Presenting: British Isles Roots of Appalachian Music

The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center will present the British Isles Roots of Appalachian Music, a performance and lecture event which explores the diverse roots of the region's music, on Saturday, October 20th at 7pm in Clintwood's Jettie Baker Center. Special guests for this event include Katie Doman, Ted Olson, and Fire in the Kitchen. Reserve your tickets early for this rare opportunity to explore the history of mountain music with some of the region's best performers and scholars!

Each month from September to December 2007, the Roots of Appalachian Music Concert Series explores a different side of Appalachian music's history and development, including events highlighting Africa, the British Isles, Eastern Europe, and the string band tradition in the mountains. This important series also seeks to extend special programming to area schools to promote educational outreach and provide area school systems with opportunities to work with regional scholars and musicians.

The first guest in the latest event, Katie Hoffman Doman, is a Virginian by birth and a singer/songwriter who now lives in Greene County, Tennessee. Her repertoire includes traditional tunes ranging from Appalachian mountain ballads and songs to bluegrass, old-time, and early country standards. Her debut CD, Beautiful Day, was produced by Raymond McLain and features the incredible musicianship of the East Tennessee State University Bluegrass Band. The CD features nine of Katie's original songs.

Not only is Katie a practitioner of local tradition, she's also a scholar. She is currently writing her dissertation on Appalachian literature for a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She served as the Music Task Force Co-Chair for the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. She travels the region performing and lecturing on traditional Appalachian music in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. Katie's recent projects include a performance on the Song of the Mountains Concert Series, televised on Blue Ridge Public Television. She also currently serves as traditional music consultant on an environmental history of Appalachia, a four-part series produced by the James Agee Film Project to be aired on National Public Television in 2008.

For more than 25 years, Ted Olson has performed folk ballads, songs, and tunes from the U.S.A.(particularly from Appalachia and the South), as well as Ireland, Scotland, and England. He has appeared at a wide variety of educational and entertainment venues, accompanying his singing on guitar, banjo, and dulcimer, with spoken introductions to each ballad/song/tune to establish the historical context.

Olson holds the Ph.D. in English from the University of Mississippi, the M.A. in English from the University of Kentucky, and the B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota. Presently Associate Professor of Appalachian Studies and English at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, he has served as Director of that school's Appalachian, Scottish, and Irish Studies program and as Interim Director of that school's Center for Appalachian Studies and Services.

Olson is the author of several books, including Blue Ridge Folklife and Breathing in Darkness: Poems. He has also edited numerous books, including an award-winning poetry collection by the late Kentucky author James Still entitled From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems, CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, and Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction. Additionally, he was the music section editor and associate editor for The Encyclopedia of Appalachia as well as the co-editor of the award-winning book The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music.

Playing together for nearly five years, the quartet of Fire In The Kitchen specializes in presenting lively Appalachian and Celtic music to its audiences. Instrumentation of the ensemble includes: Teddy Helton on guitar and bass, Tammy Martin on hammered dulcimer, Irish bodhran and vocals, Debbie Shrewsbury on classical and Irish flutes, Irish low whistles and pennywhistle, and Linda Waltner on fiddle and viola. Representing both Virginia and Tennessee, members hail from Bristol, Abingdon, and Emory, VA and Kingsport, TN.

Fire In The Kitchen has performed at venues such as: The Virginia Highlands' Festival, The Bristol Paramount Theatre, The Barter Theatre, The Carter Family Fold, The Capital Theater, Sycamore Shoals Celtic Festival, Blue Ridge Celtic Festival, Wake Forest Celtic festival among many others. The group has been featured on Public radio programming "Live in Studio 1A" and performed at the BCMA's (Birthplace of Country Music Alliance) 75th Anniversary Celebration of the Bristol Sessions. Most recently the group performed on the Blue Ridge Public Television series "Song of the Mountains" which is being broadcast by local and national PBS stations across the United States.

This fine group of musicians has released two CDs of their renditions of traditional Celtic and Appalachian music. Their first CD, An Appalachian Celtic Journey, was released in 2002 and was archived at the Smithsonian Institute's Folklife Museum in Washington, D.C. in celebration of the Year of Appalachia. The second compact disc, The Journey Continues, was recently released in December 2006. This CD features a refreshing variety of styles. Tunes were gathered from diverse sources: Ireland, Scotland, France, West Virginia, Texas, and Southwest Virginia. They range from the haunting strains of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", to the driving acceleration of the polkas, "Riding on a Load of Hay" and "Cobbler's Polka", to the loving affirmation of the Carter family vocal "Storms Are on the Ocean."

Tickets to this event are $10 per person for general admission and $5 for student admission. For more information about the October 20th performance, or to reserve your tickets, please contact the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center at (276) 926-8550.

The Roots of Appalachian Music Concert Series is made possible by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities was established in 1974 to develop and support public programs, education, and research in the humanities and to relate the humanities to public issues. The VFH promotes understanding and use of the humanities through public debate, group discussion, and individual inquiry. Principal activities of the Virginia Foundation include an internationally recognized Fellowship Program, the Virginia Folklife Program, the Virginia Center for Media and Culture, a statewide network of Regional Councils, and the Grant Program. The VFH is non-profit and non-partisan and receives support from private gifts, grants and contributions, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. For more information, write or call the Foundation's office at 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-4629, (434) 924-3296, or visit the VFH online at www.virginiafoundation.org.

The program is presented as a public service. The principal aim of the program is to discuss in an objective and nonpartisan context issues of concern and interest to citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Virginia Foundation, its contributors, or its supporting agencies.