The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will induct five new members in a ceremony next May.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will induct five new members in a ceremony next May.
Bluegrass musician Buddy Griffin will be among those joining in 2023.
Griffin played the fiddle on Wednesday at the announcement of his inclusion in the next class at Charleston Town Center. But he didn’t want the credit just for himself.
“Nothing I’ve ever done’s been great,” Griffin said. “But I’ve been able to stand on stage and rub elbows with a lot of great people.”
Also joining the Hall of Fame next year: Barbara Nissman, a concert pianist from Philadelphia who made West Virginia her home for the past three decades.
“The older I get, the more blessed I feel to be a musician, to be a piano player,” she said. “I’ve loved the piano since I was a child, even though my first teacher told my mother I didn’t have much talent. But you can persevere.”
Nissman will play at the induction ceremony next year at the Culture Center in Charleston.
Other inductees will include Fuzzy Haskins and Calvin Simon, founding members of Parliament Funkadelic.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame began inducting members in 2007. Director Michael Lipton said there’s no shortage of talent to add to the group.
“People said to me over the years, ‘Well, when are you going to run out of people?’” Lipton said. “And we’re not going to run out of people, because music is that important in West Virginia.”
Deceased members to be inducted include first-generation bluegrass group the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers and Hammond B-3 organ player Winston Wells.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting will air the induction ceremony live in May 2023.
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 The Sea The Sea to Coyotes in Boxes, Qiet to Bud Carroll 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 Charleston’s own Michael Lipton, who wears many, many hats in the #WVmusic scene. He tours around the state with The Carpenter Ants, he plays guitar for the Mountain Stage band, and he also directs the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and preserving the rich and lasting contributions West Virginians have made to all genres of music. One of those ways is through a new documentary, which will air on West Virginia Public Broadcasting later this summer. We spoke with Michael about his work as a West Virginia musician, the mission of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, and why it’s important for West Virginians to listen to West Virginia’s musical past.
Credit Josh Saul
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Michael Lipton speaks with musician Tift Merrit at a Mountain Stage in Grand Marais, Minnesota.
Are you from West Virginia originally?
I was born outside of New York, moved to Miami when I was 12, then escaped from Miami as soon as possible and ended up in Calhoun County in West Virginia when I was 20. Around 1970, I was in a group in high school, and the music scene in Miami didn’t have much national attention to it. Of course, right after we left, they had Derek & the Dominoes recording there and The Bee Gees moved down there.
Of all the places in West Virginia, why did you move to Calhoun County?
We had moved to Boston as our group. We were there for the better part of the year. There seemed to be a lull in the Boston scene at that time, and it seemed to be kind of tough to play original music there. After a year, we decided to call it quits, and I wanted to go someplace where I could, perhaps, not work for six months. I looked in an almanac and saw that West Virginia was the poorest state east of the Mississippi, and I said, “Well, never been there. Let me give that a try.”
It was a huge culture shock. It couldn’t have been more different than where I was raised or how I grew up. Maybe I was the stereotype of the person who doesn’t know that West Virginia’s a state, because I was driving around thinking, “Where are all the white houses with columns and things?” But even though it was incredibly different, there was something about it that felt good and made sense.
The very first night we spent in West Virginia, we were driving south and deciding where to look for a place. It was getting dark, and our car’s gas was getting low, but we had sleeping bags, so we pulled off and slept on the side of the road until morning. We found a field, put the bedrolls down, and I woke up in the morning and saw an old man digging potatoes around me. He said, “I tried not to wake you.” That was when I knew this place was meant for me. I stayed in Calhoun County for 15 years after that.
Credit Brian Blauser / Mountain Stage
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A definite throwback moment for the Mountain Stage band.
How did you end up playing and living in Charleston?
I was planning on going to Northwestern University’s School of Journalism, but then I decided I wasn’t going to school. I had started writing for the Calhoun Chronicle, just for the hell of it. And when we had this band, I was trying to get some press for it. One year, we were playing a costume New Year’s Eve party in Alderson Prison, so I called the Charleston Gazette and asked if anyone wanted to cover it. They said they didn’t have anyone to send out on New Year’s Eve, and somewhere in that conversation, I guess I must have said I was a writer. So they said, “Well, why don’t you write it?” And even though they never ran the piece, I just kept writing for them. I kept doing it more and more, so I just ended up moving to Charleston.
