This week, we drop by Flat Five Studio in Salem, Virginia. It had a reputation for recording bluegrass bands, but caught a big break in the early 1990s when the Dave Matthews Band needed a quiet place to record its debut album. We also learn a little about primordial forests, and we visit a small nonprofit company in West Virginia that’s making solar powered light kits for families in war-torn Ukraine.
This week, Inside Appalachia drops by Flat Five Studio in Salem, Virginia. It had a reputation for recording bluegrass bands, but caught a big break in the early 1990s when the Dave Matthews Band needed a quiet place to record its debut album.
We also learn a little about primordial forests. A patch of woods in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve was recently inducted into the Old Growth Forest Network.
And we visit a small nonprofit company in West Virginia that’s making solar powered light kits for families in war-torn Ukraine.
Tom Ohmsen’s been around music and recording his whole life. He got his first tape recorder when he was just a kid. In college, he recorded bluegrass bands, which led to the start of Flat Five Studio in Salem, Virginia.
In the early 1990s, the studio helped launch the Dave Matthews Band, but now Ohmsen’s looking toward retirement.
Mason Adams visited Flat Five to get its history and hear about its future.
The Burnwood Trail Protected And Preserved
If you ever want perspective on your place in the world, visit one of Appalachia’s old-growth forests. Trees tower overhead and you can get a sense of just how old the world is. Old-growth forests play an important ecological role, too, protecting against erosion and providing a habitat for rare animal and plant species.
The nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network is dedicated to protecting these old growth forests. Recently, the Burnwood Trail at the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve was brought into the group’s network.
WVPB’s Briana Heaney has this story.
Lights For Ukraine
Russia’s war with Ukraine has dragged on for more than a year and a half. The distant war has faded into the background for some, but not for the head of a West Virginia nonprofit, who wanted to do something for Ukrainian families under constant threat of bombardment.
WVPB’s Assistant News Director Caroline MacGregor visited New Vision Renewable Energy in Philippi, West Virginia where they’re making solar light kits for Ukrainian families that can also be used to charge a cell phone.
Dire Decisions At WVU
Students and community members protest on the downtown Morgantown campus of West Virginia University Aug. 21, 2023.
Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Grappling with a $45 million budget shortfall, West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia has recommended cutting 32 of its 338 majors, including all of its world language programs.
WVPB’s Chris Schulz has been covering the story.
——
Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by ONA, Valerie June, John Blissard, June Carter Cash and Little Sparrow.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
On this West Virginia Morning, a summit at Marshall University will explore critical interventions against xylazine in the opioid crisis. Also, in this show, this week’s Inside Appalachia episode makes a visit to the Flat Five Studio in western Virginia.
On this West Virginia Morning, a summit at Marshall University will explore critical interventions against xylazine in the opioid crisis. Emily Rice has more.
Also, in this show, this week’s Inside Appalachia episode makes a visit to the Flat Five Studio in western Virginia, which began as a shop that recorded bluegrass musicians, but then caught a big break in the early 1990s. Mason Adams has more.
And, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes to us from Loudon Wainwright III. We listen to his performance of “Suddenly It’s Christmas.” The song originally appeared on his 1993 live album Career Moves.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.
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.
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 produced this episode.
Teresa Wills is our host.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia and western Virginia are some of the southernmost places in the U.S. to make maple syrup, but producers are adapting to changing demands, and a changing climate. Folkways Reporter Clara Haizlett has this story.
On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia and western Virginia are some of the southernmost places in the U.S. to make maple syrup, but producers are adapting to changing demands, and a changing climate. Folkways Reporter Clara Haizlett has this story.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.
Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and produced this episode.
Teresa Wills is our host.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
People love to argue over which barbecue sauce is most authentic — vinegar, tomato or mustard. But Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque in Tazewell County, Virginia, is distinguished by something entirely different.
This story originally aired in the Sept. 2, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.
At a little past 5:30 p.m., the gravel parking lot of Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque is full of cars, vans, trucks and motorcycles. Customers line up outside this big purple, orange and blue barn with its attached red-brick silo, sitting just off the edge of a four-lane highway in southwest Virginia.
It was selected in 2019 by World Restaurant Awards as one of the top 28 under-the-radar restaurants in the world, and it doesn’t take long to find out why.
