How do you rock old-time music? Well, the band The Buck Stops Here will show you how on Saturday night October 10, as Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music presents this talented group of young women at the Blowing Rock School Auditorium. The doors open at 7 p.m. with the concert beginning at 7:30 p.m.
The Buck Stops Here takes the old-time style of traditional mountain music and lends it a unique youthful energy. With beautiful four-part harmony, funky bass and original songs and tunes, these four women (and their token buck) will win you over with their intimacy and reverence for the music they play. Gailanne Amundsen (Fiddle, banjo, guitar) is the common link between these four women, and her story of meeting them all is remarkably similar.
All the members of The Buck Stops Here are multi-instrumentalist and they are a band that likes a challenge. Amundsen (of Jubal’s Kin) started the group with a few phone calls in August of 2013. She knew she wanted a project that could combine old-time music with a very contemporary edge, great musicianship and spot on vocals. She chose three women from different parts of the east coast and asked if they wanted to try an experiment. Amundsen thought long and hard about who she wanted in the band and how they would all fit together like a creatively compatible puzzle and assembled an ensemble that includes some fiddles, old time AND bluegrass banjo, guitars, drums, upright bass and many singers.
The band’s coming together involves their meeting at old time music festivals and playing music all night long till the early morning sun. Rebecca Jones (bluegrass banjo, drum box, harmony vocals) and Julie Chiles (lead vocals, fiddle, guitar) met at a square dance at Appalachian State University, and have played together in other projects. Before the band started, at a festival early one morning in the eerie beginnings of dawn, Chiles had been drawn over to where Shona Carr (tenor guitar, vocals, claw-hammer banjo, fiddle, songwriter) sat singing in the morning mist. These interconnections of shared friendships have jelled into a dynamic musical collaboration.
Both Jones and Chiles are ASU graduates and they have both been involved with the Junior Appalachian Musicians program at the Jones House in Boone. Recently, Jones has been making a name for herself as a noted filmmaker, producing documentaries of local characters – Glen Bolick and Herb Keys.
JSMHM director, Rodney Sutton, says of The Buck Stops Here – “I made a point to catch their CD release party at The Appalachian String Band Festival in Cliff Top West Virginia this past August. This fiddler’s convention is attended by some of the best old-time musicians from across the US and the CD release parties have become a big part of the fun for this weeklong event. The Buck Stops Here drew one of the largest crowds of the festival and they held their musical peers attention for nearly two hours with their enthusiastic playing, singing and dancing. These folks know how to put on a show!”
The band will be featuring songs and tunes from their new self-titled CD.
This concert is supported by the following private sponsors: T. C. Farthing Family, Dr. E. Frank and Tara Hancock, Lynn Hubbard, Merida H. Steele – In Honor of John H. Steele, and The Estate of Joe Shannon. Business sponsors include; Appalachian Brian Estates, Mountain Times Publishing, and WETS-89.5FM. Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music is also proud to be included as a site on the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina(BlueRidgeMusicNC.com).
Tickets cost $18 in advance and $20 at the door. Student tickets are $10. Children 12 and younger are admitted free. Advance tickets may be purchased online at www.mountainhomemusic.com. Tickets may also be purchased at the Mast General Store (Boone and Valle Crucis), Fred’s Mercantile on Beech Mountain, Stick Boy Bread Company(345 Hardin St, Boone), and Pandora’s Mailbox and the Dulcimer Shop, both in the Martin House on Main Street in downtown Blowing Rock.
The Blowing Rock School Auditorium is located at 130 Sunset Drive, Blowing Rock, NC. Directions and more info can be found at the JSMHM website – www.mountainhomemusic.com/
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