Rural kids rally: Nature nerding; 4-day school week; hikes instead of detention; farm safety; the 'Little White Duck'

Whether it's discovering a ginormous toad, finding the most gooseberries or uncovering troves of fossils, when kids venture into the great unknown of rural places, adventures unfold. A new graphic novel by cartoonist Tiffany Everett, Diary of a Nature Nerd, celebrates all the discoveries and learning nature nerding youth can make while tramping over hill and dale. "Everett encourages readers to explore new places, keep journals about what they encounter, and think like scientists," reports John R. Platt of The Revelator.

Rural school districts with teacher hiring and retention challenges turned to 4-day school weeks as an employment perk that also saves districts money. The 4-day school week schedule has been criticized as cutting too deeply into student learning time, and yet some rural schools are keeping the shortened schedule because it's a practical fix. "The schedule is especially popular with rural communities, where students and teachers often have to travel long distances to get to school," reports Anya Petrone Slepyan of The Daily Yonder. "But when it comes to assessing how the four-day school week affects students’ educational outcomes, the results are inconclusive."

At the end of the 3 1/2-mile hike, the students grab their 
backpacks and head home. (All Trails photo)

Instead of sitting in detention for breaking school rules, some high schoolers at Morse High School in Maine have opted to take mandatory hikes instead. Morse counselor Leslie Trundy was inspired to start the program after attending an outdoor conference, reports Madi Smith of NPR. Trundy told Smith, "I hoped that time in the woods, like, I could sort of take the skills that I have on the road with them, or on the trail, and be a listener for them and [while students] pay back the time to the school and sort of serve their consequence, [they] also receive more care and attention."

While growing up on a farm may sound wholesome and safe, farms can be dangerous places for children and young adults. The list of risks is long and can include everything from cows and barbed-wire fencing to big tractors and grain bins. To help farming families build safety awareness and habits, the National Farm Medicine Center and National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety support the "Cultivate Safety" website, which offers free resources in English and Spanish. For a quick safety check, Rural Mutual shares its "Top Tips" list for farmers and kids to review.

Often remembered as the voice of Sam the Snowman from the classic 1964 Christmas television special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Burl Ives also acted and sang. For children who need to calm down after rowdy play or to get ready for bed, Ives' recording of "The Little White Duck and Other Children’s Favorites" is delightfully soothing. Ives’s collection of "traditional folk songs for children is as much fun for the kids as it is for the adults (I dare to say)," writes Jan Pytalski of The Daily Yonder. "Ives was central in promoting traditional folk tunes all the way back in 1940s and continued performing for many decades after."

Ozarks duo share vocals and instruments that 'reflects layers of history ... and the recognition that rural voices are important'

Cindy Woolf and Mark Bilyeu perform at the Library of Congress in August.
(Photo by Kaitlyn McConnell, The Daily Yonder)

Since the 1800s, music from the American Ozarks has combined instrumentation and vocals from northern Europe, West Africa and German traditions. The region's rugged topography and relative isolation helped its music develop a distinct and often haunting musical style.

While the Ozarks are no longer as isolated as they were more than 200 years ago, its talented musical artists, including the married duo of Cindy Woolf and Mark Bilyeu, known as The Creek Rocks, are determined to keep the musical heritage alive, reports Kaitlyn McConnell for The Daily Yonder.

When The Creek Rocks play, their music draws from "folk tunes and ballads, passed down from other continents and cultures before finding their way to the Ozarks," McConnell writes. The duo's sound ultimately reflects "layers of history... and the recognition that rural voices are important. . . .They are the voices of lived experience, linking generations and stories."

When the couple performed at the Library of Congress in August, the "echoes of generations of Ozarkers reverberated through the auditorium," McConnell adds. The Creek Rocks were "chosen as the library’s American Folklife Center’s inaugural Artists in Resonance, a fellowship founded to 'support artists in creating new musical works inspired by and sourced from collection materials in the Center’s archives.'"

The artists have dedicated part of their life's work to "research and document local folk culture," McConnell explains. "As part of the fellowship, Bilyeu and Woolf traveled to D.C., where they conducted research in the library’s archives."

As part of their fellowship, they focused on a musical collection by Sidney Robertson Cowell, who "visited the Ozarks in the mid-1930s," McConnell reports. Cowell's collection includes recordings from "local musicians in Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina."

The Cowell collection helped Bilyeu and Woolf hear and feel the distinct difference in Ozark music from this time period. McConnell writes, "'Ozarks folk music, as revealed by these collections, is all about the voice,' Bilyeu said – a key difference is in the way the songs sound. The tunes Cowell collected seemed even more 'ancient,' as Woolf put it, due to their musical structure."

Hear The Creek Rocks perform at The Library of Congress here.

J. R. 'Robbie' Robertson, who 'turned old American folklore into modern myths' with The Band and others, dies at 80

Robertson at his Santa Monica studio in 2019. (Photo by Carolyn Cole, L.A. Times)

Robbie Robertson, a native Canadian who helped create the muscal genre Americana or "roots music," did Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 80.

