On Thursday at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country, Boone welcomed Appalachian Road Show and special guest, Bryan Sutton. On this evening, the community welcomed the performers with open arms to celebrate the building’s 86th birthday.
Appalachian Road Show consists of five members: Grammy-nominated Barry Abernathy on banjo, Todd Phillips on bass, Zeb Synder on guitar, Grammy-winner Jim VanCleve on the fiddle, Darrell Webb on mandolin and all the members contributing to vocals.
The band is heavily influenced by and deeply rooted in the Appalachian region. As an old-timey folk and bluegrass band, they draw inspiration from artists such as Doc Watson, Norman Blake and The Carter Family, VanCleve later shared on stage.
Before the band took to the theater, the lights dimmed and a pre-recorded monologue from Dolly Parton played with folky banjo music in the background from the first track in their album “Jubilation” called “In Time, Jubilation.”
Parton celebrates the band and the people and culture in Appalachia.
“The native and the settler, the enslaved and the free, the farmers and the miners, the men, women and children; they are bound to this place and shaped by it,” Parton said in the recording.
Following the monologue, Road Show made their entrance to the stage, quietly and calmly, followed by breaking into an original tune called “Dance, Dance, Dance.” A particularly striking moment came during the performance when banjo player Abernathy grabbed the crowd’s attention with his special talent: playing the banjo despite missing all four fingers on his left hand except for his thumb.
During their performance, their songs had an old-timey bluegrass feel yet divulged into relevant topics today. They sang songs about high taxes, poverty and government, all while celebrating the community created in Appalachia because of such hardships.
Appalachian Road Show represents community in their music, with almost every song they play letting one another jam out and create their own solos.
After a brief intermission, Appalachian Theatre welcomed in Sutton, a Grammy nominee and 10-time International Bluegrass Music Association award winner for Guitar Player of the Year. Sutton began his set paying tribute to Doc Watson, playing the same song Watson used to open his sets with, “Willie Moore.”
Throughout Sutton’s set, members of Appalachian Road Show came out on the stage to join him to celebrate each other and Appalachia, and they played more well-known tunes together, such as “Shady Grove” and “Angeline the Baker.”
Appalachian Road Show and Sutton came together and spoke about hardships from Hurricane Helene in Appalachia through a form of musical prose. They went on to talk about how in times of struggle, the people of Appalachia find themselves coming together to support one another even stronger than before.
“Life is best when it is unrehearsed,” Sutton said, closing out the set and celebrating the struggle and the strength of the community.
