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Slavalachia: The New Music Tradition Uniting Across An Ocean, A Pandemic And A Revolution

This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, an independent, non-profit digital news publication incubated at the Media Innovation Center at the West Virginia University Reed College of Media. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.

Belarusian musician and activist Siarhei Douhushau was in Chicago in March of 2019 on a U.S. tour presenting folk art and music from his eastern European home. Nadzeya Ilkevich, then a second-year graduate student at Ohio University, caught wind and lured her friend and fellow countryman to Athens, Ohio – an Appalachian foothill college town of about 40,000 – to perform traditional Belarusian songs using flutes and a hurdy gurdy, which is a hand-cranked hybrid of a violin and small piano.

Brett Hill was at Jackie O’s – a popular “uptown” brewpub – that night. Hill is the frontman for Hill Spirits, a modern Appalachian folk quartet based in southern Ohio.

“We asked Siarhei if he wanted to jam the next night,” Hill said. “Fortunately enough, he did want to…The evening was spent feasting, drinking, singing, shouting and growing to learn of each other’s traditions for the first time.”

Among the Madness, Someone Yelled, “Slavalachia!”

That evening, the namesake was born as both an Appalachian-Slavic folk ensemble and a cross-cultural folk alliance.

“As a cultural manager, this is the kind of collaboration I would like to see continue,” Ilkevich says.

She immediately grew the project, adding Maria Chichkova, of Torban Folk Band, from Lviv, Ukraine, to the Slavalachia lineup. Torban is a traditional ensemble that creates new arrangements around traditional Ukrainian acapella songs. “This is our traditional song transformed for a modern listener.”

Ben Stewart is a member of Brett Hill’s band Hill Spirits and traveled to eastern Europe in early 2020 for the Slavalachian music exchange.

According to Chichkova, traditional music in Ukraine is alive and well. But in Belarus, the health of traditional music, along with Belarusian culture, has long been tyrannized by centuries of Russian encroachment. Ilkevich says most families speak Russian as the primary language. The 2009 Census says about 70 percent of the population speak Russian at home.

“During Soviet times, and before Soviet times, the Russian government – and I’m not accusing the people – [was] trying to absorb…the Belarusian language and culture, and replace it with theirs,” Ilkevich says.

People grew disconnected from their traditional and folk music as these customs were increasingly portrayed through a Soviet lens, Ilkevich says.

Ilkevich says the situation in Belarus has only deteriorated during dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year reign. He is partial to the Soviet influence, she explains. “He changed the flag and symbol of the country. He tried to remove [the] Belarusian language from [schools].”

But in 2020, the political tension hit a climax when Lukashenko proclaimed himself the winner of what opposition leaders called a fraudulent election. Citizens poured into the streets in August last year for weeks of demonstrations, and neither the United States nor the European Union recognizes Lukashenko as the legitimate leader.

But Ilkevich says the uprising amidst a pandemic has stoked a fire of curiosity about Belarusian folk traditions among the people.

“Thanks to the revolution, we have a [real] boom of traditional culture,” she explains. “People started speaking [our] traditional language. They started being interested in their roots, to value the land they are from. Not just the culture, but even the land is endangered.”

In this file photo taken on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2020, a woman waves an old Belarusian national flag standing on the roof as Belarusian opposition supporters march to Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus. Protests broke out Aug. 9 after an election that official results said gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office, but that opposition figures and some poll workers said were manipulated. The nationwide demonstrations, some of which attracted up to 200,000 people, were the largest and most sustained challenge to Lukashenko in his 26 years of repressive rule.

Douhushau has been at the cultural front lines of the revolution. He says the COVID-19 pandemic is back-seat fodder compared to the revolution in his home country. “The pandemic became a good excuse for the current government to manipulate.”

Douhushau sarcastically says the borders are closed in Belarus because of COVID, but the government is allowing concerts to continue.

Douhushau explains the uprising in Belarus initially started with people rallying around a foreign song and a generic flag of white stripes, but has shifted toward the traditional songs and the historic flag of the country – symbols and songs of a country before Russian influence.

“We find our identity in a traditional culture. Everything is in there: our songs, our language, our genetic code,” Douhushau says. “Traditional song accompanies all the people’s protests and uprisings – the most powerful, the most emotional and the most influential.”

