The nation’s hottest new acoustic blues show features Wiggins and Franklin, noted for their work in the oldest blues, those of the Virginia Tidewater. Also appearing will be Nat Reese. The Buck Mountain Band provide appropriate opening music as string band and blues flow from the same roots.
Phil Wiggins is a harmonica player, composer, and singer who grew up in Washington, D.C., and began his musical career performing with Virginia’sfamed Piedmont blues masters Archie Edwards, John Jackson, and John Cephas. He toured Europe, Africa, and Latin America with Cephas, and won multiple awards from the Blues Foundation for outstanding recordings. His recordings are on the most respected national blues labels: Smithsonian Folkways, Alligator and Flying Fish.
Wiggins now performs with Rick Franklin, a Piedmont bluesman noted for soulful singing and a guitar fingerpicking mastery that recalls Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller.
Franklin’s performing skills and repertoire reflect his interaction with older blues masters, but also his international travels and mastery of other African heritage music: Brazilian Batucada ,Samba, Zydeco, and High Life.
Wiggins and Franklin are joined in this performance by beloved West Virginia songster Nat Reese. Born in 1924 in Salem, Va., Reese now lives in Princeton, W. Va., and keeps a rich store of soulful music. He grew up in the coal camps, surrounded by gospel, swing, and blues. A former coal miner,
Reese is a consummate performer, focused primarily on the traditional blues and swing music he learned as a boy in the coalfields.
Wiggins, Franklin, and Reese often dip into the repertoire of the black string bands that created a portion of Virginia’s heritage music. Black bands also created songs and instrumental skills now used by white old-time mountain bands, so it seemed fitting to have an old-time band open this
performance.
Since forming in 1999 at the Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention, the Buck Mountain Band has performed at festivals and venues in the region. The band’s members also serve as resident musicians at the Blue Ridge Music Center.
The Buck Mountain Band features Bob Taylor on fiddle, Sue Taylor on guitar, Dan Peck on banjo, Amy Boucher on guitar and banjo, and Debbie Larson on bass. Larry McPeak adds vocals and plays guitar. Bob Taylor is a descendant of the nineteenth-century fiddling Tennessee governors, Robert and Alf Taylor, so he brings to the stage a rich appreciation of heritage music, including tunes that hark back to the black string bands.
Click here to listen to a sample of music by Nat Reese.
