The 2010 Appalachia in the Bluegrass concert series is generously supported by the Office of the Provost, the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, the Appalachian Studies Program, and the Appalachian Center of the University of Kentucky.

Over the last few years the Niles Gallery Series has included an exceptional series of noontime performances by outstanding traditional musicians and scholars. This season, the series focuses on “old time music” both old and new with a strong Kentucky heritage.

The Fall 2010 Series

All performances were on Fridays at noon in the John Jacob Niles Gallery, Lucille Little Fine Arts Library, unless otherwise noted.

Karly Dawn and Little Sarie

September 3. Karly Dawn Higgins and Sarah Wood, sometimes called the sister sisters, entertain with a unique blend of vocal harmonies and banjo/guitar picking. Both East Kentucky natives, Karly Dawn and Sarah have ties in Morehead, and up the Kentucky/Ohio River Valley. Coming from a mixed musical upbringing rich in bluegrass and old country traditions, this duo was formed from the mutual love of old time music and singing. Their music is influenced by greats such as Hazel and Alice and The Carter Family, and also local legends like George Gibson and Jesse Wells. They draw their inspiration from the people they love, the trials they endure, and the beautiful land they call their home.

Rich and the Po’ Folks

September 17. Rich and the Po' Folks dates to the spring of 2006 when a group of friends got together with a common goal: to build a band on their shared love for the traditional music of east Kentucky and southwest Virginia. Taking their inspiration from some of the jewels of Appalachian music, Rich and the Po' Folks take the work of Old Time giants such as Art Stamper, Ed Haley, Charlie Osborne, George Gibson, Addie Graham, and John Morgan Salyer and use fiddle, banjo, bass, mandolin, and guitar to kick it up as only a string band can!

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker

September 24. Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. Sparky Rucker has been performing over forty years and is internationally recognized as a leading folklorist, musician, historian, storyteller, and author. He accompanies himself with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, banjo, and spoons. Rhonda Rucker is an accomplished harmonica, piano, banjo, and bones player, and also adds vocal harmonies to their songs.

Sparky and Rhonda are sure to deliver an uplifting presentation of toe-tapping music spiced with humor, history, and tall tales. They take their audience on an educational and emotional journey that ranges from poignant stories of slavery and war to an amusing rendition of a Brer Rabbit tale or their witty commentaries on current events. Their music includes a variety of old-time blues, slave songs, Appalachian music, spirituals, ballads, work songs, Civil War music, cowboy music, railroad songs, and a few of their own original compositions.

Lee Sexton with John Haywood

October 1. A master of the drop-thumb and two-finger banjo style, Lee “Boy” Sexton has lived his whole life near his birthplace in Letcher County, KY. Born in 1927.He acquired his first banjo, a homemade wooden fretless model with a groundhog skin head, for a dollar when he was eight years old. With instruction from his father and uncles (one of whom was banjo player Morgan Sexton, winner of the National Heritage Award), Sexton soon mastered the instrument, and the fiddle, as well. As a young man he would work all week in the mines and then play music all weekend at house parties, bean stringings, and corn shuckings. In 1999 he was presented with the Kentucky Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Artist and banjo picker John Wezley Haywood grew up in a small community in eastern Kentucky called Risner that was named for his Mother’s family. From his home in Knott County, he paints the real Kentucky. His artwork wallows in the stereotypes and pays tribute to lifestyles that make Kentucky and Appalachia a unique and celebrated place. The paintings tell stories of hell-raising hillbillies, hardened mine workers, mountain musicians, and more.

Bruce Greene and Don Pedi

October 8. Together legendary Old-Time Fiddler Bruce Greene, and western North Carolina's pioneering master of the Old-Time mountain dulcimer, Don Pedi, create a sound where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Their playing invokes the sound and spirit of Traditional Mountain Music with a brilliance that is both timeless and rare.

Larry Webster and the Mule Band

October 15. Larry Webster, lawyer, raconteur, newspaper columnist, former politician, and musician has been a prominent and articulate voice for East Kentucky’s mountain music heritage. The force behind the Old Time Gazebo during Pikeville’s “Hillbilly Days,” Webster mixes and matches musical talent on stage like an artist at work with his palette. The Mule Band has been performing for thirty years, perhaps the longest running old time string band in the Commonwealth, and is one of the oldest in the Appalachian region. The Mule Band specializes in the mountain style of “party songs;” the dance tunes and jolly songs that drove the frolics, cabin-raisings, quiltings, corn-huskings, and other traditional celebrations.

Nick Stump Trio

October 22. Nick Stump (Michael Stamper) of Hindman, KY is from the "fiddling" Stamper side of the family. “I'm still a Stamper. Stump is just a nickname I picked up in the service…” Nick is well known to central Kentucky audiences from his days with the Metropolitan Blues All-Stars. He’s still playing “that rocking, hillbilly blues and we're having a big time doing it.” Along with bass player and fellow Metropolitan Ricky Baldwin and guitarist Ben Andrews.

Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman

Wednesday, October 27.Alan Jabbour is one of the major figures in the revival of Appalachian traditional music. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1968, he taught English, folklore, and ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1968-69. He then moved to Washington, D.C., for over thirty years of service with Federal cultural agencies. He was head of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress 1969-74, director of the folk arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts 1974-76, and director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress 1976-99. Since his retirement, he has turned enthusiastically to a life of writing, consulting, lecturing, and playing the fiddle.

Ken Perlman is a superb instrumentalist, acclaimed teacher of instrumental skills, gifted performer, and award-winning folklorist. Ken is both a pioneer of the 5-string banjo style known as "melodic clawhammer," and a master of fingerstyle guitar. He is considered one of the top clawhammer players in the world, known in particular for his skillful adaptations of Celtic tunes to the style. On guitar, Ken's sparkling finger-picked renditions of traditional Celtic and Southern fiddle tunes are simply not to be missed.

Ada and Jimmy McCown

October 29. Jimmy McCown grew up in a musical family on Pond Creek in Pike County, KY where he learned to play banjo from his grandfather, Boyd Smith. In the late 1940s the area was filled with accomplished banjo players, many of whom played the clawhammer style. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, Jimmy went on to master the three-finger bluegrass banjo style. Jimmy and Ada married and Jimmy taught Ada to play guitar. They had their own Bluegrass band from 1968-2003, recording 6 albums and touring the U.S. and Canada.

Julie Shepherd and Adrian Powell

November 5. Award-winning musical duo, Adrian and Julie Shepherd-Powell of Lexington, Kentucky perform old-time fiddle and banjo music tied to Southwest Virginia, Western North Carolina, and Southeast Kentucky. Adrian, a native of Crimora, VA, has won contests at fiddler's conventions all over the southeast. His fiddle style is straight forward with a hard drivin' bow. Hhe currently plays with the Pea Ridge Ramblers, Matt Kinman's Old Time Serenaders, and the Cabin Creek Boys. Julie is an award-winning clawhammer banjo player and flatfoot dancer originally from North Carolina. Julie has taught old time banjo at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, VA. She has also played with Letcher County band Rich & the Po’ Folks (also performing on this season’s Niles Center Appalachian music series). Julie competes in flatfoot dance competitions at fiddlers' conventions all over the southeast and calls square dances from Knoxville to New York City. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Kentucky.

The Kentucky Clodhoppers

November 12. The Kentucky Clodhoppers are an old-time style dance band from Clark and Estill Counties in East-Central Kentucky. They play a repertoire of old tunes that were indigenous to the area in the days when square dances were the preferred form of popular entertainment for all ages. They have made a home for themselves at local Bluegrass festivals as representatives of the kind of music Bluegrass evolved from. Mainstays of the band over the years have been fiddler Billy Don Stamper, banjo player Earl Thomas, Jr., and mandolinist and fiddler Donnie Rogers. Joining them is John Harrod, recipient of the 2004 Folk Heritage Award of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts for his work in preserving traditional music.

Morehead State University Kentucky Center for Traditional Music Old Time String Band

November 19. The Traditional Music Program at Morehead is among the fastest growing academic traditional music programs at any school of higher education. Their Outreach program includes performances, presentations, lecture/demonstrations and workshops by The Kentucky Center for Traditional Music faculty. Outreach also includes Morehead State University student bands that are sections of The Traditional Music Ensemble, Bluegrass Band, Celtic Band, Old Time String Band and Old Time Country Band classes. These groups perform under the direction of their instructors on the MSU campus and across the region for programs such as the "Sounds of Our Heritage" series, which introduces students of all ages to many forms of traditional music. The group is directed by Jesse Wells, who grew up in Red Bush, Kentucky, and started attending fiddler’s conventions and festivals at an early age. His music has been greatly influenced by his father Jaime Wells, an old-time fiddler.

Red State Ramblers

December 10.
The music of the Red State Ramblers features native and adopted Kentuckians playing Kentucky tunes and songs that resonate with the truth of life lived close to the font from which this music springs. The Ramblers, Will Bacon (banjo and kazoo), Kevin Kehrberg (bass, guitar), Jeff Keith (mandolin and guitar), and Nikos Pappas (fiddle), recently released their second recording, "Commonwealth," based on the traditional music of Kentucky. In 2008 the band was a finalist in the string band competition at Clifftop Old Time String Band Festival.

Presently Jeff Keith and Dr. Kevin Kehrberg serve as professors at Warren Wilson College, Nikos Pappas is completing his Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of Kentucky, and Will Bacon is the owner of the celebrated contracting firm, BaConstruction. This performance is a special reunion of the Ramblers who have traveled a “fur piece” to crown a stellar season at the Niles Gallery.