Elizabeth LaPrelle grew up performing music with her family in southwestern Virginia. Today, she is taking the tradition forward by playing with her own, young family for a social media audience that watched throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
If you’ve listened to Inside Appalachia, there’s a good chance you’ve heard LaPrelle’s music before, as one half of Anna & Elizabeth. That would be LaPrelle, who grew up in Rural Retreat, Virginia, and Anna Roberts Gevalt, who is now based in Brooklyn.
For a while, LaPrelle lived in Brooklyn, too, but eventually she and her husband, Brian Dolphin, moved back to southwestern Virginia to raise a family. They moved in just before the pandemic hit. In March 2020, the longtime performers and new parents took to Facebook Live and began weekly livestreams of lullabies and stories.
Inside Appalachia co-host Mason Adams spoke with LaPrelle to learn more, beginning with LaPrelle’s roots as a ballad singer who took up the tradition of regional legends like Texas Gladden.
***Editor’s Note: The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
LaPrelle: It started for me at a pretty young age. But I think my first memories of ballads, as such, like knowing that they were stories and being interested in learning them, and actually learning them and singing them would have been around 10 or 11 years old. I’ve learned Barbara Allen and I sang it at my summer camp talent show.
Adams: What initially led you away from your hometown of Rural Retreat?
LaPrelle: The short answer is just touring — being a musician and trying to live as a musician. I went away for college, and after four years, I went back to Rural Retreat. I really missed the mountains and wanted to focus on music ,and didn’t have a better idea than going back to my parents’ farm. But I would be out traveling on tour, mostly around the U.S., but also going overseas. I was doing shows in the duo, Anna & Elizabeth.
Then Anna moved from southwestern Virginia to Baltimore. So we would do a lot of our work around there as well. And then from Baltimore, she went to New York City, to Brooklyn. About a year after she moved to Brooklyn, I also moved to Brooklyn to be with my now-husband, then-boyfriend. We spent a couple years based out of the city, and again, touring a lot.
Adams: What was it that brought you and Brian to southwestern Virginia again?
LaPrelle: Having our kid, we thought, ‘Well, why don’t we go? We spent a couple years in New York. Why don’t we go to our place in Virginia? We can be on the farm. That seems like a nice place to have a young child and we’ll be near my parents, Noah’s grandparents, for a little while.’ So when Noah was just a couple months old, we moved. And then a couple months after that, a big pandemic. We had thought we would travel a little bit more last year, and also maybe look for another place to live, potentially a smaller city. We didn’t have the opportunity because we were in Virginia, and we pretty much stayed there and hunkered down.
Adams: I’m interested to hear you elaborate a little more on the pandemic and how it affected you as parents of a young child and as performing musicians. What’s that been like?
LaPrelle: Mostly enormous changes, not least of which, getting married and having a kid is really huge. Even before the pandemic, I had done a pretty big pivot to not traveling as much. When Noah was a young infant. I really wanted to be home, and I didn’t have anything planned. We were going to start getting out of our kind of parental bubble in March of 2020. So we didn’t. I’d already been doing lessons online, and so I made that my whole thing. I’ve actually really enjoyed teaching a bit more and teaching one-on-one. I’d done a lot of workshops, but not a lot of private lessons. And I like them, so I think I’m going to continue that even as things open up more.
My husband and I started doing a weekly livestream. Sometimes we read stories aloud and mostly we sing songs, just for whoever is tuning in at that moment. Now I’m starting to get the Facebook memories, and it’s us a year ago, holding like our itty bitty, breadloaf-sized baby. Now we just wait until he’s asleep because he has normal sleep hours. It’s also just very hard as a parent. It’s hard to be isolated just in your family. It’s really, really really really clear to me how much you really need community as a parent, and how the care of a child really should be spread over more people than just two.
Cynthia Rylant has transported readers from around the world to Appalachia for decades, beginning with her first children’s book in 1982.
Since then, Rylant has written more than 100 books, ranging from picture books and easy readers to chapter books and novels. Her books have won Caldecott and Newbery awards.
Some of Rylant’s books, including her 1982 debut, “When I Was Young in the Mountains,” were based on her life growing up in southern West Virginia.
