I grew up making sorghum each fall on Kingdom Come Creek in Letcher County, at an event called a stir-off. I honestly loved the stir-off time more than Christmas! We kids would get to ride the sled out to the field (pulled by the big Belgian mare) and watch the men cut the cane with […]

What’s the Difference? I teach traditional dance of the Appalachian Mountains, and one of the of the first questions I often get asked in my classes is, “What’s the difference between clogging and flatfooting?” Buck dance is another name that you often hear for this group of related forms. So what IS the difference? The […]

Anybody who knows me knows that I practically worshiped my grandmother. She was born in 1898 in a tiny holler outside Oneida, Kentucky, and she was pretty much a walking encyclopedia of How To Do Stuff. I followed her around like a baby chick, constantly begged her for stories about her life, and eagerly copied […]

After spending the past nineteen years teaching each and every summer at Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in Letcher County, Kentucky where I’m from, I’m beyond proud to announce that I’m stepping into a new role as artistic director of the school. I’ll be helping to facilitate the awesome adult and youth programming offered there, […]

This is a screenshot of some of my recent online classes. Like all touring and teaching artists, I have grappled with what to do with my time now that all concerts and events and camps are shut down. So, in addition to working on some recording projects and original music, I have chosen to develop […]

After reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, I was inspired to write this letter to fear. I wrote it at a moment in my life where I was on the cusp of being brave enough to finally REALLY embrace the life I wanted to live, after decades of gearing up for it and taking baby […]

One of my most favorite songs that I have written, Me & The Redbird River, is to be made into a children’s book! It’s a song that tells of growing up in Appalachia from a child’s perspective, and describes the beauty of the subsistence skills that have continued to flourish there.  And I am so […]

This is my Big Mommy. Her name was Emma Wilson Hensley and she was from Oneida, KY. (Her name was pronounced “Emmer”, for those of you who didn’t grow up speaking mountain!) She was my Granny’s second cousin and one of her closest friends. She was my second grandmother. Like my grandmother, most of her […]

We are all just now recovering from all the fun LAST weekend in Lexington, as a passel of pickers, singers, dancers, poets, merry-makers, and general yee-haw revelers descended on Lexington for our annual old-time music event at Artsplace. A good time was had by all, and we’re already making plans for next year. The inimitable […]

I had a great time teaching a clogging and flatfooting workshops with Julie Shepherd-Powell and AP Powell for the Bluegrass Ceili Academy workshops in Lexington recently!