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This podcast is to help YOU, our listeners, become more familiar with the Northeast Tennessee community. From the perspective of folks who work and live here, we invite you to come explore all NeTN has to offer and to protect these places we love!
[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:00 - (Allie Bynum): Hello, and welcome to meet me in Tennessee. I'm your host, Allie, and this podcast is sponsored by the Northeast Tennessee Tourism association. You can find us online at northeast tennessee.org and on all social media. And today we're sitting down with doctor Renee Rogers, head curator for birthplace of Country Music Museum. And thank you so much for being here today.
0:00:21 - (Rene Rodgers): Thank you for having me.
0:00:22 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, of course. Can you please share with our listeners a little bit about the birthplace of country music museum and what makes it so unique to our region?
0:00:32 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes. So we are a museum that opened in August 2014. So we are in our 10th anniversary year right now. We are a Smithsonian affiliated museum. So that means that we have a connection to the Smithsonian. And the sort of program of the affiliate program is to bring the Smithsonian into other neighborhoods throughout the country. So we have access to lots of educational and programming resources from them.
0:00:56 - (Rene Rodgers): But the actual museum itself, the birthplace of country music museum. We are focused on the story of the 1927 Bristol sessions, a very special set of commercial country music recordings that happened here in Bristol back in the 1920s.
0:01:11 - (Allie Bynum): Well, first of all, congratulations on your 10th anniversary.
0:01:14 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes. I can't quite believe it.
0:01:15 - (Allie Bynum): That's wonderful. And with the 1927 sessions, this kind of sparked the big bang of country music. Can you tell our listeners about the significance?
0:01:27 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. So a lot of people assume because we're called the birthplace of country music, that we are the first place that country music was ever recorded. That is not true. Country music had been recorded back all the way to 1920, 219 23. And it has certainly been around a lot longer than that, though back then it wasn't called country music at that time. But what happened in 1927 was really significant for several different reasons.
0:01:53 - (Rene Rodgers): One was that because of the change in technology that had happened in 1920, 519 26 from the acoustic horn technology, which was a non electric version of recording, to the electric microphone, it meant that the quality of those recordings were better. They were more nuanced, more balanced, sort of a more authentic sound. But also it meant that you could bring some of that equipment out of the recordings. The major recording studios before this, anyone who was recording this type of music would have traveled to somewhere like New York or Richmond, Indiana, or one of those places where there was a big recording studio for the record labels.
0:02:31 - (Rene Rodgers): And now they could actually bring that equipment out. So it meant they could go to where the music was actually being made on a daily basis and gather quite a lot of music all at one time. The second most important, or second significant thing about it is the person who was recording these songs and this music. And his name was Ralph Pear. He was a producer for the Victor Talking Machine company. He had been recruited by them specifically to find this type of music, and this is what they called hillbilly music back then.
0:03:03 - (Rene Rodgers): And he had worked for OK Records and had worked in this type of music for a while. He knew Ernest Stoneman, who was from the Galax area in Virginia. And like I said, Victor recruited him specifically because they wanted to build up their catalog of hillbilly music because they hadn't really done that yet. So he came down here on the recommendation of Ernest Stoneman, who told him he would find a lot of the music that he was looking for in this region, and he was just a visionary. There were so many things about Ralph Peer that just sort of were very much about what happened in how we understand the music industry today.
0:03:41 - (Rene Rodgers): He actually told the Victor tolkring Machine company that he would take a lower salary in exchange for being able to copyright the music and publish it through his own music publishing company. So he did that, copyrighted the factual song, if it wasn't already copyrighted, copyrighted the performance, the recording itself, and then sometimes even took on some of the artists as their manager. Wow.
0:04:05 - (Allie Bynum): Did that happen right in Bristol?
0:04:07 - (Rene Rodgers): So that was the agreement that he had with the Victor Tolkien Machine company, and then he did with two of the acts that I'm going to talk about in just a second. He did then take them under his wing, management wise, but a lot of that is how the music industry works today. And what's really interesting about Ralph Peer is that that music publishing company that he started in 1926 still exists today.
0:04:30 - (Rene Rodgers): It's called pure music. It is one of the largest independent music publishing companies in the world, and it's currently. It was run by his son until recently, and is now run by his granddaughter. So, still in the family.
0:04:42 - (Allie Bynum): Oh, precious.
0:04:43 - (Rene Rodgers): And, you know, they have the copyrights of people like John Legend and Katy Perry today.
0:04:47 - (Allie Bynum): Wow.
0:04:48 - (Rene Rodgers): So, so cool. Yes. And then the third thing was the actual artists who recorded here. There was 19 different acts. 76 different songs were recorded all over a two week period. And one of those acts Ernest Stoneman had recorded multiple times before he knew Ralph pear really established, well regarded hillbilly musician. But then also, you had the Carter family and Jimmie Rogers, and this was the very first time they had ever recorded, was in Bristol.
0:05:19 - (Rene Rodgers): The Carter family had actually tried to record a year or two before that and been rejected by the record label at the time, who they had tried to record with them. They didn't see their potential. But Ralph Pear, thankfully did. And, of course, the Carter family and Jimmie Rogers are known as the first family of country music and the father of country music. And they are so foundational to the music that we listen to today under country music, that those beginnings are viewed as the sort of big bang of that commercial country music in those early years. Yeah.
0:05:50 - (Allie Bynum): Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. What a precious story. And I'm kind of just sitting here taking it all in. So much history with music in our area.