We (Larry Groce, myself and Frank Venezia) eventually took over Graffiti. I knew Frank from Calhoun County. He was part of a commune out there and after my house in Calhoun County was hit with lightning and burned down, he helped me rebuild my house. As for Larry, when I started writing about music for the Charleston Gazette, the most interesting thing to write about was the stuff that was happening on Mountain Stage. At that time, it had only been up-and-running for a couple years. So we became friends, and he asked if I wanted to play guitar for the show.
I’m not very good with remembering dates, but I am with this one. It was 2004. Graffiti had not broken even, not even one month in 15 years. It was a miserable experience with a lot of work and not a lot of credit. Anytime you see you name in print, it was fun. But that satisfaction ended a long time before the paper ended. And we saw the writing on the wall with the internet and hard copy becoming tougher and tougher to keep going. So Ogden Newspapers, a big conservative publisher, bought it. Around that time, I had been to Nashville to the Country Music Hall of Fame and thought, “Gee, why doesn’t West Virginia have one of these things.”
The first exhibits we did, I went in my basement and picked out all the West Virginia records I could find, just to give us something to do. But when I first bought them, I didn’t know that any of them were from West Virginia. After that, I started looking for more things. One of the things I like about the whole project is finding that kind of stuff.
Prior to starting the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, what did you know about the West Virginia music scene?
I thought I knew a lot about it, because I had been playing here for 30 years, but then I realized that I didn’t know much at all. I didn’t know Bill Withers was from Raleigh County. I mean, I knew Little Jimmy Dickens and Kathy Mattea, but I didn’t know two of the co-founders of Parliament-Funkadlic were from West Virginia. The list goes on.
One of the things I think is wonderful about West Virginia is that you can have an idea and you can do it. If you were any place else, there would be three of them that exist already or it would be very difficult to do because of red tape or money or what have you. But here, you can just start things. Keeping it going is a different story, of course.
What was the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s first induction ceremony like?
The first induction ceremony was in 2007. That was one the things we knew we had to start doing. The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame board picked the people. The first induction class was amazing, really. Little Jimmy Dickens, Hazel Dickens, George Crumb, Billy Edd Wheeler, Clark Kessinger, Johnnie Johnson, and more. There were ten inductees then, and we have never had as many inductees in a class since.
Andy Ridenour [one of Mountain Stage’s co-founders] got me an address for Bill Withers’ wife, so we figured we’d start with the biggest fish, and we figured Bill Withers was the biggest fish. We wrote him and said, “We’re starting this thing, you’re in our first class of inductees. Could you be present for this ceremony?” And he wrote back and said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He’s been key to a number of things we’ve done, and once he said that, we thought, “Ok. It looks like we’ve got something here.” He’s received awards from all over the world, and in some ways, his memories of West Virginia aren’t that fond. So I could certainly understand if he was too busy or whatever. But he came. All of the five surviving members of that first class of inductees came.
You’ve inducted over 40 West Virginians into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. What are the qualifications for getting selected or being inducted?
There are no exact guidelines. Obviously you’ve had to amass as canon of work and been influential in some way. But there are two main categories: either you were born here or chose to spend your life here. So long as you’ve had a remarkable impact on the state and the nation at-large.
Is there a region of West Virginia with the most inductees?
Kanawha County has the most inductees. But in terms of where respective musicians come from in the state, the central part of the state (the swath that goes through Gilmer, Roane, and Clay) is home to really the best old-time musicians. That’s because that region of the state had the least influx of outside folks.
Credit Courtesy of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
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How long have you been working on getting the new West Virginia Music Hall of Fame documentary up-and-running?
It’s been five years. The idea behind the documentary was not to just look at all of these people’s careers. The idea for it came from realizing that growing up in West Virginia is a different experience than growing up in other places. Granted, any place can say that, but I really think this is more different than other places, partially because of the isolation. Another thing that made me think about doing it was this: when we talked to all of these inductees for the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, there really hasn’t been anybody who has crashed and burned. I wanted to showcase how the ideals that people were taught growing up here helped keep their heads on straight, both when things were going great and when things were going bad. This is how this state has influenced their lives and influenced their careers.
What’s a common thread from each of those inductee’s experiences?
One was that almost everybody started music from church. Another was this common sense of community, family, and support. I think that’s a thread that goes through the whole film. And that this is a very special to be from.
