Asheville Sessions – Panel Discussions on the 1925 OKeh Sessions

Friday, November 7, 10:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Free to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis
The Venue
21 N Market St, Asheville, NC 28801

Dive deep into the history and legacy of Asheville’s landmark 1925 recording sessions with a day of free panels and discussions featuring a look at Asheville in 1925 and the art of remastering acoustic recordings, insights into the lasting significance of the 1925 Okeh recording sessions, and a special gathering of descendants of the musicians who recorded in the 1925 sessions.

10:30-12:00 Asheville and an Emerging Record Industry in 1925

What kind of city did Ralph Peer visit one hundred years ago? Katherine Cutshall, Director of Special Collections at Pack Memorial Library, will delve into the social, cultural, and economic forces shaping Asheville when Peer arrived at the Vanderbilt Hotel to make records for the OKeh Phonograph Corporation. Bryan Wright, the founder of Rivermont Records and an expert in the restoration of acoustic audio recordings, will describe the recording technology used in 1925 as well as the process of restoring the original recordings for the reissue album, Music From The Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions.

1:30-3:00 The 1925 OKeh Sessions: What Occurred and Why Is It Significant?

The field sessions in Asheville produced the first performances of traditional music recorded in the Appalachians for the purpose of commercial sale to a broader American audience. This event accelerated the integration of Southern stringband music, balladry, and sacred song into an emerging genre that was eventually branded as Country and Western. Music historians Tony Russell and Ted Olson, authors of the notes to Music From The Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions, will explore how the Asheville recordings came to be made and the impact of the sessions on the trajectory of Appalachian and American music.

3:30-5:00 Gathering of Descendants of the Musicians Who Recorded in Asheville in 1925

Most of the musicians documented in the Asheville sessions lived in western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia and east Tennessee. Several passed down to their children both a love of traditional music and an appreciation of its cultural value to the region, and beyond. Hear descendants of Kelly Harrell, Blackwell and Bascom Lunsford, and J.D. McFarlane tell family stories and speak to the ways that music has influenced their lives and shaped family identity.

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