0:06:00 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. And there was so many other artists who were there. I mean, Ernest Phipps came with four other singers. That was sort of the very first, what we would call southern gospel that had been recorded. We also had people like Blind Alfred Reed, who Ralph Peer liked so much that he recorded again the following year. L. Watson, the only african american artist who was there, who, interestingly, because of the way genre was looked at in those days, there was this segregation of sound. So even though he was recording here, where Ralph Peer was primarily looking for hillbilly music and what he recorded wasn't that different from what other artists were recording.
0:06:40 - (Rene Rodgers): They actually marketed what El Watson did as race records, which was the term that they used for african american music at that time.
0:06:47 - (Allie Bynum): Sure. And how interesting to think of the term hillbilly, how it's evolved. But back then, it was just a way to describe this music that was from a specific place and a culture.
0:06:57 - (Rene Rodgers): Well, and it's interesting, the legend of why it's called hillbilly music. I'm not 100%, I won't say I'm 100% sure that this is a true story, but again, ties back to Ralph Peer. He had recorded several years before with a group of singers and musicians from this region. Again, they had come up to the New York studio, and after they had recorded the songs, he said, what do we call you? Because they wanted to write it down in the cue sheet so that they would know what to put on the label.
0:07:25 - (Allie Bynum): Sure.
0:07:26 - (Rene Rodgers): And they said, oh, you can call us anything you want. We're just a bunch of hillbillies from Virginia and North Carolina. And so they wrote down the hillbillies, and supposedly that's where the term came from.
0:07:35 - (Allie Bynum): Oh, cool. So actually dubbing themself with that term.
0:07:38 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes.
0:07:40 - (Allie Bynum): That's such a cool story, renee. So how does the museum itself help to tell the story of country music in all these different forms and backgrounds?
0:07:50 - (Rene Rodgers): The museum, we have about 12,000 permanent exhibit space, and that is all focused on the story of the 1927 Bristol sessions. But also what came before it and the legacy and impact beyond those recordings. So we want people to walk away from the museum with a real understanding that this wasn't this one moment in time that just had this impact for a few years, around 1927, and then disappeared into the bowels of history. Sure.
0:08:19 - (Rene Rodgers): But again, we talk a lot about what happened with technology, because technology is such a huge part of the story of this early music, both from the development of the different ways of recording music and playing back music. But also radio was developing around the same time. And radio was a huge way that hillbilly music was distributed across the country to wider audiences, in particular radio stations like the Grand Ole, like WSM, which had the grand Ole Opry in it in Nashville, and WLS in Chicago that had the national born dance, which were these wonderful country music shows.
0:08:54 - (Rene Rodgers): And Bristol and several radio stations around the tri cities had their own smaller versions of those shows. For instance, in Bristol, it was called farm in funtime. So we talk a lot about the technology. We talk a lot about the people who came here and the music they were making. And some of the origins of those songs, because those are coming from all sorts of different places. Some of them are ballads from the old country. Some of them are songs that have been written by artists and musicians here, based on real life events like trainwrecks and the assassination of President McKinley and the Cyclone at Rye Cove. You have a lot of those event and disaster songs, but also old gospel songs, old vaudeville, what we would call pop songs today, that were the popular music of the time.
0:09:40 - (Rene Rodgers): All of those songs were being sort of reimagined within this hillbilly style. And then, of course, string band music with the fiddle and the banjo in particular. But then looking beyond what happened in 1927 to, like I said, how that music still lives on today, how it's influenced artists beyond 1927, why that history is important so that people can really understand the greater impact beyond Bristol itself and that early commercial music, but also how it. Or early commercial country music, but also american music as a whole.
0:10:14 - (Allie Bynum): Oh, that's so beautifully said. Her region is just. It's full of deep historical culture with music and traditional roots. And I just. I think of, like, growing up in this area, and my grandparents every Saturday night would head up the hill to an old barn in North Carolina and go tap dance into some bluegrass. Never knew who was going to be on or.
0:10:36 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah, because. And that was it. That's how people shared music, and that's how they shared community, was through music. And the museum is very experiential, like, every room has soundscapes in it. Every room has music in it. We have four film experiences. We also then have other smaller films that aren't within their own theater. We have interactive. So you can sort of dig into the content of the museum in a lot of different ways. And one of the really interesting things that I think we've found is music is so tied to emotion and it's so tied to memory.
0:11:09 - (Rene Rodgers): Sure. And we're, you know, I feel very fortunate that we have this museum that is about music and filled with music, because with our visitors, one of the things that makes me really happy is that they're not only we have. Everyone loves to learn the story, you know, they're interested in it. Some people know a little bit about it. Some people never heard of it before in their lives. But because of the music side of it, almost all of our visitors have a personal connection in some way in the museum. And they often tell us, and our frontline get lots of great stories about, oh, my grandma sang that song to me years ago, or I remember when we used to go to the community center and they would play this music, and I always was really fascinated by the banjo player, you know? So you have these really emotional, personal reactions to the museum, which is really.
0:11:53 - (Allie Bynum): Special sense of nostalgia. I wanted to touch a little bit more about how you said, with the history of the music and how it's related to, you know, this. Not only the technology has evolved in America, but the history helping to tell and connect our communities and today, like, and just nationally in America. So how. How do specific exhibits that you help to curate on the backend help to bridge that gap between the history and the relevance today and what folks can learn. And specifically, I wanted to. If we can talk about the I've endured women in old time music exhibit. Okay, how is that an example of telling that story?