Anna Sale, the host of WNYC’s “Death, Sex & Money” and an alumnus of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, provides the narration for this film. How did you get her on-board with this?
We did the whole film backwards because we didn’t know what all of these people were going to say. I think I did 47 interviews with 130 hours of film. So we were trying to figure out how and when we were going to need narration to bring it all together. Jack Wright, who helped us finish the film and was a friend and film professor at Ohio University, suggested Anna Sale to us. She actually did all of the interviews for us for the first class of inductees when she worked at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. I had also known her for a long time.
And Larry Groce is no stranger to speaking off the cuff, so when we were trying to figure out how to get from “point A” to “point Z” in the film, we looked at Larry’s interview and saw it was all there. In a sense, he serves as another narrator, as one of the film’s guides.
Credit Courtesy of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
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Since 2007, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s traveling museum has visited over 500 schools.
Why is this #WVmusic documentary, not to mention the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, important for West Virginians to see?
One of the things we really try to do with the traveling museum, a project we put together with the West Virginia Department of Education and has been to over 500 schools and been seen by 15,000 kids, we try to stress that all of these people grew up in the same situation, if not worse. The last quote in the film was something Bill Withers said (which I’m paraphrasing): “The real goal when you live in a place like West Virginia is to show kids that nobody has any magic that they don’t have. They’re just people.” So that’s it in a nutshell: to let people know that they don’t have to be from a big city to do this. You have to work hard, you have to have the talent, you have to have the determination, but it’s still possible. And this is also to give people a sense of pride of where they live.
Credit Josh Saul
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Michael Lipton warms up for this 2015 Mountain Stage at Ohio University.
How do you think West Virginia is doing right now in terms of its music output?
There’s definitely a new vitality, which wasn’t here to this extent back in the ‘90s. There’s always been a lot of great players, not to mention an incredible amount of sidemen from West Virginia who now live in Nashville. But I think there’s a new sense of pride here, which is great. People are starting to move back [laughing]. Not as many people are coming back as are leaving, but everything fuels everything else. The more you feel like you live in a real, vital, energetic place, the better you feel about your work and the more you become a cheerleader for it.
What advice would you give to folks wanting to get into music?
There are so many more avenues now to get your music out there. You just got to really want to do it. That’s what we tell kids, too. “You want to be an athlete? That’s great, that’s fine, but how long is your career going to be? 10 or 20 years, maybe? You can play music virtually the day you die, and it doesn’t make any difference if you’re playing on the back porch or playing on the stage. It will be enjoyable for you and hopefully for other people to.” If that can’t be your own reward, then you’re in trouble.
Credit Courtesy of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
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Keep an eye on West Virginia Public Broadcasting for the television premiere of West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s new documentary, West Virginia My Home: Musicians and the Mountain State Experience. And keep an ear out for a Little Jimmy Dickens tribute album (featuring Bill Withers, Russ Hicks, Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., Kathy Mattea, Tim O’Brien, and more), which will be out later this fall. To hear more #WVmusic, tune in to 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.
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 Rozwell Kid to Beach House drummer Graham Hill, Goodwolf to Teammate’s Scott Simons 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 Hello June, an indie rock four-piece that was started just a few years back by Morgantown native Sarah Rudy. The band has now grown to include Summersville’s Nate Snyder and Charleston buds Whit Alexander and Chad Brown. We sat down with the band to talk about their new release and what it’s like being a rock’n group of twenty-somethings in northern West Virginia.
Credit Courtesy of Hello June
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How did Hello June come together?
Nate Snyder (bassist): Sarah started the band in 2013 with Whit. It started as a little project, mostly recording songs that Sarah was writing. And that’s how Hello June’s EP came out around that time. it kind of took off from there. Eventually, everything went on a little break. Sarah ran into me, randomly, through another band practice that never worked out. We hit it off, and she asked me to play in Hello June. So I came up, and Chad moved in with us around the same time. Me, Sarah and Chad actually live together. So we all started playing, and Whit rejoined as the drummer as he was the guitarist previously.
Sarah Rudy (vocalist & guitarist): Hello June was my first official project. But Chad, Whit and I had a little project when we lived in the same apartment building around 2008 or 2009. So we had a history of playing together. And the reason why things are coming together so quickly with Hello June is because Chad and White grew up learning how to play together, so it’s really awesome to have them in the same room.
Nate: I literally just joined in February of this year [laughing]. It’s only been this formation since mid-March.