While she has a lot of happy memories from her early childhood, Rylant also experienced tough times. She was raised by a single mom, who had to leave her young daughter so she could attend nursing school. For those years, Rylant lived with her grandparents in Raleigh County, in the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams recently interviewed Rylant about her childhood in the state and how it shaped the rest of her life.
***Editor’s Note: The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
Rylant: It was so lovely living [in Raleigh County].
For one thing, it was just so quiet. The world has such a noisy place these days. Just to hear the cowbells out in the field, and just to hear the birds singing in the morning, and be able to be free and be outside all day.
People were quiet. They were very dignified, and took such good care of their homes. They had beautiful gardens, and canned all their vegetables.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Rylant was inspired by time time she spent with her grandparents for her book “When I Was Young in the Mountains.”
I was very protected. I never felt afraid when I was there.
Adams: Was “When I Was Young in the Mountains” based on your own experience living with your grandparents?
Rylant: Yes, everything in that book is true.
The book was illustrated by an artist named Diane Goode. In her art, she placed the time of the story much earlier. It looks to be in the late 1800s the way that people are dressed. Actually, the time that I lived in Cool Ridge was in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s.
Adams: The page that fascinates my kids is the image of the children swimming in the pond with the snakes. I think they find it so fascinating because in every other book, people tend to be scared of snakes. Your book just depicts people co-existing with them, and that squares with their own lives. Did you swim with snakes then?
Rylant: Oh, yeah. And in the book, I talked about us draping a long snake across our necks for a photograph. We did that. I’ve got one photograph with my mom and I think the same snake. We’d never seen one quite that long. She’s sitting on the hood of a car, and a dead snake is draped across the hood of the car behind her.
We were so used to nature. I’m more nervous walking in the woods now than when I was five years old.
Adams: You stayed with your grandparents for several years. What happened next?
Rylant: During those years I lived with my grandparents, I was very protected and had happy days.
But I was shattered when my mother would come and visit for a short period of time, and then leave again and go back to nursing school. I have a memory of standing in the yard and watching the car take her away to the Greyhound bus station, and crying so hard and my grandmother leading me back into the house gently and putting me into her bed covering me up, just crying my little eyes out.
So the most joyful thing was that my mother finally finished school, and she came back permanently and got a job at a hospital in Beckley. She found us a little three-room apartment with an indoor bathroom, which I had not experienced before.
This was in Beaver, West Virginia, and I began my more urban life. In Beaver, I could walk to the grocery store and a little drugstore and little post office. I could ride my bike on paved roads. That was a whole new world for me. Beaver gave me all kinds of stories, too.
Adams: When she graduated high school, Cynthia Rylant went to college in Charleston and later got her master’s degree in English at Marshall University in Huntington. That’s where she met a community of like-minded people who were into books and literature.
Rylant: I didn’t write creatively, all through high school and college. In a strange way, I wasn’t worthy of it. Like that could never be something that I could do.
I finished graduate school, and was still living in Huntington. I waitressed for a while, and then somebody suggested I try to get a job at the public library. I applied, even though I’d never really used a public library before, and I got a job as a clerk making minimum wage.
I was assigned to the children’s department. That’s where I first started reading children’s books. And that changed my life.
First of all, I was just kind of astonished that they were all so beautiful. I’d never seen picture books before. I had come out of graduate school in English. And the writing in those books was just incredibly moving to me — much more than the writing that I had studied in all my classes.
Adams: Was that what inspired you to pick up the pen and start writing?
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Rylant’s book was illustrated by Diane Goode, who placed the time of the story in the late 1800s.
Rylant: When I was working in the children’s department, I used to just carry home bags full of children’s books to read. Something told me to pick up a pen, a pad of paper. One night, I sat down and I wrote the line, “When I was young in the mountains, Grandfather came home in the evening covered with the black dust of a coal mine.”
I just kept writing and within a few minutes, I’d written my first picture book, “When I Was Young in the Mountains.”
Adams: How did you then write your second book? How did you go from that one book to dozens of books?
Rylant: When I got the first book accepted, I remember sort of trying to bargain with God, and saying, ‘If you just let me have one more book accepted, I’ll be happy. I’ll just be happy with two books.’