0:12:33 - (Rene Rodgers): Well, I'll say one thing about the permanent exhibits that I think is a great sort of starting place for seeing that connection is there's the immersion theater with the circle. Will the circle be unbroken? That really ties it in where you have artists talking about the impact of the music and how they've interpreted it for themselves or how they've grown up with it. But then there's also a booth, which is called the listening station, where you can listen to the song as it was recorded in 1927 and then listen to four, like, three or four other versions of it throughout time that have been reinterpreted by other artists in different ways.
0:13:06 - (Rene Rodgers): And you'll find that, like, one of the songs in particular, the longest train I ever saw, which was recorded by the Tiniva Ramblers, that is a song that was then later recorded by Nirvana. There's a great mt unplugged of Kurt Cobain singing in the Pines, which is his version of it, but it's also been used by the Walking Dead, which a lot of people know. They've watched that over the years. A lot of true crime podcasts use that song because it's very evocative song.
0:13:36 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah.
0:13:36 - (Rene Rodgers): So you just see that this music still has connections with people, that they're still finding it relevant to them.
0:13:41 - (Allie Bynum): Sure.
0:13:42 - (Rene Rodgers): And Ivan Jerd is a great example. I'm glad you brought that up, because that was an exhibit that we had at the museum all of last year. It's actually going to travel to North Carolina and several other venues soon. And the idea behind that was to tell the story of women in this music. Because while women have been hugely impactful, I mean, you think of people like Mabel and Sarah Carter and Dolly Parton and all these wonderful women who have made this music, the history of this music is still primarily told to the stories of men. And so we wanted to rectify that situation.
0:14:15 - (Rene Rodgers): But what we wanted to do was not just talk about the past. We wanted to really connect it to the way women have both carried on those traditions from the past. Like, they're preserving those wonderful traditions of old time music, but they're also innovating it and pushing its boundaries. And so for that exhibit, we actually interviewed 18 contemporary female musicians, from women who have been in the industry for decades to women who are just making their mark in it, to find out, like, who inspired them, why this music matters to them, what they hope to see in the future for it. And so with that, it really made us feel, and I think it made the.
0:14:54 - (Rene Rodgers): The visitors to the exhibit feel like this music. Again, it's not static. It's not. Even though we're calling it old time music. It's not.
0:15:03 - (Allie Bynum): It's every ballpark.
0:15:05 - (Rene Rodgers): It's relevant. And it touches on experience and memory and emotion that everyone is feeling, both then and now. And there's so much going on that's changing it and so much more. Bringing in of groups who might not have always felt that they had a place in this music, but felt a connection to it. And I think that's really exciting, because it just means that music is becoming more and more relevant, and it's more and more shared.
0:15:31 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah. And it's always such a special. I mean, music is just something within our communities that brings folks out together. You know, it doesn't matter about what you look like or if you're male, if you're female, it's something that brings everyone out.
0:15:46 - (Rene Rodgers): You think of someone like Dolly Parton, who has just about every different type of audience member you can imagine.
0:15:51 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, right, right. And that exhibit, I just remember, like you said, like, it evokes a feeling inside of you. And walking through, I thought of country music before as primarily a male dominated industry. And walking through that exhibit, it was like, oh, I can connect with this. You know, my mama used to go tap dancing at the barn, and I could see it within these musicians all ages.
0:16:12 - (Rene Rodgers): That was one of the things that we also wanted people to understand is being an important part of the way music has evolved and grown is not just someone who's on stage. It's also the fact that when women, especially in the 18 hundreds in Appalachia, women mostly, almost primarily, were working in the home, but they were the ones who were around their children all the time. They were passing on these songs, they were passing on the music.
0:16:35 - (Rene Rodgers): They were sort of these cultural caretakers of these traditions.
0:16:39 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, definitely. And then what are some other current exhibits that you've helped to curate where folks can experience on their next visit? I know I read about the cardboard history of Blue Ridge music.
0:16:52 - (Rene Rodgers): So that's one that is open and at the museum to July. Okay. And the idea behind that exhibit, it was actually a collector. He's collected these posters since he was a kid, and they're basically the old concert and performance posters that would have just been hung up on walls, on telephone poles, put into windows, and probably just thrown away at the end to just advertise various shows for traveling musicians.
0:17:14 - (Rene Rodgers): And these are musicians we would have heard of Bill Monroe, the Stanley brothers, Jim and Jesse McReynold. But they would carry around these posters and they'd put them up and then people would come out and see them. But they're not the types of items that tend to survive the test of time because they're ephemera, really. But Tom Murphy has collected these his whole life, and he has a massive collection. This was just 52 of his posters, but also what's cool about them, they're in this style called letterpress printing, which is movable type printing. So where you actually use wooden blocks or metal blocks of the individual letters to set up each poster.
0:17:50 - (Rene Rodgers): So it's not like mass produced printing in the way that we think of it. Today. So they have a very distinctive style. And there's some great letter presses that are still out there, like hat show print in Nashville who did this wonderful 10th anniversary commemorative poster for us all in letterpress printing. But it's a great exhibit for just getting an understanding of the artists who are traveling and, like, how hard that life must have been. You think of these big artists and today you think, oh, wouldn't it be exciting to be a musician? But it is tiring.
0:18:21 - (Rene Rodgers): You are very rarely sleeping in a bed. You're often sleeping on your bus or in your car or whatever. If you're a new artist and you're not an established artist, you're not making a lot of money while you're doing it. It's a hard life.
