They said it happens.

When I was younger, and very much so in conversation nowadays, it was always said that as you get older, you tend to circle back to the music of your youth.

The sound echoes a tone of inclusion and timelessness.

When you listen to Langhorne Slim, you’re hearing something oddly familiar, but also new and innovative at the same time. You let the songs soak into your skin, pushing ever so deeper into your carefully guarded soul. The words remind you of your past, faces you haven’t seen in years, but miss dearly. Each melody conjures memories, perhaps cherished moments, of loved ones either six feet under and long gone or six feet away where the emotional distance could still be bridged with a simple interaction.

A Jackson County landmark has changed hands.

The Great Smoky Mountains Association’s newest musical release, “Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition,” earned a Grammy nomination recently for “Best Album Notes” as written by Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The crunching kept catching my attention.

After finding a scarce parking space, it was a short, careful stroll from the Montford neighborhood of downtown Asheville to the U.S. Cellular Center for the 29th annual Christmas Jam last Saturday evening.

Catch her if you can.

In the last two or so years, the name “Margo Price” has overtaken brightly lit marquees across the country and late night television programs around the world.

“It’s exciting to think about what Haywood County could be. The desire is there.”

— Buddy Melton, fiddler/singer, Balsam Range

It’s inspiring when you come across people who have both a vision and the wherewithal to turn it into reality. It makes me want to climb on board with them and be a part of that success. That’s what I see happening with local bluegrass supergroup Balsam Range and its “Art of Music Festival.”

Don’t fuck with Elizabeth Cook.

In a city like Nashville, where your artistic integrity and credibility can be bought and sold to the highest bidder, Cook has remained a proud outsider, one whose stance on the fringe is quickly becoming the center of the melodic universe as tastes are changing, more like maturing, or even returning to the normalcy of what we regard now as “classic country” and “nitty gritty rock-n-roll.”

They stick out.

In a city like Asheville and in a region like Western North Carolina, world-renowned for bluegrass and Americana music, being a rock-n-roll band is more the exception than the norm.

It’s the carrot.

For the better part of the last 12 years, Rolling Stone magazine has been a carrot dangling in front of my eager, overzealous — and often restless — journalistic spirit.