Twists And Twangs

Virginia Plots Its Musical Heritage Along a 'Crooked Road'

With arms aloft, hands trembling, Reverend Lane shuffled down the aisle. "If you need a shot of the Holy Spirit, come on down here!" he hollered at the congregation. A young man in a baseball cap handed him a foam cup and quickly ducked away.

"Ahh, water. The source of all life," he said and took a sip. "No, sir, ain't no water down there. Ain't nothing down there but dry burning heat for all of eternity!" he roared, and the Lee Smith Singers came back to the pulpit to close the service with "I'll Fly Away."

We didn't approach the altar. We'd come to the Log House Church in Weber City, Va., in search of something other than the Holy Spirit; we were looking for the spirited gospel music that begat old-time music that begat bluegrass and country. My banjo-picking buddy John Moncure and I were traveling in his modest RV along Virginia's Crooked Road, a new tourist trail through southwest Virginia's Appalachian musical heritage.

Bill Lowe & Cripple Creek perform at the Carter Family Fold, one of many venues along the Crooked Road, a new 250-mile musically oriented tourist trail through southwestern Virginia.

The region has long attracted roots music pilgrims, wandering the small-town theaters and roadhouses in search of the birthplaces of country and bluegrass. But last year the state formally organized the experience into the Crooked Road, a 250-mile string of state highways snaking through the mountains near North Carolina and Tennessee. The valleys and "hollers" are filled with fine music, hearty country cooking and scenery that has inspired a whole catalogue of songs.

Our own six-day journey began in the town of Floyd, about 40 miles south of Roanoke. The Floyd Country Store has garnered a reputation for outstanding bluegrass and old-time music. Locals gather with tourists each Friday night for a public dance.

When we arrived, the dance floor was a blur of youngsters, oldsters and everyone in between, flat-footing and toe-tapping to Ralph Hayden and the Barbershop Grass. "Students from Virginia Tech and Radford come out here to laugh at the local yokels, but they wind up dancing with us," said Evona Jessup, a regular.

Saturday we went west, following the banjo-emblazoned signs for the Crooked Road. We stopped long enough to pull a few trout out of Whitetop Laurel Creek, a gushing mountain stream that tumbles down out of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area into Damascus. Then, a few miles beyond town on the haunches of Clinch Mountain, we found the Carter Family Fold, a large, unpainted structure that looked more like a sawmill than a concert hall. But it is a music venue established by Janette Carter, the younger daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter, "the first family of country music." Janette still hosts weekly Saturday night shows with her throaty voice and chiming autoharp.

Bill Lowe & Cripple Creek had the place jumping. Folks were kicking up their heels to old-time dance tunes revved up with dizzying bluegrass rhythm, punctuated by the clacking of metal dance taps.

Sunday morning we headed toward Bristol, a small city straddling the Virginia-Tennessee line. Unpleasantly surprised to find the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance in a mall, I was ultimately impressed by this eclectic museum that tells the story of "Appalachian music as it moved from the front porches into the recording and radio studios." Among the items on display in the glass cases were a gourd "banjar" (African ancestor of the five-string banjo), a functional fiddle made of matchsticks, and a photo of Jimmie Rodgers signed, "To the Carter Family, hope we have many more Pleasant Recordings together."

Outside we doubled back toward Duffield, one of several reversals we made to catch as many performances as possible. We camped at Natural Tunnel State Park, where Stock Creek has carved a 100-foot-high passage through the mountain. The rock walls around the tunnel's mouth form a natural band shell where bluegrass groups play in the summer.

Monday morning, the Crooked Road took us north into coal country. Here the curvaceous green mountains are interrupted by flat yellow patches where coal companies leveled mountaintops to harvest the black rock. We stopped in front of a four-story Victorian in the old coal town of Clintwood, a refurbished house that is now the Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center. We arrived just as Dr. Ralph himself rolled up in his red 1989 Zimmer, a sleek, modernized version of the 1930s Duesenberg.

The soft-spoken 78-year-old, who helped rekindle interest in bluegrass with his haunting a cappella performance in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," was clearly thrilled with his home town's new state-of-the art museum, which rang with Stanley Brothers music and flashed with video footage from vintage shows and documentaries. "There's not many people who ever live to see a museum that's built after them," he said. "I'm hoping it will bring a lot of people and help revive this area."

Afterward, we drove 20 minutes up into the hills to see the recently renovated festival grounds where the Ralph Stanley Hills of Home Bluegrass Festival takes place every Memorial Day weekend.