0:18:35 - (Allie Bynum): And imagine you're like a traveling brand to a point in today's world. Like, you're constantly having to market yourself and not having a home base, I'm sure, gets exhausted.
0:18:44 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. And that's what those posters were. It was their way to market and promote themselves. And what was cool about them is that a lot of them have a blank space at the top so that they could print multiple copies of who they were. And at the top they'd hand write in where they were performing and in what time, so that they didn't have to reprint it for each individual concert or performance. They could just have one poster and then hand write all the details in.
0:19:05 - (Allie Bynum): That sound like a really cool exhibit. I'll have to get up there and check it out.
0:19:08 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. And we've got one coming up that's going to open at the beginning of September, end of August, beginning of September called songwriter, which is a photography exhibit by photographer Ed Road of lots of country and bluegrass and other artists who are also songwriters. So you're going to see people like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton in there, but also some lesser, you know, hopefully John Prine. I think he has a picture of John Prine, but also some lesser known songwriters who you don't necessarily know about because they've written all these songs that you love, that you, they're not the face of that song. And so you might be astounded to see who some of the people are that might have written your favorite song.
0:19:48 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, that sounds very exciting. I love this combination of, like, legendary musicians. And then we have the newer, upcoming and established like amethyst Kia. Yes, we have some really awesome, awesome music.
0:19:58 - (Rene Rodgers): And Annette was heavily featured in the women in old time exhibit.
0:20:01 - (Allie Bynum): She was and was one of our interviewees, too.
0:20:03 - (Rene Rodgers): So she did a great job. Yeah.
0:20:06 - (Allie Bynum): I'm curious, Renee, where does your passion for music come from, and what's it like utilizing your passion to help curate these experiences for visitors from all around the world?
0:20:17 - (Rene Rodgers): So, I probably come to this more from a passion for history. Don't get me wrong, I love music, but I've always been a historian. That's what I did my first degree in. It's what I got my PhD in was history. So I've always had a passion for telling those stories and understanding the past. But I do love music. I'm a very. If you listen to my Spotify playlist, it would be very eclectic and very, like, all over the place.
0:20:42 - (Rene Rodgers): But I think what really made me passionate about this particular story is when I did my master's degree, I went to England for my master's degree, and I went on what was called at the time a Rotary ambassadorial scholarship, where your local Rotary club basically sponsors you to go for a year to a different country to study, and you're an ambassador, and you then visit Rotary clubs in that other country and tell them about the place you're from.
0:21:07 - (Rene Rodgers): And so when I'm from Bristol, I've lived here my whole life, but I was your typical teenager and didn't necessarily care about the story of my hometown. Thought I'd never come back here ever in my life.
0:21:20 - (Allie Bynum): Know that story.
0:21:21 - (Rene Rodgers): But when I went to do this rotary ambassadorial scholarship, I did some digging to understand more about Bristol so that I could talk about it over there. And that's when I really properly learned the story of the Carter family and Jimmie Rogers and the 1927 Bristol sessions. And so I started sharing that story then. So that was sort of probably the first, but it was more just in my general love of history at the time. And then when I moved back here in 2012, it was right as the museum was sort of being put together, and I was just fortunate enough to become part of that team. And the more I learned, the more I loved it. And now this story, to me, is so wonderful, because it's a story of just ordinary people having this extraordinary impact on american music.
0:22:13 - (Rene Rodgers): And, you know, these are people that all of us have known and all of us have had in our family, and this is the music they would have grown up on and that some of us grew up on. And I just. I love the story.
0:22:25 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah. It's a wonderful story. It's sacred. Yeah. Can you also please talk a little bit about the importance, from your perspective, of course, of museums as educational institutions?
0:22:38 - (Rene Rodgers): You know, from museums. And from my standpoint, I think that's their primary mission is education. And that's on lots of different levels, not on it, just on a k through twelve level. But everything about the museum is focused on engaging different types of visitors so that when they leave there, they felt like they've had a wonderful experience, they've learned something and they're curious to learn more. That curiosity and inspiration that they'll get from being in a museum and any museum is, you know, that's the goal, really.
0:23:11 - (Rene Rodgers): And for our museum, we do that on a lot of different ways. I mean, the exhibits, just as exhibits are part of that. And you mentioned Ivan Dird. We talked about cardboard history and songwriter. We have this 2000 square foot special exhibits gallery. And the idea behind that is that three or four, at least two or three times a year, we're going to change out the exhibit there. And it might be one that we've created like I've endured, or it might be one like songwriter that we've brought in from someone else. We also bring in exhibits from the Smithsonian.
0:23:40 - (Rene Rodgers): But the idea behind that is it's going to either deepen your understanding of what you've learned upstairs about music in Appalachia, or it's going to be just primarily, let's find an interesting topic that fits this idea of engaging and educating people. So we've had a civil rights exhibit. We've had an exhibit about children's literature. We've had an exhibit about how different mechanical items work, for instance.
0:24:04 - (Rene Rodgers): So there's that where you're actively looking for content that can touch people for educational learning. But we also do a lot of public programs. And again, almost of our public programming is either free or low cost. And it can range from a dulcimer building workshop to community jams where people come and play music together on Saturdays. We have a regular kids music lessons on banjo, guitar and fiddle. And also, of course, we do our, every year in June and July, we do our pick along summer camp, which is also musical instruction for kids, but then also aimed at adults. So we do musical performances, but nine times out of ten, with a musical performance, they're going to get some history thrown in. So, for instance, we did during I've endured, we did this wonderful tribute to singer Hazel Dickens, where Karen Collins, a wonderful musician from up near Maryland, came down and she had met Hazel years ago.
