Traditional ballad singer Joe Penland comes to D.C. with his guitar, fiddle, banjo, and lots of songs and stories from the Sodom Laurel Valley of North Carolina. He learned the ballads his father called “that old hollering” from Dellie Norton, Lloyd Chandler, and the Wallin family — as did Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles. Joe’s parents and their generation, he explains, “had the radio and there was a social stigma attached to the old love songs. They were a reminder of tough times in the mountains. Thank goodness there were a few places left where folk still sang the old songs and stories and shared them with me.”
Drawing on 12 generations of oral tradition, Joe has studied the old English and Scottish folk songs that were transplanted to western North Carolina and taken them to Great Britain as a touring performer. A cousin of the legendary ballad singer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Joe received the 2005 Bascom Lunsford Award for his stewardship of the tradition.
At Allyworld, 7014-C Westmoreland Ave, Takoma Park MD 20912 (Takoma Radio entrance). $20/$10 members.