I decided to stay in Appalachia for my writing. My second book was called “Miss Maggie.” It was again about a woman I knew, who lived in a log house near one of those cow pastures. She wore the old Appalachians bonnet. She chewed tobacco, and there was a rumor that a black snake lived in the house with her. My grandparents used to take Miss Maggie to the grocery store, back and forth. I wrote a story about her, and that was my second accepted book.
I continued with these Appalachian stories, and my third book was called ‘The Relatives Came.’ Again, that’s a true story about the relatives of Virginia traveling over the mountains to come see us in West Virginia.
It all just flowed. I think it was just my calling. I think we all find in our lives, a time when we’re doing things right and natural, no matter what that is, you know, many different things. But we just feel like we’re in the right place, doing the right thing. That’s what I felt when I started writing picture books.
Adams: You said that your intention was to remain in Appalachia and continue to write what led you to leave?
Rylant: I just couldn’t find a job. I had a master’s degree in English, but it wasn’t a Ph.D. in English, and I wasn’t ready to or even able to go to get further education to become a college teacher. I didn’t have an education degree to be a public school teacher. I was intimidated by the idea of being a student teacher.
What I ended up doing was going to Ohio, and I was able to get another assistantship, and I got a library degree. I ended up working in an Ohio library, because when I wanted to come back to West Virginia, back to Huntington, there weren’t any jobs available.
I ended up just living in Ohio for many years, and never moved back to West Virginia. Although my family, of course, stayed there. I’m in my 60s now, and all my adult life, I’ve made a trip to West Virginia at least once a year.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Adams: Now you live in the Pacific Northwest?
Rylant: Yeah. I do.
Adams: What led you there?
Rylant: A lot of people do this so-called midlife crisis that happens around the late 30s, early 40s. People think they just got to do something different.
I can’t really explain to you why I felt I needed to come to the Pacific Northwest at that time. But I had visited Seattle once, and was just fascinated by this part of the country, and the whole Puget Sound region. It’s kind of mysterious and so green. I just got it into my head when I was close to 40 that I wanted to move out here.
This was not really my design as probably God’s design. I just thought it was my idea.
When we look at our lives, and we look at the choices we’ve made, I often think of all the mistakes I’ve made, and the wrong turns I took, and the people I shouldn’t have been with, and people I should have been with that I wasn’t — you know, things like that.
You look back and think, ‘Oh, I wish I could change this or that,’ but you have to follow the thread. You have to say, where does that mistake you think you’re making take you? And invariably, when I look back at my thread, it took me someplace good.
When I got out here to the Pacific Northwest, many times I would think, maybe I should go back. But, I have a little granddaughter born just three years ago. I tell myself that long thread you were following led to her. She wouldn’t have been made had I not come out here.
And so we have to think that when we’re making our choices, we’re being guided. We’re being pulled towards something that we don’t even understand.
It has been a while since I have named a “Storyteller Award” winner for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. To make up for it, I am naming five – that’s right, five – WVPB Storytellers. Each employee was nominated by their peers for excellence in telling West Virginia’s story.
1. Jessica Lilly, Inside Appalachia host/southern W.Va. bureau chief
2. Roxy Todd, Inside Appalachia producer/reporter
Working with Beth Vorhees and the rest of the news crew, Jessica and Roxy have transformed “Inside Appalachia” in many ways.
Roxy Todd
They have found a way to focus each weekly show around a topic – for example, mine safety, or clean water, or Appalachian food.
The podcast was recently recognized as one of the best in America by thetimbre.com, a site devoted to reviewing podcasts:
“I don’t know what it’s like to be from West Virginia. Short of moving there, I may never know. But for an hour every week I can suspend whatever judgments I have and look past the empty statistics about poverty and methamphetamines and try to get a sense of what it means to live there.”
Here’s what Roxy’s nominator said about her willingness to go above and beyond to get the story:
Brynn Kusic
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Roxy Todd told the story of Hillsboro, W.Va. coming together after racist graffiti was painted on the side of a local business.
“Roxy heard of an incident in Pocahontas County where racist graffiti was painted on the side wall of a building in Hillsboro. The business was a restaurant owned by a local woman who is married to a Jamaican man.
