The Never-ending Storyteller
Connie Regan-Blake has been taking honest, hard-working folks for a ride for over four decades now. If her lips are moving, she’s spinning a yarn.
“This has been my only real job,” says Regan-Blake, a celebrated storyteller based in Asheville, North Carolina. “It still amazes me that you can even do that.”
Internationally renowned as one of America’s foremost storytellers, Regan-Blake is a true shepherd of the storytelling movement that re-emerged in the 1970s. She has not only written a page in history for herself but has also taken care to document those who have surrounded her in the folk art world over the years, through recordings, photographs, notes, posters, fliers, and other memorabilia. Last spring, the Library of Congress announced it would house this significant compilation of materials, which will eventually be accessible online in the Connie Regan-Blake Collection.
A native of Alabama, Regan-Blake’s career began as a young woman in 1971, when she was hired as a storyteller (primarily for children) at a public library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Soon after, she met the legendary Ray Hicks, a towering man from Beech Mountain in Watauga County, North Carolina. Hicks, a National Heritage Award winner known for his Jack Tales, became a mentor to Connie, and the Hicks family became lifelong friends.
“Ray had a way of being inside the story,” Regan-Blake recalls. “He was so present—he told a story as if it was unfolding right then.”
In 1973, she appeared at the debut National Storytelling Festival in northeastern Tennessee, joining 60 others who gathered on hay bales around tellers on wagons. A few years later, Regan-Blake hit the road in a pickup truck with her cousin Barbara Freeman. Together they called themselves the Folktellers and performed at folk music festivals and other events. The duo took solo turns on the stage and also told stories together in tandem, each trading lines back and forth until the tale was told.
“We are credited with creating that genre,” Regan-Blake says, though they were inspired by Kentucky’s Appalshop groups who would act out mountain tales. The two spent 20 years working together, and Regan-Blake since has performed on her own, appearing at the Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian, and many other festivals and venues. The Library of Congress collection will encapsulate her remarkable career, with mementos such as a copy of Connie’s first Storytelling Festival paycheck, diary-like notes she scribbled in her calendars, cassette recordings of musicians at the many folk festivals she attended, and letters from the Hicks family.
“I really believe that storytelling is a part of who we are as humans,” Regan-Blake says. “It might shift and change, but the stories will always be here.”
Follow the Story
This October 2 to 4, Regan-Blake will reprise her role as emcee at the 43rd annual National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee—as the only person alive who has taken the festival stage each year since its founding. This year, more than 20 storytellers from around the globe will spin tales taller than the Washington County Courthouse at main stage performances, a story slam, an adults-only Midnight Cabaret, and at ghost story concerts under the stars.
In addition to her many performances, Connie Regan-Blake shares her expertise as a coach and workshop leader. In Asheville this August 21, Regan-Blake and her students will present “Slice of Life: An Evening of Stories” at Metro Wines on Charlotte Street. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. for $15 admission, including a glass of wine.
For more information about Regan-Blake’s events, coaching opportunities, and storytelling workshops, see storywindow.com.