Tray Wellington, innovative young North Carolina banjoist and band leader, has accepted a position as Communications Manager with Pinecone in Raleigh, NC.
Pinecone, which is also known as the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, is a non-profit agency dedicated to preserving, presenting, and promoting traditional music, dance, and other folk performing arts. In addition to their work with education and live performance in the Tri-Cities region, Pinecone is a major partner with the International Bluegrass Music Association in the annual World of Bluegrass and Wide Open Bluegrass events in Raleigh.
Tray tells us that he will be plenty busy with his new job, but will still be able to maintain a touring schedule.
“My position will be overseeing PineCone’s e-newsletters, website, press releases, marketing, and managing Pinecone’s social media channels.
I will have flexibility with touring, and still plan on going out with the Tray Wellington Band.”
David Brower, PineCone’s Executive Director, says that he believes that Wellington will be a valuable member of their organization.
“We’re thrilled to have Tray join the team. Tray has an infectious love for the music which will serve us well as we work to grow the audience for roots music in North Carolina.”
Wellington has a new album with Mountain Home Music expected sometime next year. He is also a recent graduate of the Bluegrass, Old Time & Country Music Studies program at East Tennessee State University.
Usually in October, PineCone, the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, and the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County use the renewed interest in bluegrass that emerges following the annual hosting of World of Bluegrass and Wide Open Bluegrass in Raleigh, to take their Bluegrass In The Schools programs out into the local community. Bands, duos, and solo entertainers would visit area middle and high schools to teach students a bit more about the music that regional media had been covering so intently in previous weeks.
But now, with most schools closed to in-person classes, there was no chance of bringing artists into school assemblies for these presentations. Typically, these programs involved a combination of performance and education, along with giving the student a chance to ask questions and maybe inspect the instruments up close.
So Pinecone and the Arts Council have taken their Bluegrass in The Schools programs into the virtual space, with assistance from the IBMA Foundation.
Ragen Carlile, Vice President for Education and Community Programs at United Arts, tells us that they have taken to Zoom, or whichever virtual education application a school is using, to offer the same sort of thing online as they had in person this past seven years.
“Our eighth Bluegrass in the Schools program may look a little different this year, but it seems more important than ever. Without field trips and in-school performances, these virtual concerts give students the chance to have fun dancing and singing in their living room while learning about the rich history of bluegrass music. Half of the schools this year are Title One schools, which is significant because they may not have the opportunity to participate in other Artists in Schools programs this year – virtually or otherwise.”
Organizers were uncertain whether these online efforts would bear the same fruit as in years past, but Shannon Neu, music teacher at Richland Creek Elementary School, says that it went quite well.
“The kids loved it and were very engaged. It was an awesome opportunity for the students, and one they would not have been able to experience otherwise this year.”
An unexpected advantage of going virtual is that artists far from the Triangle of western North Carolina were also able to participate. Pinecone had moved their jam camps online this year with similar success.
There are two such BITS programs left next week:
October 20 – Hank, Pattie, & The Current will do an online visit with 3 classes at Laurel Park Elementary in Apex, NC
October 21 – Twisted Pine, a young and very talented band from the northeast, will do a virtual visit with students from Parkside Elementary in Morrisville, NC
I recall during my own high school days – in another century – our school regularly brought in folk and bluegrass performers who would play in the library, and it had a large impact on my decision to learn to play this music and chase it as a career.
So hats off to Pinecone and the United Arts Council for keeping their Bluegrass in the Schools presentations going under difficult circumstances.
The IBMA Foundation offers resources to schools, bands, or bluegrass associations who are interested in seeing a program such as this in their own community. Full details can be found online.
This week young bluegrassers in central North Carolina are hard at work boning up on their musical chops at the Youth Bluegrass Camps in Cary, NC. Located just outside of North Carolina’s Research Triangle, these camps are sponsored and administered by PineCone – The Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, based in Raleigh.
Designed for teen and preteen students, the week long camps offer instruction from experienced practitioners in beginning and intermediate fiddle, beginning and intermediate songwriting, guitar, and mandolin. Students between ages 8 and 16 are welcome to attend, with discounted fees for Cary residents and members of Pinecone.
These young pickers are also preparing to be featured at a concert on Friday evening outdoors at the Page-Walker Arts & History Center in Cary. Ash Breeze, a family bluegrass/Americana band of young performers, is the featured act, but before their set students from the camp will appear in a recital of what they have learned this week.
Leading the fiddle camps is Matt Hooper (of Don Rigsby & Midnight Call, formerly of Kickin Grass), with Charles Pettee (Shady Grove Band, Charles Pettee & the Iron Mountain Messengers, FolkPsalm) taking guitar and mandolin, and Lynda Dawson (Kickin Grass, Lynda & Pattie) teaching songwriting.
PineCone also offers a Bluegrass Jam Camp for Youth that runs July 25-29 for ages 10-17, and a Youth Jam on September 18. More details can be found online.
Many bluegrass fans will recall Ash Breeze, who won the prestigious KSMU Youth in Bluegrass Band Contest in May 2015 during the Bluegrass & BBQ festival at Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO. The invitational competition seeks to identify the top young bluegrass group in the US each year through a live, single microphone stage challenge.
The band consists of siblings from the Smith Family of Fayetteville, NC. Corey is on guitar, Nellie on fiddle, Luke on banjo, Eli on mandolin, with Allen (their father) on bass. Corey has garnered national attention for his pair of documentaries on young grassers called Generation Bluegrass, and Nellie is gaining notice for her agile and appealing singing voice.
Ash Breeze records for Travianna Music, an affiliate of Mountain Fever Records.