James Royal Robertson was lead songwriter and guitarist of The Band, which started out as The Hawks, often a backup group for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, and "ended up as The Band — a conceit their fans would say they earned — because people would point to them when they were with Dylan and refer to them as 'the band'," writes Hillel Italie of The Associated Press. "The Band profoundly influenced popular music in the 1960s and ‘70s, first by literally amplifying Dylan’s polarizing transition from folk artist to rock star and then by absorbing the works of Dylan and Dylan’s influences as they fashioned a new sound immersed in the American past. . . . They remain defined by their first two albums, 'Music from Big Pink' and 'The Band,' both released in the late 1960s." Robertson's works "offered a rustic vision of America that seemed at once mythic and authentic," writes Jim Farber of The New York Times.

Robertson "had the knack of making everything he recorded sound fashioned by hand, produced in a barn and played from the heart," Ty Burr writes for The Washington Post. "But his influences and inspirations came from all over the map: the lost colony of Acadia and Louisiana’s Cajun diaspora, deep-blues juke joints in the Mississippi Delta and rockabilly rave-ups at a Midwest county fair. There was jazz in there, and folk music and country; there was a lot of backwoods front-porch hootenanny. There were the atmospheric orchestrations of modern film scoring, too, and underneath it all and increasingly on the surface there was Robertson’s birthright: the sounds of Ontario’s Six Nations people and, by extension, the indigenous tribes of an entire continent — the roots music whose roots go deepest of all. Robbie Robertson didn’t make Americana. He made North American music."

The Band's songs, sung by drummer Levon Helm, keyboardist Richard Manuel and bassist Rick Danko, "were unlike anything on the AM or FM dial — older, wiser, sadder and friskier, with bones that went back to a time before electricity," Burr writes. "Parables like 'The Weight,' which straddled the Bible and the tall tale; 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,' which sounded like it really was sung by a defeated Confederate soldier in 1865; ''King Harvest Has Surely Come', a busted Depression-era farmer’s lament; 'Up On Cripple Creek,' a truck driver coming home to Bessie in 'Lake Charles, Looozeyana'. . . . Like Dylan, Robertson was a self-taught musicologist and storyteller influenced by everything American from the novels of William Faulkner to the scorching blues of Howlin’ Wolf to the gospel harmonies of the Swan Silvertones." Farber says Robertson's lyrics "conjured a wild place, often centered in the South, peopled by rough-hewed characters," such as "the shady creatures in 'Life Is a Carnival'."

In death, Robertson has a final hit: His 2017 memoir Testimony "has returned to the top of the bestseller lists," Variety reports. Here are "15 essential Robbie Robertson songs," from the Los Angeles Times, whose Stephen Thomas Erlewine says "Robertson turned old American folklore into modern myths" and "acted as the ringleader in 'The Last Waltz,' widely regarded as one of the greatest concert films ever made." Erlewine reports on Robertson's later work and notes, "In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Center."

'I've endured.' Eastern Kentucky musicians rebuild after the floods with hope and resilience

Damaged instruments from the Museum of the 
Mountain Dulcimer (Photo by Stephanie Wolf, WFPL)

Decimated by the 2022 flooding, Eastern Kentucky's music community is finding ways to rebuild all that was lost: "The water carried away dozens of historic instruments, including early examples of the hourglass-shaped dulcimer, developed and honed in Knott and Letcher counties in southeast Kentucky, and one once played by Appalachian music legend Jean Ritchie," reports Stephanie Wolf of Louisville's WFPL, discussing the losses at the Museum of the Mountain Dulcimer in Hindman. "About two-thirds of the collection 'just disappeared.' What was recovered will need extensive restoration."

Doug Naselroad, co-curator of the museum, told Wolf that it was difficult for him to dig up the courage to visit after the flood. When he finally did get up the nerve, he felt "like you're Indiana Jones exploring his own tomb. You have trepidation and dread looking in at the things you cherish and trying to will them back."

Eastern Kentuckians are familiar with flooding, Wolf writes, "but there's a distressing redundancy in the responses I heard when asking people about this particular weather event, which swept through Central Appalachia but did the most concentrated damage here, in the southeast part of the state."

Sarah Kate Morgan at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, where she serves as director of traditional arts education, told Wolf, "For the next year, we're going to be focused on rebuilding what we lost instead of reaching out, like we usually do. We won't be able to do as much of the good work that we used to . . . and I fear that we'll lose some momentum."

Toward the end of their interview, Wolf shares, "Morgan fetched her own mountain dulcimer from her on-site apartment, saying, 'It'd be nice to play music for a second,' Her brief set included a subdued rendition of Ernie Carpenter's Elk River Blues and Ola Belle Reed's 'I've Endured'. When I thanked her for the performance, she answered as though I'd done her a favor: 'It was good for me to share.'"