Are you all from West Virginia originally?
Sarah: Whit and Chad are from Charleston. I’m from Morgantown.
Nate: I’m from Summersville.
How did you get into music?
Nate: Well, I started playing bass originally than switched to guitars and then drums, because in Summersville, nobody ever seemed to have a drummer. When I was about 15, I was sneaking into bars to play a 30-minute set with bands who were in their 40’s, and then I would have to sneak out really quickly. That was my first taste of playing music, and then it kind of just kept going from there.
Credit Courtesy of Hello June
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Hello June in silhouette.
Sarah: I grew up playing. My grandfather played guitar, so he taught me how to play. Music is just integral to my family.
Chad Brown (guitarist): I started playing drums when I was 5, then switching to guitars at around 11. Everyone in my family plays music, so I’ve been around the Appalachian music scene since I could walk.
Whit Alexander (drummer & percussionist): My dad and uncle both played guitar, so I grew up around that. And when Chad had a band in high school, they were in need of a drummer, so I starting drumming on tables and then starting drumming with real percussion instruments.
When you were growing up in West Virginia, did you look up to any bands playing in the state?
Nate: Growing up, no. If you count college growing up, then I eventually found Daniel Johnston. He became a very big influence on me, and it was pleasure to find out that he was from West Virginia. When I was younger, I never got into the country music thing. I was always idolizing classic rock, and then I find indie and went in that direction very quickly.
Sarah: I always appreciated Jason Molina. He lived here for a little bit. He’s one of my favorite artists, so the fact that he had any ties to West Virginia was exciting to me.
Chad: For me, growing up in Charleston and being around Mountain Stage, Michael Lipton has been one of my favorite guitar players for a long time.
Whit: I had the opportunity to work with Larry Groce for a little bit on Mountain Stage about eight years ago, and he’s somebody that I’ve always idolized in the West Virginia music scene. But also, Bud Carroll had a band called American Minor that, when I was in high school, a band that I got really into. Their sound was really cool.
It’s interesting you all brought up Jason Molina and Daniel Johnston. Of the #WVmusic interviews I’ve done so far, no one has cited those artists for inspiration.
Sarah: I’m not surprised. We’re a little bit weird [laughing]. I know William Matheny loves Jason Molina…
Nate: …he just won’t admit it [laughing].
Sarah: [Laughing] He just doesn’t love Jason as much as I do.
When you were growing up in West Virginia, was it hard trying to make music that was less country and more indie rock?
Nate: Absolutely. For me it was, at least. I grew up listening to Garth Brooks, and I can literally remember the day I first heard The Beatles. And I thought, “Oh ok. That’s cooler than everything else.” I started down that path, which lead to classic rock and indie music eventually. But when I would hang out with my friends, and they would want to listen to the new Jay Z or Kanye West or Toby Keith album at the time, I would say, “That’s cool… but Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (which is another band from West Virginia that I should mention)!” And my friends would say, “Yeah… nobody cares. Go away. Go listen to your weird music.”
The lead singer from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is actually from the Morgantown area, if I’m not mistaken. I got to meet Surfer Blood when they played up here at 123 Pleasant Street, and the first question they asked me was, “Does everyone here love Clap Your Hands Say Yeah because of West Virginia?” And I was like, “I don’t think anybody else besides me knows that they’re from West Virginia.” [Laughing] The lead singer is from here, but he eventually moved to New York. There’s actually a line “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” that says, “Far, far away from West Virginia / I will try on New York City,” and that’s literally what he did. It’s kind of an autobiographical song.
And Katy Goodman from La Sera (who recently played here at 123 Pleasant Street) and Vivan Girls said that her family was from the Lewisburg area.
Chad: I came up on a lot more traditional Appalachian music. There was a lot of acoustic string music and a lot of Southern rock in my house. We played a lot of juke joints and dive bars, so it was a lot more normal for me to deal with that than to go out and fight to play a surf punk song or a metal song.
Sarah: I honestly don’t know if I ever thought about. I think I just do whatever I feel like doing [laughing]. I grew up listening to a bunch of different stuff like Neil Young and Elton John and some crazy things my mother would bring to the table. I never really thought about where we were in West Virginia or where I was even in the world. I just did whatever I felt was right at the time [laughing].
Credit Aaron New
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Hello June is Chad Brown, Whit Alexander, Sarah Rudy and Nate Snyder.
