Photo by Timothy Duffy
Grammy-winning musician Dom Flemons will headline Riddlefest, the annual event honoring the legacy of Yancey County native and musician Lesley Riddle.
The festival is Saturday, June 22.
Flemons is a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2010.
Flemons left the group in 2014, to pursue his solo career, and his 2018 album, “Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys,” earned a Grammy nomination. Flemons is a music scholar, historian, record collector and multi-instrumentalist known as “The American Songster” because his repertoire covers more than 100 years of American folklore, ballads and tunes.
The festival’s namesake, Lesley Riddle, traveled the Appalachian region with A.P. Carter in the 1920s on song-collecting trips. Carter gathered the lyrics, while Riddle learned the music. The Carter Family went on to record those songs and form the beginnings of today’s country music, while the contributions by Riddle, an African-American, went overlooked for decades.
“Lesley Riddle was part of the foundational work of what we consider country music,” said Tim Babb, a board member with the Traditional Voices Group, which puts on RiddleFest. “Understanding who Riddle was helps us appreciate where we are right now.”
Bill and the Belles, the house band at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, will open for Flemons at the Burnsville Town Center. The band draws its musical style from the East Tennessee old-time traditions popularized in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. The Griffith Chapel Singers, a local choral group with connections to the Riddle family, kick off the evening with gospel tunes.
The concert starts at 7 p.m., and tickets are $20. To purchase, go to www.EventBrite.com and search “RiddleFest,” or call Burnsville Town Center at (828) 682-7209.
Flemons and Kris Truelsen, band leader for Bill and the Belles, will lead a free seminar at 3 p.m. that day titled “Old Songs, Fresh Voices.”
For more info, visit www.TraditionalVoicesGroup.com/RiddleFest-2019 .