Wolf continues, "Naselroad and his team have begun the long process to restore both the luthiery and the factory, and he hopes to be building instruments again in an alternate facility before the end of the year. As for the museum and its recovered instruments, their story just got bigger: not merely artifacts of the builders and musicians who brought them to life, but now, witnesses to a historic crisis, and participants in the collective recovery."

"The things that can be restored, that can be repaired, that survived? I think it's a powerful statement," Naselroad told Wolf. "Our heritage can't be destroyed."

County where John Prine was once controversial now has a park named for him, at the place he wanted his soul to be

A crowd gathered at the park on the Green River for the dedication. (Hoptown Chronicle photos by Jennifer P. Brown)

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River. Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam. I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’, just five miles away from wherever I am. —John Prine, "Paradise"

"Few places in rural America are so cherished for their connection to a song as Muhlenberg County is to people who revered the singer-songwriter John Prine for his blend of country and folk music. His song 'Paradise' — about the tiny coal town on the Green River that was wiped out by strip mining — immortalized the community for generations of listeners," writes Jennifer P. Brown of the Hoptown Chronicle, in Hopkinsville in adjoining Christian County, Kentucky.

Muhlenberg County, Kentucky
(Wikipedia map, adapted)

But when the song came out in 1971, and for many years afterward, it and Prine (whose Chicago parents were from Muhlenberg County) were controversial because the county's economy was based largely on coal. Those days have passed, and the Tennessee Valley Authority steam plant named for the vanished town now makes electricity from natural gas, not coal. And now there's a memorial to Prine, who died in April 2020 of Covid-19.

It's the John Prine Memorial Park at Rochester Dam. Prine fans "came from across Kentucky and from as far away as San Francisco and Seattle" for Saturday's dedication, Brown writes. "Parking their cars and trucks in a field where corn had recently been harvested, they carried lawn chairs, guitars, cameras and dogs up to the park. Numerous John Prine concert T-shirts, many faded and worn with age, were scattered throughout the audience. Some of his fans leaned on canes."

Prine's widow, Fiona Whelan-Prine, spoke at the dedication. (JPB photo)

Reinforcing the official acceptance of Prine, "County Judge-Executive Curtis McGehee announced at the dedication that every October will be celebrated as John Prine Month in Muhlenberg County. A committee of local volunteers and the Muhlenberg County Tourism Commission led efforts to improve the park ahead of the dedication. A new pavilion with a red roof was built and picnic tables were installed. There are plans for a viewing deck at the river’s edge and for a new boat ramp. . . . The audience sang 'Paradise' to close the dedication. Some of them stayed to eat banana pudding, John Prine’s favorite dessert, under the new pavilion bearing his name."

Jerry Jeff Walker, writer of 'Mr. Bojangles' and a godfather to 'Texas outlaw' and Americana music, dies at 78 in Austin

Jerry Jeff Walker at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in 2016
(Photo by Erkia Goldring, Getty Images)

Jerry Jeff Walker, who was best known for writing "Mr. Bojangles" but was also an influential figure in the music of his adoptive Texas and the development of the genre now known as Americana, died of throat cancer Friday at a hospital in Austin. He was 78.

He was born Ronald Clyde Crosby in Oneonta, N.Y., "in northernmost Appalachia," The New York Times notes. He got his stage name (soon afterward his legal name) in New Orleans, reports Melissa Roberto of Fox News. He wrote 'Mr. Bojangles' in the mid-1960s after a night in a New Orleans jail where he met a man who 'danced a lick across the cell'," writes Peter Blackstock of the Austin-American Statesman. The song languished, and Walker "was ready to give up on the music business" in 1971 until the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band had a Top 10 hit with it, reports Matt Schudel of The Washington Post. "It soon became recognized as a standard." More than 100 artists have recorded it, Blackstock reports.

Walker's own recording career "spanned 51 years and he released 36 albums, including compilations," Roberto notes. "He became known as a mentor to musicians such as Garth Brooks, Jimmy Buffett, Guy Clark, Todd Snider and Lucinda Williams." He "had some trouble with alcohol and drugs," and his obituary notes his "rowdy performances and offstage excess." He settled in Austin in 1971, and "The Austin outlaw music scene he helped launch came to include Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt," Schudel writes. He "formed a group called the Lost Gonzo Band, evoking the untamed spirit of 'gonzo' journalist Hunter S. Thompson." He told Rolling Stone in 1974 that “Texas was the only place where they didn’t look at me like I was crazy," The New York Times reports.

His 1973 album Viva Terlingua, recorded in the virtual ghost town of Luckenbach, Texas . . . practically defined the new Texas sound, combining elements of country, rock and folk music with a touch of sagebrush poetry," Schudel reports. Walked had only five songs on the album, and the best-known "were by other writers, including Guy Clark’s cinematic 'Desperados Waiting for a Train,' Ray Wylie Hubbard’s honky-tonk anthem 'Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother' and Gary P. Nunn’s 'London Homesick Blues,' about a Texan stranded in England who longs 'to go home with the armadillo, good country music from Amarillo and Abilene'."

