A&E

Don’t know where I’m going, all I know is where I’ve gone

49 Winchester.

Isaac Gibson of 49 Winchester

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD S TAFF WRITER

Hailing from the Southern Appalachian backwoods of Castlewood, Virginia (population: 2,045), 49 Winchester is a rapidly rising alt-country/rock act.

For the better part of the last decade, the band has been relentlessly working its way through the Southeastern music industry — playing every stage and festival that’ll have ‘em — where now the raucous group is whispered in the same breath (of raw talent and sincere passion) as the Drive-By Truckers, Tyler Childers and Sturgill Simpson, to name a few.

The tone is gritty, but soothing, a sense of warmth in a sometimes cold, cruel world. For every heartache, broken bottle and shattered dream, there’s an honest and tangible feeling of triumph and redemption — pushing through any obstacle when the going gets tough and others may doubt the path you’re currently on.

Fronted by lead singer/guitarist Isaac Gibson, the quintet is a true band of brothers. The lineup includes childhood friends of Gibson, either from around the corner or

across the county line. Onstage, 49 Winchester is a well-oiled and fiery machine of melody and purpose — something that lends itself to a seamless evolution of sound, ultimately creating a long-term vision for bountiful creativity and awe-inspiring performance.

Smoky Mountain News: Did you find that the shutdown not only justified, but maybe brought more purpose to what it is that you love doing with music?

Isaac Gibson: Yeah. It’s definitely given me perspective on just how much playing music for new faces every night really meant to me — not having that in my life anymore has been sort of a shock factor. It’s given me a new perspective on what it means to be in a touring band, what it means to get out and gig, what it means to make people boogie, dance and enjoy your music.

SMN: Being from Southwestern Virginia, what is it about those people and that landscape that really influences the music?

IG: There’s nowhere on the planet that is at all culturally similar to Central Appalachia. There are other places that can say the same thing, but it’s not for the same reasons. This place is completely and totally independent of everything around it — we’re on our own little island here in the mountains.

Want to watch?

The next installment of the “No Contact Concert Series” will feature 49 Winchester at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11. You can watch the performance by going to www.crowdless.com and click on the “Upcoming Shows” tab.

Shows are streamed through YouTube and Facebook Live. Broadcasted live from the Codex Sound warehouse in Hickory, NCCS was designed as a solution to the limits that traditional at-home live streams present: low audio/video quality, and caps on band size.

Each show is fully equipped with a professional grade stage and lighting rig, audio inputs, and 12 camera angles, with the only people onsite being crew and band members (who perform on pre-sanitized backline equipment).

The series will continue with Tall Tall Trees (July 18), The Fritz (July 24), Cicada Rhythm (Aug. 1), Fireside Collective (Aug. 8), Chatham County Line (Aug. 14) and Amythyst Kiah (Aug. 22).

For more information on 49 Winchester, visit www.49winchester.com.

There’s such a deep sense of community where we come from. There’s a rich musical history that just kind of sprung out of its own [here]. Country music and bluegrass had their genesis here — the “Big Bang,” so to speak. It came out of the hills and [it was] in full force.

SMN: When you think about how the band started, what was the initial vision? Was it just getting together and hanging out, and then it evolved? Or did you have an initial plan?

IG: I think I had a plan from the start. Maybe not from the start of my musicianship, but the start of getting together, branching out and playing with other musicians. I’ve been playing music since I was a kid and I’d been singing since I was a kid, but nobody ever heard me except the walls in my bedroom [for] a lot of years.

But, as soon as I started getting serious enough about it, to play around with other musicians, to toss ideas off of each other and bounce stuff around, I knew I wanted to start a band.

And I want to start a band [where I didn’t] want to just go out and find hired guns. I wanted to start a band with friends. I want to start a band with people that I knew. And, you know, there [were] a couple of dudes that play guitar in the neighborhood and [a] guy that played drums — we got together and here we are now.

