How My Rural Virginia Upbringing Still Influences My Songwriting
Hiking at Wolf Gap, on the WV State Line, Winter 2015
My mountain-bred folk songs feel a bit out of place in the Northern Virginia community I now call home. The country-tinged guitar and slight twang in my voice feel ill at ease between the high-rises and data centers.
As a child, I didn’t fully appreciate what my hometown gave me. I grew up in a small rural community nestled in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the kind of place where the Census Bureau has to count the cows before they can even think about the people. I couldn’t wait to leave home and see what opportunities lay beyond the Shenandoah Valley. As a teenager, I dreamed of hopping on I-81 and playing music on the road. It wasn’t until I moved away from my hometown that I realized how special it was to me - and how I had taken it for granted.
All of my important, formative memories are tied to local landmarks and geography. I remember Saturday afternoons on the Shenandoah River, catching largemouth bass with my dad. I remember stopping for a hot dog and a milkshake at the local drug store’s retro lunch counter (it wasn’t themed, it just hadn’t been upgraded in decades). I remember walking the railroad tracks, exploring the bridges and defunct depots along the way. If I hadn’t grown up in the Shenandoah Valley, I would never have hiked up Wolf Gap on a cold, clear night to see the expanse of the Milky Way. The Blue Ridge Mountains formed me from their very clay and gave me a lifelong appreciation for hard work, simple pleasures, and the outdoors.
Fishing at Red Banks, Mount Jackson VA, 2009
It also made me creative. With nothing to do, my friends and I had to figure out alternative ways to have fun - and I don’t mean drugs and alcohol. As imaginative, curious teenagers, evading angry, ATV-riding farmers while exploring the “boundless frontier” of their fields was more fun than any of that stuff. My friends and I wrote and filmed movies, dove deep into caves and rotting farmhouses, caught whatever fauna we could keep from biting us, and rode our bikes for miles to unknown destinations. I was a bored kid on the outskirts of Appalachia, and bored kids get creative. That’s why I started writing songs.
I no longer live in the Shenandoah Valley, but it is with me everywhere I go. Today, I could hardly live in a more different place - Fairfax County, on the outskirts of Washington DC. Same state, totally different culture. I miss it sometimes - the mountains, the Shenandoah River, even the smell of cowshit in the spring. But no matter where I go, these memories continue to inspire my songwriting. My songs are reflections of who I am, and who I am today is a reflection of the place I grew up in.
Performing with one of my first bands in Lost RIver, WV, c. 2015. I still make music with my old bandmate Jesse, seen here playing electric guitar on the right.