From Slavic Traditions to Appalachia – A World Away

Two months before the world locked down and seven months before the Belarusian revolution began, Appalachian musician Brett Hill and his Hill Spirits bandmate Benjamin Stewart flew to eastern Europe. The January 2020 trip was the first full meeting of Ilkevich’s Slavalachia brainchild.

Ilkevich, Chichkova, Douhushau, Hill and Stewart met in the airport in Lviv, Ukraine, where Chichkova held a white markerboard with Slavalachia inscribed on it.

“We were trying to film, but the guards wouldn’t let us,” Ilkevich remembers. “Siarhei started playing flutes, and the guards kicked us out.”

Left to right, Marichka Chichkova, Brett Hill, Siarhei Douhushau and Benjamin Stewart – the full Slavalachia lineup – first met in the Lviv, Ukraine, airport January 16, 2020.

It was during this trip, Hill says, he started to understand how both Slavic traditional music and Appalachian traditional music were so closely tied to one another. They are less about sonics and more about connections to their respective cultures-at-large.

Over the following weeks, members of Slavalachia deepened their connections with one another and each other’s respective folk traditions. They traveled around eastern Europe, practiced in small villages near the Białowieża Forest of Belarus, deep in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, and ultimately played their first live concert (remember those?) at Lviv’s Dzyga, a major cultural center.

Douhushau opened. Hill and Stewart played next and even taught a Georgian men’s vocal choir a moonshiner song.

“They just loved that stuff….It just lit the room on fire. Absolutely lit it on fire,” Hill says.

The Ukrainians went third, and the full supergroup – all three acts – played out their inaugural set as the closer to the first official Slavalachia showcase.

Ilkevich, the manager and producer of the project, was thrilled.

“They were jamming. Some other musicians came to the stage. The concert was one hour longer than we were supposed to have. It was big!”

Hill witnessed the health of Ukrainian traditional music as a major component of Ukrainian culture, but in Belarus, he saw the polar opposite. Instead of being celebrated, in early 2020, traditional Belarusian music wasn’t really known by its people.

Brett Hills is the frontman of Hill Spirits, an Appalachian folk band based in southwestern Ohio.

“Appalachian traditional music finds itself between these two in terms of their stages of cultural health,” he said. “Appalachian folk music is not going anywhere, but it has not earned respect that it might have even 100 years ago, when Bascom Lamar Lunsford was performing for the Queen of England.”

In other words, Appalachians aren’t exactly sitting around the dinner table singing traditional songs like Ukrainians might, but no dictator is trying to sweep their heritage under the rug like in Belarus either.

“I still get messages from Ukrainians…asking when we’re going to come back and perform more of that music,” Hill says. “[The result has been] my musical project, Brother Hill, being about three times as listened to in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and eastern Europe than in the U.S.”

“That solidifies it, too. The foreigners dig this Appalachian music a little more than the Americans do!”

Before Slavalachia, Douhushau says he knew nothing of Appalachian music.

“If I was searching this on the internet, I would never be interested in it. When I met [Appalachian musicians] personally, it opened this music for myself. I started to understand it and feel it. We started to improvise with that music and that opened my soul towards it. “

Chichkova echoes that she had zero previous knowledge of Appalachian music, but she says there is familiarity with her Ukrainian traditions. She hears it as music of the mountains, of nature, and “…about people and relationships. We are very connected to each other. And now our music is connected…The spirit is the same…All traditional music speaks one language.”

Before the Americans Returned to Ohio, Slavalachia Began Carving its Next Cross-cultural Exchange

But then Ilkevich says, “COVID f*@!ed everything up – beautifully!”

Plans were in the works for the next collaboration in the U.S. when the virus essentially shut the world down. Athens, Ohio, Mayor Steve Patterson invited Torban to showcase Ukrainian music in venues throughout the college town where Douhushau had played the year prior. She says the City of Lviv was ready to sponsor the trip to promote Ukrainian culture abroad. The Americans started scheming their return to Ukraine to record an album with Douhushau as the full Slavalachia outfit.

Brett Hill says his work on the Slavalachia collaboration has taught him about the similarities of Slavic and Appalachian music traditions.

Even with COVID, the project has not been fully put on hold.

During 2020, the musicians had what Hill calls a light-medium success recording remotely in response to Lukashenko’s controversial re-election in Belarus. Musicians half a world away used digital platforms to continue communicating and practicing, even recording tracks that were sent back-and-forth – tracks that were a direct response to the political uprising in eastern Europe, a resistance piece.

