0:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Last month I was driving through a small downtown, in north eastern Tennessee, and realized that my two left tires were directly on top of the state line. 0:18 [SPEAKER_01]: On my right side was still Tennessee, but on my left side was the state of Virginia. 0:25 [SPEAKER_01]: The yellow line was the border line. 0:28 [SPEAKER_01]: It occurred to me that these shop owners on opposite side of the street were not only in two different states, but subject to different laws and taxation. 0:39 [SPEAKER_01]: The name of the town was Bristol, and when researching its history, I learned that this strange, multi-state downtown, was recognized by the U.S. Congress as the official birthplace of country music. 0:55 [SPEAKER_01]: I found a local museum called the birthplace of country music museum and reached out to head curator Renee Rogers to learn more. 1:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Alright so why don't we go ahead and start with you explaining to me what your name is and your title there. 1:15 [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Renee Rogers and my title is head trainer at the birthplace of 1:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, your museum is located in Bristol. 1:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that in Tennessee or is that in Virginia? 1:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's interesting. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Our museum is in Bristol, Virginia, but our offices where I am right now are in Bristol, Tennessee. 1:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The state line goes right down the middle of our historic downtown and called state street, strangely enough. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are actually two separate towns, obviously because of the two states, and they each have their own city councils, their own police departments, 1:54 [SPEAKER_00]: and court systems are at school systems that we function often, especially in the downtown area, as when and today, even if that's not what we are on the civic definition or the political definition of what a city is. 2:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 2:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fascinating that your technical city would be in both states, but then you have to operate as two different cities. 2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 2:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's wild when you 20 explained that it passed the street in Tennessee. 2:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The taxes are better for this, but on this side of the street in Virginia, the taxes are better for this or it's a little things that you even think about. 2:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, was Bristol originally founded before one of those states was formed. 2:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that why it's on the line? 2:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, so it was formed in the 1850s officially and they were actually called two different things for a while. 2:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was Bristol, I think, was the Tennessee side and the other side was called Goodsonville, I believe. 2:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But everyone had gotten so used to calling the town itself, Bristol, so they then incorporated this two separate cities on the stapling, but within two different states. 2:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Fascinating. 2:57 [SPEAKER_01]: So is there a post office in both sides? 3:00 [SPEAKER_00]: They're used today and now we share a post office and the main post office is on the Tennessee side and we've got like a smaller little post office on the Virginia side, but there used to be two quite grand those grand old post office building. 3:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have to really amazing old post office buildings and Bristol one on the Tennessee side one on the Virginia that are quite grand that neither one of them holds the post office anymore. 3:21 [SPEAKER_00]: What are they used for now? 3:23 [SPEAKER_00]: One of them is a event space, plus it has a speak easy and a basement, which is cool. 3:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And the other one is privately owned, but they also use it as an event space. 3:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I've not been in the upstairs of the Virginia one in a while, but the Tennessee one, and they've done a beautiful restoration of it, and has a lot of the old post-stop has stopped at it, and it's really cool. 3:46 [SPEAKER_01]: This is just a little side story, but I was telling Nick how I discovered your museum. 3:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm in the very north of Indiana, and I was traveling in Tennessee at the time, and I was looking for the nearest Tesla charger because I drive a Tesla, and I saw that Bristol has two Tesla chargers. 4:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But they're listed, yeah. 4:08 [SPEAKER_01]: But they're listed as one of them is in Bristol, Virginia, and the other one's in Bristol, Tennessee. 4:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, which one is it? 4:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Is this Tesla charger in Virginia or Tennessee? 4:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm in Tennessee. 4:19 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to go to Virginia. 4:21 [SPEAKER_01]: So I was looking that up on the map, trying to figure out which one was the case. 4:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And when I did that, I came across your museum. 4:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, that works like a fascinating museum. 4:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, just the story of what we tell the museum is great, but like you said, the history of a city on tea state volumes and functioning in that way. 4:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not like we're the only one in America on state lines, but there's not a lot of us. 4:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And it is interesting. 4:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we're going to get into of course the what happened for the birthplace, but at the time this was that that was the case though that Bristol was known as a place on the state line. 4:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, and back in the 1920s, they put up the, and I don't know if he saw this when you came here, the sign across the state line, a big illuminated sign. 5:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's again, that's a wonderful historic piece of history because there's a lot of lot left of those illuminated like city signs and it says Bristol and then it has two little arrows that point to either side because it's straddling state street up near the train station. 5:22 [SPEAKER_00]: One point to Virginia and one point to Tennessee, it goes Bristol, points to the tea state and it goes a good place to live underneath. 5:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's something that it was known for a while though. 5:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, in the 1850s, they actually had two different aims. 5:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So they weren't allowed to incorporate a city across state lines, basically. 5:39 [SPEAKER_01]: make sense. 5:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So on October 12th, 1998, Congress designated Bristol as the birthplace of country music, can you explain to me the events that led up to Bristol having that type of recognition? 5:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So it started off with a group of dedicated community numbers who were interested in the history and interested in that musical heritage that came from that event and from our region of the whole really digging deeper into the history and wanting to share it more widely and then doing a very good job of that they did a lot of work to share the story to create programming to tell our legislators about it and so both states initially did it so it became it was a. 6:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They were two state declarations of that name. 6:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I think, I believe it was one each maybe from each state went forward and took it to the U.S. Congress. 6:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But it started out at the state level. 6:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And that got to the state level from just local community members who thought this was an important piece of history that needed to be recognized more widely. 6:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So why is Bristol known as the birthplace of country music? 6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know, it's interesting because a no single thing, especially music, I never have a single birthplace, but we are definitely the reason why we're known as it is because of the 1927, Bristol sessions that happened here. 6:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many stories that like come before and after the Bristol sessions that play into that birth of country music, but we sort of know what happened here is the birth of that early commercial country music industry, because while there had been 7:09 [SPEAKER_00]: recordings of what was then called Hillbilly music or that early traditional old time style music. 7:15 [SPEAKER_00]: As far back, it heard much earlier in the 1920s like 1928 to 1923. 7:19 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of things that happened that made bristols really have a particular impact. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I call it the perfect storm of the events that happened around those 1920s and Universal Sessions. 7:28 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things was about technology. 7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Up until about 1926, 7:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Acoustic corn technology for recording. 7:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So that is a non-electrical type of recording and it did the job well, but obviously when you're doing something without the electrification and you don't have the amplification process happening, it's tricky, especially when you're dealing with, say, a band full of different instruments and people are having to move around to get up near the horn so that they can be heard better. 7:56 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of us think of the guitar as one of the primary 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: iconic instruments of country music. 8:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But for a while, it was just a rhythm, background instrument, especially when it was being recorded by an acoustic horn because the fiddle in the band you had a much more driving harder found and could drown it out. 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't heard as well. 8:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So when the electric microphone was invented around 1925-26, that started to transform the way those records would sound to people. 8:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So with Bristol, it was recorded 8:30 [SPEAKER_00]: a better sounding record is probably going to sell better. 8:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The second thing was Ralph PR. 8:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He was the producer at the Victor talking machine company who was the record label that was here in 1927. 8:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He was a visionary. 8:42 [SPEAKER_00]: There was some amazing producers out there and certainly just in our, you know, just down the road, it jumps in city and then a little bit further to Knoxville. 8:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Some amazing, he'll believe, and other music were recorded around the same time with producers from other record labels. 8:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But Ralph PR I think was interesting 9:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He really, he knew how to make money from the music, but he also knew what would sell well and what people would be interested in and was very good at finding it. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And so when he came here, he had his own music publishing company. 9:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So he was able to, he set up his own music publishing company so that he was able to copyright the performance itself, copyright the song if it didn't have any copyright already attached to it. 9:23 [SPEAKER_00]: and also he could he took on some of the acts that he met as part of his like slew of artists. 9:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was paying these royalties. 9:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He was paying one of his so people were getting a good deal from it as artists. 9:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just think that sort of the basis of what he was doing there. 9:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of what we see in the music industry today. 9:42 [SPEAKER_00]: What's interesting to me about Ralph Peer is not only what he did for Hillgling music, but he had been really active in race records before this, so that was music that was based on the music of African-American artists and aimed in an African-American audience. 9:54 [SPEAKER_00]: But also later down the line, he got into Latin music, classical music, and the company that he started in which was called a Southern music publishing company is still around today, still thinly owned and run and is one of the biggest and dependent publishing music publishing companies in the world. 10:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And you think that guy was here in 1927, recording these songs and it's pretty exciting. 10:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And then third of all is who was here for those sessions? 10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: This was one of the first times that we had what were called these location recording sessions. 10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Not where the artists were traveling up to New York or a bigger studio in a more urban space like Richmond, Indiana or Atlanta, Georgia, but they were actually the recording equipment and the recording personnel were coming to 10:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The region where that music was being based, so admit that you got a lot more artists recorded it once. 10:39 [SPEAKER_00]: They were here for two weeks, at the very end of July, beginning of August, recorded 19 different acts, 76 different songs, 69 of which were released from those recordings. 