The April issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray contains an article focused, of course, on the food of Virginia’s Crooked Road.

In a regular feature about food and travel, called Go Away, Rachael visits several locations along The Crooked Road. I’ve not read the article, but I’ve been told that the music is given some time in the magazine, with references to specific bands that Rachael listens to while traveling along The Crooked Road.

If anyone has a copy, please comment and give us some details.

The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, has a brand new web site, with a fun twist and a chance to win a custom built mandolin or guitar. The Trail is the state of Virginia’s official tour guide for traditional music lovers, which offers a driving route that connects major venues and historical sites throughout southwest Virginia that would appeal to fans of Appalachian music.

The new site has a clever option where you can build your own custom bluegrass song, and send it to a friend. The site will ask you to respond to a series of questions to obtain the name of your song’s recipient, their relationship to you, and some of their interests and hobbies. Immediately after responding to these queries, it will present you with a song, played and sung by No Speed Limit, which includes references to all of your responses.

You’ll then be able to send the song to whomever you wish, by either phone or email, and enter the contest to win a new mandolin or guitar.

The Build-A-Lyric site will surely give you a chuckle, and you may find yourself sending them to several of your friends. They don’t have the ability to create a song for every name that you might choose, and the other responses are limited as well, but it’s still a hoot - and the music is great.

The instruments in the giveaway are from southwest Virginia luthiers. The mandolin is made by Gerald Anderson, who studied with Wayne Henderson, and the guitar by Spencer Strickland, who is Anderson’s apprentice.

The newest release in the Crooked Road series from the Virginia Folklife program is just out. It is by Linda Lay, Sammy Shelor & Crooked Run, and entitled Taking The Crooked Road Home.

Linda Lay grew up in Bristol, VA singing and playing with her family’s string band since she was a small child. She later formed her own band, Appalachian Trail, which was a fixture at festivals in the Blue Ridge area for twenty years, and performs now with her husband David, and David McLaughlin as Springfield Exit.

Most of our readers know Sammy Shelor as the powerhouse banjo picker with Lonesome River Band, which has been his home for the past 17 years. He and Linda did a show at a folk festival a few years ago, and plans to record together were hatched not long after.

They are assisted on this CD by David McLaughlin and Jeff Parker on mandolin, David Lay on guitar, and Ron Stewart on fiddle. Though the sound is solid traditional bluegrass, most of the songs are new, with contributions from Tom T. and Dixie Hall, Mike Evans and Harley Allen.

Sammy said that recording this project was a blast for him.

“I love the way bluegrass music is played in southwest VA and east TN, and this project perfectly captures the drive, the power and the soul of that sound. Linda is the strongest vocalist I have ever worked with, and I think those who have never heard her sing are in for a surprise.”

Audio samples for all 12 tracks can be found online.

Like the last few Lonesome River Band releases, Taking The Crooked Road Home is available for purchase on the band’s site as an audio CD, or for immediate digital download as MP3 files.

Radio service is being handled by Sammy Shelor, so show hosts who would like a copy for airplay should contact Sammy via the LRB web site.

We expect that readers of The Bluegrass Blog know Sammy Shelor as the award-winning banjo player and manager of Lonesome River Band. Some may be aware of his work with the state of Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, more commonly known as The Crooked Road, and a few may even realize that his wife, Sue, operates a small crafts business, Mountain Meadow Farm and Crafts Market.

Not many will know that he is set to open a music-themed tourist attraction this weekend, not far from his home in Patrick County, VA. It will be known as the Corn Acoustics Corn Maze, and is located on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Meadows of Dan, VA. Sam was inspired to create the maze by the efforts of his friend John Arnold of the Lonesome Highway Bluegrass Band, who does a similar maze himself each year near Romney, WV.

The Grand Opening is scheduled for September 2, in conjunction with the 2nd Annual Chinquapin Festival in Meadows Of Dan. Visitors can try their hand at navigating the maze, cut to resemble the official Crooked Trail logo, which is styled in the shape of a banjo.