None of Walker's songs "has had the staying power or emotional resonance of 'Mr. Bojangles,' Schudel writes, citing in part a 2004 profile in Texas Monthly: "He said he was reading the poetry of Dylan Thomas and was conscious of using internal rhyme. He strummed a descending chord figure in the lilting time signature of 6/8, and the words and music came together. . . . Many people assume that the dancer described by Mr. Walker was African American, like Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, but that was not the case. In his autobiography, Mr. Walker noted that because the jails were segregated in New Orleans in 1965, the Bojangles he met was an elderly white dancer down on his luck."

Tyler Childers drops a surprise album meant to raise money for Appalachia and raise awareness about racial injustice

Screenshot of Childers' album website

Eastern Kentucky-born country singer and songwriter Tyler Childers released a surprise album on Friday meant to raise money for Appalachian philanthropic efforts and raise awareness about racial injustice to rural white listeners, Joseph Hudak reports for Rolling Stone.

Long Violent History is mostly instrumental fiddle music but includes a track with the same name of the album, in which Childers "sings about the Appalachian upbringing of a 'white boy from Hickman' and how he and his kin have been sometimes labeled 'belligerent' and 'ignorant.' But, he points out, they’ve never had to fear for their lives," Hudak reports. "Could you imagine just constantly worryin'/Kickin' and fightin', beggin' to breathe?" he sings.

"The album arrives with a six-minute video message from the Kentucky songwriter, in which he directly challenges his fans, including his 'white rural listeners,' to empathize with black victims of police brutality," Hudak writes. "It’s a stunning speech, with Childers touching on his six-month sobriety, the covid pandemic, and the South’s misguided allegiance to the Confederate flag. But the focus of his address is on police brutality."

In the speech, Childers encourages rural, white listeners to empathize with the Black Lives Matter movement with a thought exercise: He asks them to imagine how they would feel if they constantly saw news headlines such as "East Kentucky man shot seven times on a fishing trip" for a story about a white man rummaging through his tackle box, shot by a game warden who thought he was reaching for a knife, Hudak reports. "If we wouldn’t stand for it, why would we expect another group of Americans to stand for it?" Childers asks.

All net proceeds from the album benefit the Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund, which Childers and his wife established earlier this year to help fund philanthropic efforts in Appalachia. 

The new album isn't the first time Childers has waded into politics and philanthropy. The Martin County native began writing songs partly as a reaction to the negative portrayal of his home town an episode of ABC News' "20/20". And in 2018, after the Martin County Water District gained nationwide attention for failing to provide clean, reliable drinking water to residents, Childers donated—and helped distribute—500 cases of water to his home county.

John Prine, a songwriter for the ages and our times, dies

John Prine died in Nashville of covid-91, the coronavirus disease. He was 73. (Photo by The Associated Press)

There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes. ("Sam Stone")
Mostly they made love from ten miles away. ("Donald and Lydia")
Broken hearts and dirty windows make life difficult to see. ("Souvenirs")
She reminds me of a chess game with someone I admire. ("Christmas in Prison").
The wind was blowing, especially through her hair. ("Lake Marie")
Stop wishin' for bad luck and knockin' on wood. ("Dear Abby")
Well done, hot dog bun, my sister's a nun. ("Illegal Smile")
Old people just grow lonesome, waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."
. . . make me a poster of an old rodeo. Just give me one thing that I can hold on to. To believe in this living is just a hard way to go. ("Angel from Montgomery")
"Nobody but Prine could write like that." (Bob Dylan)

John Prine, who died Tuesday night of covid-19, was a songwriter for the ages and for our times. He knew rural America. The only full stanza in The New York Times' obituary was from "Paradise:"
The coal company came with the world’s largest shovel,
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land;
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken;
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

Post office and grocery at Paradise, Ky.

For many people in America's coalfields, that said it all. Prine, a Chicago native, wrote it about a town in "Western Kentucky, where my parents were born," one of his hundreds of plain but unusual lines. But that was the genesis of the story he wanted to tell, and Prine was a superb storyteller: evocative, somber, silly, thoughtful and surprising. His "ingenious lyrics to songs by turns poignant, angry and comic made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others," William Grimes writes for the Times. Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the magic slippers of what Prine called his "Cinderella story" of becoming a performer, retold by Annie Reuter in Billboard.

Prine "wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people and changed the face of modern American roots music," Stephen L. Betts and Patrick Doyle write for Rolling Stone. "Prine helped shape the Americana genre that has gained popularity in recent years," and "explored a wide variety of musical styles, from hard country to rockabilly to bluegrass; he liked to say that he tried to live in a space somewhere between his heroes Johnny Cash and Dylan." He said his "songwriting hero" was Gordon Lightfoot. James Hohmann of The Washington Post notes that Prine is the latest of several musicians to die from covid-19.