With IBMA’s annual World of Bluegrass and Wide Open Bluegrass Festival taking place this week, many bluegrass fans are turning their attention to Raleigh, North Carolina for the second year in a row. Tickets have been purchased, hotel rooms have been reserved, and of course, everyone is trying to decide which radio station to listen to once they get to Raleigh. For many, that will be WQDR-FM – at least on Sunday night at six, when the PineCone Bluegrass Show is broadcast.
The show is sponsored by the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music (or for short, PineCone), a traditional music organization headquartered in Raleigh. Although WQDR is a commercial country station, in the late 1980s they had been receiving quite a few requests for bluegrass songs. The station approached PineCone for help, and after some discussion, Larry Nixon (a member of the PineCone Board of Directors) and Tim Woodall (a multi-instrumentalist who is now the bass player for The Grass Cats) started the show in January 1989. Both men were and continue to be heavily involved in bluegrass music. Nixon jokes that Woodall, along with The Grass Cats, has had several number ones on the Bluegrass Today and Bluegrass Unlimited charts, while he, as a member of Nixon, Blevins & Gage, is still trying for number one.
According to Woodall, he and Nixon have been alternating Sunday shows for the past twenty-five years. “We consider it an honor to spread the word each week about this wonderful music we call bluegrass,” he says. The PineCone Bluegrass Show was both Woodall and Nixon’s first foray into bluegrass broadcasting, although both men became interested in radio at a young age. Woodall says that he got to know some of the guys that worked at Raleigh’s WKIX when he was a teenager, sparking his interest. Nixon worked at a local radio station in Elkin, NC while in high school and later at local stations around Raleigh while attending NC State.
We recently had the chance to speak with Nixon and Woodall about their thoughts on bluegrass music. Here’s what they had to say.
How would you define bluegrass music as a genre?
Nixon: “No drums… producers’ use of drums is destructive to the genre. In recent appearances, both Tony Rice and Rhonda Vincent have reflected this position. The essence of bluegrass is the establishment of rhythm without the use of percussive instruments.”
Woodall: An eclectic blend of Gospel, old time, country, blues, Irish fiddle tunes and others… just like Bill Monroe saw it.”
What form of bluegrass do you most enjoy?
Nixon: “Modern Traditional.”
Woodall: “A mixture of all types.”
What bands do you consider examples of the form you most enjoy?
If you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life, which one would it be?
Nixon: “J.D. Crowe & the New South. This album is one of the best illustrating the transition from old to new.”
Woodall: “J.D. Crowe & the New South, 0044.”
What album is currently in your car stereo?
Nixon: “Detour, A Better Place.”
Woodall: “The Grass Cats’ next one.”
Artists who would like to submit their music to the PineCone Bluegrass Show can submit a physical copy of their album to either DJ. To submit music to Woodall, please email him at timwoodall@grasscats.com to receive a mailing address. To submit to Nixon, please mail CDs to:
4412 Dewees Court
Raleigh, NC 27607
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This report on the Kickin Grass 10th Anniversary show comes from their guitarist/vocalist Lynda Dawson. Photos are from Hunter Lee Elliott at 5 X 5 Photography.
It was a thrill to take the stage and greet about 600 people in the audience at the historic Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham! We kicked off the night with Hometown in honor of our hometown fans.
Patrick Walsh, Bass Player and founder of the band, MC’d between songs, telling stories about the beginning of the band and each of the current and past bend members throughout the night.
We structured the evening to move backwards in time, so we started with a few songs off our self-titled album from 2008, then revisited tunes off our 2006 release, On The Short Rows, before heading even deeper into the 2003 songs off our first release, Backroads.
Brand new tunes were sprinkled throughout the night, and these went over especially well with the audience, most notably a 3-part harmony gospel number featuring fiddle player Pattie Hopkins on lead vocals—she wowed everyone with her singing! Former band members joined us for highlight moments throughout the evening, including a meaningful tribute to our lost loved ones with all past and current members on stage singing Morning Train at the end of the night.
The Apple Chill Cloggers also performed two full-on dance numbers at the end of the first set and came out to buckdance again during the finale, joining all the current and former band members on stage for a final fiddle tune.
It was a heartwarming treat to share the stage with everyone who has been a part of our musical family throughout the years. Jerry Brown, sound engineer for The Rubber Room in Chapel Hill, was behind the sound board, Carl Wetter and his stage hands did a wonderful job with lighting and overall production, and we had a crew on multiple cameras filming for a live DVD of the performance, which we hope to release later this year.
Instrumental in the success of the evening were both The Carolina Theatre and Pinecone – The Piedmont Council of Traditional Music – both of whom partnered with us as presenting sponsors. We couldn’t have pulled off such a special evening without them.
We left the stage that night with immense gratitude for the incredible support of our music, not just at the show, but throughout our tenure as a band—there’s no way we’d still be doing what we love without all the fans, DJs, reporters, sound guys, promoters, and genuine roots music lovers out there who keep us going.
All in all, it was an incredible night in tribute to 10 years together.
PineCone, also known as the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, has posted two live performance video samples on their MySpace page.
The videos are for The Wilders and The Red Stick Ramblers, both of whom are slated to appear at the A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh, NC on January 13, 2007 for a Pinecone concert. The show will be recorded for a subsequent broadcast on The King Pup Radio Show, carried on 53 radio affiliates all over the world.
The Piedmont Council also hosts a weekly bluegrass radio show, hosted by Tim Woodall and Larry Nixon. The Pinecone Bluegrass Show airs each Sunday at 6:00 p.m. on WQDR-FM 94.7 out of Raleigh.