The maze was planted in May of this year, and they have a number of photos of the proces of planting and cutting the maze up on their web site, along with tips for solving it should you want to give it a try.

You can find the Corn Acoustics Corn Maze along the Crooked Road, adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway near Milepost 178 on State Route 795 (Concord Road). Hours, admission fees and contact info are available on the Mountain Meadow web site.

The Dixie Bee-Liners could be seen as an anomaly in the rapidly expanding world of bluegrass and acoustic music - a male/female, singer/songwriter duo playing Appalachian-inflected original music with their band, originally from a base in New York City.

On second thought, maybe there isn’t much of an anomaly at all, as artists based in in every corner of the globe seek to claim, and redefine, the music that originated in the southeastern mountain regions of the United States. Recent entrants have included The Earl Brothers, playing a minimalistic sort of mountain string music from CA, and G2, a bluegrass band in Sweden whose music sounds very much like what I encounter here in southwestern VA.

The Bee-Liners are Brandi Hart and Buddy Woodward, both accomplished bluegrass players, singers and songwriters. While Buddy is a New Yorker, Brandi hails from the Bluegrass State, growing up in Lexington, KY. Brandi will be a showcase songwriter at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass this fall, and Buddy will be appearing before audiences throughout the south this fall reprising his multiple roles in the touring show for Man Of Constant Sorrow: The Story of the Stanley Brothers, originally staged at The Barter Theater in Abingdon, VA.

Their debut release was a self-titled EP CD containing 8 songs, was widely praised by critics, with the “culture clash” between the Appalachians and the Big Apple a major part of their sound. It spent six weeks in the Top Ten on the Roots Music Report bluegrass chart after its release. (more…)

We found a nice article in The Blue Ridge Gazette on the contributions of Patrick County, VA residents to traditional Appalachian and bluegrass music. The article is specifically about the opening of a historical marker and information kiosk in Meadows Of Dan, VA along The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail. The article includes some info on Lonesome River Band’s Sammy Shelor, a Meadows Of Dan native, and both his and his family’s contributions to the music.

We have posted once before about The Crooked Trail, a tourist and promotional effort, funded by both private and governmental sources. They describe the Road as:

…a driving route through the Appalachian Mountains from the western slopes of the Blue Ridge to the Coalfields region of the state. The trail connects major heritage music venues in the Appalachian region such as the Blue Ridge Music Center, Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, and the Carter Family Fold.

You can read the article online.

Blue Ridge Gazette is a new blog recently launched to foster interest and raise awareness of the beauty, history, people and arts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A recent entry features longtime Blue Ridge resident Sammy Shelor - of Lonesome River Band fame - and his wife, Sue. The article offers a brief history of Sammy’s involvement in bluegrass music, and how he and Sue met and were married, but is primarily focused on Sue’s arts business, Mountain Meadow Crafts. She and Sam have become deeply involved in The Crooked Road project, another effort to celebrate the unique musical and cultural contributions this part of the United States has added to our lives, and Sue’s arts and crafts market is located on this Crooked Road trail.

Read the piece on Sammy and Sue here.

The Roanoke Times (local newspaper for this blog’s authors) has a terrific series of articles - and some snappy multimedia content on their web site - about the efforts of the state of Virginia to capitalize on the interest in traditional string music as a tourist attraction for southwestern VA.

Officially named The Heritage Music Trail, the project has been more casually dubbed “The Crooked Road,” for the shape of the trail itself, which joins a number of sites in SW VA with ties to this music.

In addition to Floyd, Galax and Stanley country, stops include the the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Galax, the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, the Country Cabin in Norton and the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College.

The print series (viewable online) is authored by Roanoke Times staff writer Ralph Berrier, an old time fiddler himself, who does a very thorough and respectful job with this series. The multimedia content (click on the fiddle icon on the left) was created by Roanoke Times Multimedia Editor Seth Gitner. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in this region, the origins of our music or the efforts of the state of VA to draw attention to it with tourism in mind.