Carnegie Hall’s Appalachian Heritage Series presents FolkMusic of the Southern West Virginia Coalfields with Chris Haddox on Friday, Mar. 14 at 7 p.m. Guests are invited to come early to Club Carnegie from 6 to 6:45 p.m. A cash bar and snacks will be available.
Coal and coal-related activities are often the first things that come to mind when thinking about the history of southern West Virginia. Coal played such a part in the history of the area that the counties of Logan, Mingo, Lincoln, Boone, Wyoming, McDowell, Wayne, Fayette, Mercer, Cabell, Nicholas, Summers, and Kanawha are often simply referred to as the southern WV coalfields – as if nothing else ever occurred there.
The focus of Haddox’ program is to shine a light on the individuals who contributed to the rich folk music traditions of those “coalfield” counties. While the songs and tunes themselves are wonderful and should be treasured, there is often a lack of information about the people who made the music – a gap this program aims to fill.
Everyone who knows Chris Haddox seems to know something different about him. That’s not surprising because this stellar musician is also a community leader who has directed Habitat for Humanity and worked to preserve old neighborhoods, a WVU professor of sustainable design, and an amateur musicologist who researches musicians from the southern coalfields of West Virginia. That’s a lot of breadth for someone the music community knows as a well-loved, easy-going consummate picker who never met a stringed instrument he couldn’t master – not to mention a gifted songwriter in the traditional country/Americana vein.
Says one of his close friends and fellow musicians, “I once looked around at a party where most of the guests didn’t know each other, but they all knew Chris. “You’re the nexus!” I said, to which he replied, after reflecting on his Logan County West Virginia roots, “Maybe I’m the Red Nexus!” That kind of self-deprecating wit extends to his voluminous repertoire of songs about (to quote him): “religion, firearms, courthouse squares, goats on trampolines, shoes, fiddles, and hurricanes” – whatever catches his eye. He continues, “Like most writers, I try to find new ways to address old topics. Some songs are funny, some sad, some sarcastic but they are all honest – even the ones that are full of lies.“
Born in 1960 into a musical family in Logan, WV, Chris started playing piano at age six and moved onto guitar when he was influenced by his Uncle Jim, a fantastic country blues singer and picker. In college he picked up the dobro and just kept going… fiddle, banjo, mandolin; he seems to have an innate facility with those strings.
Galvanized by the Delmore Brothers, Chris moved to Nashville in 1981 to dedicate himself to making it as a songwriter. Over the course of three healthy stints in the Music City he learned about the music business, made some great friends and contacts in the business, but he eventually decided that the time was just not right for him. His time illustrates a principle from the age-old question: Do you want to be a professional songwriter, or do you want to write songs. After leaving Nashville, Chris never stopped writing, and we’re all the better for it.
If you live in Appalachia, a land of savage contrasts, you develop a relationship to obscurity and miscommunication. Many outsiders willfully misunderstand us. In Appalachia, we have a history of fixed ideas: Music is something you do after work, for fun. Your real work is about your people and the communities you live in. Chris’s work and avocation come together in his passion and talent for lending voice to forgotten musicians brings them alive for all of us. To hear him sing and play over the graves of lost and forgotten musicians in remote and overgrown mountain cemeteries, reveals their humanity and rescues ours.
An exceptional musician with an open heart, Chris is a collection of all the right kinds of contrasts. In short, Chris Haddox represents everything that is good about Appalachia.
Tickets are $20 and may be purchased by calling Carnegie Hall Box Office at 304-645-7917, visiting www.carnegiehallwv.org, or stopping by at 611 Church Street, Lewisburg. Carnegie Hall Box Office is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
