When finding your artistic voice, it’s about moving forward and not looking back, being true to yourself and refusing to run around in well-worn circles of creativity.

When he didn’t have the money to purchase a banjo, Joshua Grant took matters into his own hands.

“I couldn’t afford what I wanted, so I decided to build one,” he said.

A native of the Nantahala Gorge, the 31-year-old recently launched Grant Custom Banjos, a business that constructs handmade instruments as unique and full of character as Grant himself. 

It was a decade in the making, but its origins are hundreds of years old.

Partnering with the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, the North Carolina Arts Council recently launched its latest initiative – the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina. Encompassing 29 counties in Western North Carolina, the trails were created to preserve, interpret and promote these rich pockets of music and dance that have had a profound impact on American culture and beyond.

Rhiannon Giddens is an old soul, but one that embraces modernity.

Vocalist/fiddler of renowned Americana string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens is a jack-of-all-trades in not only her instrumentation but also her exploration of the history and evolution of American music.

“Once in awhile you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right…”
– Grateful Dead “Scarlet Begonias”

If the Grateful Dead taught us anything through their music, it would be the mere fact that surprises, in all shapes and sizes, can come from the most unexpected of encounters and corners of the universe.

The town of Sylva is one of those corners.

John Driskell Hopkins was driving in his truck when it struck him.

It was a song. Radiating from his satellite radio, it sounded like a fond memory he once knew. The voices and melody were familiar, but he hadn’t ever heard it before, and had no idea who wrote it. He looked at the radio. A band name appeared in the digital display: Balsam Range.

Pulling into a row of unimposing metal garage-sized storage units on Frazier Street in Waynesville, the sound of buzzing is heard.

You think maybe the truck heater is finally kicking on and combating the cold December morning, or it’s the usual hustle and bustle of traffic on the highway bypass. Yet, the source of the noise seems to be echoing from a slightly cracked garage bay at the end of the row.

Chris Robinson is a freak‚ a damn musical freak.

Finally wrangling everything into the studio with his freewheelin’ solo project‚ Robinson has already released two albums this year (Big Moon Ritual and The Magic Door)‚ both of which could be considered cornerstone records for any group.

It’s the greatest show in town, but the location is a secret.

With the tall smokestacks of the Canton paper mill falling into the rearview mirror, the pickup truck meandered up into the surrounding hills. The road snaked deeper into the woods. Pulling into a muddy entrance, a few sporadic vehicles lined the driveway. Tires squish through puddles in search of a place to park.

At a McDonald’s in Canton, S.R. “Sha” Shahan sits quietly in one of the corner booths, casually sipping his coffee and reflecting on where it all began for him.

Hailing from the coal-mining hills of West Virginia, the 86-year-old was raised in Bristol, a town “about as small as you can get,” he chuckled. His father was a self-taught fiddler who would perform at regional line dances and other special functions with his handmade instrument that was constructed from a wooden cheese box.

Eventually, he taught Sha how to play percussion and keep a rhythm by having him tap the neck of the fiddle to the beat as he played. Sha began to take an interest in music, finding himself playing bass in the high school band. Though he enjoyed it, the passion didn’t click inside of him, not yet at least, especially with World War II breaking out. The action was across the globe, and music seemed to take a backseat to adventure. He was drafted in 1944 and found himself on a military train heading west to destinations unknown.

“No one knew where we were going on the train,” he said. “We were about halfway there when the guy came out and said we were in the Air Force and heading to Texas for training. We all applauded to that because you didn’t want to be an infantryman at that time.”

Assigned as a tail gunner for a B-24 bomber in the Pacific Theater, Shahan was in combat a handful of times. As a gunner, a particularly dangerous and often fatal assignment, he manned two .50 caliber machine guns.

“When you shot them, your whole body shook, your head rattled,” he said.

A troop carrier soon scooped him up, and they headed for the Okinawa Island shortly after the infamous battleground had been liberated and was being prepped as a launching paid for air raids over Japan. Shahan was gearing up for flight when a captain approached him on the carrier.

“The day we pulled into the harbor, the sirens went off,” he said. “The captain came in and said, ‘Son, the war is over. They just dropped the A-bomb.’”

Coming back to the mainland, Shahan immersed himself into post-war America. He got married, had children and moved along in a worthwhile career. Working for an independent insurance adjusting system, he was then recruited by Allstate and found himself in Florida, managing home offices in Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg.

Life was going pretty well, but after retirement, something seemed to be missing. That something was music — the music of his past. He soon found himself at local music jam sessions in Clearwater and decided to participate.

“It was like something new, something you got back into that you’ve been missing and didn’t know you were missing it,” he said.

After getting inspired by a washboard player at one of the sessions, Shahan tracked down his wife’s washboard in the garage and made his own, ultimately bringing it to the next event. The organizer threw him into the mix with a skilled banjo player and professional drummer. Unbeknownst to Shahan, the drummer was Eddie Graham, who backed jazz legend Earl Hines.

“I had no idea who Eddie was,” Shahan chuckled. “The two of them would start up and sound like they’ve been playing together all their lives. We each had to do a solo, and I thought I would die.”

But, Shahan pushed through and found himself on the other side. He now had plunged back into music, a deep itch he was finally scratching. By 1994, he bought a seasonal home in Maggie Valley and began jumping into the local music scene, which included playing with innumerable talented musicians like renowned banjoist Raymond Fairchild.

“I got asked to go up and play with Raymond,” Shahan said. “We did a tune, and it went fairly well. Raymond turned around and gave me ‘the look’ [of approval], so I knew I was safe.”

Now bouncing around the Western North Carolina mountain music circuit, Shahan and his friends were shuffled around to several spots where they could play. The location and people in attendance seemed to change like the seasons, but those playing remained the same. The passion and pursuit never seemed to wane. As time passed, Shahan found himself putting together the sessions, wrangling his friends and those curious to come out and pluck.

“It’s unbelievable how many good pickers are in Haywood County, not to mention the surrounding counties,” he said. “It’s back to the roots of what Appalachian music is all about, and it’s just enough people to try and keep that going.”