Prine was "known for his ability to mine seemingly ordinary experiences — he wrote many of his classics as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois — for revelatory songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience," Betts and Doyle write, in a story worth reading. They quote Bonnie Raitt, who sang "Angel from Montgomery" into the American canon: "The combination of being that tender and that wise and that astute, mixed with his homespun sense of humor — it probably the closest thing for those of us that didn’t get the blessing of seeing Mark Twain in person."

"He sang his conversational lyrics in a voice roughened by a hard-luck life, particularly after throat cancer left him with a disfigured jaw," writes Michael Warren of The Associated Press, in a story well-sprinkled with Prine stanzas. But his last album, The Tree of Forgiveness, was his biggest hit, and early this year he won another Grammy award, for lifetime achievement. Warren's piece ends with a stanza from Prine's "When I Get to Heaven," which you can see and hear him perform on the "House of Strombo" show in 2018, with Gordon Lightfoot in the audience:

When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel; ain’t the afterlife grand?
That one, in spoken word and song, can be heard here. Prine's "Summer's End," with its chorus of "Come on home," is also a fitting farewell, and many in Kentucky would surely prefer this one:
When I die, let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven, with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

Honoring lost miners 10 years after Upper Big Branch blast

Judy Jones Peterson looks at a photo of her brother, who
died in the mine explosion. (NPR photo by Howard Berkes)

Ten years ago yesterday, 29 coal miners lost their lives during an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. An episode of West Virginia Public Broadcasting's "Inside Appalachia" remembers those who died and explores how the families, artists and communities have memorialized those lost. Click here to the episode.

The episode features an interview with husband and wife playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, who wrote a play about the disaster called "Coal Country."

Blank and Jensen drew on hours of interviews and court testimony for inspiration, Jeff Young reports for Ohio Valley ReSource. The play opened to critical acclaim at The Public Theater in New York City on March 3, but was postponed after two weeks because of the pandemic.

Blank and Jensen, who live in Brooklyn, New York, said they had a hard time getting family members to return their calls when they first became interested in writing a play, but had a much easier time after they began traveling to Charleston and having long visits with the families, Young reports. Jensen, who grew up in the rural Midwest, said he could relate to the mining families, and both say they hope the play will help urban audiences better understand life in coal country.

Though "Coal Country" isn't a musical, country rock singer Steve Earle wrote songs for it that he performs as accompaniment. "Earle sits on stage with a guitar or banjo and listens intently to the actors, then adds a song that might echo a characters’ loss or hint at deeper themes. Jensen described his role as akin to a Greek chorus of one," Young reports.

On April 5, Earle gave a livestreamed performance of the songs online, which you can listen to here.

'Americana' music gains popularity and recognition

Bob Weir performing

"Americana" music is on the rise, with four of its artists—Bon Iver, Bob Weir (formerly of the Grateful Dead), Van Morrison and the Drive-By Truckers—in the most recent Billboard charts top 10 for the week ending Oct. 6, Dan Rys reports for the magazine. Americana has more spots in the top 10 than any other music except rock, a genre for which all four artists also qualify.

The four's popularity reflects a recent trend toward the establishment of Americana music as a distinct genre in a realm often dominated by rock, country, rap and R&B, Rys writes. In 2010 the Grammy Awards added a Best Americana album category—Levon Helm won it that year—and there are now categories for Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance.

In August of 2015, Merriam-Webster officially added "Americana" to its dictionary, "defining it as 'a genre of American music having roots in early folk and country music.'" Rys writes. "And in May, Billboard announced the re-branding of the Folk Albums chart following in-depth dialogue with industry contacts, writing the chart would 'spotlight the middle ground bridging country and rock: organic, roots and acoustic-based groups and solo singer-songwriters.'"

Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association, told Rys, "I think it's burgeoning in the commercial marketplace for a community that already existed in a non-commercial marketplace. I think that the fact that there's a word in the dictionary, there's a Grammy Award, [now] there's a place for these artists who don't necessarily fit in the mainstream commercial boxes, but do have artistic similarities can call home." (Read more)

How often is your state named in popular songs?

Does your state inspire musicians to write songs? Julia Silge, who writes a blog, data science ish, used figures from the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to the present to chart two maps, one that shows how many times a state was mentioned in song lyrics and one that divided mentions by population to find which states got more or less than their share of attention, Ana Swanson reports for The Washington Post. (Pictogram: Number of mentions by state)

"Southern states like Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky turned out to have an outsized influence, as did states like New York, Hawaii and Montana," Swanson writes. "Nebraska and Maine also fared well." (Number of mentions by state per every million residents)

Silge found that New York had the most mentions, 51, although she estimates that many of those references probably refer to the city, not the state. Second was California, with 26 mentions, followed by Georgia (21), Texas (13), Tennessee (11), Alabama (9), Mississippi (8), Kentucky (7) and Hawaii and Virginia (6).

