The Appalachian Mountains were just hills. I was a painfully shy eight-year-old, my brother was a brave fifth grader, and we were fresh from the West, where kids read quickly, we got real snow, and mountains were screaming, sky-scraping shards, not … Continue reading
My relationship with West Virginia has always been strained. I’ve lived most of my life in her hills, attending kindergarten and grades four through twelve in two adjacent counties in the Northern Panhandle. But even from a young age, I … Continue reading
I wasn’t born in the Oklahoma hills. The Guthries’ lyrics rang truer in high school, when my dad sang them with our family string band. But even though both my parents grew up in Stillwater, the cowboy’s life never much … Continue reading
I love Tennessee’s old-time fiddle music. It’s just something people do…
Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, as the kid of a New York Jew and a New Jersey WASP, I didn’t listen to a lot of country music. But in high school, when my horseback-riding, naturally-twangy friend Casey introduced me to … Continue reading