SMN: Well, it’s that thing, too, where you know each other on this very cerebral and kind of cosmic level. And you can’t replace that…

IG: Yeah, that’s true. A hundred percent. The thing that really makes us what we are is the fact that we’re brothers, man. We really are. This whole deal is driven [by that]. It’s a deep connection with each other and a great love that we have for each other, and respect for each other, that I think has really allowed us to sort of mesh — not just onstage, but in the studio and offstage when we’re just at home writing new songs or just hanging out. There’s definitely an element of brotherhood.

SMN: Do you think that parlays itself into not getting stressed out about things, the idea that, “We’re all doing this together and we’re having fun. It’ll be a slow burn, but we’ll do it at our own pace”?

IG: Absolutely. That’s the one thing that has kept us hanging on this long. We’re no spring chickens anymore. We’ve been doing this since we were 18 and I’m 26 now. We’ve been cranking away at this for quite a while. That has kept us tight knit. We’re going to rock and roll with this thing, with this idea, with this set of values — wherever that takes us, we’re satisfied with.

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD

Sacandaga Lake. (photo: Garret K. Woodward)

Ain’t it funny how you feel, when you’re findin’ out it’s real?

Much like New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July is one of those holidays that everyone you know will definitely be doing something of some sort. But, for some damn reason, nobody ever seems to decide what that something is until the last minute.

Like clockwork, plans with friends and family are vaguely made shortly after Memorial Day, only to simply jump into whatever beautiful mischief or organized chaos arrives in the 11th hour of Independence Day.

Case-in-point, it was around midnight on July 3 when I found myself standing in a dive bar on the corner of Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, New York. As I was sipping a cold Labatt Blue, my smart phone vibrated with a text message. It was my buddy Kevin from Tampa.

He was randomly in Lake George (two hours south of Plattsburgh) and wanted to know if I had any plans for the next day. “No plans, as of yet,” I responded. Turns out, his best buddy from Florida (Scott) has a summer home on the shores of Sacandaga Lake on the southern edge of the Adirondack Mountains.

“Want to come down for the 4th?” Kevin asked. “Sold. See y’all tomorrow afternoon,” I replied.

With a blazing sun overhead, I cruised down Interstate 87 South towards Sacandaga. Windows rolled down in the ole pickup truck. Neil Young’s “Decade” album blasting from the speakers. My hands held steady on the wheel, my mind drifting into the high peaks of the ancient Adirondacks, one by one flowing by my field of vision.

Somewhere along Route 9N, I found myself approaching the Town of Hadley. To the left was Lake Luzerne, the picturesque Wayside Beach filled with patrons balancing a need for cold water immersion and practicing social distancing. Beach balls and hot dogs. Bathing suits and sunglasses. Laughter and splashing. Like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Pulling into the dirt driveway of Scott’s family abode, the summer home was more so a compound. Over 180 acres along the waterfront of Sacandaga, filled with numerous old cabins still owned by the extended family, mostly rented out to close friends throughout the year.

Parking the truck, nobody was in the main cabin. I yelled around the house and front yard, only to be greeted by silence. Cracking open a beer, I strolled down to a small beach below. Finally found Kevin, eventually introduced to the genuine friendliness and hospitality of Scott.

The last time I’d seen Kevin was down in Tampa in February, running around the never-ending nightlife, right before the pandemic and shutdown — when “normalcy” was something in real time, not something thought of in the past tense as it seems to be nowadays.

Throwing on my bathing suit, I jumped into the lukewarm lake, happily floating around, the rays of the hot sun slowly falling behind the tree line. Sand between my toes, I emerged from the watery depths and shook my long hair like some shaggy, wet dog eager for the next adventure.

Placing some steaks on the grill, Kevin, Scott and I talked about our respective industries and how our lives came to a halt in the era of Covid. Kevin owns a prominent brewery and restaurant in Ybor City. Scott works in the Tampa school system.

And myself, a journalist who travels and covers events for a living. Our daily routines shattered, with nothing better to do with our newfound time than high-tail it up to the mountains of Upstate New York for introspective moments and reflective thoughts.

