Interview: Chris Jude (Fly Around Fest)
Images for something called Fly Around Fest began to circulate on Instagram earlier this year. A new music festival planned for Western North Carolina is always welcome news, but when the full lineup of festival acts was unveiled, that’s when a particular strand of music nerd began gasping and double-checking what they were seeing. Variations of the following sentence were breathlessly shared with friends, partners, and family, all of whom responded with varying levels of comprehension:
“Joan Shelley [pictured], Nathan Salsburg, Myriam Gendron, Liam Grant, Elkhorn, and the Magic Tuber Stringband are all playing on the same day at the same place? And that’s not even everyone on the lineup?!?”
This same music nerd straw-person started analyzing the calendar, then scrutinizing Google Maps, and asking themselves: “Where is Lansing, North Carolina, again?”
The answer is Ashe County, located deep in the High Country to the northeast of Boone, near to the point where Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina converge. There’s something about the mountains of the High Country that are different from the mountains surrounding Asheville. They’re closer together, deeper, and cast a distinct type of shadow. And with its natural beauty and long-standing connection to traditional music, Ashe County is an ideal setting for a new music festival.
To find out more about this new musical start-up, Asheville Stages spoke to its organizer Chris Jude about the inspiration for Fly Around Fest, assembling the impressive lineup, and lots of other details about the festival.
Scott Bunn: This is the first year of this festival. How did it originate?
Chris Jude: One of my first experiences coming to Lansing was a traditional shape-note singing festival, so I've always known about the musical history here. I feel like, in recent years, there's been a really interesting scene brewing of folks taking traditional music and pushing it into new places — more experimental but still honoring those old-time, bluegrass, and traditional Appalachian sounds. I wanted to put something together that honored the tradition here but then also showed where we could go with that. I'm not a deep old-time music head but I've enjoyed it for years living in Boone and Asheville. But then I also tend to like more experimental music, so I wanted to see what it would be like to bring the two together. There was an old music festival called Terrastock that brought together a lot of experimental musicians, and I wanted this to be like an Appalachian Terrastock of sorts.
SB: The musical lineup for this first-year festival is remarkable, especially for a small town in the High Country. What was the process in putting it together?
CJ: Thank you for saying that. I agree.
I had an “A list” of artists that I wanted, hoped to get, and nearly everybody said, “Yes.” I've been thinking about this music festival for a number of years. We've got this really cool old [Works Progress Administration]-era schoolhouse that's been adopted or taken over by Lost Province Center for the Cultural Arts. And their goal is to restore the actual school building and bring the campus back to a really nice place.
After [Tropical Storm Helene] and the flooding happened — I was involved with some of the relief efforts here — the community gathered and centered on the Lost Providence school. While it was a terrible experience, it was very inspiring to see the community come together. There was not necessarily a point person. It just kind of happened. For weeks and weeks, it was a flurry of activity there at the school: people coming together, donations being made, people coming and getting donations, people showing up to volunteer. It was very inspiring, and I felt like this was the time to make that happen.
Magic Tuber Stringband was the very first band to respond and say, “Oh yes, we're there,” which was really cool. And then I was talking with Joan Shelley and her management, and they were very interested. Once I got them on board, everybody wanted to get involved.
So, I was working on a list of artists that were, like we said, inspired by Appalachian and folk traditions. Of course, there is the scene here — the old-time scene. There's a number of excellent musicians like Trevor McKenzie or Sammy Osmond, Clover-Lynn and the Hellfires that are more local that I got involved. But then, even working with Myriam Gendron from Quebec, she doesn't necessarily work in the Appalachian tradition, but she really draws heavily from Canadian folk traditions. And so I just thought that it would be really great to bring them together.
If you know a lot of these artists, there's kind of a Kevin Bacon thing where they've all worked together in one way or another. Trevor McKenzie, he's local here in Lansing, but he's performed on at least three of these artists’ albums. And then you look at Elkhorn, Liam Grant, Mike Gangloff of Black Twig Pickers — they've all collaborated. Actually, three or four of them are all on the VHF Records label out of Virginia. These folks know each other and they've performed together, and I wanted to bring them all together into this rural mountain location. It's going to be a pretty intimate festival. We're expecting 300-400 people. So, it's not a Bonnaroo or anything like that. I think it’ll be fun for folks to kind of get to see all these artists in a small environment.
SB: Tell me about the name and how it links into the spirit of place of the setting.