In front of the restaurant’s entrance, two life-size ceramic pigs stand like sentries. A pig in a tutu stands on top of the gatepost. The front door is still the original double-hung oak door of this former dairy barn.
Once inside, paintings of pigs morph into dragons. Red, pink and yellow Chinese lanterns hang from the dining room ceiling. There’s a string of masks and cartoon figures running the length of the bar. It could easily be a folk art museum.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Piggy-dragons” smile on the back side of the front doors.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
More than 40 hand-painted tables or booths fill the dining rooms.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Pop and folk art cover the wall space.
“When we first opened in 1979, we had four tables,” said owner Yvonne Thompson. “And there were lines out the door on the porch.”
The lines still go out the door. People arrive by all modes of transportation — from hikers on foot, to CEOs that come in by helicopter. The cashier rings up tabs under the eye of a life-size polar bear, and busboys maneuver around paper mache pigs.
“Of course we’re into pop culture — Pee-wee Herman, Superman, Hulk Hogan, Elvis,” Thompson said. Most of this art was either drawn, painted or curated by Thompson’s late husband Mike, an art history major who co-founded the restaurant.
Other art in the restaurant came as gifts from customers. Like a life-size cutout of Elvis in pink overalls, holding a pig in his arms.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Yvonne Thompson with a life-size Elvis, once kidnapped.
“Somebody stole that one time. It was sticking out of the convertible as they left the parking lot. But then they brought it back a few years later. They felt bad. See, everything in here has a history,” Thompson said.
Asian Accentuates Appalachian
Part of that history begins in Hong Kong, where Thompson was born and grew up. She wanted to go to college in the United States.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The mixture of Asian and Appalachian runs throughout Cuz’s — elephant bamboo doorways, alongside native hickory wood chairs. On the wall, woodcuts of pigs hang next to a silk Chinese embroidery of chickens.
“And my uncle had a really good Chinese restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. He was my sponsor, so I came and started working from day one,” Thompson said. Her uncle was Liang Wong, who ran the well-known Lantern House, once featured in Esquire magazine.
Courtesy
Sketch of Thompson’s uncle, published with a restaurant review in the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 1980.
He not only taught her about restaurants, but he also taught her life lessons. Like the time Thompson saw an employee put sugar in her purse.
“I said, ‘Look, Uncle, she’s taking sugar from you.’ He said, ‘Look away, look away.’ He said, ‘She’s my best cook, my best worker — she can have my sugar.’ Think of that lesson,” Thompson said.
After graduating from the University of Missouri in journalism, she moved to Richlands, Virginia for her first reporting job, and met and married Mike Thompson. It was Mike’s cousin who suggested they start a restaurant in Mike’s old family barn sitting empty by the road, so they named it “Cuz’s.” Barbecue was hard to find back then so the name became Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque.
“If he was the only one running it, it would probably fold in a year, because he didn’t know how to run a business,” Thompson said with a laugh. “You know, I’m the business person and have the organization and the skills. But he was the flair, the fun part. That’s the yin and the yang. He’s the yang, I’m the yin.”
Michael J.N. Bowles
/
Courtesy
In the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, the point is that differences can work together, Thompson said. And she and Mike were the best examples of that.
Yvonne’s husband Mike died in 2018 after an accident on an electric bike. Thompson thought strongly about retiring. But she knew how Cuz’s had become so much a part of the community’s life and she thought Mike would have wanted her to carry on.
“He would never not speak up and he’s probably still speaking up to us from down from the grave. Saying you guys better make it right. He was a character. But that’s why Cuz’s is the way it is,” Thompson said.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Mike’s wit is on the menu covers, where each character or meme reflects his cleverness.
Open the menu and you’ll see his humor in the food descriptions. Like the macaroni and cheese, you can order either plain or “skanky.” That was the word that Thompson said just came into Mike’s head, when he needed a way to describe blue cheese.
“It was a funny word,” she said. “People always like, ‘what?,’ but then they laugh about it.”
A Family Behind The Scenes
Preparing items on the menu starts early in the morning.Cuz’s staff make their own mayonnaise, hand chop their own garlic and fresh ginger, and peel their own potatoes — on the order of 500 pounds a week. Thompson works alongside her staff, making a pie crust from scratch. Everyone is surrounded by colorful mosaic tilework and funky art.
