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This October, the Adaptive Climbers Festival will gather in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge for the fifth year. In 2023, Folkways Reporter Emily Chen-Newton covered the event for Inside Appalachia. Since then, the Adaptive Climbers Festival has grown. Organizers say they’re nearly at capacity, with 300 climbers, caregivers and volunteers. Ahead of the festival, the campground has made accessibility improvements. Volunteers with the ACF have also been sprucing up the trails.
Folk Music Legend Tom Paxton Celebrates 80th Birthday with Mountain Stage in Elkins This Saturday.
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“Mountain Stage with Larry Groce” returns to Elkins, WV this Saturday, August 12 as the closing concert of the Augusta Heritage Festival.
The show will take place at 7:30pm at the Harper-McNeeley Auditorium in the Myles Center for the Arts on the campus of Davis & Elkins College. Scheduled to appear are folk-music icon Tom Paxton featuring The DonJuans– the duo of Don Henry and Jon Vezner, both accomplished songwriters and performers. Also on the bill is bluegrass mainstay and Augusta instructor Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, guitar-hero Bill Kirchen, also a past Augusta instructor, plus folk duo Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer and an emerging roots group with ties to Elkins and the Augusta Workshops, The Early Mays.
Tickets are $25, general admission, and are available online, by phone at 304.637.1255, and at the Augusta Heritage office.
Guitarist Laurie Lewis has instructed at the Augusta Workshops many times. Now she returns to showcase her band when Mountain Stage closes the Augusta Heritage Festival this Saturday.
Tom Paxton is one of the most prolific songwriter/performers in recorded music history, with songs covered by artists including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, The Weavers, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, John Denver, Sandy Denny and The Move, among many others. A four-time Grammy nominee and recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from The Recording Academy in 2009 and an ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award (for Folk) in 2002, Paxton has made six appearances on “Mountain Stage” since 1986.
Paxton’s new album, “Boat in the Water,” is produced by Grammy winners Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who are also scheduled to be a part of the “Mountain Stage” program in Elkins. “Boat in the Water” is a fitting addition to a career that first took off in the fertile turf of New York’s Greenwich Village in the ‘60s, where his contemporaries included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk and Joan Baez.
With movies like the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (in which Paxton is portrayed as a soldier in uniform singing “The Last Thing on My Mind”) and the recent induction of Joan Baez into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the ‘60s Village folk scene has been the focus of renewed attention. Tom will be celebrating his 80th at The Birchmere on October 28th and in NYC at Pace Univeristy October 29th.
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Since her estate made the announcement of her passing on Aug. 25, grieving fans have written tributes and fond remembrances. Mountain Stage Host and fellow country music star Kathy Mattea, who has spent a little time with Dolly, shared a few memories with Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams.
On this West Virginia Week, a second data center is coming to Mason County, the Rural Health Transformation Program Funds are beginning to be distributed in the state, and remembering Dolly Parton.
This week, we remember the one and only Dolly Parton. Dolly used her musical success to help others. She started the Imagination Library, a free book program for children that included some of her favorites, like the "Little Engine that Could." And, Dolly’s kindness touched people from all walks of life.
We remember Dolly Parton, not just as a musician and celebrity, but as a voice for Appalachian humor, resilience and kindness. Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams spoke with Mountain Stage host and country star Kathy Mattea, who shares some of her memories.