“We utilized a song that I have been singing since I was a little boy, called ‘Which Side Are You On?’” Hill says, a song widely known for its use during various protest movements throughout history, especially in Appalachia. “My father was a union man, his father before him was a union man, workers carpenters, elevator operators…This song is a song that reins true in hills of Appalachia or streets of Belarus.”

Filmmakers in Ohio, Belarus and Ukraine gathered footage, and a music video for the song was cut and released in support of the uprising. The video, like the song, was cut and assembled from three remote locations. It’s been viewed nearly 9,000 times.

Despite kicking out one track, the musicians are much more eager to play together in person rather than in a virtual space. They have recently put the videoconference practice on hold.

“Unfortunately, a monitor does not give energy,” Chichkova says. “I like to feel live bodies…I think it’s normal because it’s an energy.”

Ultimately, the hybrid of styles among these differing folk traditions presents an opportunity for tangible collaboration and ongoing camaraderie, Hill says of Slavalachia.

Ben Stewart. along with bandmate Brett Hill, played traditional Appalachian folk music in early 2020 for audiences in Ukraine and Belarus, before the COVID-19 pandemic essentially closed down in-person cultural exchanges around the world.

“The point of Slavalachia is to band together, make super dope music that has never been – as far as we can tell – made before by the fusion of these three traditions, and also help support each other’s not only musical projects…but support each other’s folk traditions.”

Hill says he hopes to travel to Ukraine to perform once coronavirus restrictions begin to loosen up – and when Douhushau can find time to travel during the Belarusian revolution.

For now, Ilkevich is awaiting a transfer from Lviv to Prague, where she will continue to work in cultural promotion in the Czech Republic. One of the many productions on her post-COVID to-do list is Slavalachia. She wants to keep filming and compile the footage into a documentary – her husband is a documentary filmmaker.

“I’m keeping everybody together and watering Slavalachia-land for them to grow.”

Chad J. Reich is a freelance journalist, multimedia producer and MFA candidate at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. His MFA documentary “A Monolithic Folly: Fracking Colorado’s North Fork Valley,” was named a Finalist in the Student World Awards. In June 2021, Chad will join Western Colorado University as the official photographer and videographer.

Editor’s Note: Two characters in this story speak English as a secondary language, and one speaks only Belarusian. Quotes have been edited for clarity but retain accuracy and authenticity.

Recycling Never Sounded So Good: Appalachian Luthiers Turn Cardboard And Tin Cans Into Musical Instruments

Jon Cooley has been making dulcimers for 25 years. He has sold hundreds of his instruments and hosted workshops at music festivals, mostly in Western North Carolina.

But, there is one thing that makes his dulcimers stand out. They are made of cardboard.

“I just started making them one day,” Cooley said. “I was out of work, I lost my job as a counselor, so I was like ‘I have to start doing something here’.”

This was in the mid-1990s, but Cooley’s journey began in the early 1980s. That was when he bought his first cardboard dulcimer kit at a music festival in New York. He discovered cardboard dulcimers were easy and cheap to make – they seemed perfect for kids and families who might not be able to afford instruments. So he started his own cardboard dulcimer business and began making dulcimers and teaching workshops.

Cooley’s dulcimers range in size and can be nearly 3-feet long. Unlike the hourglass-shaped Appalachian dulcimers, Cooley’s dulcimers are rectangular. He leaves some of them unpainted, so other people can customize them, with wolves, hummingbirds or flowers.

Cooley’s cardboard dulcimers range in size. The largest “D” model is nearly 3-feet long.

Cooley’s cardboard of choice is thick, recycled refrigerator boxes. This makes his instruments affordable, and durable.

“They’re easy to make and easy to play,” Cooley said. “You can build them with kids.”

Of course, a cardboard dulcimer will not sound exactly like a wooden dulcimer.

“It’s not as crispy. I would say a wooden dulcimer is more crispy,” Cooley said. “Cardboard is a little more mellow.”

But do not mistake the cardboard dulcimer for a toy. It actually follows a long line of homemade or do-it-yourself Appalachian instruments. Appalachian Studies professor and folklorist Mark Freed says ingenuity has driven instrument design in Appalachia for centuries.

“When you think of this region, it’s often like, ‘Oh, people here are holding on to these old traditions and the bearers of these old traditions’ and that kind of thing, but really they were inventive and cutting edge,” Freed said.