Many of Thompson’s staff have been with her for decades.
“Praise for the older people, they know how to work,” Thompson said.
From Baby Boomers to Gen Z, Cuz’s staff of 34 workers call each other family — figuratively and literally. Like 65-year-old dishwasher Judy Conley, who works alongside her 21-year-old niece Megan Dye. Conley remembers Dye as a baby.
Nathaniel Whitt
/
Courtesy
Dishwashers Megan Dye and Judy Conley.
“When they first brought her to Cuz’s, she was about this long, and I got to hold her. And now I’m working with her,” Conley said.
Thompson said one part of her staff — the busboys — does turn over frequently. “They’re the ones I’m really proud of, because I feel like this is like a passage. They learn how to work hard and save up their money. I have probably hundreds of busboys that have gone through this place. I felt like I’ve raised them. Some of them have become physical therapists, lawyers, FBI agents, commercial pilots, sheriffs, nurses, teachers. I’m so proud of them,” Thompson said.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The current crew of Cuz’s busboys.
On Mondays, when the task is to make 1,000 egg rolls, the kitchen crew becomes the kitchen brigade and anyone can get recruited to help. Egg rolls have been on Cuz’s menu from the start. The dipping sauce recipe came from Thompson’s uncle. But the version that Thompson calls a Southern Chinese egg roll came later.
“Actually one of our old staffers came up with the idea. She liked cheese and she wanted to put a slice of cheese, and the thing that was around was Velveeta. And after we tasted it was like, ‘Wow, that’s good,’” Thompson said.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cuz’s cheese egg roll was one of the items highlighted in a food exhibit at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City.
Courtesy
Thompson shares her uncle’s recipe, published as part of the Museum of Chinese in America exhibit.
Grillin’ And Gardenin’
Back by the grill, the brick ovens and barbecue smoker, award-winning chef Mike Oder, known as Chef Mikey, has just finished cutting up steaks. He’s worked at Cuz’s for 38 years, and now he’s also Thompson’s business partner. He is proud of how the staff work together.
“Everybody comes in and sees what needs to be done and goes ahead and does it. Everybody here’s got their own personality. We all click good. It’s like a family,” Oder said.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Mike Oder (far right) is head chef and Thompson’s business partner. Taylor Hamilton stands to his left.
Part of Chef Mikey’s job is passing down techniques and shortcuts to the younger guys cooking the meats. Like Taylor Hamilton.
Hamilton started working when he was 15 years old. He has a degree in applied mathematics from Radford University, and he chooses to work here rather than use his degree to teach.
But his coworkers give him a hard time about applying his math in the kitchen.
“Simple math ain’t really my strong suit. Just like calculating how much of what to put into stuff to tone it down to a smaller recipe, I can’t. It just makes me think too hard.I’d much rather do some calculus than break some tablespoons and teaspoons down. So I’m always like ‘Mikey will you do this for me?’ Cause I’m confusing myself trying to figure it out,” Hamilton said.
He gets satisfaction out of working here.
“I love the rush that you get. Like when you get 20 steaks filled up on your grill and everyone’s screamin’ at you — I love it. Just making great food for people, and them telling you they enjoyed it. Knowing you made that. It’s a lot of reward,” Hamilton said.
Stepping out the back door, Oder points out the restaurant’s garden, not far from the highway. In a good growing season, Thompson said it allows Cuz’s to serve exceptionally fresh food — like the corn.
“We would pick them the day we use them and you can’t hardly buy corn like that; it’d be several days old at least,” Thompson said.
Thompson said Cuz’s tries to conserve their garden efforts to only grow things that they cannot buy, like squash blossoms, blackberries and heirloom tomatoes. One heirloom is special because the seed was a gift from a customer, Kathy Hypes, whose family had grown it locally for over 100 years.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cuz’s adds an Appalachian twist to the traditional Italian caprese salad, pairing heirloom tomatoes with country ham, fresh mozzarella, basil and balsamic vinegar reduction.
Cuz’s customers and Cuz’s staff stay connected with each other in the community, even when the restaurant closes for the off-season, from late November to March.
Keisha Norris, who’s been eating at Cuz’s since she was a kid, said she applied to waitress when she was in high school and found herself working alongside a familiar face, Sallie Bowen, her physical education teacher in school.
