This week on Inside Appalachia, we pick up a little light reading at the Johnson City Zine Fest. And… Grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive. Also, the perils of playing the spoons.
This week, we pick up a little light reading at the Johnson City Zine Fest.
And… Grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive.
Also, the perils of playing the spoons.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Calling a square dance is tricky business. It’s a skill that’s been handed down for generations, but a growing number of callers are updating the language to be more inclusive to keep the tradition alive.
Folkways Reporter Lydia Warren brought us the story.
A Visit To Zine Fest
Credit: Mason Adams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A zine, as in magazine, is a self-published pamphlet or brochure, or even a booklet. Some are very low-tech and rudimentary, and others are elaborately designed works of art. They’re all unique, and reflect the people who make them. Mason Adams went to Johnson City Zine Fest, met zine makers and talked with them.
All About The Spoons
Jeff Fedan has been teaching aspiring spoons players how to play for years. He is also one of the co-founders and organizers of the yearly Pattyfest.
Credit: Lauren Griffin/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
If you love string-band music, you don’t have to go too far to find a bluegrass or old-time jam here in the Appalachian mountains. Musicians get together, try out new licks and teach each other songs. But, you don’t have to play fiddle or guitar to get in on the music. Playing along might be as easy as just grabbing something out of a kitchen drawer.
Folkways reporter Lauren Griffin has the story.
The Life And Legacy of Woody Williams
The front of the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument in Charleston, West Virginia.
Credit: Janet Kunicki/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Woody Williams: An Extraordinary Life of Service” is a new documentary exploring the life of Hershel “Woody” Williams, the last living World War II recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Williams, who died last year at the age of 98, spent decades working for veterans and their families.
Bill Lynch spoke with WVPB’s Randy Yohe and Janet Kunicki. They spent more than a year exploring Williams’ life and legacy for the documentary.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by the Carpenter Ants, Harvey and Copeland, Rev. Payton’s Big Damn Band, Le Tigre, John Blissard, The Sycomores, Hazel Dickens and Frank George.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Philip Bowen, a fiddle-playing social media star and Montgomery, West Virginia native, is set to appear on Tuesday’s episode of America’s Got Talent.
Philip Bowen, a fiddle-playing social media star and Montgomery, West Virginia native, is set to appear on the Tuesday, May 30 episode of America’s Got Talent.
Bowen is one of the featured contestants auditioning for the talent contest. The show will kick off its 18th season.
He’s most known for his viral TikTok series called “Does It Fiddle?” where he improvises melodies over popular songs from different genres.
But he’s also making a name for himself as an Appalachian songwriter. He performed original songs at a Mountain Stage show last January. His song “Old Kanawha” was the program’s March 30 Song of the Week. His debut album, which is named after the song, is also set to release Aug. 18.
Bowen was also a recent subject of West Virginia Public Broadcasting podcast Us & Them. He spoke to host Trey Kay about growing up in Appalachia, and how his songwriting reflects realities of the Mountain State’s coal industry.
“I worked at Cracker Barrel one summer out of college, in Kanawha City. And these coal miners would come in for breakfast, like literally black head to toe,” Bowen said during a sit down interview with Kay about his song “Vampire in Appalachia.” “There’s nobody that’s gonna tell you breathing that stuff in for your whole career is gonna do your body any good. And so I just was getting really frustrated by all of that sacrifice to provide for a family.”
Bowen is not the first native West Virginian to receive attention through America’s Got Talent.Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., a jazz singer from Logan County, won the show’s sixth season.
America’s Got Talentwill air Tuesday, May 30 at 8 p.m. on NBC.
Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature.
Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature. There were themes of longevity among the muses, along with an amiable artistic forecast for the future.
Visitors do much more than fiddle around at the Augusta Heritage Center in Randolph County. Celebrating 50 years of preserving and elevating traditional West Virginia art forms, Executive Director Seth Young said the center’s annual July Heritage Series workshops have become an international arts mecca.