After dinner, we hopped into Scott’s golf cart and headed for the beach — it was time to light the bonfire. This newfound group of friendly faces now huddled around the massive pile of dried wood. Scott set the pile ablaze just as someone else began to launch the fireworks over the lake.

In that instance, I felt normal, if but for a moment. The idea of a social gathering on a national holiday amid a slew of traditions being showcased has seemed like such a foreign concept to me (and probably you, too) within these last four months in a time as uncertain as it is haphazard.

But, in that moment of exploding gunpowder and crackling flames, I also felt a deep sense of self. The journalism and music industry are each such a whirlwind circus, these landscapes that I’ve figured out how to navigate and ride steadily over the years.

What’s wild is this deafening silence: no music onstage, no words spilling out of my fingertips across the keyboard about the music witnessed, experienced and, most of all, deeply felt. It’s odd to go from this speeding melodic train to being somehow left at the last stop way out in the high desert of isolation.

I haven’t stopped writing about live music since I was 21 years old. Several shows each and every week. And now, at 35, here I am, sitting in Upstate New York (for the time being until I return to North Carolina), reflecting on the past and trying to paint a picture for the future.

A few months ago, I figured the shutdown would drive me crazy. But, if anything, it’s justified why I truly, honestly live and die for my work in this career path I’ve called home since college (some 14 years ago).

I’ve spent this pandemic and shutdown brutally looking at myself in the mirror, trying to figure out what it means to do what I do, and in what capacity I do it. I’ve been so busy working and wandering, that I never really made time for anything or anyone else (for years and years).

This pause has made me take a hard glance at who I am, what I am about, and who I want to be moving forward. I’ve circled back to my old self, but with new eyes and new thoughts of what the future could be — if only I remain optimistic and determined, filled with passion and grace that is meant to not only push forward my hopes and dreams, but also that of others, too.

Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all. We are open

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Concerts on the Creek postponed

Due to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s announcement to extend Phase 2 of Covid-19 restrictions, the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce has postponed the 11th season of Concerts on the Creek again until at least July 17.

Performances will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at Bridge Park in Sylva. The tentative updated schedule is as follows: • Friday, July 17 - Summer & Bray (Mountain Faith) (Bluegrass/Gospel) • Saturday, July 18 - Bohemian Jean (Classic Hits & Originals) • Friday, July 24 - Darren Nicholson Band (Classic Country/Bluegrass/Americana) • Saturday, July 25 - Mile High Band (Classic Rock/Country) • Friday, July 31 - Tuxedo Junction (Classic Hits) • Saturday, Aug. 1 - Terri Lynn Queen, Tim Queen & Scott Baker (Classic Hits) • Friday, Aug. 7 - Dashboard Blue (Classic Hits) • Saturday, Aug. 8- Eleanor Underhill & Friends (Americana) • Friday, Aug. 14 - Jonah Riddle & Carolina Express (Bluegrass/Gospel) • Saturday, Aug. 15 - The Rewind House Band (Classic Rock Hits)

• Friday, Aug. 21 - The Get Right Band (Funk/Rock) • Saturday, Aug. 22 - Shane Meade & The Sound (Soul/Rock/Funk) • Friday, Aug. 28 - Arnold Hill Band (Rock/Country/Americana) • Saturday, Aug. 29 - Keil Nathan Smith Band (Classic Rock/Country) • Friday, Sept. 4: Daddy Rabbit (Blues/Rock) • Saturday, Sept. 5 - SKA City (Ska/Two tone/Trojan rocksteady)

Organizers are awaiting the governor’s lifting of restrictions on crowd gathering sizes due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Everyone is encouraged to bring a chair or blanket. These events are free but donations are encouraged. Dogs must be kept on a leash. No alcohol, smoking or coolers are allowed in the park.

Organizers will strongly suggest that everyone obeys safe Covid-19 practices, which include social distancing (staying at least six feet apart), using hand sanitizer when possible, and wearing protective face coverings/masks.

These concerts are produced by the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, the Town of Sylva and the Jackson County Parks and Recreation Department.