0:25:05 - (Rene Rodgers): And we told the story of Hazel's life and the story behind her songs. And she played some of the music. And so you got sort of the best of both worlds from that. But we also do a lot of k through twelve programming. We do school groups, we do outreach, we do after school. Sometimes we supplement after school programming with the local schools. And every summer we do a teacher in service that allows teachers to come into the museum, learn about the resources that they can use from us because we have loads of free resources, from lesson plans to student activity sheets to virtual videos and stuff that they can use in the classroom.
0:25:41 - (Rene Rodgers): And we basically just give them the time and the space to learn about that and other educational resources. So, for instance, last year we invited several other local museums to come in and share their resources, too, just so the teachers know that there's all these wonderful educational sort of support systems for them.
0:26:01 - (Allie Bynum): Yes, absolutely. I think that's beautiful and that's necessary. And museums are vital components of community, for sure. Yes, for all ages, like you said. And keeping them at an affordable cost so anyone can access them is important.
0:26:18 - (Rene Rodgers): And like when we have special exhibits, we always try. If it's an exhibit we've created in house, obviously we have full control over that content. But, you know, the majority of the exhibits are ones that we've brought in from outside and wherever possible. And I'd say that almost every special exhibit we've had, except maybe one or two, we've been able to do this with. We have supplemented it in some way with content that ties back either to what the museum is about or to Appalachia or to our region. So even so, for instance, with the civil rights exhibit, we reached out to the local black community in Bristol and also in Johnson City and got the segregated, what had been the segregated high schools before they integrated in the 1960s to share some of their stories, their pictures, artifacts. And so we were able to then tell during that civil rights exhibit a little bit of the story about the high schools that had been so important to the black community in this region and how, and how integration had impacted those students.
0:27:18 - (Allie Bynum): Right.
0:27:18 - (Rene Rodgers): So we got to tell that local story, too.
0:27:20 - (Allie Bynum): Love that. So you're taking a national event and making it resonate with locals as well.
0:27:25 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes, yes. And also, you know, what's great about doing that is that you then make these parts, you make these connections within your community. And, you know, with the birthplace of country music museum, it's a wonderful museum. But if you're not a country music fan, like if you're really into metal music instead or something, or opera or.
0:27:45 - (Allie Bynum): Whatever, you might not think to yourself.
0:27:46 - (Rene Rodgers): You might think to yourself, well, I'm sure that's great, because museums are great, but I'm not really interested in country music.
0:27:51 - (Allie Bynum): Sure.
0:27:52 - (Rene Rodgers): So we want to give people lots of different ways to connect with us, because even if country music isn't the music you're listening to at home, the history and the story is so interesting. You just have to come through our doors or just have to listen to our radio station, because that's the other cool thing. And part of the other sort of community connection is that we've got this live, working community radio station in the museum.
0:28:12 - (Allie Bynum): Yes, I wanted to talk about that radio Bristol session.
0:28:15 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes.
0:28:16 - (Allie Bynum): Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that?
0:28:18 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. So the Radio Bristol, it's a booth. It's actually part of the Museum of permanent exhibits. And originally it was meant to be a static exhibit. It was going to have, like, wax figures in it so that it just looked like what a radio station, a period radio station would look like. And then someone on the content team was like, I wonder how, what it entails to create a real radio station. And they.
0:28:40 - (Allie Bynum): They already got inspired by the exhibit.
0:28:42 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. And they were like, well, let's look into it. And, you know, there's some. Obviously, we've got some great state, some great stations around here, but we also have television stations that used to be radio stations. So you have that history of WCYB, WJL, both of those had radio stations.
0:28:58 - (Allie Bynum): No way.
0:28:59 - (Rene Rodgers): And then it meant we also had a few people around here who actually knew about the industry. And the next thing we know, we have an FCC license for a low power radio station. And it is a nonprofit radio station. It has like 30 unique programs run by either staff members or volunteer dj's. The museum has two radio shows. Within that, we do a partnership with the Bristol Public Library called Radio Bristol Book Club once a month, where we talk about a book about music or Appalachia on the air, and then talk to the author about their book.
0:29:36 - (Rene Rodgers): And then we also do a weekly show called Museum Talk, where we talk to different cultural organizations and museums about the work of museums and what they do.
0:29:45 - (Allie Bynum): And this is stationed right inside the museum?
0:29:47 - (Rene Rodgers): It is. So if you're in the museum, when one of those dj's is on the air, you can see them in the booth, they can wave at you, and then it's broadcast live, all sorts of different shows. We've got bluegrass, we've got gospel, we've got roots music. We've got americana, we've got country. We even have. We had a garage rock show for a while. We've got a show about food ways. So also just, you know, we used to have a show about folklore.
0:30:13 - (Rene Rodgers): So all sorts of really interesting shows and a great way to connect with the community for sure.
0:30:18 - (Allie Bynum): And how would someone tune into that programming?
0:30:22 - (Rene Rodgers): So if you're local and that's usually about 20 miles radius around Bristol, you can listen to it on W 100.1 FM. FM. But you can also download the radio Bristol app onto your phone and listen to it anytime. Or you can stream online via our website.