“Roxy insisted that she drop her producing duties for an afternoon, drive two and a half hours to Pocahontas County and attend a meeting the residents were having to talk about racism in their community.
“She was back in Charleston late that night. The next morning, she was at the state Board of Education meeting at 9:00 a.m. The board was discussing the climate change science curriculum that had made headlines.
“Through her effort and work ethic, Roxy went to great lengths to cover stories that mattered to our listeners. I admire that initiative and drive.”
And here is what Jessica Lilly’s nominator said about her initiative and drive:
Jessica Lilly interviewing Betty Younger about water in McDowell County
“Jessica Lilly has been championing the causes of the people of Southern West Virginia her entire carrier. In the past year, we had a water crisis here in Charleston that effected about 300,000 people across the state. It reached the national news.
“Jessica took up the cause of letting everyone know that fresh running water is a daily struggle for folks in the southern part of the state, not just a couple weeks of their lives.
“In October, Jessica had a car accident that took her out of work for a few weeks. She injured her arm and had to do rehab for it. Her car was totaled. Her family came up with a loaner, but unfortunately it broke down on her.
“Through all of this, she worked from home, and at times walked to work at Concord University. Never taking a ‘woe is me’ attitude, Jessica just powers through.”
3. Teresa Wills, Morning Edition Host
Teresa Wills
Do you realize how hard it is to talk on the radio at 5 a.m. every morning? Even harder to sound calm and pleasant, consistently, every day.
But that’s what Teresa Wills does. She’s the voice of Morning Edition on West Virginia Public Broadcasting, teaming up with Beth Vorhees to deliver news, traffic, weather, and yes, school closings. Teresa has been at WVPB for almost 13 years.
Teresa also is in charge of traffic at our radio operation – which has nothing to do with cars and trucks, but is the scheduling of underwriting and other messages throughout the day. In the past few months, Teresa also has dealt with major changes to our schedule and the “clocks” NPR uses.
More than one person submitted a nomination for Teresa. Here’s what one person said:
“She is reliable, pleasant, & frankly, is gifted with an ambassador’s ‘voice’ for our state. She is a steady anchor for us no matter what else is going on around us. She also has an excellent way of finding better & more efficient ways to do things, which is a huge boon to our workloads!”
4. Eddie Isom, Media Sales Associate
Credit Eddie Isom / WVPB
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WVPB
Separated at birth? Eddie Isom and Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey.
I have yet to meet a person who does not like Eddie Isom. His energy and enthusiasm for West Virginia Public Broadcasting is infectious.
Eddie was asked to switch from the TV programming department to underwriting last year. He brought his enthusiasm into his new job, and it has paid off for WVPB. Here’s what his nominator said about him:
“Eddie came on board as a member of the underwriting team last winter, and jumped into the work like a pro. Right away he brought on a brand new $10,000 underwriter from southern West Virginia, and he hasn’t stopped racking up the contracts since.
“He brings a deep knowledge and love of public media to his work, and it shows when he meets with our constituents. Eddie is always upbeat and ready to take on any challenge.
“He never says ‘no’ to anything. He is a joy to work with AND he plays a mean ukelele!”
5. Dale Malcomb, IT Director
Dale is in charge of IT at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. For us, this is more than keeping our computer network running. It also means figuring out ways to transport and store huge amounts of data required for audio and video files.
Dale has worked at WVPB for 15 years, and he quietly has done his job with excellence. He also has a knack for hard-bargaining and getting the most out of our limited resources.
Dale also was nominated by more than one person. Here’s what one said:
“He works largely unseen and behind closed doors, and is not always the most popular guy because of his goals of protecting the information that belongs to the EBA. He works more hours than anyone but me probably knows about, and he does not seek credit, but deserves thanks.”
Right now, Dale is working on “The Interconnect,” a system to share and backup files between our three main facilities. Here’s what his nominator said about that:
“The Interconnect is about to come past a giant milestone, once the circuits are connected. We are a little ways out from calling it “completed”, but his maneuvering and system design will give us a great infrastructure, while saving the state large dollars on our circuits.
“He also saved large sums of cash by obtaining 13 routers from the Office of Technology that were basically going to be dumped because they had been tainted as pork spending by the newspaper.
