A.P. Carter had a wandering soul. The chronic road traveler spent much of his life searching out songs and music in the Appalachian Mountains, and the sorrowful ballads he discovered started a musical movement that became popular in the 1930s and 1940s and lives on today at bluegrass festivals and as the musical background for films like O Brother Where Art Thou.
When the road tired Carter, he loved to come home to his green-carpeted mountainous community known as Maces Spring. When you visit this timeless mountain community, it's easy to understand Carter's affection.
My trip to the area started in the strip-malled outskirts of Bristol, Tennessee and slipped across the border into Virginia and under the rumbling concrete of Interstate 81 to take a trip back in time. The four-lane gives way to two, and as the miles go by the scenery changes from beat-up gas stations and tightly-packed homes to weatherbeaten tobacco barns and split rail fences. The route slips under the shadow of Clinch Mountain to arrive at Maces Spring, the home of Carter as well as his daughter, June, and son-in-law, Johnny Cash.
The 25 or so miles I'm traveling took Carter all day to drive in the late 1920s. Carter made the long drive in July 1927 with his wife Sara and her sister Maybelle. The musical trio drove to Bristol after spotting an ad taken out by The Victor Company seeking recording artists and made $300 for the six songs they recorded.
A.P.'s journey to Bristol was the start of his successful career as one of the founding figures in the bluegrass music movement. Just as the blues are infused with the Mississippi Delta, bluegrass lives and breathes in the Appalachian Mountains, created at a time when the isolated region was populated with a blend of nationalities and constantly passed through by people traveling to the American West.
Bluegrass was born in this cauldron, created by the banjo, the fiddle; the sounds are a fresh mix created on back porches and popularized by musicians such as Tom Monroe and the A.P. Carter family. That lively music lives on in the hills, and finding a good banjo player requires as little effort today as it did when A.P. Carter's radio show became a national sensation in the 1930s and 1940s.
My bluegrass journey began on a cold, rainy night in April following the road from Bristol, Tennessee to the Carter Family Fold in Maces Springs. The Fold is a music center rich with American music history that remains a bluegrass destination with local and national acts filling the stands above the stage as well as the dance floor every Saturday night
The parking lot was packed when I arrived, and the crowd was composed of an eclectic mix of college kids, bluegrass tourists, and Carter family and friends packed into a venue that seats about 1,000 comfortably and bulged with larger crowds when Johnny Cash made one of his regular appearances (including the last live performance of his career on July 5, 2003).
The Carter family descendants still run the Fold, and A.P.'s granddaughter Rita Forrester graciously took me on a tour of their little bluegrass museum and a restored log cabin that is the birthplace of her grandfather. She had me sit down with her in the cabin, and said with a laugh, "It's the only quiet place on the fold!"
She sat in a rocking chair that was a favorite of Johnny Cash's, and talked about how she had grown up in these mountains, swimming in the local pond and surrounded by a large music-oriented family that was and is her primary social circle. Unlike her ever-wandering grandfather, she doesn't like to leave it often, and is one of the rare Americans left in the world who finds home so satisfying that there is no need to travel to find out she's happy right where she was born.
I bought some of Rita's beans (which were delicious) and a BBQ sandwich and sat down only to find more Carter family members in the crowd, who happily told me how they came down nearly every Saturday night and that there was a 15-year-old banjo-playing prodigy appearing that night, a kid named Grant Marshall. The dance floor filled with flat-footing dancers, the band played, and the halls echoed with the sounds of a mandolin, banjo, and harmonized vocals.
Back on the road, my next bluegrass destination took me back on Highway 58 through Bristol and on to Mt. Rogers Recreational Area. The highway is a wonderful two-lane journey, twisting through the wilderness area up to Mt. Rogers (elev. 5,729 feet), the highest point in Virginia.
Come to this area in June, and you'll find the Song of the Mountains Festival bringing together thousands of people and some of the country's best bluegrass at the nearby Davis Valley Winery. When I passed through, however, the park was quiet and a perfect place to take in the curves with some gusto.
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