When accounting for mentions per every million people, Hawaii was No. 1, followed by Mississippi, New York, Maine, Georgia, Montana, Alabama, Tennessee, Nebraska and Kentucky.

Suit seeks to put 'This Land Is Your Land' in public domain, says any copyright expired long ago

Woody Guthrie (Associated Press photo)

Woody Guthrie's classic song "This Land Is Your Land" could soon be in the public domain, if the New York law firm that last year persuaded a federal judge to put "Happy Birthday to You" there has its way, Niraj Chokshi reports for The New York Times. The firm of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz also hopes to do the same for the Civil Rights-era protest song “We Shall Overcome.” Guthrie's song was written in response to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America,” which Guthrie "felt inadequately addressed land and wealth inequality, according to the Library of Congress."

The suit filed Tuesday for "This Land Is Your Land" aims to liberate "a song known to generations of schoolchildren who have raised their voices to sing about a free country belonging to one and all, sprawling 'from California to New York Island, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters'," Chokshi writes. "The suit was filed on behalf of the Brooklyn band Satorii, which recorded two versions of the song. It argues that the music belongs to the public and not to The Richmond Organization and its subsidiary, Ludlow Music, the publishing company that collects licensing fees to use the composition. Ludlow did not return phone calls or answer an email message seeking comment on Thursday."

Satorii and their lawyers say that in 1945, Guthrie "published the song with a copyright notice that was never renewed," Chokshi writes. "As a result, that copyright would have expired—and the song would have entered the public domain—28 years later, in 1973, they say. Despite Guthrie’s publication, Ludlow filed for its own copyright of the song in 1956, according to the suit. But Satorii and its lawyers argue that Ludlow never had a right to claim the copyright in the first place."

Radio series looks at how one Central Appalachian town is using arts, tourism to revitalize economy

Central Appalachian communities continue to look for ways to revitalize local economies hurt by the loss of coal jobs. One such community is Hindman, Ky (Best Places map). Making Connections News and WMMT 88.7 in Whitesburg teamed up to produce a two-part radio series that looks at how the tiny county seat has turned to tourism and arts for economic development.

In the first segment WMMT reporter Kelli Haywood examines how efforts are "being made to use the distinctive cultural resources available to the community in hopes that arts, traditional music, education and skill-building opportunities, and tourism will create a thriving economy in the years to come," Making Connections News reports. Hindman has a rich tradition in the arts, with the Hindman Settlement School annually hosting the Appalachian Writers' Workshop and Family Folk Week, both of which draw well-known Appalachian writers and musicians.

In the second segment Haywood examines how Hindman is using "the community’s cultural assets to rebuild the economy," reports Making Connections News. Haywood joins staff of the Settlement School "to discuss their place within the community and how they use their historical perspective to envision the future. Jessica Evans, assistant director of the Appalachian Artisan Center, also continues the conversation along with artist, Sean Starowitz." (Read more)

Country-folk duo use words and music to fight proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline

The proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia to North Carolina, is drawing plenty of criticism in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, most notably from a country-folk duo made famous by the “Prairie Home Companion” radio show, Frances Stead Sellers reports for The Washington Post. Musicians Robin and Linda Williams object to the pipeline that is designed to "carry up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of methane for more than 500 miles through the Shenandoah Valley, across the Blue Ridge Mountains and over the Piedmont and then the Tidewater to North Carolina, burrowing its way through both public and private lands." (News & Advance map)

A spokesman for energy giant Dominion Recources "explains that if everything stays on schedule, the company could get approval for the project next summer, start construction later that year and go into operation before the end of 2018," Sellers writes. "About 300 landowners have objected, he says; 52 changed their minds after getting a follow-up call; and the pipeline company has so far filed 58 lawsuits. There is a state law about surveying private property, the spokesman says, and 'as long as we follow the statute, by law we don’t have to ask for permission.' He’s also aware of at least two lawsuits that landowners have filed, alleging that the state statute violates the U.S. Constitution."

And then there's the music of Robin and Linda Williams, who wrote the protest song, "We Don't Want Your Pipeline." The song goes:

We don’t want your pipeline, we don’t want your pipeline
We’ll take the sunshine, the water and wind!
We’re gonna put a stop sign on Dominion’s pipeline.
Go tell your neighbors! Go tell your friends!

They’ll bring cough and corruption like we’ve never seen,
Gouging our Forest, our mountains and our streams.
Five hundred miles long and fifty yards wide,
Blasting through our homes with their pipeline

Now sinkholes, explosions and gas-line leaks,
You hear it on the news almost every week.
Dominion says ‘Don’t worry,’ but it ain’t wise,
To be flirting with disaster with their pipeline

These Richmond operators don’t care ’bout you and me.
They just want to make a killing when they got more than they need.
And you can bet they’re safe in their houses so fine,
Far, far away from the pipeline.