I’ve tried to find bands that have made good music, regardless of where they’re from or who’s in the band, but I would say that only a small portion of those bands involved women. What are your thoughts on that, Sarah?
Sarah: I think that’s pretty accurate. Haley Slagle is around Morgantown, and she’s one of the first women artists in West Virginia I noticed when I moved back here. The music scene around here is very male-dominated, and I don’t think that’s unique to Morgantown; I think it’s across the state. I definitely think that’s a good observation [laughing].
I really don’t know why we don’t see more women playing around the state. If you go to a show any given night, it’s extremely rare to see a female up there. So I don’t know if it’s because it’s expected because it’s the norm as of now or something else. I do think it’s changing in a different direction. Recently, I’ve come into contact with different females in our music. Tonight, we’re playing a show with The Furr, which has a female drummer, and that’s pretty cool. But in general, the female presence is lacking in my humble female opinion [laughing].
Nate: I will say that I have no experience in being a female member of a band [laughing], but pretty much every band I’ve been in has had a female in at some point, either permanently or is led by a female. It’s always been great. When I was younger, I heard somebody say, “Well, that band would be a lot better if that girl wasn’t on stage.” That really irked me at a young age, and even though I don’t necessarily seek it out, I always enjoy whenever there’s a female in a band. So when Sarah asked me play up here, it was even better because I knew how strong of a lead she was and how her work would be a good push for young girls and older women to just get out there and step up on stage, stand in the spotlight and do their thing.
Sarah: Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
Where does the name Hello June come from?
Sarah: I loved Johnny Cash growing up. I actually thought my grandfather was Johnny Cash probably until the year 2000. And I also looked up to June Carter Cash and her presence, probably because she was female and I felt connected to her. So Hello June stemmed from that. It sounds silly, but whenever Johnny Cash would get up on stage and say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” putting those concepts together is how I came up with that band name.
Credit Courtesy of Hello June
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A snapshot of Hello June’s recording space.
How would you describe Hello June’s sound?
Nate: That’s actually been a really difficult question for us. We describe our sound as indie rock in general. Some people describe us as bummer rock, which…
Sarah: I don’t agree with that.
Nate: We don’t agree with it. There’s a mellow feel to what we do, even though we do get intense from time to time in our live shows. I always tell people that it’s a little bit of rock, a little bit of indie and it’s also got a country tinge to it.
Sarah: Honestly, it’s really hard for me to categorize it. Hopefully one day I will be able to articulate that to you [laughing].
What are some of the influences on the band and the music?
Nate: The National is really big for me, I think for Sarah also. For me, I look up to bands like Frightened Rabbit and Death Cab for Cutie. Those all are really depressing bands, which I realize…
Sarah: Yeah about that “bummer rock” description… [laughing]
Nate: I’m the bummer, and they’re the rock [laughing]. But those bands have been big to me. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Lady Lamb recently, because I’ve been trying to get more into the mindset of Sarah’s style of playing. I’m producing the new Hello June record, so I wanted to make sure I understood how female vocals sat into the mixes and how they should be presented. And going to newer bands like Lady Lamb, La Sera and Alvvays, I paid a lot of attention to those sounds and used those influences on how we recorded.
<a href=”http://hellojune.bandcamp.com/album/hello-june-ep”>Hello June EP by Hello June</a>
It doesn’t seem like you’ve released much since your 2013 self-titled EP. Is there a reason for that?
Sarah: We just took a very long break. Whit and I released that EP, and we desperately tried to get a band together at that point, but it just wasn’t happening. We both went back to school (Whit studies computer science, I was studying biology), and we finished our degrees. We just weren’t focusing on music at all. Just recently, I decided to pull it back up and see what we could do with it.
Now you have the band back together and a new single out titled “Handshakes.” Can you talk about this new release a little bit?
Sarah: I wrote the bones of it a couple years ago, and I always wanted to do something with it. I brought it to these guys, and it started coming together. When we started playing together, that’s when things really started coming together, and we started figuring out different arrangements that we appreciated. And then we started recording it.
Credit Courtesy of Hello June
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Hello June’s new single is “Handshakes.” Expect a full-length from the band by the end of the year.