For more information, call the chamber at 828.586.2155, visit www.mountainlovers.com/concerts-on-the-creek or Concerts on the Creek’s Facebook page.

Frank & Allie Lee.

Local string musicians Frank & Allie Lee will be presenting an online concert and fundraiser for the Marianna Black Library at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11, on Facebook.

To attend the online concert, log on to Facebook, search for “Frank and Allie Lee,” then click on the events link in the left column, or go directly to this link: www.facebook.com/events/2749038672088586.

Frank & Allie Lee are a husband and wife duo specializing in harmony-powered oldtime and rural southern traditional music. With nylon string fretless banjo, guitar, slide guitar, and steel string banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and harmony vocals, they give a wide variety of heirloom songs and tunes new life.

The couple’s latest release “Treat A Stranger Right” was released in February and was No. 1 album on the Folk Alliance International Folk Chart for two months this winter.

Because of the quarantine stay-at-home

• Andrews Brewing Company (Andrews) will host the “Lounge Series” at its Calaboose location with The Trailer Hippies July 10,

Moriah Domby July 11, George Ausman July 12, Brother! July 18 and Mike Bonham July 19. All shows are free and begin at 2 p.m. unless otherwise noted. www.andrewsbrewing.com.

• Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will host

Maggie Valley Band (Americana/indie) July 10, Arnold Hill (Americana/rock) July 11, JJ

Hipps & The Hideaway July 17 and

Scoundrel’s Lounge July 18. All shows begin at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public. www.froglevelbrewing.com. order, due to the Covid-19 virus, Frank & Allie Lee were forced to cancel their spring and summer tour dates. Instead, they began planning and performing online concerts from their own home in Bryson City in March.

Soon after their first online concert, in which they provided options to purchase albums or leave a “tip,” they began playing benefit concerts for the community. Since then, they have raised over $3,000 for local nonprofits and individuals in need.

The Marianna Black Library, which closed in March, but has since reopened with limited hours and services, has had to cancel all indoor programming until further notice, including the annual “Summer Music Series.”

Though this is a benefit concert, anyone can watch and listen online for free. For more information, click on www.frankandallie.com or www.fontanalib.org/brysoncity.

• The “Haywood County Medical Exhibit: 1870-1950” will be held at The Shelton

House in Waynesville. The showcase will run through October. Admission is $7 adults. $5 students. Children ages 5 and under free.

Admission includes Shelton House. 828.452.1551 or www.sheltonhouse.org.

• The next “Dillsboro After Five: Wonderful

Wednesdays” will be held from 3:30 to 7 p.m. July 8 in downtown. Start ALSO: with a visit to the Jackson County Farmers Market located in the

Innovation Station parking lot. Stay for dinner and take advantage of late-hour shopping.

Bring the family and enjoy small town hospitality at its best. “Dillsboro After Five” will be held every Wednesday through July 29. 828.586.2155 or www.mountainlovers.com.

In her own words

If you’re like me and are interested in or son of Jesus of Nazareth and/or played curious about the day-to-day life and major roles in the biblical history of his life especially the early life of Jesus — the soand times. called missing years — then you’re probably Following the chronology of the Jesus going to like Sue Monk Kidd’s new novel, story as laid out in the New Testament, we The Book of Longings.

Kidd is an award-winning and number one bestselling author of books such as The Secret Life of Bees. She is also known for her groundbreaking work on religion and feminism, and ... she lives in North Carolina. Given her history as a writer, The Book of Thomas Crowe Writer Longings falls right into line with what she has done previously in this regard and is told from the perspective of Ana, a young woman living in Sepphoris, a small town in Galilee near Nazareth in the first century BC, who meets a young 20-year-old Jesus in a local cave where Jesus is praying and Ana is hiding her scrolls and writing materials from her controlling parents and where she falls in love with him at first sight.

