Folk music on BVA isn't a museum piece, it's a living practice. Music that carries the weight of tradition while responding to the present moment.
Transmission 02: High Wind Warning
November 9, 2023
Nora Brown, a young banjo prodigy, plays "Darling Cora" with the authority of someone who understands that old-time music isn't about nostalgia, it's about continuity. Jake Xerxes Fussell, a folklorist as much as a musician, interprets "The River St. Johns" from archival sources, letting the song's age speak through his guitar. Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man brings the Appalachian vocal tradition forward.
Transmission 03: The Valley Finds Its Voice
November 23, 2023
"John Henry split my heart."
Songs: Ohia opens the third transmission, Jason Molina's lo-fi folk meditation on the American labor mythology of John Henry, the steel-driving man who died proving a Black man could work faster than a machine. Los Kory Huayras carry Andean folk resistance from Bolivia. Timber Timbre brings Canadian folk noir, haunted, gothic, religious imagery draped over slow-burning arrangements.
Transmission 04: Break Open the Dark
December 7, 2023
The Doc Watson Family carrying Appalachian music down the mountain. Elizabeth Cotten playing a right-handed guitar upside down and backwards. Mississippi John Hurt recording in 1928 and vanishing into farm work for thirty-five years before being found again. Damien Jurado. Bill Callahan. Abner Jay playing a bone. Dave Van Ronk closing with Brecht and Weill. Folk as living memory, what the market forgets, the valley remembers.
Transmission 05: The Longest Night
December 21, 2023, Winter Solstice
Sam Amidon's "Cuckoo", a traditional folk song reimagined by the Vermont-born singer on Nonesuch. Purple Mountains' "Snow is Falling in Manhattan", David Berman's final songs on Drag City, released a month before he died. Terry Allen returns with "X-Mas On The Isthmus," a Christmas song from 1999 that sounds like it was written in a fever dream on the Panama Canal. Folk as the people's music, always.
Transmission 07: Sketches of the Valley
January 18, 2024
Frank Proffitt's "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down", a banjo player from these very mountains, recorded by Rounder, closing the transmission with the valley's own prayer. Folk as living practice, from the field recordings to the creek bank.
Transmission 09: Cold Damp Valley
February 15, 2024
Michael Nau's "No Quit" and Spencer Cullum's "Cold Damp Valley", the holler in February, folk as weather. Marty Robbins' "They're Hanging Me Tonight" and Jerry Jeff Walker's "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight", folk as the people's music, always.