Listen: Bill Kirchen on Mountain Stage

A great deal has changed since 1964. But when rockabilly purveyor Bill Kirchen performed “The Times They Are A-Changin'” on Mountain Stage in 2017, it brought it back into focus.

This week’s rebroadcast also features performances from The Early Mays, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands and Tom Paxton and the Don Juans.

Like what you hear? Subscribe to the Mountain Stage podcast to hear our collection of full episodes available right at your fingertips.

Folk Music Legend Tom Paxton Celebrates 80th Birthday with Mountain Stage in Elkins This Saturday.

“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.

RSVP to our Facebook Event.

Follow Mountain Stage on Instagram and Twitter to peak behind the scenes.

Sign up for our e-mail newsletter to get periodic updates, discounts and playlists from the Mountain Stage office.

Did you know Mountain Stage Members get seven days of exclusive pre-sale access to all Culture Center shows? To support Mountain Stage directly with a sustaining gift, please click here.

See all of our upcoming live events at MountainStage.org/shows.

Credit Polly Whitehorn
/
Emily Pinkerton, Ellen Gozion and Rachel Eddy comprise the roots trio The Early Mays, who appear on Mountain Stage this Saturday in Elkins, WV.

Chris Wood Named Davis & Elkins College President

Chris Wood has been named the 15th president of Davis & Elkins College.

The college’s Board of Trustees announced Wood’s selection Wednesday from among more than 60 candidates following a yearlong search.

The Huntington native’s appointment is effective Aug. 1. 

The 51-year-old Wood currently is vice president for advancement at Wesley College in Dover, Delaware.

Wood succeeds Buck Smith, who served six of the past eight years and will retire again as president emeritus.

In a statement, Wood says while he has not been actively seeking a college presidency, he found that Davis & Elkins’ liberal arts education offerings, faith-based roots and location in his home state were “enticing and captivating.”

Wood has a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a post-graduate degree from Northwestern University’s theological seminary.

First Class of D&E's Appalachian Ensemble Program Shines in National Spotlight

Last week, Davis and Elkins College graduated its first class of students that includes members of its touring string band and dance ensemble. The Appalachian Ensemble works a lot like a college sports team- the players, in this case musicians and flatfoot dancers, earn scholarships.

One of the graduates is 22-year-old banjo player, Kaia Kater, who was recently featured by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the 10 New Country Artists You Need to Know.

The other graduate is 24-year old Scotty Leach, who plays fiddle and piano. Five years ago, he was living in Centralia, Washington. He played in a local contra dance band, and he loved it. But he didn’t feel content. “I didn’t have a plan to go to school, and I remember thinking one day, I was sitting in the house I was renting, and I felt like I was headed in a downward spiral, like my life had no purpose or meaning or direction or anything. And I thought…this is bad.”

So then, a very strange thing happened. The president of a small liberal arts college in West Virginia visited and invited Scotty to attend his school — with a scholarship. He was one of three performers Gerry Milnes and Buck Smith recruited to Davis and Elkins College for the first year of the Appalachian Ensemble program, in 2012.

Kaia Kater came from Canada. She and Scotty brought very different styles to the program. A third student named Rebecca Wudarski- who ended up leaving the college after a few years- was the only native West Virginian in the band that first year.

The first time they ever played together as a band was in Thomas in 2012. A crowd gathered around the three young musicians as they played an informal jam.

“Even through the anxiety of like are we gonna get along as friends, I think that moment was really when musically we were gonna be ok,” said Kaia.

Their sophomore year, a new group of dance students started at D&E. In addition to West Virginia tunes, the string band learned new music that would showcase the dance students.

Credit Mountain Stage
/
Scotty Leach is a fiddle player for the Appalachian Ensemble

Scotty says he thinks the program will continue to grow and adapt.

“I’m curious what this will be like in ten years. You know, after several cycles of students are have gone through it, I’m curious what the repertoire looks like. We have some Duke Ellington now. Gerry would have never let us do Duke Ellington the first year.”

Gerry Milnes retired a year after Scotty and Kaia started at D&E.

As an folklorist of a different generation, he says the break from traditional old time music was something that was tough for him get used to.

“Things move along and things change, and even traditional music changes, it’s never been really static, it’s changed through time, and it’s never gonna change, so I have to realize that it’s a new generation and a new time, and I have to understand that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMOYkrmQYU
 

And the Ensemble’s style of fusion Appalachian music has helped bring a lot of attention to D&E. Four years later, the program has grown. There are now 13 students in the Appalachian Ensemble. The college invests in the program in the same way that other schools do for athletic teams.

Scholarships average about $7,000 per year, though the amount varies for each student.

The students tour across Appalachia, performing at schools and festivals. It hasn’t been cheap for the college, which has fewer than 900 students enrolled.

The Chair of Division of Fine and Performing Arts, Tom Hackman, says the Ensemble has helped the college do more outreach and branding. “I don’t want to say that it’s paid for itself, but it’s been worth it from the college’s standpoint. It’s something unique, and a lot of small liberal arts colleges, we have to embrace our uniqueness. We have to look at, you know, these are things that we do that are different from everyone else. And a lot of people here on campus recognized very early on that that was the case with the Appalachian Ensemble, that no one was doing something exactly like this.”

As for Scotty and Kaia, they both say they have a lot of bittersweet emotions this week- after they played their very last performance as D&E musicians.

Credit courtesty Kaia Kater
/
Kaia Kater

This summer, Scotty will be staying in West Virginia to work at the Augusta Heritage Center. After August- he’s not sure what his plans will be.

Kaia Kater will be touring in Canada and the United States to promote her new solo album, Nine Pin. On the sleeve of the CD, Kaia says: “Thank you to Scotty Leach, we’ve been everywhere and back again.”

Exit mobile version