This week on Inside Appalachia, we speak with an author about grief rituals, a podcaster about the religious music of snake handling churches, and we explore best practices to prepare for retirement.
This week, we speak with the author of a new book about grief rituals and how they’re practiced here in the mountains.
We also talk with podcaster Abe Partridge about an Appalachian art that goes unheard by most people – the religious music of snake handling churches.
And, a new study recently found a majority of Americans are not on track to comfortably pay for retirement. We checked in with the National Council on Aging about preparing for the end of our working lives.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Rachel Held Evans was a bestselling author, columnist and blogger, who wrote extensively about modern Christianity in America.
Considered a voice for young, progressive Christians, at 37, she unexpectedly died in 2019.
Her death led her sister Amanda Held Opelt to study grief rituals, as she processed her own loss.
Producer Bill Lynch spoke with Opelt about her sister, and writing about grief while grieving.
Plan Ahead For Retirement And Beyond
A new study by Fidelity Investments found that more than half of Americans are not on track for a comfortable retirement. It’s not just millennials and Gen Xers either: Many older adults don’t have enough money to retire.
WVPB News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Josh Hodges, chief customer officer for the National Council on Aging, to learn about what help is available for retirees and caregivers.
Amanda Held Opelt wrote about grief rituals, after losing her sister Rachel in 2019. Courtesy
Exploring Music From Snake Handling Churches
Abe Partridge explores music and faith with “Alabama Astronaut.” Courtesy
There are always untapped veins of Appalachian music that haven’t been mined, including the religious music of snake handling churches, which has its own particular style.
That music is the subject of a podcast called “Alabama Astronaut.”
Folkways Reporter Zack Harold spoke with co-host Abe Partridge about how a project intended to document this music ended up being about a whole lot more.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by David Mayfield, Jesse Milnes, Jeff Ellis, Little David and Tyler Childers.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. Zander Aloi also helped produce this episode.
You can send us an email at InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Folkways reporter Zack Harold interviews musician, songwriter, painter and former preacher Abe Partridge about his podcast “Alabama Astronaut,” which chronicles the world of Appalachian snake handling churches and the unique genre of music found within their walls.
This story originally aired in the Nov. 4, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Folkways reporter Zack Harold interviews musician, songwriter, painter and former preacher Abe Partridge about his podcast Alabama Astronaut, which chronicles the world of Appalachian snake handling churches and the unique genre of music found within their walls.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Harold: Can you give us a brief introduction on how you became familiar with the world of snake handling churches?
Partridge: I guess it depends on how far we want to go back, but I pastored in Middlesboro, Kentucky when I was in my mid 20s. I went through a crisis of faith, I guess you could say, and I was in the process of leaving the church.
During that time, I met a guy by the name of Jamie Coots, who was pretty well known in the serpent handling faith. We probably had a 30 or 45 minute conversation, but in that 30 or 45 minutes, it was a real striking conversation that I never forgot. He gave me his phone number — I think he knew that I was struggling.
Well, I started playing songs and painting and stuff like that. I was touring on the West Coast with artists by the name of Jerry Joseph and this other Alabamian from Birmingham named Will Stewart. He had a song that he wrote called “Brush Arbor.” It had a line in it that mentioned “copperheads and the Holy Ghost.” And I thought that was odd. I asked Will what it was about and he’s like, “It’s about a book I read called ‘Salvation on Sand Mountain.’” I read it at the beginning of the pandemic. And guess who’s in it? Jamie Coots.
So I said, “I’m going to go find this serpent handling church and I’m going to go.” Well, I found a few. And at every one that I went to, I had heard songs that I never knew — that I’d never heard before. And I had spent a large portion of my life in church.
Courtesy
Musician, singer-songwriter, painter, podcaster and former preacher Abe Partridge
Harold: For people that haven’t heard the podcast — what makes it special, compared to church music they might be familiar with?