0:30:36 - (Allie Bynum): Awesome. And that's just another one of those touch points of, like, nostalgia and connecting is hearing that old radio. We're not always just listening to, you know, this live, constant stream of ad free music. It's nice to tune into some intentional.
0:30:51 - (Rene Rodgers): Programming and you get some really good history in it, too. You know, we're always talking about the history of some of the songs and the artists and this day in history and country music and. Cool. There's not very many museums out there that have a live, working radio station in them.
0:31:04 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, that's pretty special. So how. Let's see, do you have any fun events coming up this spring or summer in the museum?
0:31:11 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. So every month on the second Tuesday of the month, we do a program called Speaker Sessions. We started that in the pandemic as a virtual program when people couldn't come through our doors. And now it is an in person program, and we have a different speaker each month. Sometimes they're both a speaker and a musician. So sometimes you get music as part of it, too, talking about different things. So we had a couple of local chefs talking about appalachian food ways in March, we had someone from hat show print in April.
0:31:40 - (Rene Rodgers): On May 14, we've got Dave Egger and Lynn Cook. And Dave Edgar is a really famous musician who lives in this area and has played on all sorts of really important artist records. And Lynn Cook is a mixed martial artist expert. And they work together to create this wonderful program called composing a champion to help people.
0:32:01 - (Allie Bynum): How fun is that?
0:32:01 - (Rene Rodgers): Build their confidence to get up on stage and perform. So they're going to be talking about that. So we do that every second Tuesday at 07:00 and you can listen, you can come in person, or you can watch it on YouTube free and open to the public. We always have museum story time for tiny tots in their grownups where they get to read a story, they get to have a live music performance from our very own mama molasses and do a craft together every first Friday of the month at 1030 the second and fourth Saturdays of the month. We always have our community in bluegrass jams where anybody can come and listen or play music together.
0:32:38 - (Allie Bynum): That was a good time.
0:32:39 - (Rene Rodgers): And then if you go onto our website, birthplace of countrymusic.org, and then go to the events tab, it'll have all the updates as like, more one off programming. But one of the really cool things that's coming up, because our organization is not just a museum. It's also, like I said, the radio station and the Bristol Rhythm and Roots reunion.
0:32:55 - (Allie Bynum): Yes.
0:32:55 - (Rene Rodgers): We've got a really wonderful fundraising concert coming up on June 1 called in the Pines with Dwight Yocomb, who is a favorite of so many people.
0:33:04 - (Allie Bynum): Y'all turn the volume up in the pines. This is first of its kind.
0:33:07 - (Rene Rodgers): It is. Yes, it's the first. It's a fundraising concert for the birthplace of country music to help us continue to do this work and to make it, keep it as accessible and community focused as we possibly can. So it's got dwight Yocomb, el King, Paul Cawthorn, and Wyatt Flores. So four acts, one concert, downtown Bristol. It's going to be awesome on June 1. So definitely people should get their tickets for that.
0:33:30 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, y'all should totally get tickets. This is going to be a great event. And like Renee said, this is a fundraiser for the Bristol Rhythm and Roots reunion.
0:33:37 - (Rene Rodgers): Well, for the actual birthplace, the country music at the birthplace.
0:33:40 - (Allie Bynum): Okay, I see.
0:33:41 - (Rene Rodgers): Yep.
0:33:42 - (Allie Bynum): And can we also talk a little bit about rhythm and roots?
0:33:44 - (Rene Rodgers): We can. Yeah.
0:33:45 - (Allie Bynum): Okay, awesome. To those of you listening, I know locals are pretty, pretty familiar with this festival, but if somebody were not, and they were visiting northeast Tennessee, and that happened to be when rhythm and roots was here, what stands out about it and why should they come?
0:34:00 - (Rene Rodgers): So rhythm and roots is such a great festival. It's the second weekend of September, starts on Friday, ends on Sunday. There's about 100 different bands here across 15 different stages, both inside and outside. What's different about our festival is that it's actually in the historic downtown of Bristol, Tennessee, Virginia. So you're in two states, two places at once. You're not in a muddy field. If you have bad weather, if you have bad weather, you can always get inside somewhere, and at least you're not in mud.
0:34:30 - (Rene Rodgers): But it's a great sort of mix of country, blues, bluegrass, americana, roots music. We always have several headliners, people you would. I've definitely heard of. We also have a lot of great regional and local bands, and then there's always, like a sector of bands that are just on the cusp of breaking out. We've had a lot of amazing acts who have just hit the big time right after they've been within a year or so of being here. And so you've seen them here first.
0:34:57 - (Rene Rodgers): And it's such an affordable festival. I mean, the tickets for three days of bands, there's food and craft vendors, there's a children's day, so if you have kids, kids under twelve get in free.
0:35:10 - (Allie Bynum): Very family friendly family, very crafts and artisans, local arts out there to come support.
0:35:15 - (Rene Rodgers): It's just a really great festival, has a really wonderful atmosphere and it couldn't.
0:35:21 - (Allie Bynum): Have a better name. Rhythm and roots, I mean, that's exactly what it is. You feel connected when you're here. And like Renee said, some great local musicians on the cusp of turning into rising big stars.
0:35:32 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah, 49 Winchester is a great example of that.
0:35:34 - (Allie Bynum): They sure are. And they're going to be here this September, so get those tickets as well. And Renee, we're going to switch it up just a little bit. Okay. Are you ready?
0:35:43 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes.
0:35:45 - (Allie Bynum): So what are some favorite road trip song that you like to jam out too when you're spending a long day on the road?