In a book that is foremost a love story, it is also an imagined and fictional account of what the life of Jesus might have looked like during his short lifetime. In that sense, Kidd gives us a realistic portrayal of the life of Jesus, his family and compatriots. But even get the full monty of those years as a result moreso, I think that Kidd’s new book is the of Kidd’s extensive research and detail. In a author telling the untold stories of certain history that has been told to us by men, we females in history. In this case, the stories of get a more and much needed feminist perthose women who were essential to the perspective as we learn about the identity and early life of Judas before his betrayal. We are privy to the ambitions and narcissism of Herod Antipas. We learn of Jesus’ relation to and time with John the Baptist and then Jesus taking on John’s role when John is captured and imprisoned by Herod — by taking up the activist work of non-violent protest against the Roman state. But all of this, and more, is told through the eyes and mind of Ana and her interactions with all these people as a result of her love for and eventual marriage to Jesus. In the early pages of the book, Ana, who is the daughter of the number one Scribe in the court of Herod Antipas, is described by Kidd as “a student, an ink maker, a composer of words, a collector of forgotten stories.” She is, at the outset, writing a book about the women who have been mislaid, misremembered and abused by either the Roman or the Jewish societies. She is smart and she is fiesty. Yet she is also compassionate and loving and her many loves and her compassion know no bound. While she is a good, or even a perfect match for Jesus, she is also something of a mentor and some of the words that are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament originally come from the mouth of young Ana. Kidd is not shy about saying at one point that “great sages had female teachers.” In this sense, there is a comparison to other well-known and more modern literary figures such as T.S. Eliot, Percy Bysshe Shelly and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had literary wives who also served as the famous men’s editors and probably even their revisionists. “I didn’t know what I would write. Words engulfed me. Torents and floodwaters. I couldn’t contain them, nor could I release them. But it wasn’t words that surged through me, it was longing. It was love of him,” she writes of her early love for Jesus and then goes on to say, “I dipped my pen. When you love, you remember everything. The way his eyes rested on me for the first time. The yarns he held in the market, fluttering now in hidden places in my body. The sound of his voice on my skin. The thought of him like a diving bird in my belly. I had loved others ... but not more than I loved words. Jesus had put his hand to the latch and I was flung open.” Good stuff. With writing like this in The Book of Longings, Kidd takes us right back 2,000 years and we get to walk in Ana’s and Jesus’ shoes, or sandals as it were. And we walk with them for 11 years of life together learning their lifestyle and the history of the ancient world of the Nabataean Kingdom there on the Mediterranean Sea not all that far from Egypt.

As the story progresses, we eventually get to the denouement from Ana’s perspective as Jesus sets out on his well-known journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem. “Then he rose and, opening the door, stared toward the valley with the same deep, pure gaze he’d cast on me. I went to stand beside him and looked in the same direction as he, and it seemed for an instant I saw the world as he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.” With these thoughts from Ana, and with no end-of-book spoiler from me, Jesus begins his journey south. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Thomas Crowe is a regular contributor to The

Smoky Mountain News. He is the author of the historical fiction novel The Watcher (Like Sweet

Bells Jangled) and lives in Jackson County. He can be reached at newnativepress@hotmail.com.

City Lights drive-by book signing

There will be a drive-by book signing for Leah Hampton, author of the short story collection F*ckFace, at 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.

The author will be set up outside the store for folks to drive up and have books signed. Just be sure to have a mask on.

City Lights Bookstore owner, Chris Wilcox, said of F*ckFace, “Do you find the title of this book off-putting? Please, read the poignant title story, which upsets any preconceived notions that the name conjures. Such prejudice is an apt chord to strike at the beginning of a collection of stories set in the southern Appalachians, a region too often dismissed and demeaned by outsiders unwilling to grapple with nuance once they’ve made up their minds. F*ckface marks the debut of a major literary talent and is a fresh addition to the southern Gothic canon.”

Hampton is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and the winner of the University of Texas’s Keene Prize for Literature, as well as North Carolina’s James Hurst and Doris Betts prizes.

To reserve copies of F*ckFace, call City Lights Bookstore at 828.586.9499.

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