Megan Dye
/
Courtesy
When Cuz’s shuts down for the season in mid-November, many of the serving crew pick up their second jobs as school teachers, probation officers or pharmacy techs, and then return when the season opens back up in March.
Over the years it’s these kinds of community ties that have sustained Cuz’s and been part of its resilience — most recently, through COVID-19 sicknesses in the spring of 2022.
Customer Wanda Lowe said that when the restaurant closed when several employees were out sick, she offered to step in and help. “There’s a group of us told them we can wash dishes, we will prepare salads, we can clean tables — anything to keep from closing, ‘cause it’s so good.”
Donna Bowen
/
Courtesy
Cuz’s steak sauce, or “snake oil truth serum,” has been a popular gift-giving item in the community.
Browsing through the public library’s county cookbook, Thompson saw one of Cuz’s recipes, along with histories of restaurants.
When asked what she would want Cuz’s to be remembered for, she said, “I would say, treating people the way you want to be treated, walking in their shoes. Maybe it’s like an older philosophy. I think maybe the two words that sum up this place are passion and compassion. And a heart. And, to me, that’s the starting point of a good business.”
Lowe remembers another time when Cuz’s was forced to close.
In 2008, a fire destroyed large areas of the kitchen. It damaged the roof, wiring and furniture. It was actually the second time a major laundry-related fire had spread through Cuz’s. It brought back the memories of the first fire only eight years earlier and the feelings of despair. Thompson and her husband Mike, along with many of the staff, stood watching the flames, wondering if this fire would threaten to close the book on the restaurant’s history.
Thompson’s son Arthur had been home for the summer, after just graduating from the College of William and Mary.
“And he came to us while we were standing outside seeing the place burning down. He said, ‘You have to rebuild. This is our legacy. I will stay and help rebuild this place and not take a job until you can open back up.’ So he stayed and worked through the winter. And then he left when we were able to open the door,” Thompson said.
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Showing off her phlox, Thompson said, “Now I’m an Appalachian girl. Can you tell by my southwest Virginia and Chinese accent? I’m totally here.”
Connie Bailey Kitts
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The restaurant was selected in 2019 by World Restaurant Awards as one of the top under-the-radar restaurants in the world.
——
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 FolkwaysReporting 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 Appalachianfolklife, arts, and culture.
People from all walks of life travel from Roanoke, Blacksburg and places far beyond to reach Floyd, Virginia — a one-stoplight town in a sprawling county of about 15,000 people on the Blue Ridge Plateau. It’s home to the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store.
FLOYD, VIRGINIA — Every Friday, people from throughout eastern Appalachia ascend the steep slopes of the Blue Ridge to gather to sing, dance and play music at a long-running jamboree.
People from all walks of life travel from Roanoke, Blacksburg and places far beyond to reach Floyd, Virginia — a one-stoplight town in a sprawling county of about 15,000 people on the Blue Ridge Plateau. It’s home to the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store.
In the summer, music spills from the country store’s stage and dance floor, out onto the sidewalk. On a warm July evening, Chad Ritchie fiddled and Robbie Harmon played banjo on the street. They had traveled up two hours from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, for a single reason: music.
“Coming up here, wow, it’s like everything revolves around the music,” Harmon said. “Where we’re from, music, you fit it in with your life. Around here, music is life.”
The main event each Friday is the jamboree that takes place inside the Floyd Country Store. But there’s a whole scene.
“We have the gospel band [from] 6:30 to 7:30; dance band is 7:30 p.m. to 10,” explained David Easterly, one of the greeters inside the jamboree. “Come in here, go outside. People dance in here, dance outside.”
Inside or outside, you find all kinds of folks. There are locals like Curtis Newell.
“We’ve got a lot of friends here that’s been coming for 20 or 30 years, and you come every week basically to see them,” Newell said.
Tracy Elliott and her husband drive 226 miles with her husband to attend the jamboree nearly weekly. They first learned about it from the internet.
“We had never heard this type of music,we had never danced a day in our life,” Elliott said. “And now we dance every week.
Like much of Appalachia, Floyd County tends to vote Republican. GOP candidates generally win about two-thirds of the vote. People of all political persuasions attend the jamboree, though, dancing, singing and playing music together.