0:35:51 - (Rene Rodgers): Okay, well, I was in the car 10 hours yesterday, so this is very timely. I get really tired when I drive, so I have to have really upbeat music. My playlist is a real mix, but I will fast forward over anything that goes slow or feels a bit too fast. It has to be. So. I really love pink. Okay. Pink is one of my. I saw her in concert last summer and it was amazing. So I really love tink. I love the live Folsom prison album by Johnny Cash and our native daughters that has amethyst Keough was one of the artists on that. I love those, though. There are a few songs on both of those two albums that I have to. That are too slow for a road trip.
0:36:30 - (Rene Rodgers): I love the chicks. I do listen to a lot of rap, actually.
0:36:35 - (Allie Bynum): Oh, here we go. Now it's coming.
0:36:38 - (Rene Rodgers): I do listen to a lot of rap. I also, funnily enough, I have, I don't know if you've ever heard it, Snoop Dogg's affirmation for kids.
0:36:45 - (Allie Bynum): No, I've not heard his affirmations for kids.
0:36:47 - (Rene Rodgers): It's very. It makes you feel better about yourself. So I'll say, listen to Snoop Dogg's affirmations.
0:36:52 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, that's interesting.
0:36:54 - (Rene Rodgers): And I really. One of my favorite songs, though, and even though, and it totally contradicts everything I've just said about it, has to be really upbeat and fast. Is that one of my favorite songs of all time to sing along to is a song by Sean Colvin called Orion in the sky, which I can listen to over and over and over again.
0:37:11 - (Allie Bynum): Jam.
0:37:11 - (Rene Rodgers): Okay. Yeah. So ones that I can sing along to and ones that I can sort of balk to are what I need on a road trip to keep me sort of keep you alert. Can alert.
0:37:20 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, I can relate on those. Those are some good ones. What are some of your favorite activities and hobbies around northeast Tennessee that you'd recommend to someone coming for the first time?
0:37:30 - (Rene Rodgers): Well, I have a 75 pound puppy who has a lot of energy, so long walks and hike are definitely one of the big things. And we're so lucky. There's so many wonderful places to go hiking and to be out in nature. And you can get out into nature. Even in Bristol, there's a huge park in Bristol, Tennessee, stills Creek Park.
0:37:51 - (Allie Bynum): Stews Creek is awesome.
0:37:52 - (Rene Rodgers): That is wonderful. So you don't have to go far at all to hit wonderful nature trails. So that's one of them, obviously. The lake.
0:38:00 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah.
0:38:01 - (Rene Rodgers): And the rivers again, just poodling around and shoot, we're lucky to live here. We're very lucky. Tubing on the river or just being out on a pontoon on the lake and just sort of poodling around and with your music on and some good food and getting into the water, what.
0:38:17 - (Allie Bynum): More could you do?
0:38:17 - (Rene Rodgers): Those are a big thing. But, you know, this is such a sort of. There's so much culture here.
0:38:23 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah.
0:38:23 - (Rene Rodgers): You know, it's a small. It's small towns, but there's lots of live music, obviously, but there's also lots of wonderful traditional craftspeople and artists of different types. So not just musicians. So I think. And there's some other really good museums. I mean, just in Johnson City alone or near Johnson City, you've got Rock Hay Mount. You've got Jonesboro, the oldest town in Tennessee. You've got the Reese museum, you've got the hands on museum and gray fossil site, all these amazing museums on the museums. And then you're right there on the cusp of southwest Virginia, too. So just, you know, this is a really, really great place to vacate in and to live.
0:39:03 - (Allie Bynum): It sure is. It truly is. Our appalachian culture here runs deep. And how you said earlier, like, when we're younger, we don't appreciate it as much, but, you know, growing, it keeps bringing us back.
0:39:14 - (Rene Rodgers): It does. I know so many people who've moved back after leaving and feeling that same way of I need to be. We're bigger and better.
0:39:20 - (Allie Bynum): Oh, yeah. And then coming over that, you know, Sam's gap or wherever, I'm seeing those.
0:39:24 - (Rene Rodgers): Blue ridge mountains when I'm really upset, or when I'm like, oh, man, why did I move back? Because I was in England for 20 years. The minute I see the mountains, I'm like, okay, I love this. These mountains are beautiful. They make me calm everything for me.
0:39:39 - (Allie Bynum): Absolutely, absolutely. Who's been one of your favorite past performers at rhythm and roots?
0:39:46 - (Rene Rodgers): Oh, Sturgill Simpson. So I saw him when he was there several years ago and ended up going to see him again at the Tennessee theater in Knoxville because I loved him so much. He was great. There was this one group, and I'm not sure I'm going to get their name right, but I just sort of stumbled because as a staff member, I don't really get to sit down and listen to music. I stumble into music for a minute here or a minute there, and I stumbled into these guys, and I think they were called the milk box kids, but I really loved them.
0:40:17 - (Rene Rodgers): They were really interesting. I always loved to see amethyst.
0:40:20 - (Allie Bynum): I would go back to cartoon kids.
0:40:21 - (Rene Rodgers): Was it milk carton kids? Yeah.
0:40:23 - (Allie Bynum): This little band that's like one of my favorite bands.
0:40:25 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes. I love them.
0:40:26 - (Allie Bynum): They're so good.
0:40:26 - (Rene Rodgers): I love them. This mountain I always loved. I saw Doyle Lawson for the first time live at rhythm and roots. And I'm not really a bluegrass or a gospel y person in general, but I was just mesmerized. Absolutely loved it.
