As is seemingly often the case with one’s home, I didn’t appreciate mine until I began to leave it—after 16 years of promising and being promised that I would ‘make it out’ of the rural south, I did. On my own away from home, I listened to more Appalachian music than ever.
Everyone I interviewed for this project tiptoes the meeting point of friend, mentor, hero, and teacher for me and many others. I was so grateful for the chance to eat early summer garden salads and listen carefully to their stories of self and home, years into our relationships: I’ve listened to Donna Ray for a decade and was nervous to tears the first time we shared a stage; I’ll never forget being 17 thinking I’d practice until I was just like Helena after I heard her sing her song ‘Out of My Bones’; and the Carters taught 12-year-old me to play Old-time and write tunes in the first place.
In ballads and folksongs, repeated lines are endemic (try the ever-resonant “if I don’t go tomorrow, then I’m gone today”). Still, they rarely lose potency, and they certainly don’t lose truth. These songs have stuck for centuries now, and I hope I’ll keep them and their people for all my days too.
All my love and thanks to these perfect interviewees.