Now these Big Boys say, ‘It’s a done deal.’
But nothing’s done as long as we’ll,
Stand together for our rights and our property,
And keep pushing back against their pipeline

Jean Ritchie, a leader of the folk revival, dies at 92; memorial Sunday at Union Church in Berea, Ky.

Jean Ritchie, who helped start a folk-music revival in the mid-20th century and remained an icon of it into the 21st, died Monday at her home in Berea, Ky., at 92.

New York Times photo of Jean Ritchie by Vic DeLucia.

As the youngest of 14 children in Viper, Ky., "Ritchie was a vital link in a chain of oral tradition that stretched back centuries," Margalit Fox reports for The New York Times. "Song was woven seamlessly into every aspect of the Ritchies' daily life." They performed and were known as "The Singing Family of the Cumberlands."

After earning a social-work degree from the University of Kentucky, Ritchie moved to New York but took with her "the Appalachian fretted dulcimer she had learned to play as a girl . . . a stringed instrument plucked with one hand," Fox writes. At the Henry Street Settlement, "She routinely calmed the urban street children in her care with songs from the Cumberlands, which, with their haunting modal melodies and tales of simple pastimes, were so alien as to stun her young charges into submission."

Ritchie drew the attention of renowned record producer Mitch Miller, who got her into commercial recording in 1952. She performed "with some of the best-known names in folk music, including Pete Seeger and Doc Watson," Fox writes. "She was closely associated with the Newport Folk Festival, performing at its inception in 1959 and many times afterward. With her flowing red hair and modest dress, Ms. Ritchie had a quietly striking stage presence. Hers was not a trained voice, but it was a splendidly traditional one: high, sweet, lyrical and plaintive." She wrote original songs, such as "Black Waters," which denounced strip mining in her native state, to which she returned after her husband, filmmaker George Pickow, died in 2010. Using coalfield footage from Appalshop and stills from Ken Murray, Pickow produced a video of Ritchie singing her "Blue Diamond Mines" in 2007.

"She was a source of incredible pride for my people," southeastern Kentucky author Silas House wrote for Appalachian Voices. "Everyone I knew loved Jean Ritchie, and they especially loved the way she represented Appalachian people: with generosity and sweetness, yes. But also with defiance and strength."

Ritchie's honors included, in 2002, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, "considered the nation’s highest award in the traditional arts," Fox writes. "She was the subject of a 1996 documentary, Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story, available on video from Kentucky Educational Television.

UPDATES, June 3-4: A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at Union Church, 200 Prospect St., Berea, with visitation from 2 to 4 p.m. Ritchie's family asks that donations, in lieu of flowers, go to Appalachian Voices, 171 Grand Blvd., Boone NC 28607.

Guy Carawan, folk singer and civil rights pioneer, died on Saturday at 87 in Tennessee

Guy Carawan, a folk singer and activist who fight for civil writes and worker's rights in Appalachia and the South, died on Saturday at 87 in New Market, Tenn., Lance Coleman reports for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Carawan and his wife Candie "marched with Martin Luther King through the streets of Selma, Ala.," and "introduced the song 'We Shall Overcome' to the movement." (News-Sentinel photos: Guy and Candie Carawan)

"The couple and their children lived with and documented the people and stories of Johns Island, S.C., and preserved those stories in books and recordings," Coleman writes. "They also worked with coal miners and others in union battles while recording their own albums of songs."

The News-Sentinel wrote a feature story about the Carawans in 2009. To read that story, click here.

USA Today lists best festivals in the U.S.; many promote tourism in rural areas

Now that the weather is heating up throughout most of the U.S., festival season is on the horizon. USA Today "teamed up with a panel of festival experts to find the best music, food, culture, art and film festivals in the U.S," Lydia Schrandt reports for USA Today. Readers were then allowed to vote for their favorites, and some of the winners include festivals in rural areas or with rural resonance.

Among the best music festivals, No. 2 was the Electric Forest Festival, a four-day music fest in Rothbury, Mich., a village with a population of 424. An estimated 50,000 people attend the festival every year. No. 7 on the list is Bonnaroo, a four-day festival held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn. The festival had more than 90,000 attendees last year.

For poetry enthusiasts, the Best Cultural Festival list includes the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. The six-day event is "an annual celebration of the ranching and rural West," says the organization's website. Also on the list are the Texas Renaissance Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Frozen Dead Guy Days, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Festivals Acadiens et Créoles.

No. 2 on the list of Best General Food Festival is the Bounty of Yamhill County, located in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The Bounty of Yamhill County "is a three-day annual event that celebrates this vibrant community of famous wineries, celebrated chefs and sustainable family farms. No other locally sourced food and wine event can boast such nationally recognized participants," says the organization's website. No. 9 on the list is the Beaver Creek Food & Wine Weekend, a four-day event in Beaver Creek, Colo.