In Big Stone Gap, we stopped at the Heart of Appalachia Tourism Authority, where Executive Director Geneva O'Quinn assured us a companion CD and book would be available along the route by late summer. And soon the agency will build roadside listening posts where travelers can tune in to audio commentary on their radios. For now, a downloadable map and a visitor guide are available (see box).

We made it back to Weber City in time for the weekly Tuesday night jam sessions at the Lazy Time Pickin' Parlor. In the music shop's crowded back room, a group of eight or nine musicians, mostly seniors, sat in a circle playing old country standards. People were drinking coffee as if it were beer. The atmosphere was inviting, and my friend John soon added his banjo to the mix. When the band slid into a rendition of "Walking the Floor Over You," an eightysomething lady from a nearby senior center jumped out of her folding chair, dancing and grinning .

Driving home the next morning, we decided to drop in unannounced on musician and guitarmaker Wayne Henderson. He lives just off the Crooked Road in Grayson County, where Christmas tree saplings speckle the undulating hills in neat rows. Henderson is famous as a modern-day Stradivarius of the steel-string guitar (he kept Eric Clapton waiting seven years for his order) and for his sparkling old-time fingerpicking. In his sawdust-covered workshop, filled with tools, slabs of exotic wood and pieces of unfinished guitars and mandolins, he said he hoped tourism would boost a county economy once sustained by furniture and textile mills. "The Crooked Road will certainly bring attention to our music and culture, which is probably this community's best resource. And it would be real hard to move to China," he said.

Southwestern Virginia, left in the dust by economic progress, now stands to gain from its link to the past. "It's not just a matter of following the signs the Virginia tourism office puts up, said Randy Sluss, a regular at the Pickin' Parlor. "The Crooked Road is everywhere: It's every back road, every holler, every church, every mountain and every front porch around here."

Escape Keys

GETTING THERE: The 250-mile-long Crooked Road officially begins at the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, on the campus of Ferrum College in Ferrum, Va., about 280 miles south of Washington.

WHERE TO STAY: Oak Haven Lodge (323 Webb's Mills Rd., Floyd, 540-745-5716, http://www.oakhavenlodge.com/ ) is a new but rustic and affordable lodge close to downtown Floyd. Double rooms are $65. The Damascus Old Mill (215 Imboden St., Damascus, 276-475-3745, http://www.damascusoldmill.com/ ) is a small inn next to the Holston River. Rooms from $119 to $189. There are good campgrounds and plenty of beauty at both Grayson Highlands State Park (829 Grayson Highland Lane, near Mount Rogers National Recreation Area , 276-579-7092, http://www.dcr.state.va.us/ ) and Natural Tunnel State Park (Route 3, 276-940-2674, http://www.naturaltunnel.info/ ) near Duffield.

WHERE TO EAT: Mama Lazardo's Pizza (205 S. Locust St., Floyd) has good pizza and a variety of beer and wine. For country cooking, try the County Line Cafe (956 E. Stuart Dr., Galax, 276-236-3201); lunch, tax and tip runs $5 to $7.

MUSIC: The Birthplace of Country Music Alliance Museum (500 Gate City Hwy., Bristol, Va., 276-645-0035, http://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/ ) is open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday noon to 7. The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center in Clintwood (Main Street, 276-926-5591, http://www.ralphstanleymuseum.com/ ) is open Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. Blue Ridge Institute and Museum (540-365-4416, Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. in summer, http://www.blueridgeinstitute.org/ ) at Ferrum College has rotating exhibits on the music and culture of the Blue Ridge. Friday nights at the Floyd Country Store (296 S. Locust St., 540-745-4563, http://www.floydcountrystore.com/ ) feature gospel, old-time and bluegrass bands. The Carter Family Fold (A.P. Carter Highway; follow signs from Route 58 in Hiltons, 276-386-9480, http://www.carterfamilyfold.org/ ) has live shows every Saturday night starting at 7:30. The music shop Pickin' Parlor (Route 23, Weber City, 276-386-2654) fills with local musicians Tuesday evenings at 7.

FESTIVALS: Ralph Stanley hosts his 35th annual Hills of Home Bluegrass Festival ( http://www.drralphstanley.com/ ) near Clintwood, May 26-28. Guests this year include Gillian Welch, Jim Lauderdale, Larry Sparks and Rhonda Vincent in addition to Dr. Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Grayson Highlands State Park offers a mountain setting for the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival & Guitar Competition ( http://www.waynehenderson.org/ ), on June 18. This year's Old Fiddler's Convention in Galax ( http://www.oldfiddlersconvention.com/ ) is Aug. 8-13.

INFO: The Crooked Road , 866-686-6874, http://www.thecrookedroad.org/ .