“It’s three weeks of music, art, craft, folklore, foodways and folkways on the campus of Davis and Elkins College,” Young said. “People come from all over the world to study things such as Cajun and Creole culture, swing music, classic country music, bluegrass, vocal blues, old-time music, and of course crafts, folkways and folklore.”
West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Mountain Stage is celebrating 40 years of live music performances. Associate Director Mallory Richards said with a network of more than 290 stations airing the program around the globe, Mountain Stage is West Virginia’s calling card to the world.
“You can tune in wherever you are. You could be in the car driving down the road or you can join us here in Charleston, West Virginia for a live show,” Richards said. “It really goes back to hospitality. Everyone’s treated equally. Our artists backstage, it’s like welcoming a family home.”
Ten or so years ago, when West Virginia’s public schools faced serious budget challenges, many said the arts were not a priority. They asked, do we really need a band or theater department? In 2023, the opposite seems true.
Singing in the Senate chamber, the Appalachian Children’s Choir is living proof of what state Curator of Arts, Culture and History Randall Reid-Smith said is a statewide, flourishing font of artistic creativity.
“I was just at the Wood County Board of Education to present awards. They were recognized in all the arts, and they just put back in their school system, fifth grade band. I mean, that is huge,” Reid-Smith said. “We just had, in the last two days, the West Virginia State Arts Conference. We had 147 arts organizations and individual artists that have wonderful outreach programs into our schools. And the thing that they were all excited about is that the arts are back. Arts are great and today we’re here at Arts Day, we have all 55 booths filled, it is all about the arts.”
Reid-Smith said the only pure academic pursuit is the arts, that everything else in life is just an elective.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a state agency within the Department of Arts, Culture and History.
You might be familiar with a traditional instrument called the mountain or lap dulcimer. But there’s another, lesser-known dulcimer in Appalachia called the hammer dulcimer. It’s a bigger, stationary instrument that isn’t related to the lap dulcimer at all. In fact, it’s a relative of a Ukrainian instrument called the tsymbaly.
You might be familiar with a traditional instrument called the mountain or lap dulcimer. But there’s another, lesser-known dulcimer in Appalachia called the hammer dulcimer. It’s a bigger, stationary instrument that isn’t related to the lap dulcimer at all. In fact, it’s a relative of a Ukrainian instrument called the tsymbaly.
The Hammer Dulcimer And Its Ukrainian Relative
When I first learned about the connection between the Appalachian hammer dulcimer and the Ukrainian tsymbaly, I was intrigued. With just a quick glance at the two instruments, there’s no doubt they are related. But how? With 5,000 miles of ocean and a land mass in between, where was the link?
To start my investigation, I talked with Lynette Swiger, a hammer dulcimer player from Fairmont, West Virginia. She’s a retired elementary school teacher and adjunct professor at Fairmont State University’s West Virginia Folklife Center.
I visited Swiger at her farmhouse in Marion County. She sat on a stool behind a large wooden board laced with exposed strings. The afternoon sunlight illuminated her hands as they moved across the board, gently drumming the strings with wooden hammers that resemble little skis. The music rippled and rolled, resounding into the air.
Clara Haizlett
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Lynette Swiger is a hammer dulcimer player from Marion County, West Virginia.
Swiger was introduced to the hammer dulcimer when she was a teenager.
“My mother was the local 4-H leader and there was a man from Manninton called Russel Fluharty,” she said.
At the time, the hammer dulcimer tradition in north central West Virginia was beginning to fade away. According to Swiger, Fluharty single-handedly kept it alive. He was called “the dulcimer man.” When Russell played for Swiger’s 4-H group, it was the first time she had ever heard the hammer dulcimer.
“And when he left, I wanted to play that instrument,” she recalled.
Swiger had her eye on a dulcimer made by a local woodworker, which cost $125. She said she got down to pennies to make up that $125.
“I remember I poured it all into a brown paper lunch bag and tied it at the top with a piece of string and took it to Ralph Campbell’s house and plunked it down on his coffee table,” she said.