For a complete list of best festivals, click here.

Internet radio station gives worldwide exposure to aspiring musicians of Appalachia

Appalachian musicians are getting worldwide exposure through an Internet radio station based in West Virginia that mostly plays local bands from the Charleston area but hopes to expand to cover musicians in the entire region, Bill Lynch reports for The Charleston Gazette. The station, New Appalachian Radio, which began airing in March, was created by two former college classmates.

Station co-founder Jody Herndon told Lynch, "New Appalachian music can sound like a lot of things. It can be country or rock or rap or even metal. It’s just all influenced by being here." (Gazette photo by Kenny Kemp: Station founders Eric Meadows and Jody Herndon)

Herndon and co-founder Eric Meadows said that "What they hope to do is to give local people the chance to hear their favorite local bands someplace other than the clubs as well as spread that music farther out," Lynch writes. They said they also hope the station becomes popular enough to influence Appalachian musicians to remain locally instead of taking their musical talents to urban areas like New York or Nashville. (Read more) Listen to the station by clicking here.

Woody Guthrie's home town finally embraces him, will rebuild his boyhood home

Woody Guthrie's Oklahoma hometown has forgiven him for what some thought were communist ideas, and the town wants to honor the late singer famous for his songwriting, singing and progressive politics by rebuilding his boyhood home that was town down in the 1970s, Justin Juozapavicius reports for The Associated Press. "Tensions persisted for more than a generation, but attitudes about Guthrie have slowly softened. Now developers working with the blessing of Guthrie’s relatives have announced plans to rebuild his 1860s-era boyhood home in Okemah, a time-worn town of 3,300 people desperately seeking tourism dollars." (AP photo by Sue Ogrocki)

"Best known for the song 'This Land is Your Land,' Guthrie came of age during the Great Depression and later embraced left-wing politics, including for a time some tenets of communism. By weaving social issues into his music, he re-imagined folk songs as platforms for protest, starting a creative tradition carried on by scores of other top artists," Juozapavicius writes. "In hundreds of folk songs and ballads, Guthrie’s lyrics celebrated American workers, lamented the woes of the poor and advocated for civil rights. Although revered as one of the best songwriters in American history, he was rarely acknowledged, let alone honored, by his home state, even for decades after his death in 1967." But many in Oklahoma are now celebrating Guthrie, with an annual music festival in Okemah that draws thousands, and a 12,000-square-foot museum in Tulsa that showcases his life’s work.

"The estimated $500,000 rebuild of Guthrie’s childhood home will use original planks salvaged from the run-down property, called London House, which was purchased by prominent local businessman Earl Walker in the early 1960s," Juozapavicius writes. "Walker saved the lumber for the day when his neighbors would recognize Guthrie’s importance to the town and the country. The bundle of preserved wood eventually ended up at the Okfuskee County History Center. Today, all that remains of London House are a few blocks of the home’s sandstone foundation — mostly obscured by knee-high weeds. A faded sign on the lot warns visitors against stealing the stones. London House is to be rebuilt on the same lot, and project organizers want to come as close as possible to making it look like it did when Guthrie lived there. Organizers hope to raise money for the project through donations and a benefit concert in Tulsa. Construction is scheduled for November through May." (Read more)

Tennessee songwriting festival renews this week

Stunned that there wasn't already an Appalachian songwriters festival in East Tennessee, musician Cyndy Montgomery Reeves helped start one, Kenneth Burns reports for The Mountain Press, the daily newspaper for Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Now in its second year, the Smoky Mountains Songwriting Festival is scheduled to begin Thursday and run through Sunday in Gatlinburg. (Photo from festival website: Musicians performing at last year's event)

The event showcases amateur and professional musicians and features competitions in bluegrass, country, folk and rock, Burns writes. All live music is free. There are also workshops, which charge a fee, and cover areas such as how to write, pitch and demo a song, increasing your chances of getting a song cut, and co-writing.

Reeves was inspired to start the event after seeing a similar festival in Key West, Fla., Burns writes. She told Burns, "I love you, Jimmy Buffett, but how can you have a songwriters festival for 16 years, and I’m from East Tennessee, and I’ve never heard of one?” From there, Reeves helped preview the festival for city officials in 2011, before the first event was held last year. She told Burns, "It was very successful,. Everybody there enjoyed it. We broke even, and we started something we knew could be a great success.” (Photo by Kay Speer: Festival founder Cyndy Reeves)

One performer will be Marty Dodson, who has written songs recorded by Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Billy Currington, and Diamond Rio. Dodson told Burns, "It’s about putting a face behind the song. When people hear a song I wrote that Kenny Chesney did, they might feel like maybe he wrote it, or they don’t think about who wrote the song.” Dodson said songwriter festivals also can educate listeners about the nature of the music business. He told Burns, “If I’m downloading a song for free, here’s who I’m hurting, a real person with a family.” (Read more)