Nate: When Sarah first asked me to play, I was already a huge fan of the self-titled EP. So when she said she was working on a full-length, I thought that was incredible and jumped on the opportunity as quickly as possible. I didn’t know what my part was going to be. I fell into playing the bass after trying several different instruments including a very small synthesizer [laughing] which is funny because I’m 6’4’’ and giant. So a little tiny synthesizer was an interesting choice for me.
But whenever we started restructuring the songs that Sarah had written three or four years ago, it was originally just me, Sarah and Chad with headphone practice and ran everything through the computer in our apartment because we couldn’t play loud. For a little while, Whit was even playing drums in the keyboards, which was hilarious and awesome at the same time [laughing]. He was actually really good at it. We finally got a space, and as soon as we got into the space, we could finally play how we wanted to…
Sarah: Like real people [laughing].
Nate: We could make as much noise as wanted to, and we definitely did. I think it took two or three practices when we began feeling really tight as a band and how to react to each other doing things. Sarah did the self-titled EP pretty much by herself with Whit on it as well (she had a drummer at the time who also did some tracks), but she handed the reins over for me for most of “Handshakes.” Between the four of us, we’ve all been jumping in and attacking the recording process on our own, taking things one step at a time. We all had enough experience to know how it would go, but not enough to see how it would turn out…
Sarah: We still don’t know how it’s going to turn out [laughing].
Nate: [Laughing] Yeah. But so far, we’re pretty pleased with what we’ve done. We’re anticipating eight to ten songs on the new full-length, and the original three songs from the EP will be recorded the way we play them now for the upcoming full-length release. Because they still get a lot of attention and good response from the shows, so we thought it was time to rerecord them and put them back out.
Let’s talk about you all playing in Morgantown. How welcoming has the city been to your music?
Sarah: Very welcoming. The response we’ve gotten has always been positive.
Credit Courtesy of Hello June
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Hello June performed at U92 FM’s inaugural Moose Fest at 123 Pleasant Street.
Nate: I was recently talking to U92 FM’s Aaron New about Moose Fest, which was our first full-band show. We were playing the upper bar of 123 Pleasant Street and the tiny area in front of the window. He said that from what he heard, other than Rozwell Kid playing the fest (who has been an established band for a long time), and he said that people were really excited to see us and the bar was full when we played. A lot of people did respond really strongly to Hello June’s first EP, and I think everybody was excited to hear that something new was coming out.
We picked a weird time to start being a band and playing out more since all the college students leave, so the audiences are cut in half in Morgantown, but a lot of the locals have come out and are being receptive to our music.
Sarah: When I came back from Baltimore around 2011, I was not super into playing shows at that point. I felt like the Morgantown music scene was harsher at that point. But more recently, there’s been some really, really quality bands that have popped up, and the audiences have helped with that.
What have your experiences been playing music in West Virginia?
Nate: Having played in West Virginia most of my life, it’s definitely been a lot of positives and a lot of negatives, especially being an indie band. Morgantown is really the only place you can fit in, for the most part. Maybe Charleston (sometimes). It’s hard to book shows if you’re not playing modern country songs, not even classic country. We’re lucky to have 123 Pleasant Street, and Mainstage Morgantown is starting to get a little more indie. And Gene’s is starting to put on shows. The fact that they’re opening the doors to alternative and indie bands, not just your typical metal and country and bluegrass, that’s just amazing. Don’t get me wrong, there are downfalls for playing in the same spot. But you just have to keep pushing through that and look at the positives.
#thestruggletostay has been a big topic of conversation in West Virginia. Do you all expect this band to stay in West Virginia much longer?
Chad: If we got the opportunity, I don’t think anyone would think, “No, we can’t move. This is not an option.” It’s so cheap, and we’re all here. Whit is married. There’s no need for us to go anywhere now. It’s easy here.
Sarah: I like it here. I wasn’t expecting to stay much longer after moving back from Baltimore. I was just finishing up some school stuff, but I now appreciate the mix of things going on in Morgantown.
Nate: For the longest time, my life’s goal was to leave West Virginia. But I realize now that it’s not a terrible place, and I can accept where I am for right now.
When people walk away from this interview, what is the one thing they should know about Hello June?
Chad: We have fun [laughing]. We do.
Sarah: We’re all really good friends. We have a strong connection.
<a href=”http://hellojune.bandcamp.com/track/handshakes”>Handshakes by Hello June</a>
Hello June’s newest single is “Handshakes,” available now on their Bandcamp. Hear more #WVmusic 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 and subscribe to our RSS / podcast feeds!