“We will be using these routers as part of the interconnect project, and for the first time since I’ve been here, because of the numbers of routers he got, we have backups, and automatic failovers, not just one box to nervously wait to fail.”
Each storyteller award winner will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the retailer of his or her choice.
Meanwhile, we’re always looking for new candidates for Storyteller of the Month. It can be any employee or volunteer who goes above and beyond to “Tell West Virginia’s Story.”
Please provide the following information:
1. How long has the nominated person worked here?
2. What is one example of something this person has accomplished lately – a story of success we can share?
3. We need a good picture of the person from the nominator.
Send nominations anytime to Belinda McCallister, bmccallister@wvpublic.org.
It’s easy to panic when a transmitter goes down. Engineer Art Austin keeps a cool head in the middle of that chaos, and that’s why he’s the August winner of WVPB’s Storyteller Award.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting maintains transmitters, translators, microwave links and other equipment at more than 30 sites. They stretch from Bluefield to Bethany, Logan to Lost River.
These transmitters and translators deliver our programs not just to old-fashioned aerial antennas. They also deliver our programs to cable and satellite systems throughout the state.
When bad weather hits, you can count on something going wrong. Even when skies are clear, equipment can fail at any moment.
Recently, that’s what happened in Wheeling. An important piece of equipment failed on our translator. Even worse, the replacement part wasn’t available for weeks!
But that didn’t stop Art, according to WVPB Chief Engineer Dave McClanahan.
“Art took the parts from two bad modules and created his own Franken-translator,” McClanahan said.
Art Austin
According to his friend and co-worker, Debbie Oleksa, Art is from Uniontown, Pa., and started working in Master Control, and later transitioned into his current engineering post in Morgantown.
“In his spare time he is a Pennsylvania constable, and a volunteer fire fighter,” she said.
Art has suffered injuries as he’s done the difficult and dangerous job of fixing transmitters and translators. He continues to do that work without complaint.
It doesn’t matter how well we tell West Virginia story if no one can see and hear it. Thanks Art and the rest of our engineering staff for making that happen.
Art will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the retailer of his choice.
Meanwhile, we’re always looking for new candidates for Storyteller of the Month. It can be any employee or volunteer who goes above and beyond to “Tell West Virginia’s Story.”
Send nominations anytime to Belinda McCallister, bmccallister@wvpublic.org.
Every month, we recognize an employee or volunteer who goes out of their way to help “tell West Virginia’s story.”
This month, our Storyteller Award goes to an employee whose positive attitude and endless energy makes him a joy to work with: Jeff Sandner.
You might know Sandner as our “All Things Considered” host on West Virginia Public Radio. It’s a tough job for one person – newscasts, spots, underwriters, etc. Jeff does it with excellence and with a smile on his face every day.
Recently, a last-minute programming issue came up, and no one was available to fill in for Morning Edition the next day.
Sandner insisted on doing the show himself, even though he had worked the night before, and it meant getting to the station in the wee, wee hours of the morning.
His boss, Radio Director Kristi George, wrote this about him:
Jeff Sandner, West Virginia Public Broadcasting Storyteller Award winner for January 2014.
“Jeff works tirelessly, sometimes longer than he should, attending to the details of his work. He not only does an excellent job on the air, he is also behind the scenes crafting promos, lining up programs, and assisting the Operations Director with whatever needs to be done.
“If that weren’t enough, he stands at the ready to pinch hit for others when they are out, planned or last-minute.
“Jeff is always ready to lend a helping hand, whether asked to do so, or of his own initiative. He does so with a positive attitude & endless energy. He is the consummate team player.
“Frankly, it is a ‘blessing’ to have Jeff on our team. I can’t imagine doing what we do without him. For Jeff, we are truly grateful!”
Sandner will receive a $50 gift certificate from the retailer of his choice. To nominate someone for the next Storyteller Award, e-mail Belinda McCallister – bmccallister@wvpublic.org. Please be specific in your nomination.
The 12 Days of Christmas is a popular holiday song. But have you ever really thought about the gifts that person gave? What does one do with 7 swans a-swimming?
Actress and storyteller Karen Vuranch of Fayetteville believes she knows what a smart, resilient Appalachian woman would do with such gifts!