A Common Ancestor
Swiger learned to play hammer dulcimer in the traditional West Virginia style. And although the approach is unique to the region, many versions of the instrument are played across the world. Swiger told me our hammer dulcimer is a descendant of the hawkbrett, an old German instrument.
“Hawkbrett means chopping block, so you would chop with your little hammers,” she said.
As people migrated, the hawkbrett did, too. It made its way west, through Great Britain, Ireland and eventually to Appalachia, where it became known as the hammer dulcimer. It also migrated to the east, taking root along the way, including in the mountains of Ukraine. There it was known as the tsymbaly.
When European immigrants came to work in the Appalachian coal fields, they each brought their own version of the hawkbrett — the tsymbaly and the hammer dulcimer.
“The two instruments existed, side by side, right here in Marion County, West Virginia and really never crossed over for a variety of reasons,” Swiger explained.
As a musician and teacher of folklore, Swiger wanted to figure out why. Through her research, she found that the hammer dulcimer is a simpler instrument, while the tsymbaly evolved to be larger, more elaborate and ornate. The isolation of the mountains and the ethnic separation in coal camps also impeded cross pollination between the two.
Appalachian Music Makes Its Debut In Western Ukraine
In 2013, Swiger presented her research about the differences and similarities between the tsymbaly and hammer dulcimer at a conference in western Ukraine. So, of course, she packed her dulcimer.
“So I’m going down the Pittsburgh Airport, wheeling this trapezoid on a wooden box, it’s half as big as me, and people are giving me the oddest looks,” she said. “And then I’m telling the airport workers, ‘please be careful with it’ … I have ‘fragile’ written all over it. And they’re saying ‘what is it?’”
But when she got to Ukraine, it was a different story.
“I get it off the luggage rack and one of the handlers hands it to me. And he says ‘tsymbaly!’ And I said, ‘Yes! Yes!’ And I’m wheeling it down the airport and people are saying ‘tsymbaly, tsymbaly!’ … They knew exactly what it was,” she said.
Swiger recalled that she felt right at home in the mountains of Ukraine.
“When we walked into the mountains, the people were just common mountain people, just like they are here. People would come out of their house and wave to us…their laundry was hanging on the lines,” she said. “I mean it was just like being at home.”
At the opening session of the conference, Swiger and her hammer dulcimer took center stage.
“Everyone was there,” she said. “And it was very hushed and quiet. I sat down with that instrument, and they really wanted to hear Appalachian music played on their national instrument.”
The hammer dulcimer community is still active in Appalachia, but the presence of tsymbaly has largely faded away. And since I couldn’t find a tsymbalist here in Appalachia, I decided to look to the source. After some intense internet sleuthing, I found my guy.
Vsevolod Sadovyj is a classically educated musician and multi-instrumentalist from Lviv, Ukraine. I met Sadovyj over Zoom, in typical millennial fashion. He wore a hoodie and hipster glasses. A drum set filled the screen behind him, speakers lined the shelves and I spotted a keyboard peaking into the frame. It was the home of a musician.
Sadovyj’s tsymbaly was much more ornate than Swiger’s hammer dulcimer.
“It’s decorated in the mountain style, with a lot of colored glass [decorations],” he said. “It’s got a lot of wooden elements…steel strings.”
Sadovyj lives near the Carpathian mountains of western Ukraine, a terrain which has greatly influenced the traditional music of the region.
“The scale and the tempo is precisely matched to the landscape,” he said. “And you’re always going down and going up and going down and going up. It’s 90 percent instrumental music, really fast and highly decorated melodies, fast tempos and rich in ornaments.”
Sadovyj said nowadays not many people play tsymbaly. It’s heavy and hard to tune.
“There is a joke, it says that the tsymbalist…half of his life, he’s tuning his tsymbaly. And the other part of his life he’s playing on an untuned one,” he said with a laugh.
But Sadovyj has taught himself how to play, drawing inspiration from traditional music and blending it with his classical training and contemporary interests.
“I think one life is not enough for going through all the traditions of tsymbaly just in our mountains,” he said.
