North Carolina

Following his experiences at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention writer and musician Banning Eyre embarks on a journey across the state of North Carolina to hear the music and stories of some of the older players and singers who can trace a direct line back to before the age of the radio and the gramophone, to when Old Time music was a strictly oral tradition.

Banning meets 90 year old fiddler Jo Thomson, who is perhaps the only known surviving Old Time African-American string band player. His playing and stories capture a period of time before this music was delineated on race grounds, of a time when both black and white string bands flourished.

Sat out on her porch on top of a mountain near Mars Hill, eighth generation ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams, tells stories and sings songs as her grandmother taught her, out in the open, singing to the fireflies and crickets. Her ballads, that tell of Knights and Ladies and boats at sea, hail from the 'Old Country': England, Ireland and Scotland. Passed down through singing generations in the little settlement of Sodom where she grew up, she preserves the haunting and often macabre song of her ancestors, and is today passing it on to her children and grandchildren.

89 year-old Benton Flippen and his Smokey Valley boys, are remnants of a past age and of the heyday of Old Time stringband music, having learnt their tunes at the knee of their parents and grandparents. It won't be long before the last of this generation has passed, and those guardians of the flame, who knew this music as a vital pre-modern part of everyday life in the rural south are with us no longer.

Produced by Peter Meanwell

Repeat.