10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So compare that to like it when an artist would go up and record several songs, and then another artist might come up. 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: They were getting a lot of music. 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: where that really short space of time. 10:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Pio came here because he knew Ernest Stownman already. 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Ernest Stownman had been a was a recording veteran at this point he recorded up to the 80 to 100 sides already by the time 1927 rolled around. 11:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And he recommended to Ralph Pio that this would be a great place to come to find that he'll believe music that he was looking for. 11:14 [SPEAKER_00]: You had veterans like Ernest Stownman who recorded here and then you had newcomers. 11:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He were not newcomers to performing but newcomers to being recorded and released. 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Jimmy Rogers, who became known as the father of Country Music, and the Carter family who became known. 11:30 [SPEAKER_00]: as the first family of country music to really foundational acts to the country music that came after them and even today, Ernest Stomen and the Stomen family, again, were hugely instrumental in the development of the country music industry. 11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you had a lot of other interesting acts that came out of that. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The first holiness music was recorded here by Ernest Phelps and his holiness quartet. 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the next year when Ralph Pio came back in 1838 by the holiness singers 11:57 [SPEAKER_00]: who had all these amazing original compositions that were ranging from events, stories about train wrecks and mind disasters, early protests songs, so there's a wonderful song about how can a poor man stand to live? 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of this was happy right around the depression when he was still writing these songs. 12:15 [SPEAKER_00]: After 1927, when he was still producing songs, it's, I think it's called, how can a poor man stand such times in love? 12:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It walked title, but it tells you everything you need to know about what songs about it not title. 12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So just these really interesting recordings, and we have one African American artist at the Bristol Sessions, L. Watson, who despite the fact that he did two harmonic episodes, there weren't two dissimilar from the harmonic pieces that Henry Wedder did. 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Henry Witters, where I want to compete with or market it is Hillbilly and El Watson's were marketed as race records. 12:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But one of the Johnson Brothers, Charles Johnson played on El Watson's record and El Watson played on some of the Johnson Brothers records. 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And so those are some of the earliest integrated country and blues records also. 12:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some really interesting bits of history that sort of intersect in Bristol that helped make it so special and also have that impact, especially when you think of the artists, the technology and the producer. 13:09 [SPEAKER_01]: for the Bristol sessions. 13:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Did you say that was over a two week period? 13:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the very end of July beginning of August. 13:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And how did he get the word out that they were going to be recording this and get people in? 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Initially, he put an advertisement in the local paper. 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It was an advertisement. 13:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Quite small, actually, at the bottom of the local furniture, dealers, furniture stores that sold like the trollets and records and that kind of thing. 13:36 [SPEAKER_00]: At part a few people out plus they did also pre book and I put my little earquits from that, because I'm not sure it's as formal as that, but they had some artists in mind already to perform so that they knew that there was a few artists on the books already to perform. 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But then after a few days when they weren't getting as many people coming out of the sort of woodwork on their own, he persuaded the local paper to do a short editorial or article about what he was doing there and talked about how much money earned a stem and had made the previous year and royalties and for the time period it was. 14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: a really big chunk of change. 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And that brought a lot more people out interested in wanting to record. 14:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And people like the Carter family, who traveled down Tripilton's Virginia, which today is like a 45-minute drive. 14:29 [SPEAKER_00]: 15 minutes maybe. 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It took them an entire day. 14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: There were a car broke down two or three times with an eight-month pregnant male in the next seat. 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It was like, it was a big deal to come out for something like that, but they got people coming from Kentucky, from West Virginia. 14:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, so it did work. 14:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And he also had believes to talk to one of the civic clubs. 14:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And I can't remember if it's the rotary or the Kwaness or one of those types of clubs about the work that he was doing. 14:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And at the time, the music was being called Hillbilly Music. 15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah, and that was again something that was a tribute to Ralph Pierre that terminology, I don't know, we're not entirely sure how completely accurate the story is that the story is that back in the earlier 1920s he had been recording for a different record label that he worked for at the time and there were there was a group that came up and they didn't have a name and so after he recorded their songs he said, what do I call you because he wanted. 15:28 [SPEAKER_00]: to be able to write it down on the q-sheet, and I'm like, you can call us whatever you like. 15:32 [SPEAKER_00]: We're just a bunch of hillbillies from North Carolina in Virginia, and so they write down the hillbillies. 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, supposedly, that's where that sort of hillbilly term for the music came from. 15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And what was different between the music that was being recorded there versus the other music that was being widely recorded elsewhere? 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: This music, this, what we call, what I'm calling, he'll be willing to use it right now. 15:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously this music could've been being played. 