0:40:42 - (Allie Bynum): And you're hearing it live, it's just like you're part of the dance. It's a whole thing.
0:40:45 - (Rene Rodgers): And I saw someone, I think, last year, sunny war, maybe it was a single female musician, and she sang Elizabeth Cotton. I stumbled on her right as she started Elizabeth Cotton's freight train, which Elizabeth Cotton was featured in the Ivan Durrett exhibit. She was one of my favorite women that was featured in that exhibit. Freight train, she wrote when she was twelve years old. And this woman was, like, singing it at rhythm and roots, and it was beautiful. And I took a video of it, and I'm pretty sure her name was Sunny.
0:41:16 - (Rene Rodgers): But I could be wrong about that again, because I stumble across people as opposed to knowing who I'm seeing sometimes. I'm not 100% sure.
0:41:23 - (Allie Bynum): That's kind of the fun part about the festival. I remember so many people I'd never heard of Holy Ghost tent revival.
0:41:28 - (Rene Rodgers): They're awesome, aren't they? So cool. I love them.
0:41:30 - (Allie Bynum): And then they just kind of disappeared. But I saw one of the best shows at rhythm and roots. And do you remember Roz Allen?
0:41:35 - (Rene Rodgers): I don't remember Roz alon. No.
0:41:37 - (Allie Bynum): Okay. Okay. He was just like this organic farmer, and he would just barefoot around and play his guitar, but he ended up performing at rhythm and roots. Oh, no. It's very nostalgic, I suppose.
0:41:46 - (Rene Rodgers): I think that's why it's so great, because you do just walk away with at least two or three artists you've never heard of that are just your new favorite.
0:41:53 - (Allie Bynum): Yes, for sure.
0:41:54 - (Rene Rodgers): Oh, Warren Trady. The Warren Trady. Ooh.
0:41:56 - (Allie Bynum): Okay.
0:41:56 - (Rene Rodgers): I loved them. Absolutely loved them.
0:41:59 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah. Special, special toms in downtown Bristol.
0:42:02 - (Rene Rodgers): Yes.
0:42:02 - (Allie Bynum): And so how can folks support the museum and keep Bristol's rich music heritage alive for future generations? And can you maybe talk a little bit about the 1927 society if that's something folks want to get involved with?
0:42:16 - (Rene Rodgers): So we always welcome people who will donate to us. What's interesting about museums is that only 27% of our funding comes from earned income, and only 5% of that is actually museum admissions. People walking through our doors. So that includes what we sell in our store, what we're event costs, all that stuff. The rest of it is made usually through grants and through private donations and people supporting us that way. So any amount makes a difference to us.
0:42:45 - (Rene Rodgers): You can go online to learn more about how to donate to the whole organization. And the 1927 society is basically, you're committing to give a certain amount every year, and that's dollar 250. And then as a member of the 1927 society, there's certain membership benefits. The other thing is just bring your friends and family. When you've got people visiting, come and visit the museum shop in our museum store. We've got some amazing, wonderful artisan items and branded items.
0:43:14 - (Rene Rodgers): Really great gifts. I probably pay half my salary there for December when I'm doing my Christmas.
0:43:21 - (Allie Bynum): Cause I just want to pop in. I have to just swing.
0:43:23 - (Rene Rodgers): But also talk about us. Tell other people about us. If you're going to be around on June 1, please come to in the pines. That's a great way to support us. And then we'll also be doing our super raffle again. I think it'll be our fifth year. That's another fundraiser that we do in the summer where you can also win amazing prizes from a car to $25,000. So there's lots of great ways to support us, but really just telling people about us, coming through our doors, participating in our activities.
0:43:50 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, just come experience it for yourself and learn something.
0:43:54 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And share our posts with people because that's also a great way. We put a lot of really deep content onto those social posts so you can get a lot of really great history there, too.
0:44:07 - (Allie Bynum): Very intentional content on there. I follow you all. And can you share with our listeners again that website where they can check out the birthplace of country music museum?
0:44:15 - (Rene Rodgers): Yep. So if you go to birthplaceofcountrymusic.org on the right hand top side of the website, you'll have all the different tabs for the festival, the radio station, the museum, but also you can go and read our blog there. You can find out more about the events, and that's also where you can find out how to support us.
0:44:30 - (Allie Bynum): Awesome.
0:44:30 - (Rene Rodgers): And you could also become a volunteer. We also really welcome anyone who wants to volunteer with us.
0:44:35 - (Allie Bynum): We love to get the word out about volunteers. So y'all heard that if you're looking for a place to lend a helping hand.
0:44:39 - (Rene Rodgers): Yep. And it's a lot of fun.
0:44:41 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah, sounds like tons of fun. And then, renee, thank you so much for, for coming on today.
0:44:46 - (Rene Rodgers): Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it being here, for sure.
0:44:48 - (Allie Bynum): Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?
0:44:51 - (Rene Rodgers): Just keep listening to the music for sure, and tune in. You won't regret it.
0:44:55 - (Allie Bynum): Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all you do for the community and for sharing your passion with the museum.
0:45:01 - (Rene Rodgers): Thank you.
0:45:02 - (Allie Bynum): And for upcoming events and happenings in northeast Tennessee. Be sure to follow us on all the socials and check out our website at northeast tennessee.org where there's more up here to do. CMB when you meet me in Tennessee thanks for tuning in.