Michael & Carrie Kline (Special Event)

Michael and Carrie Kline weave West Virginia stories and folklore with spine tingling harmonies on voice and guitar. They live and breathe Appalachian music and culture. Their voices carry the songs with truth and authenticity. The Klines present their music both as entertainment and social history, with engaging ease and hard-hitting passion. They have spent years recording music and spoken narrative from Cherokee, North Carolina throughout the southern coalfields and mountainside farms of Kentucky and Virginia. They have documented southern mountain experience and music in industrial cities from Cincinnati to New England. The Klines' high mountain harmonies meld with their intertwining bass lines on two guitars, with Michael's melodic flat-picking and Carrie's rhythmic backup. They have performed in Italy, Germany, and across the United States in living rooms, conference centers and concert halls from Maine to Ohio, New York City and Washington, D.C., Wisconsin and California. To hear them and be encouraged to join in on a chorus is to be transported to a country church, a primeval forest, a coal miner's picket line, or grandma's kitchen. From songs such as Walk with Granny One More Time, to Coal Tattoo, all of them wrapped in a patchwork quilt of vivid images, the Klines evoke emotions that touch the soul. Kitchen songs. When they sing, you can smell the biscuits baking. The Klines' CDs featuring regional history, music and folklife will be on hand, including two new releases of their singing, "Working Shoes" and "Wild Hog in the Woods."