Take the Appalachian dulcimer — they were introduced to popular culture in the 1960s by folk musicians in New York City and mass-produced soon after.

But Freed says long before that, when the dulcimer was first introduced to Western North Carolina, community members built them based on a paper pattern.

“The story of that is that there was a guy who came through this area, right around the late 1800s or turn of the century, and he had a dulcimer,” Freed said. “One of the local community members traced a pattern of that dulcimer, and that pattern got passed around and people in this area were making lap dulcimers.”

From there, community members were able to innovate and make instruments their own. And as we see with Cooley, instrument makers and Appalachians are still innovating.

Appalachian instruments were often distinct because instrument-makers had to deal with limited resources. Freed says the fretless mountain banjo is another example of this innovation.

Peterson’s fretless mountain banjos are all made to order and he has customers all around the globe. To date, he’s made nearly 730 banjos.

“The mountain-style banjo, you know, has the smaller head, because this was the size of a stovepipe, or maybe of a coffee can,” Freed said. “People were using what was available to them.”

In Boone, North Carolina, John Peterson is a renowned mountain banjo maker who still builds instruments by this ethos.

“The mountain banjos are a little more primitive or homemade looking than a factory banjo,” Peterson said.

Peterson has been making fretless mountain banjos for over a decade now. He learned to make banjos by watching other master banjo-makers and studying banjos he owned.

Peterson did not set out to make mountain banjos, he just wanted to play them in local bands while he lived in Fargo, North Dakota. Peterson says his fretless banjos and old-time music style made him a novelty in Fargo. Not many people had seen the unique instruments, which are typically found in Appalachia and the South. He remembers one night, an audience member approached him after he played in a coffee shop.

“This guy came up to me after the show and he asked me if I would build him ‘one of those,’ and I never built anything like that before, but I told him I would,” Peterson said.

So Peterson set out, studying banjos he owned from other local builders. The end result was a plywood banjo. It did the job, and since then he has made more than 700 banjos. But Peterson’s fretless banjos are not exactly like the ones one might find even 50 years ago. For example, he uses large #10 cans from restaurants as a combination tone ring and tension hoop. This is in lieu of a stove pipe.

Since stove pipes are not common anymore, Peterson says it makes sense to get the large cans from restaurants for free to use in their place. He is also happy to stick with calf and goat skins on the banjo head instead of squirrel or even groundhog skins, which were used for mountain banjos in the past. No matter the material he uses, Peterson’s dedication to preserving the craft and the unique form of the mountain banjo remains.

Peterson also makes other homemade instruments, like the “can-jo,” a scaled-down version of a banjo that uses a coffee can or tin can for the head. Some canjos only have a single string, but some canjos can have a fretboard, like a full-size banjo or guitar.

The canjo is mostly used as a craft project for kids, but folklorist Mark Freed said it follows in the spirit of Appalachian musical traditions, just like the cardboard dulcimer.

“People were resourceful,” Freed said. “If you wanted to be entertained, you entertained yourself.”

April 22, 2011: Old-Time and Bluegrass Musician Hazel Dickens Dies

Musician Hazel Dickens died in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 2011, at age 75. Oftentimes called the “Voice of West Virginia,” Appalachian music matriarch Hazel Dickens was a pioneer of old-time and bluegrass music, known for preserving the traditional vocal styles of West Virginia

And songs like “Black Lung,” “Mannington Mines,” and “They’ll Never Keep Us Down” demonstrated her commitment to working people and labor unions. Many of her compositions, such as “Mama’s Hands,” recalled her West Virginia youth. Perhaps her most famous song is this endearing tribute to her native state, “West Virginia, My Home.”

Dickens was featured in a number of movies, including Matewan and the Oscar-winning Harlan County, USA. She was honored with the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor given to folk artists. Hazel Dickens also was in the inaugural class of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Phyllis Marks Leaves Storied Legacy as Appalachian Ballad Singer

Ballad singer Phyllis Marks, a native of Gilmer County, West Virginia, passed away June 22, 2019 at the age of 92.

According to folklorist Gerry Milnes, Marks was the last active ballad singer in the state who, as she says, “learned by heart,” via oral transmission, namely from her mother, Arlene Layfield Frashure, and her grandmother, Sarah Margaret Messenger Layfield, who were of Irish ancestry.

Marks was among West Virginia’s finest musicians and was an exceptional bearer of traditional unaccompanied singing in the Appalachian region.

