Oct. 5, 2016
LOGAN, W.Va. – The 12th annual “Aunt Jennie Music Festival,” will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 15-16, this year. The pair of free concerts, named in honor of West Virginia folk legend Virginia Myrtle “Aunt Jennie” Wilson and hosted by Museum in the Park, will be held at the Pickin’ in the Park theater, located in the old park stables building in Chief Logan State Park. The theater is halfway between the Liz Spurlock Amphitheater and the campgrounds.
George Daugherty, the Earl of Elkview, will serve as the concert’s emcee for the weekend. Wilson’s grandson and Logan native Roger Bryant, whose musical roots are in the old-time and folk music traditions, will open for Saturday’s 4-10:30 p.m. concert. Bryant, who has shared the stage with Tom T. Hall, Tammy Wynette, Kathy Mattea and Kris Kristofferson, will be joined on stage with other notable old-time musicians. Bryant achieved national attention in the late 1970s with his song “Stop the Flow of Coal” and has recorded four albums, the most recent of which is “On the Banks of the Old Guyan.” In 2014, he was the recipient of the Division of Culture and History’s Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folklife honor.
Other Saturday performers include The Earl of Elkview; The Dick Taylor Band, a bluegrass group from Chapmanville; Jeff Ellis, a Huntington native who has appeared on Mountain Stage, was a featured artist on National Public Radio and one of five co-winners of the 2008 Mountain Stage NewSong Songwriting Contest; Sasha Colette, a singer and songwriter with rock and roll, country and soul roots; the High Ridge Ramblers, a trio who plays early bluegrass and old-time music; and Ray Perry, a Logan native, and Friends.
Sunday’s concert, set for 1-8:15 p.m., will feature Glen Simpson, a folk musician from Hardy, Ky.; Cora and Fred Hairston, gospel singers from Omar; Elaine Purkey, known for her powerful voice, mountain singing and “The Friendly Neighbor Show” band from the weekly radio program on WVOW Radio in Logan; Robert Shafer and The Pour House Band, a country band based in the Charleston area; The Samples Brothers, an old-time music and bluegrass band from Duck; The Stewarts, a gospel group from Clear Fork; Retro and Smiling, a bluegrass band that honors the music of Don Wesley Reno and Arthur Lee Smiley; and The Street Players, a classic rock band from Logan.
Jennie Wilson was born in 1900 in the Doc Ellis hollow of what is now Chief Logan State Park. She was one of the first women in the region to learn to play the banjo, and her music and storytelling made her internationally known for her preservation of Appalachian culture. She was the Vandalia Award winner in 1982. Wilson died in 1992.
Visitors also are welcome to tour the Museum in the Park and see the current exhibits on display. They include We Are Marshall; Railroads and Coal Mining in Southern West Virginia; DeHue: A Special Place; Ron Moxley Collection; Buffalo Creek; Communities Grieve; Early Farming in West Virginia; Blenko: West Virginia’s Gift to the World; Vandalia Award Winners; and the General Store. There also are quilts, textiles, looms, spinning wheels and a Conestoga Wagon made in the 1880s in Berkeley County on display.
Along with the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and Museum in the Park, sponsors of the festival include the Logan County Commission, the Coalfield Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Logan Regional Medical Center.
For more information about the festival, contact Deborah Durham at the Museum in the Park, at (304) 792-7229.
The Museum in the Park is a regional cultural center showcasing the best in West Virginia history and the arts. It features changing exhibits and displays of artwork and historical items from the collections of the West Virginia State Museum and the State Archives. One area of the museum is dedicated to local and regional history. It is operated and maintained by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and is four miles north of Logan on W.Va. Route 10 in Chief Logan State Park. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The West Virginia Division of Culture and History is an agency within the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts with Kay Goodwin, Cabinet Secretary. The division, led by Commissioner Randall Reid-Smith, brings together the past, present and future through programs and services focusing on archives and history, arts, historic preservation and museums. For more information about the division’s programs, events and sites, visit www.wvculture.org. The Division of Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
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