“We can pleasantly tease each other politically,” said Kirsten Griffiths, “because we are going to be on complete and utter opposite ends of the spectrum. But we will dance together — most of the time,” she laughed.
The dance floor at the Friday Night Jamboree is renowned for its friendliness and inclusivity. Floyd local and jamboree regular Roger Dickerson said he was reluctant to dance the first time, but once he tried it, he was hooked. Now, he’s become something of a dance floor ambassador: “I tell people all the time, I say, ‘You come to dance?’ And they say ‘no, we’re just curious, we want to hear the music.’ I say, ‘The music is good. But when you get out on that floor, it’s another world.’”
Children participate in the jamboree, too. In July, one of the first music circles that took shape outside the country store consisted of kids. They were learning how to play fiddles, banjos and guitars at the country store’s Handmade Music School. College student Sophie Moeckel, who’s been teaching the youth class, led them through a rendition of “Shortnin’ Bread.”
Mason Adams
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Musicians, including children in the Handmade Music School, play music outside the Floyd Country Store at the Friday Night Jamboree. Store co-owner Heather Krantz is playing guitar (center).
Kids have been part of the Friday Night Jamboree since it first started in 1984. Some of them who started coming then have grown into adults who still come now.
“When I was just a boy, I’d come here, and they’d play music over at the fire department too — and I’d go from there to here, from there to here,” said Chris Prillaman, a jamboree regular from Ferrum, Virginia.
Floyd’s Friday Night Jamboree officially started in the mid-80s, when Freeman Cockram started keeping his general store open Friday evenings for people who wanted to play, and hear, string-band music. Since then, the business changed hands several times. But each of its five different owners through the years has kept the jamboree going. Dylan Locke and Heather Krantz, the current owners, bought it eight years ago. But they don’t see themselves as owners so much as stewards.
“It never has never belonged to us,” Krantz said. “It’s not something that I think belongs to anyone you know. It belongs to this community and it belongs to the people that show up every week.”
Krantz, who played guitar in the circle with the kids from the Handmade Music School, said her and Locke’s work keeping the jamboree is not so different from improvising music.
“You have to be listening or else it doesn’t work, right?” Krantz said. “And same with playing music. If you’re playing in a jam or something like, you have to be listening to the other people around you.”
Krantz and Locke have grown the Floyd Country Store’s music schedule to include events on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes they’ll host a big national act at the store — Bela Fleck, Gillian Welch and Floyd’s own Morgan Wade have all played there.
They’re also honoring the past with a bluegrass distribution business and an attempt to document the region’s musical history through a program called Music in the Mountains. And the Handmade Music School pays it forward by building the next generation of musicians.
A circle of musicians play on the street at the Friday Night Jamboree in Floyd, Virginia.
All of that contributes to the Friday Night Jamboree — which in turn attracts people from around the world — like a couple who sailed from England, and a woman from Kenya who drove down from Northern Virginia with her husband, in part because bluegrass and country music reminded her of home.
That’s the true magic of the Friday Night Jamboree — it doesn’t matter if you’re from Floyd, or from England, or from Kenya; if you’re a Democrat or a Republican; if you’re 2, or 92. The jamboree just feels like home.
The company went back to the Virginia State Corporation Commission about a year after the body rejected its plan for the John Amos and Mountaineer power plants.
Appalachian Power tried again Wednesday to convince Virginia regulators to extend the life of two West Virginia power plants.
The company went back to the Virginia State Corporation Commission about a year after the body rejected its plan for the John Amos and Mountaineer power plants.
The utility asked regulators again to approve its request for Virginia ratepayers to contribute to upgrades for the coal-fired plants to keep them operating beyond 2028.
Virginia’s Clean Economy Act requires an increasing portion of the state’s power to come from renewable sources.
Attorneys for the Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices have argued that shutting the plants down in 2028 is a better deal for ratepayers.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission last year approved the upgrades to keep the plants running. If nothing changes, West Virginia ratepayers will be the ones paying the cost.
On Oct. 4, the PSC will hear Appalachian Power’s request to recover $297 million from West Virginia ratepayers, citing the higher cost of coal, natural gas and power purchased from PJM.
Appalachian Power is an underwriter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
