On Friday, the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country held a Hurricane Helene benefit concert for the High Country’s art community.
The event was produced by Mountain Home Music, Carolina Ramble Productions, Kattagast and several other local artists. The event was nearly sold out, with over 500 tickets purchased. All proceeds went directly to the North Carolina Arts Disaster Relief Fund, which will benefit the art community.
The event is a representation of the change of plans all of Western North Carolina felt after Helene. The concert was originally scheduled for Oct. 18 but was rescheduled to give artists time to recover.
The theme of “Wake of the Flood” is a new iteration of a fall tradition in Boone. This would have been the sixth year of “An Evening of Appalachian Murder Ballads,” a seasonal event of folk singers sharing macabre stories from the High Country at the Appalachian Theatre. However, this year’s theme was changed to reflect the High Country’s shared community and recovery from the flood.
“A lot of this was similar to Murder Ballads,” said Kat Chaffin, a local artist who performs under the name Kattagast and organized the event. “The channels were all open and artists were willing to help.”
Performers included Trevor Mackenzie, a fiddler and the director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at App State; Loose Roosters, a bluegrass band consisting of Tim Jones, Chris Capozzoli, Ben McPherron, and Dirk Brown; Ray Christian, a storyteller and professor of African American Studies at App State; and several others. They played music and told stories related to their lives, High Country folklore including the floods of 1916 and 1940 and Hurricane Helene.
Like other businesses, the arts community was hurt by Helene because of the timing of peak tourist season. Musicians lost gigs that would have been some of the most important of the year. Courtney Wheeler of Mountain Home Music said none of the artists playing at “Wake of the Flood” asked for their usual fees, their only goal was to make art in the name of revitalizing their community.
Darcy Wade, a visual artist and Boone local who provided some of the looping backdrops on the stage’s projector, was living in Colorado when Helene hit. She has since moved back to Western North Carolina to help her family and the arts community recover.
She has old ties to the artists that performed. Chaffin was the first person to show her art when she was a student at App State and facilitated her eventual success as an art therapist.
“I’m a visual person, so art is more reliable than my voice sometimes,” Wade said.
Wade had a table set up near the ticket booth in the lobby of the crowded theater where she was met by old friends and people interested in her work.
The show attracted over 500 people, including incumbent Watauga County Board of Education member Charlotte Mizelle Lloyd, who shared her love for the arts community in the High Country.
“We need to preserve the community here,” Lloyd said. “We’ll keep what we have and keep getting better.”
Lloyd brought up the need for better parking on King Street so that the Appalachian Theatre can handle large events like “Wake of the Flood.” She also noted that prices for shows in Boone are much more sustainable than in larger cities, and that is largely thanks to independent venues.
Dave Brewer, one of the founders of Carolina Ramble Productions, further emphasized the need to support local venues like the Appalachian Theatre on stage toward the end of the show. He commended the arts community for coming together and called on the audience to keep the support going.
“However long we can hold onto this feeling,” Brewer said, “we need to hold on to it with two hands.”
To close out the show, every last artist, storyteller, banjo player and singer came out on stage to sing The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends.” They got a standing ovation and the audience walked out into the near-freezing night a little warmer than before.