Phyllis Marks was born in Sand Fork, West Virginia, on June 5, 1927. Drawn to music at an early age, she learned several songs from her grandmother before she passed away when Marks was 5 years old. Her mother taught her many other songs.

At age 14, Marks began to lose her eyesight after a failed treatment by a country doctor, and became completely blind at age 54. In 1943, she married Jesse Marks, a coal miner, sawmill worker, and shape-note singing school teacher, and together they had four children.

In addition to being a housewife and gardener, Phyllis worked for 15 years in the cafeteria at Glenville State College, and recalls often singing while washing dishes and preparing food.

Marks performed every year at the West Virginia State Folk Festival in Glenville. She appeared at the first festival in 1954, and continued to perform at every festival for the next 65 years, missing only one due to illness. The 2005 festival was dedicated to her.

Marks was also featured at the Vandalia Gathering, the Augusta Heritage Festival, Appalshop’s Seedtime on the Cumberland, the Berea Celebration of Traditional Music, and the Folklore Society of Greater Washington in Washington, D.C.

In fall of 2016, she performed a special concert at the West Virginia Humanities Council in Charleston, presented by the West Virginia Folklife Program and supported by the American Folklife Center. The concert and interview recordings are now part of a collection at the Library of Congress, adding to Marks’ existing recordings in the archive.

In 1991 and 1997, Phyllis recorded two albums for the Augusta Heritage Center. She is also included on the 2000 compilation Lest We Forget: The 50th Annual West Virginia State Folk Festival.

Phyllis Marks was revered in her community for her songs and stories, and sang regularly at local funerals, nursing homes, and for her family and visitors. She often swapped songs with her in-home caregiver, who visited her daily. Marks was a master in her field whose artistry was made exemplary by her unique and vast repertoire, vocal skill, and her lifetime commitment to sharing and sustaining traditional balladry in West Virginia.

Emily Hilliard is the West Virginia State Folklorist with the West Virginia Humanities Council. Learn more about the West Virginia Folklife Program, a project of the West Virginia Humanities Council, at wvfolklife.org.

Pickin' & Grinnin' with Morgantown's Apple Pappy

From West Virginia Public Broadcasting and A Change of Tune, this is 30 Days of #WVmusic, the interview series celebrating the folks who make the West Virginia music scene wild and wonderful.

And today’s interview is with an Appalachian quartet who are creating a new mountain sound for the next generation. This… is Apple Pappy.

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How did the band start playing music?

Emily Tanzey (guitar-vocals), Smith Sarver (guitar-vocals,) Ben Williams (mandolin-vocals,) and Greg Mulley (bass) all became friends while attending WVU in Morgantown and were drawn together by a love for Appalachian music and its tradition in storytelling.

Where does your current band/act name come from?

Ben’s grandfather had apple and peach orchards in Hampshire County, West Virginia. We were also influenced by the phonetic form of “Appalachia.”

How has the band’s sound changed over time (if at all)?

We learned many standards and old time/bluegrass songs before using our music to tell our own (and the mountain’s) stories.

Where does the band play in and around West Virginia (venues, festivals, etc.)?

We tend to play in Morgantown. We played at Cheatfest (Preston County) and Pink Moon Festival (Monroe County) last year, and lately we’ve performed for more private parties and weddings.

What’s been the highlight of the band’s musical journey thus far?

Opening for the Larry Keel Experience at 123 Pleasant St. was a real thrill. That group really inspires us.

What’s your best advice to anyone starting to make music?

Just with any art, imitating the masters is a good place to start. However, finding your own unique voice and using it to tell the stories of your community is when your art becomes alive.

What’s it like making music in West Virginia?

West Virginia is a tight-knit community across the board. Musicians in the state are generally very supportive of each other and help lift each other up. This is an attitude you will not find in many places. It’s rewarding to make music that resonates with old and young people alike, we all have common ground in our Mountain Mama.

Do you feel held back by being in West Virginia? Or does it feel like a musically-supportive place?

It is a much smaller pond than Nashville or even Asheville. This can be discouraging, but ultimately the talent and drive of West Virginians is unrivaled. You can’t expect support from a big record label, but you can expect it from your fellow musicians and listeners.

What, in your opinion, needs to happen in the West Virginia music scene for it to move forward?

People are waking up to the beauty of our state and the wonderful ways in which we can combine outdoor adventure, craft brewing and live music. These three areas need to recognize their symbiotic relationship and keep our government focused on tourism and attraction rather than capitalism and extraction.