Sadovyj is a full-time musician and music teacher. He plays in a group called “Lemko Bluegrass Band,” whose style blends traditional Ukrainian music with bluegrass. In the past several months, he and his fellow musicians have been playing gigs to raise money in support of Ukrainian troops. Lviv, the city where Sadovyj lives, has been mostly spared from the violence in eastern parts of the country.
Sadovyj said there’s a growing trend of young people like him who are interested in preserving traditional music and Ukrainian culture, an act which feels significant, especially amidst the current circumstances.
“The traditional arts, the folk music, the dances…it all matters,” he said. “We have treasures we see around us. I want to listen to it [traditional music]. I want to share it with my friends.”
A Meeting Of The Musicians
Clara Haizlett
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Hammer dulcimer player Lynette Swiger and tsymbalist Vsevolod Sadovyj meet over Zoom.
Sadovyj’s passion for the tsymbaly and folk music of Ukraine felt so similar to Swiger’s commitment to the hammer dulcimer and folk music of Appalachia. And after talking to them both, I found it puzzling that both instruments originated from a common source, centuries later nearly collided right here in West Virginia, but then promptly went their separate ways. They were like magnets of the same pole, repelling each other when they got too close.
So I decided to interfere. I set up a Zoom call to bring Swiger and Sadovyj together, along with their instruments.
Swiger was in her farmhouse in Fairmont.
“I live in the mountains on a farm,” she described to Sadovyj. “If you go to your mountains, the Carpathian Mountains, if you go there and look around, that’s what it looks like here.”
Sadovyj was in his home on the outskirts of Lviv.
“I’m now in my place, in my home. It is a small house, a tiny house and outside there is a small village outside the city,” Sadovyj said.
From there, the conversation took off, talking about tuning and melodies and musical terms that went right over my head.
Sadovyj played his tsymbaly for us, cell phone in one hand, and hammer in the other.
We had just a 40 minute time limit on Zoom, which quickly timed out. The next 40 minute call also maxed out. And as we talked, they exchanged knowing smiles, united as insiders with this instrument that has transcended time and place.
“Folk traditions are only by ear,” Sadovyj explained. “We had an attempt to write down the songs, but it is a very interesting quest, because every word, every verse is different. There is some core, and we learn the core. You understand me?”
“Yes! We do the same here… exactly!” Swiger exclaimed in agreement.
‘We Are Playing Who We Are As People’
Throughout my conversations with Sadovyj and Swiger, they both expressed a deep commitment to preserving the heritage of their people through music.
“In Ukraine, we have really deep, deep roots. And we still have evidence in a village,” Sadovyj said. “The grannies are singing in the 9th or 10th century style. It’s really a treasure.”
“This traditional Appalachian music, it’s our roots,” Swiger said. “If you look at the titles, they are named after specific people…events in the area, places, creeks. So when we play those tunes, we’re playing our history. We may not know it, but we are playing our history. And we are playing who we are as people.”
And that, I learned, is what links the hammer dulcimer and the tsymbaly. In both western Ukraine and in Appalachia, these instruments are vessels, holding a history and culture that is so specific yet altogether universal.
As we wrapped up the Zoom meeting, Sadovyj proposed they call again.
“Maybe we will meet once more and you will show me your dulcimer,” he suggested.
Swiger agreed. She’d have her dulcimer ready to go.
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This story originally aired in the July 29, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation.
Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
It takes about 40 hours of hammering to turn a steel drum into a steelpan drum.
Although originally meant to hold oil, shampoo or ketchup, the metal tube becomes an instrument uniquely capable of evoking island breezes and a slower pace of life.
And believe it or not, this transformation takes place in an old storefront in Osage, West Virginia, population 395.
This is the home of Mannette Musical Instruments, maker of world-renowned steelpan drums.
Zack Harold
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The steelpan factory is something of a living museum to Ellie Mannette, with memorabilia from his life hidden away in nearly every corner.
