The Twangtown Paramours from Nashville are an acoustic duo drawing on country, bluegrass and blues. They perform a special evening concert, as well as during the day along with several other music acts at the one-day event.
The new Rugby Roots: Appalachian Arts With A British Beat event on May 23, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, brings an updated version of Rugby, Tennessee’s long-popular Spring Festival that will showcase the talents of musicians, dancers and storytellers.
Daytime performances under the main tent run from noon to 6:30 p.m. Eastern (11-5:30 Central) followed by an evening concert at 7/6 Central by the Twangtown Paramours in the Rebecca Johnson Theatre.
The Nashville acoustic duo are singer-songwriters who draw on country, bluegrass, and blues genres in crafting “new folk” songs that have won them national acclaim.
Sharing the main music stage with Twangtown Paramours will be Junction South, performing classic rock and country Americana; and the Empty Bottle String Band, a young group of old-time musicians from Johnson City, whose dance tunes are guaranteed to bring square dancers and buck dancers in the audience to their feet.
On the Harrow Road Cafe porch will be old-time singer Roy Harper, recipient of a Tennessee Folklife Heritage Award in 2003. Alternating with him in that venue will be solo performer Michael Jacobs, whose original songs incorporate Native American tradition into folk and rock Americana.
Performing on the storytelling stage will be Judy Baker from Cleveland, TN, teller of traditional Appalachian folk tales and personal experience stories; Tim Mangan of Crossville, whose tales include stories behind popular American broadside ballads; Delanna Reed, presenting traditional British and Appalachian Jack tales; and Morgan County native Joni Lovegrove, telling stories from her Cherokee heritage.
British dance will be represented, as at all 40 past Rugby Spring Festivals, by Lark in the Morn English Country Dancers from Knoxville and their instrumentalists, performing dances and inviting visitors to join them in the traditional maypole dance.
Food vendors and the Harrow Road Cafe will provide food and drink.
Festival tickets are $5 daytime only, $5 for the evening concert only, or a combined ticket price of $8 for both. Ticket revenue helps nonprofit Historic Rugby staff its Visitor Centre and Johnson Theatre as well as maintain several of the site’s historic buildings. Guided tours and memberships are also available to further support the organization’s nonprofit mission of historic preservation and cultural interpretation.
For lodging and more details about the event and performers, visit www.historicrugby.org or call 423-628-2441.
Rugby, founded in 1880 as a British-American utopian village, is just off State Scenic Hwy. 52, 16 miles southeast of Jamestown and 35 miles from either Interstate 40 or I-75 in East Tennessee on the southern edge of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.
Lark in the Morn English Country Dancers from Knoxville with their maypole and other dances have delighted spectators at Rugby spring events for decades.