.

“When you can consume that at the dinner table and can consume the story that goes along with it, you know… you’re connecting with people,” he said. “And you’re connecting with thousands of years of history of that being in all the hands and all of the communities that it has passed through to get to that point.”

String lights illuminate the communal table at Lost Creek Farm in preparation for hungry dinner guests.

Lost Creek Farm Inspires And Creates Community

The apple butter and communion wafers are symbolic of the dinner events themselves, a place where people come together around Appalachian foods and traditions.

Arriving at the farm, guests are greeted with music and a warm fire burning outside. Under string lights and bright stars, folks are seated around the communal table, some meeting for the first time. Some of the foods served are simple, like apple butter and communion wafers. But there is more to it than that.

“If you just look at the ingredients, you look at the recipes, apple butter and crackers, not that big of a deal, right? But, there’s so much meaning packed into it,” Costello said.

Part of that meaning is the communities of people who have shaped these two food traditions. And the new communities Costello and Dawson are creating at Lost Creek Farm.

——