Apply Pappy’s self-titled release is out now. Keep an eye (and ear) on the band’s social media for tour dates and new music. Hear more #WVmusic on A Change of Tune, airing Saturday nights at 10 on West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Connect with A Change of Tune on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And for more #WVmusic chats, make sure to go to wvpublic.org/wvmusic and subscribe to our RSS / podcast feeds.

Support for 30 Days of #WVmusic is provided by Kin Ship Goods, proud supporter of DIY music and the arts. Locally shipped worldwide at kinshipgoods.com.

Kaia Kater: A Portrait of a Young Quebecalachian

Since the show began almost two years ago, A Change of Tune has highlighted some of the best up-and-coming artists out of these West Virginia hills with podcast-y chats ranging from Tyler Childers to The World is a Beautiful Place…, The Sea The Sea to Qiet and beyond. But those interviews have been a bit infrequent, and since West Virginia Day is coming up (not to mention A Change of Tune’s second birthday), we thought we’d do something special: 30 days, 30 brand new #WVmusic interviews that range from Morgantown alt-rockers and Parkersburg singer-songwriters to West Virginia music venues and regional artist management and beyond, all of which contribute to this state’s wild and wonderful music scene.

And today, we are chatting with recent Davis & Elkins College graduate Kaia Kater, a singer-songwriter who traveled from Quebec to West Virginia nearly four years ago to learn more about Appalachia‘s old-time music and culture. We sat down with Kaia in our Charleston studios to talk about her musical journey, her love of bluegrass and R&B, and her recent feature from Rolling Stone magazine.

Kaia Kater’s newest release is Nine Pin, now available for purchase, download, and streaming. You can hear more of her music on A Change of Tune, airing Saturday nights at 10 on West Virginia Public Broadcasting. And for more #WVMusic chats, make sure to go to wvpublic.org/wvmusic.

Interview Highlights

On being from Canada:

I’m from Montreal, Quebec. I grew up there for most of my life. Then I spent a little bit of time in Winnipeg, Manitoba. And I’m currently based in Toronto, Ontario.

It’s funny because I had very little appreciation for Canada until I left Canada. And then I was like, “Wow… things are pretty ok in Canada!” And so I think, living home was probably the best thing because now I have more of an appreciation for my country.

On falling in love with old-time music at a young age:

Actually my grandpa is a luthier. He used to build harpsichords and guitars, but he cut some of his thumb off in 2013… he’s ok! [Laughing] But I think that sort of cut his career short, but he was retiring anyway. At family gatherings and Christmases and birthdays, we would always gather around and have a kitchen party where we would play tunes. And it was always really exciting for me because it was the time I could stay up past my bedtime to listen to people sing and play. And sometimes I would just fall asleep listening to people singing. It was just really special for me.

I got into old-time music in a really odd way. My mom fell in love with bluegrass music when I was eight. And she was like, “Ok. We’re going to go to a bluegrass festival now!” So I just got carried along, and registration was free if you were under 11. It was actually Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in Oak Hill [in New York], and they ran this Bluegrass Academy for Kids. It’s a really successful program, but at the beginning, it was basically [where] parents could drop off their kids at 9am and pick them up at 3pm and during that time, you would pick either banjo, bass, fiddle or violin. You would bring your own instrument, and all of these kids from 8- to 11-years-of-age would just hang around and learn how to play bluegrass music.

So I tried all of the different instruments. I tried fiddle and bass, and then I settled on the banjo. And I was determined to be a bluegrass banjo player, and somehow old-time swooped in like a hawk and picked me up, so I switched to clawhammer. And I think it’s because a lot of the teachers around me at home were clawhammer players and influenced me that way.

On becoming a professional musician:

You know when you discover your passion is when you trudge through your daily activities and chores and classes, and then at the end of the night, you’re like, “Ok. What do I really want to be doing?” And that was playing music for me.

And I think I was scared because I had seen a lot of musicians around me deal with touring. My mom was the executive director of the Ottowa Folk Festival and the Winnipeg Folk Festival. So a lot of musicians crashed at our house and hung out, and I think it was a really interesting education for me because I did see the darker side of touring, which is not being able to see your family. And some folks had drinking problems (not anything that was overwhelming, but it was a different way of life). And I think I was apprehensive about that, but there is a way to tour in a healthy way, I think.