CJ: Trevor [McKenzie] actually helped us come up with that. I wanted to call it “High on a Mountain,” which was a little too tongue-in-cheek for up here. So “fly around” is based on that standard “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” which one of the first folks to record it actually grew up and lived on Little Horse Creek here in Lansing — Frank Blevins. He recorded that in the 1920s and was one of the first folks to do a commercial recording of that song. So that, I think, fit the mood and was just a great tie-in to the location.
Myriam Gendron (Photo by Suoni Per Il Popolo)
SB: You have a bunch of different activities that will happen at the festival beyond the music. Can you provide an overview of what else you have planned?
CJ: We're going to be working with Blue Ridge Conservancy. They're going to be hosting a guided hike at the Pond Mountain Preserve, which is just about 10 or 15 miles outside of Lansing up near the Tennessee and Virginia border in Ashe County. We're going to have some really great Appalachian-style craft artists doing some demonstrations and bending as well. We'll have an artist doing live art during performances. We're going to have fly-tying and some things more on the demonstration side than on the workshop side. We pulled back a little bit on some of the workshops just to simplify this in the first year.
SB: Describe a little bit about Lansing and the High Country setting of the festival.
CJ: We're in Ashe County, a very rural part of the state. A lot of our economy is based on tourism and the fall leaf season and Christmas trees and whatnot, so we have a lot of detrimental effects from the storm from last year. So, definitely a big part of this festival is not just presenting the music and art but also bringing folks from out of town up here to bring some money into this economy and bring some money to businesses here locally.
I think it's going to be a pretty unique event. There's lodging here in Ashe County. There's a lot of unique rental properties and campgrounds and things like that to explore. I think it'll be a neat vacation. The other main point is the average temperature here in Lansing in August is 78 degrees, so certainly folks down in the Triangle and such need to come up here. Even Asheville, I know y'all get some heat in August. So, if you want to come and cool off, come and see us.
SB: Who are the beneficiary nonprofits of this event?
CJ: Lost Province Center for the Cultural Arts — they're the host and they'll be running the bar, so the bar proceeds are going to be going to them. And like I said earlier, the amazing community response after the storm of turning that school into a collection center and volunteer resource center was pretty incredible. The funds raised from the festival for LPCCA are going towards the building restoration fund. They've got a lot of work to do to bring the building back into working condition but they've been working on that for a few years now.
GLAD NC is the Greater Lansing Area Development, a really great community group here and they do a lot of cultural events in town. They've also been managing a lot of recovery funds for businesses and individuals. They've given cash out to some of the businesses that were affected, and then also to families and such that have been in need. They do a lot of great fundraising in the community.
Ashe FAN Club is Ashe Friends Assisting Neighbors, and that's more or less a mutual aid organization. They can give direct cash assistance to folks in need in Ashe County, primarily with heating, housing, rent assistance, and pharmaceutical assistance. And then Blue Ridge Conservancy — an excellent conservancy group here in the High Country — has been doing a lot of work in Lansing on the Creeper Trail Park. There's a lot of flooding and damage in the park, and they've been working with landowners to help remediate flood damage on lands here in Ashe County.
SB: OK, I’m going to try and put you on the spot: Is there one act that you are particularly excited about seeing?
CJ: Honestly, this is practically a dream lineup for me. But that being said, I'm really excited to be bringing Myriam Gendron to North Carolina. It's definitely her first show in North Carolina. It may be her first show in the Southeast. She's an artist who, over the last six or eight years, has gotten a lot of critical acclaim and worked with some really amazing artists. I just love the emotion and feeling that she puts into her music, so I'm very excited to see her bring her down from Canada for this,
Her last album, Mayday, I think she wrote it after the loss of her mother. I think she battled disease and passed away. I think the sense of loss that she's exploring on that album really can apply to us here in Western North Carolina after the storm. I think we've all been through a lot. I know you all in Asheville took a lot of damage, and, at the same time, I think many of us were able to find community out of that. And to me, there's so much going on in the world right now, and some days I feel like all we have is each other and the music. And that's what I want to bring with the Fly Around Fest.
IF YOU GO
What: Fly Around Fest
When: Friday, Aug. 1-Saturday, Aug. 2
Where: Lost Province Center for Cultural Arts, 9710 NC Hwy 194 N., Lansing
Tickets: Aug. 1 - $12 advance/$20 day of show; Aug. 2 - $69 advance/$85 day of show
Listen to the festival playlist here.
(Photo of Joan Shelley by Mickie Winters)
