Music From The Crooked Road Featured at Virginia Highlands Festival

Abingdon, Virginia – Music From The Crooked Road will be featured at the Virginia Highlands Festival on Sunday, July 29 from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM at the Abingdon Market Pavilion stage. Featured artists include Dale Jett & Hello Stranger, the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters, and ShadowGrass.

Dale Jett is a native of Southwest Virginia. He is a third-generation member of the legendary Carter Family. His musical trio, Hello Stranger, carries on the Carter Family tradition with a unique combination of traditional songs blended with a mix of songwriters that they admire and original tunes. The New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters are a celebrated group of musicians from the Galax, VA area playing Appalachian string-band style and carrying the traditional music of the Virginia/Carolina Blue Ridge forward. ShadowGrass is a group of young musicians from Western North Carolina and Southwest Virginia who crossed paths at local fiddler’s conventions in the summer of 2014 and have become the premier youth bluegrass band to emerge from the Crooked Road area. Band members adopted the name “ShadowGrass” in recognition of playing bluegrass music in the “shadow” of all the great bluegrass musicians that lived before them. 

The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail celebrates the traditional music that has been kept by families and communities of Southwest Virginia since colonial times. Settlers of this mountainous region since the 1700’s have brought various ingredients – a cappella gospel music from German tradition that lives in the Old Regular Baptist churches today; spirituals, emotive singing and a musical gourd we now call a banjo from African tradition; and ballads and fiddles brought by the Scots-Irish and English. Mixed together, these ingredients have produced one of the richest musical traditions on earth. The variety of it is amazing – old time string bands, a cappella gospel, blues, 300 year-old ballads, bluegrass, and more! It is a music tradition that is as vibrant today as it has ever been.

Please plan to join us for a day of Music from The Crooked Road at the Virginia Highlands Festival. The Abingdon Market Pavilion is located at Cummings Street and Remsburg Drive, Abingdon, VA 24210 (behind the Fields-Penn House). Tickets are $5 / Children under 12 free. More information can be found at www.vahighlandsfestival.org or by calling (276) 623-5266.

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