Carla Gover

I'm super-excited to release my new song/video on the first day of the year. It's a feminist Appalachian ballad that I performed with my daughter, and the subject is very dear to my heart.

This song is a re-working of…

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…

What’s your heartset? On my walk today, I was thinking about how we always talk about the importance of “mindset” to achieving our goals and dreams. But isn’t “heartset” just as important? We need BOTH heart and mind working in…

I can't reveal too much yet, but I just wanted to share a quick screen shot of our new feminist video Girls Will Be Girls. We shot it in Lexington, KY with filmmaker Jared Richardson, and we're so excited! This…

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…

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…

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…

This is a screen shot 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…

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…

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…

This is a video clip of a rehearsal for a collaborative project I've been doing, with choreographer Teresa Tomb and Shesha Tribal Belly Dance. It is set to my original Appalachian Ballad inspired by the Peggy Seeger tune "B Side"…

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 by marriage…