Patridge: It differs, number one, in the lyrical content. These people happen to believe a certain passage of scripture that’s found in the book of Mark, chapter 16, verses 18 and 19. It draws from Jesus’ last words to his disciples before he ascended into heaven. And the last things that he told his disciples was there were five signs that were going to follow them that believe. Very quickly, the five are: cast out devils, laying hands on the sick and they shall recover, speaking in tongues, “they shall take up serpents,” and then “if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
Now there are hundreds of millions of Pentecostals that exist on planet Earth. And nearly all of those Pentecostals will do three of those signs — speaking in tongues, they profess to cast out devils and they profess to lay hands on the sick and then they recover. But outside of these few believers, I’m not aware of any other ones in the world where they literally take up serpents and literally, if they consume a poison that it does not hurt them.
So whenever you hear a song that references those, you know that it had to originate within this sect of believers — because there is literally no other sect of believers on planet Earth that falls under the realm of Christianity that believe these things.
Harold: The musical style is also unique. How would you describe that?
Partridge: Dennis Covington wrote the book “Salvation on Sand Mountain.” He described it as a mixture of Salvation Army and acid rock. And then other people have called it rockabilly, rock and roll, rock and roll sacred music. I call it serpent handling gospel music. They just call it music.
Harold: So how is this tradition being passed down?
Partridge: The same way that music was passed down for all the centuries before man had access to means of recording. Person to person, church to church. I have yet to meet a serpent handling musician that had any type of formal training in music. They pass down both the songs and the style of their playing, I guess you would say, orally.
Harold: But you’ve got churches all the way from Alabama up into West Virginia. It’s a pretty big swath of territory. Are they visiting one another and passing along songs? How does that cultural exchange happen?
Partridge: The serpent handlers know each other. They sometimes have special meetings they call them “homecomings.” Sometimes they have meetings called “revivals.” And people will travel from the other churches to attend. I’ve actually been in services before where, if you listen to the audio, you would assume there was only one guitar player. But in actuality, there were multiple guitar players. They pass the guitar along as each one feels led. But they play the same style, because it all derives from their sacred music.
Harold: Has there been a change over the years in the kind of music that the snake handling churches are playing? Or has it maintained some kind of consistency?
Partridge: I wouldn’t call them “changes,” I would call them “tweaks” with the introduction of electric instruments, probably in the ‘60s. But before that even, they were playing acoustic instruments, and they were playing the same type of songs they’re playing now.
It’s still actively, right now in 2022, being passed down. And I’ve got hundreds of hours of recordings that show this kind of music being played back into the ‘50s.
Harold: It seems the depth you’ve gone into all this — is it all just about the music? Or is there something else behind it too?
Partridge: So it’s always been music first. That was my goal. But I will tell you this, if it was just about the music, I wouldn’t still be going. I’ve already got hundreds of hours of recordings. I could put a record out but two weeks ago, I was still there.
It’s actually helped rekindle my own faith. I wouldn’t necessarily like to line out what that looks like. And, you know, I’m not going to start picking up snakes. But I have witnessed things in the moment that felt absolutely supernatural.
Harold: So you’ve got the recordings. What’s the plan to present those to the public?
Partridge: We have released the Coots Duo album, which is an album that we recorded inside of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus’ Name in Middlesboro, Kentucky — which is Jamie Coots’ old church — with his son Cody, and his wife, Cassie.
Cody happens to be a fourth generation serpent handler, serpent handling preacher and songwriter. So we’ve recorded music with them. And we’ve already put that out on our website. It’s already available for download.
Courtesy
The Coots Duo album, produced by Partridge, features snake handling preacher Cody Coots and his wife Cassie.
The goal is to create a documentary record that is captured within the church. But now I need to find the most powerful moments and get these things mixed and mastered — which I do not personally have the skills to do. So that’s where we’re at right now.
And let me tell you when it gets done, it is going to blow your mind. Because it’s so good.
