On this West Virginia Morning, dignitaries recently gathered to honor clawhammer banjo player Aunt Jeanie Wilson with a Legends and Lore signpost unveiled in Chief Logan State Park. Briana Heaney was there and has this story.
On this West Virginia Morning, dignitaries recently gathered to honor clawhammer banjo player Aunt Jeanie Wilson with a Legends and Lore signpost unveiled in Chief Logan State Park. Briana Heaney was there and has this story.
Also, in this show, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes to us from fiddle man Jason Carter, who joined us with his all-star band of friends. We listen to their performance of “Queen of the Nashville Night,” from Carter’s 2022 album Lowdown Hoedown.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
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Our Appalachia Health News project is made possible with support from CAMC and Marshall Health.
West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schultz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.
Eric Douglas is our news director. Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and producer.
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Musician Virginia Wilson died on March 2, 1992, at age 92. She was born in 1900 in what is now part of Chief Logan State Park.
Wilson was a master of the clawhammer-style banjo but was little known outside of her native Logan County for much of her life. That changed at age 58, when she was discovered by West Virginia University folklorist Patrick Gainer.
During the 1960s and 1970s, “Aunt Jennie,” as she was affectionately known, became a regular on the festival circuit. She also recorded traditional music for the Library of Congress and released an album produced by West Virginia native Billy Edd Wheeler.
Wilson was equally beloved for her wit and insights into life. One of her favorite sayings was ‘‘don’t take more on your head than you can kick off your heels’’—challenging people to enjoy life to its fullest. She also loved to recount stories from Logan County history. In 1984, Wilson received the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folk-life honor. And each Labor Day weekend, Wilson’s grandson, Roger Bryant, hosts a music festival in her honor at Chief Logan State Park.
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.
Credit Susan Bibeau – Beehive Productions
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Quebecer singer-songwriter Kaia Kater.
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.
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!”
Credit Polina Mourzina
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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.
For many West Virginians, the banjo represents a sense of home. That’s certainly the case for Shepherdstown-based musician, Chelsea McBee. The 29-year-old banjo player is a regular on the West Virginia music scene now, but that wasn’t always her plan.
McBee grew up in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. She graduated from Shepherd University with a degree in Photography, and she was sure she wanted to be a photographer. But during her last year at Shepherd, she discovered a love for the banjo. She even learned a unique playing style called clawhammer.
Q&A
How did your upbringing inspire your musicianship?
“I didn’t actually start playing the banjo until my senior year of college, here at Shepherd, but as soon as I started learning those old time tunes, it really, it’s all so connected, that even having grown up in West Virginia, and not necessarily played the instrument growing up, it just ties everything together, all the geography, and the history, and then the music.”
Did you ever meet people who were surprised to see a female banjo player?
“The most common reaction that I get is people are excited that I’m a woman playing this instrument, and…they can get…where once they see that, they get past, like, oh it’s not just a singer, and isn’t it so cute that she plays banjo, like, oh, I can really sit down and play a tune, and that’s…it’s good. I have a lot of young girls that come up and say they want to play, they want to perform, and I’m just like, yeah, do that, get started, play whatever you want!”
What is the clawhammer style?
“I’d say that the most recognizable style of banjo playing is the three finger picking style that is used in Bluegrass music traditionally, and the clawhammer style is more of a rhythm keeping kind of strum, and the way that you hold your hand, it kind of looks like a claw on a hammer, which is where the name comes from. So your fingers are curled up in a claw, and they hit the four main strings, and then your thumb is used to hit the top string as a drone.”
Why did you pursue the banjo?
“When I first learned a West Virginia old time tune, from a friend, he grew up in Romney, West Virginia, and played old time banjo, and he showed me my first couple tunes, and it is really cool, and I hadn’t heard stuff like that before necessarily, and it just really, really spoke to me. The music that I was listening to at the time, there was a little bit of banjo in there, but I wanted to see what else I could do with it, so really once I got started, then the process of getting to know the instrument is really what kept me intrigued and really what made me pursue playing and what else I could do with it, and that led into songwriting, and here we are today.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Colin McQuire of the Fredrick News Post described your voice as if “Nora Jones and Dolly Parton could have a daughter and that daughter just happened to grow up in West Virginia,” does this quote effectively represent your style, and are these women musical influences for you?
“I was thrilled when I read that quote, because it’s…their two voices are, and their presence in the music scene are ones that I look up too, certainly, and are inspirational. I mean, they’re both women that have done a lot of stuff for themselves, and…so I was honored that he would use that comparison, and I think it does fit. I’ve had a couple different people…I’ve used that quote on the website and on a couple posters when I’m travelling out of the area to give people some sort of idea, and I’ve had a couple people come in because of that quote, and say, that was really intriguing. We wanted to know what that, and he’s absolutely right! So that was great. I thank him very much for that.”
How do you see yourself evolving in the future, and has your path changed since you started your musical career?
“I think the fact that I see it at all as a musical career now, has changed, and the more and more that I play, and the more that I’m exposed too, industry-wise, the more I want to do. So that feels really good to feel inspired to continue in one direction instead of wanting to experience all the things that I was experiencing before, you know, trying to take photographs, and play music, and you know, everything else that I get excited about. So the fact that I can see that as a pretty clear path of music career, is certainly something that’s changed. And as far as evolution, I hope that it continues to grow and to evolve, and you know, I can tell a big difference in my playing and singing and writing now, you know, has changed so much since I started, for the better. I hope it keeps growing and keeps getting better.”
Chelsea McBee performs around the region – solo, and with her group, the Random Assortment, and she often plays with West Virginia’s Christian Lopez Band. On the first Thursday of every month, Chelsea hosts a First Thursday Artist Series at the Opera House in Shepherdstown.