Each of the company’s five drum builders and tuners has his own small workshop. Each workshop is nearly identical, aside from a few personal effects.
They have tool boxes full of hammers, customized for building steel drums. They have propane torches to soften up the steel when it needs to be a little more pliable. And they have super-sensitive instrument tuners to ensure all the notes on their drums are in perfect pitch.
But there’s one workshop where hammers don’t ring anymore. This room has been mostly untouched for three years, since its owner left and never returned.
This workshop once belonged to Ellie Mannette, the founder of this company and the father of the modern steel drum.
Zack Harold
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Ron Justice, who helped start Mannette Musical Instruments in the late 1990s, shows off Ellie Mannette’s former workshop.
Mannette’s red toolbox and blue propane torch are there. Hammers are laid out on his workbench, along with a stack of promotional posters.
“Some of this stuff, he was just tinkering around with,” said Ron Justice, a friend of Mannette’s who helped him start the company in the late 1990s. “This is just the way he walked out. It’s the way it was when he left.”
There are newspaper and magazine clippings hanging on the back wall. Read them, and you’ll learn how Mannette was born in Trinidad and fell in love with pan music from a young age.
He got what people in Trinidad call “the jumbie” — when pan music takes hold of your soul and won’t let go.
He started playing in local bands when he was just 11 years old. When he got older, he started making records with his band, The Invaders.
But even more than playing the instruments, Mannette’s focus was on building steelpan drums.
His parents were not enthusiastic, especially after he dropped out of high school to focus full time on drum-building.
The steel drum is now Trinidad’s national instrument but, when Mannette was growing up in the 1930s and ‘40s, pan men were viewed as ne’er-do-wells.
“They called you a vagabond. They called you a ‘bad John.’ They called you ‘no ambition.’ They don’t want to see you,” Mannette told filmmakers in the 2004 documentary The Stradivarius of Steel — The Ellie Mannette Story. “But something was driving me to do it. There was some inner sense saying ‘Keep going. Keep going. You’re going to make this work.’”
As he continued to build drums, he began to make significant innovations in the instrument.
Early versions of pan drums were made from lightweight aluminum cans. Mannette was the first to build instruments using a 55-gallon steel drum. Early drums also had domed tops. Mannette was the first to realize the tonal potential of a concave top — essentially inventing the modern steel drum.
Jesse Wright/ 100 Days In Appalachia
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Blank steel drums sit in the the Manette Musical Instruments workshop Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, in Osage, W.Va.
But there was a problem. The steel drums he needed to make his instruments cost money. Mannette didn’t have any money, so he began stealing his materials from a nearby U.S. Navy base.
He timed the guards patrolling the base. When he found a window of opportunity, he swam over to the compound, threw some barrels into the ocean and swam them back to shore. There, he cut them in half with a cold chisel, loaded them onto his bicycle and rode the 11 miles back home to Port of Spain
This eventually caught up to him.
One day, American military police showed up at Mannette’s door. They took him to the base. Once there, someone handed Mannette a phone.
“It was the commander of the Atlantic fleet,” Mannette protégé Chanler Bailey said with the air of someone recounting a story he’s heard many times before. “He says ‘I know you’ve been stealing my drums. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you drums. You have to make the U.S. Navy a steel band.’”
Mannette flew to Puerto Rico to build the U.S. Navy some steelpan drums. This provided his first exposure to the United States and ushered in the next chapter of his steel drum legacy.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, steelpan drums were gaining popularity in American music thanks to artists like Harry Belafonte, Liberace and Pete Seeger. As a result, universities and high schools started forming steel band ensembles.
But you couldn’t just go to the local music store and buy a set of steelpan drums. You still can’t. If a school wanted steelpan drums, they’d call Mannette, who would tell them how many 55-gallon drums to obtain. He would show up a few weeks later with a toolbox full of hammers.
Jesse Wright/ 100 Days In Appalachia
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A steelpan ensemble room is set up, ready for a host of musicians.
Before he left for the next school, though, Mannette would give a workshop to teach people how to play his instruments.