On deciding on West Virginia for old-time music education:

I had been going to a lot of old-time camps. I went to the Swannanoa Gathering outside of Asheville [in North Carolina], which is a little slice of heaven to spend a week to play clawhammer banjo and living in this community who are nerding out as much as you are. [Laughing] Like “I never want to go back to the outside world!” So I went there twice, and it was really my first introduction to the Southern United States because the furthest I had been was New York State.

I had actually wanted to go to Warren Wilson [College in Asheville, North Carolina] for the longest time, which is the location of the Swannanoa Gathering. It’s funny. I remember the exact moment I clicked on their website, wondering what their tuition was. And it was $42,000 a year or something. And I thought, “What?! Is that even possible?” I took a year off of school, and I didn’t expect to be going to school because I didn’t feel like anything interested me enough and the programs that did interest me, I couldn’t really afford. And I was ok with that. I just played a lot of music out in Montreal.

I casually applied to the Augusta Heritage Center, which is where Davis & Elkins College is. And I got this Facebook message from this guy named Jerry Milnes, who’s quite well-known. At first I thought it was spam. “Who is this person contacting me, offering me free college tuition to go to a school in Appalachia. Are they messing with me? Do they know my deepest dream somehow? [Laughing] Luckily I read through the whole thing, and I called him. My family and I went down exactly four years ago, we checked it out, and I loved it, and they offered me a financial package that made it so that I wouldn’t have to pay $42,000 a year. And the rest is history.

On the meaning behind Nine Pin, her latest release:

It’s named after a particular square dance formation where you have eight people (four couples) and in the middle you have one person, which what makes it a nine pin, and you dance around it. To me, it’s one of the most fun because everybody swings, and then everyone holds hands and dances around the nine pin, and then the caller says something like, “Break,” and basically the nine pin has to try and find a partner. And whoever doesn’t find a partner becomes the new nine pin. So it’s almost like musical chairs.

I started doing a lot more songwriting in my junior year of college, and I was thinking a lot about those formations and the deeper symbolism of being one person surrounded by a lot of people swirling around you (in both good and bad ways).

On her last four years at Davis & Elkins’ Augusta Heritage Center:

In many ways, it was a really beautiful experience. I was not even from this country, and I had so many people offer to have me over to their house for dinner. I don’t have a car, so I had a lot of people say, “Do you need me to take you to Kroger or Wal-Mart?” So I was met with a lot of warmth, and I think that made all the difference for me because there’s a certain amount of challenge moving to a new place and a new school.

There was a certain amount of what I call “ugly face crying,” which is when you cry so hard, your entire face turns red from sobbing and your snotting over yourself. So there was a fair amount of that from the experience of doing that for the first time. But at the end of the day, I settled into a routine, as you do. At the end of the four years, I wouldn’t be the same artist, I wouldn’t release the same music if I hadn’t spent these last four years here because I knew old-time music, and I was good at playing tunes, but I don’t think I understood the communities behind the music or the stories behind the music. And that takes time. That just takes time.

On her recent inclusion in Rolling Stone’s recent 10 New Country Artists You Need to Know:

My publicist Devon Leger told me, “Listen I pitched your album [Nine Pin] to Rolling Stone, but I don’t know if they’re going to pick it up because they must have people flinging albums at them left and right.” [Laughing] And then all of a sudden, I get this frantic message from him and he’s like, “I need you to answer these four questions… it’s for a certain journalist.” I was like, “Ok…” So I answer them, sent them back. And he said, “That was for Rolling Stone!”

Last May, Kaia Kater was listed as one of the best new artists to watch by Rolling Stone magazine.

So we knew they were going to say something about it, but we didn’t know that they would have such kind words about it. I felt totally honored and excited that more people would be hearing the album.

I almost peed my pants when they said I sounded like Gillian Welch. [Laughing] I was like, “Really? She’s my idol!” If I could have a shrine to Gillian Welch in my house, I probably would.

On advice to folks looking to pursue old-time music in West Virginia:

Go for it. Literally nothing bad can come of it. Classical music, you just have to sit in a room and practice and do scales and scales and scales. But with old-time music, you just find someone, play banjo and fiddle tunes for an hour, and you’ve gotten better at your instrument and having fun at the same time.

Music featured in this #WVmusic chat:

Kaia Kater- “Saint Elizabeth”

Kaia Kater- “Nine Pin”

Kaia Kater- “Paradise Fell”

Kais Kater- “To Come”