Harold: This is one of the most compelling podcasts I’ve heard in a long time. It gives a peek into a side of American culture that I don’t think a whole lot of people have thought about. A lot of people don’t even know exists. And it handles it with such respect and an apparent love of the subject matter.
Partridge: It’s not hard to treat them with respect. It’s not hard, but it never gets done. I think the overall theme is, there’s a lot of people in this world. And like Dr. Hood said in the podcast, if we’re going to have diversity in this country then it requires a respect.
You can find more information about the Alabama Astronaut podcast, the Coots Duo album and Partridge’s other projects at AlabamaAstronaut.com.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Stories of snake handlers, moonshining and the isolated mountains of West Virginia have been around for years, but “Shiner,” a new novel by author Amy Jo Burns, looks at them from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl caught in the middle.
Eric Douglas spoke with Burns to discuss the newly released book.
Douglas:The book is set in modern day, but there are pieces of it that feel like they could have been told 100 years ago.
Burns: I wanted to really try to get inside somebody’s head who just did not have access to things like smartphones. Somebody who lived a very isolated life. I wanted the reader to experience what it would be like for somebody like Ren who lives this very private, secluded, almost timeless life. But then the rest of the world is moving on without her so she feels that tension. She sort of goes back and forth between the two.
Douglas:There are elements in the story that mystical, yet the story is set in modern day and in modern life. Why did you choose that approach?
Burns: I grew up in a faith healing church, which is not a snake handling church. And there’s certainly a difference. But I did grow up in a landscape where people expected God to be doing very mysterious things that weren’t easily explained. So that was a huge part of the way I grew up and the way I approached the world around me. I’ve read so many books about that sort of thing that always seemed to be looking at it from the outside and thinking, ‘Oh, this is such a weird tradition’ or ‘Look how weird these people are.’
[So] I wanted to tell a story that came from inside it and was able to capture the sacredness of those things that aren’t so easily explained, even though they are a little hard to understand and lead to some pretty damaging situations. Even though it was something I couldn’t quite understand, I still had a reverence for it. I think that is really the main tension that Ren is experiencing as she’s coming into her own as a young woman.
Douglas:What’s your connection to West Virginia or Appalachia? Why did you choose to set the book here?
Credit Courtesy Howie Chen
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Courtesy Howie Chen
Burns: I grew up in western Pennsylvania. When I was a teenager, in the summers, I visited West Virginia and I just fell in love with it. It’s so beautiful there and I think the landscape is constantly telling a story. In my memoir, which I published about five years ago called “Cinderland,” West Virginia plays a role, too.
In terms of the plot of the novel, West Virginia is actually the only state in the United States where snake handling is still legal. So that was certainly an interesting piece to add into the story, but I think I love to write about places, especially places that I longed for, and I think West Virginia has always held that place in my heart.
Douglas: When you start talking about snake handling and West Virginia, that brings up some stereotypes that make some people uncomfortable.
Burns: I think what I wanted to do was to break apart the stereotype. The man who takes up serpents is named Briar Bird. There’s a legend about him that is larger than life that no human can live up to. It is a stereotype. I wanted to create a man in the book who was like the men that I knew when I was growing up — someone who had a lot of ambition that had nothing to do with money. It had nothing to do with travel or leaving home but had a real sense of wanting God’s presence to show up in a really powerful way.
My hope is that I got the mystery across in the book and all the problems that come with it. It’s also about what happens to women who were caught up in that cycle. I didn’t set out to write a book that was meant to speak for everybody in West Virginia, everybody in Appalachia. I wanted to tell a nuanced story about somebody who does some very difficult things to understand.
Douglas:Is there anything we haven’t touched on anything you want to add?
Burns: I feel like what’s going on in our world is so uncertain and so scary. It’s been a real journey for me to process what it means to be putting a novel out in the world at this time. On the one hand, it can seem maybe frivolous or purposeless, but the more I’ve been able to think about it, the more grateful I am that I get to share something like this with the world.