This was his life for over 20 years — traveling from coast to coast, giving schoolkids the jumbie everywhere he went, like a Trinidadian pied piper.
His travels led him to Morgantown, West Virginia in 1991.
Phil Faini, head of West Virginia University’s percussion program, ordered some of Mannette’s drums. He built them somewhere else, but when he came to deliver them, he gave a clinic at the music school.
“Faini saw the rapport Ellie had with students and how much joy he got out of talking about what it was he did,” said Bailey, who was in the class. “He took Ellie to the Kroger and bought some Dove bars. They’re sitting there eating their ice cream outside the Creative Arts Center and (Faini) said ‘What do you think about coming on here for a semester?’”
It was quite the feather in the music program’s cap, having the Stradivarius of Steel on staff.
But there was something in it for Mannette, too.
Whenever he’d go back to a school where he taught students how to build and play the steel drums, he found those pupils had forgotten most of what they’d learned.
Mannette, now in his 60s, realized teaching at WVU would give him an opportunity to work with students long-term. It would allow him to pass on his craft in a way that was impossible as a roving pan man.
One semester turned into two. Then two turned into four, until Mannette eventually became a permanent fixture in WVU’s music department.
“I was finishing up school and he said ‘Why don’t you come downstairs and learn how to do this?’” Bailey said.
Mannette was building drums in the basement of the Creative Arts Center at the time. He put a hammer in Bailey’s hand and told him to make the bottom of a barrel 4 inches deep. Then Mannette went away on a two-week trip to tune some steel drums.
“I spent two weeks trying to make that the prettiest 40-inch bowl I could,” Bailey said.
When Mannette returned, he complimented Bailey on the work. Then he picked up one of his largest hammers.
“He said, ‘Now you’ve got to do this!’ And he just goes at it, and beats it and beats it,” Bailey said. “That’s when I understood. I don’t see it yet.”
Building steel drums doesn’t take a lot of super-expensive tools. It just takes a lot of expertise and practice, because these instruments are far more complex than they appear.
A single steel drum head can feature up to 33 notes. That might not seem like much. But consider this: When someone hits a note on a piano, the hammer strikes a set of strings tuned to play a single note. All the notes that aren’t playing remain dampered by felt pads.
Jesse Wright/ 100 Days In Appalachia
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Mannette’s artistry was featured in many newspapers and magazines.
On a steelpan drum, the whole head vibrates when you strike a single note. This makes things incredibly difficult, especially when it comes time to tune a drum.
“Every single time you hit one note, something happens to the note beside of it, or in front of it, or behind it. It’s wildly frustrating,” Bailey said.
The craft requires years of apprenticeship with a master. Mannette was finally able to offer that kind of apprenticeship once he settled in Morgantown and began working with guys like Bailey.
“His passion was not ‘how much can I make off of a steel drum?’ His passion was, ‘I want to teach these guys everything possible I know, that they’ll be better than me and leave a legacy,’” Justice said.
In 2013, Mannette was getting ready to hang up his hammers when another steel drum-obsessed kid entered his life.
Ryan Roberts grew up in Virginia Beach. He got the jumbie in middle school, learning to play on a set of steel pans his school inherited from the U.S. Navy.
When it came time for college, there was really only one choice. He came to WVU to learn at the feet of the master.
So Mannette put off retirement. Over the next 5 years, he stuck around the shop to continue teaching Roberts and the rest of the crew as much as he could about his beloved steelpans.
“He would walk around and go in all of our rooms while we’re working. He’ll tell you straight up if it was a good note or a bad note,” Roberts said. “Then he’ll go to the next room and the next room — make his rounds — then he’d go back in his room and work on whatever he was working on.”
Although he was now in his ninth decade, it was clear Mannette was still in charge. He signed off on every drum that left the factory.
“Up until the day he passed, Ellie was always talking about what he could do with each of us,” Bailey said. “‘If (I) had another month, can you imagine how much information I could put in someone’s head?’”
But then Mannette’s health began to deteriorate.
His apprentices — who had become his family — would take him to the grocery store and to doctors appointments. They helped him around his house. And they were with him in the hospital as his life ebbed away.
Ellie Mannette died in August 2018 at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia. He was 90 years old. His obituary ran in the New York Times and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
His apprentices still grieve his absence around the shop, but Mannette’s presence can still be felt among the music and the noise.
Builder and tuner Keith Moone has picked up where Mannette left off and has continued training Roberts.
Bailey is carrying on another piece of Mannette’s legacy. He recently opened a studio next door to the drum factory where, five days a week, kids and adults come to learn the steel drum.
It looks like a high school band room — except instead of saxophones and trombones, it’s filled wall-to-wall with different sizes of steelpan drums.
“The one statement he always said was, ‘What does it profit a man to keep what he knows to himself?’” Bailey said. “I think that’s always in the back of our heads.”
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. 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.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Mountain Stage has announced its new host. After 38 years and more than 900 episodes co-founder Larry Groce is handing the mic over to Kathy Mattea — a West Virginia native who has been making country music since the early 80s.
Mattea is a two-time Grammy Award winner with numerous top 10 hits on country radio. Fans might remember Mattea’s hit “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” She’s also gained significant critical acclaim, with The Washington Post calling her “one of Nashville’s finest song interpreters.”
After guest-hosting Mountain Stage several times, Mattea was asked to take over full time. Inside Appalachia co-host Caitlin Tan spoke with Mattea hosting helm at Mountain Stage and why she decided to take it on.
BRIAN BLAUSER brianphoto@yah
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Kathy Mattea and Larry Groce
**This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.**
Caitlin Tan: Was it a hard decision to accept the hosting position for Mountain Stage?
Kathy Mattea: You know, it’s challenging. It doesn’t look like I should do this on paper. But, I think Mountain Stage is important, I think live music is important, I think West Virginia culture is important, and I was just like, “Yeah, I think I’ve got to say yes.”
Tan: What was your reaction, kind of absorbing this new title and thinking about how this is going to look going forward?
Mattea: You know, I keep talking to my friends about it and saying, “There are so many amazing musicians out there making music that blows your mind.” And so I feel like that part is really good for me. Because as you get older, it’s easy to just kind of be a stick in the mud and sort of not go out of your comfort zone. Part of the challenge for me is I may not instantly like everybody I hear. So I try to get to the essence of what is special about them, like, what is it about this person that connects with the people who love them? And then I get to sort of bring that to new people as I check this person out.
Tan: So you are originally from Cross Lanes, West Virginia, and I’m curious how it feels getting to host a show that was founded and housed out of the Mountain State?
Mattea: Well, you know, I’ve spent my whole life being sort of a West Virginia native daughter. I moved to Nashville when I was 19, and then I wound up getting to take this ride in the music business — touring all over the country and much of the world.
So, I wound up talking about the place that I’m from, and the place that made me. You know, there’s so much stereotypical stuff about hillbilly culture and it’s a chance to bring some of the soulfulness of that to people and break those stereotypes
Tan: As you take the reins, how will Mountain Stage look similar, and are you planning to add anything new?
Mattea: I kind of think of it as one of those Olympic relay races. Larry just handed me a baton, and my job is to keep the thing going without any major glitches — keep the momentum and the center and the spirit of it. I’m thinking, “Don’t mess this up, Kathy! Don’t make it about you!” [laughter]
Tan: [laughter] No! Of course not. What will the Mountain Stage band look like going forward? Will “Simple Song” still be the theme song? And obviously, you are an incredibly accomplished singer yourself. So I’m really hoping we’ll get to hear you singing?
Mattea: Well, as far as I know, the theme song is gonna stay the same. I don’t see any reason to change it.
You know, I see myself as sort of stewarding something that is a container for other people’s music. I don’t see this as like, “Oh, I’m gonna get on that stage. I’m just gonna sing a whole bunch.” You know? That’s not how I feel about it. I feel like part of my job is to take my ego out of it.