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And... 15:59 [SPEAKER_00]: heard for decades before this and was very common in this region and other action regions in particular that were not only in Appalachia and the recording industry at the time was doing a lot race records that some of the earliest race records were being done around 1920 and that's what we would think of today's blues a lot of and then reaching out as you move forward in time to jazz there's 16:24 [SPEAKER_00]: like Vaudeville and popular songs, what we think of as pop music today, they had their own version up back there and those were the songs that were being played in the dance halls and being played on the stages and the people were hearing all the time, but there's also classical music and one of the things that I think is really interesting when you look at some of the records from 16:42 [SPEAKER_00]: that early period of the 20th century is the sleeves that they're put in often have different songs listed on them or different types of music listed on them and I sort of think of it the way you know when you go to a website where you buy something and then the next time you go to that website it's hey you bought this last time I bet you would like this it was like the equivalent of that but on the records sleeve and they would have like 17:04 [SPEAKER_00]: different ethnic groups music. 17:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So they might have, like I said, they might have the Latin music, they might have Polish music where they might have Irish music. 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So there was all sorts of different music being recorded. 17:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Hillbilly music hit its stride in those early 1920s, mid to 1920s and like in 30s when it was really being recorded. 17:22 [SPEAKER_00]: heavily and finding that rural that what was perceived as a white rural audience, but was of course much broader than that. 17:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Because the tricky thing with genre when you define genre is that you're not really necessarily defining your listeners or the people who are making that music, you're defining what you think will work in a marketing sense. 17:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know a lot of what was happening in race records and he'll be a music 17:43 [SPEAKER_00]: They were influencing each other. 17:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They were certainly audiences were listening to those types of music. 17:48 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of country blues that like cross the blind between the two with both white musicians and black musicians playing that music. 17:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So those genre terms are helpful and talking about it, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the full reality of what people were doing when they were listening and playing the music themselves. 18:05 [SPEAKER_01]: When they decided to release the recordings where they were releasing the most records, 18:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yes. 18:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So these would have been flat disc records. 18:13 [SPEAKER_00]: One song per side. 18:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They were called 78s because they were rotated 78 revolutions per minute. 18:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And they only would fit about three and a half to four minutes on each side. 18:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So what's also cool about it is that of course a lot of the songs that were being sung. 18:30 [SPEAKER_00]: We're based on much older songs, ballots in particular. 18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And those ballots when they were being sung just in the community as something that was being shared on with like oral storytelling, they might be 15, 16, 20 versus long, which is not going to fit on a three and a half minute record. 18:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of, a lot of those songs that were being based on those were having to be cut down and being whittled down to this telling the story and an engaging way for three and a half to four minutes to fit on those recording. 18:58 [SPEAKER_00]: There's 19:00 [SPEAKER_00]: how many were they able to make? 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: For the 1927 resource sessions, so there was 76 different sides or songs. 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I say side, side of a record, but it was 76 different songs. 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So actually that's my true. 19:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Cause some of them were like, they did more than one version of a song. 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And 69 of them were actually released to the public and sold. 19:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know how many sold? 19:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Not off the top of my head, I can't give it some of them were very, so let's think of that Jimmy Rogers, father of country music. 19:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He recorded two songs with the Bristol sessions and they did okay. 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't like huge sellers, but Ralph Pierce saw that there was something special there and invited him to come record more. 19:45 [SPEAKER_00]: later that year early 1928, and that's when he recorded tea for Texas, which was a huge seller. 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So when you're talking about a huge seller, it really, it's very different from the way we would talk about them, but say for instance, one of the best sellers in 1928, I think sold about 14,000 copies, but then you did have other artists who could sell a lot more than that. 20:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just very, it was very dependent. 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And then also remember, this was right at the cost of a great depression, which also influences what you might see on that. 20:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, the Johnson City Sessions, 20:15 [SPEAKER_00]: a couple of years later. 20:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, so the amazing music came out of no sessions, but it happened right at the time when the country was losing the farm, as they said, and people weren't buying records. 20:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I weren't able to afford things. 20:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It changed the impact of those sessions because of the economic hardships that people were facing. 20:33 [SPEAKER_01]: For the Bristol sessions, this was the first time, if I'm hearing you correctly. 20:36 [SPEAKER_01]: This was the first time that this type of music was recorded to be released as records. 20:41 [SPEAKER_00]: No, it had been recorded or released before this. 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So, all the way back in 1922 to 1923, you had some early recordings. 20:49 [SPEAKER_00]: But they were happening in the studios of those record labels and places like New York or other urban areas. 20:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So, it wasn't the first recordings. 20:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why the birthplace of continuous is a wonderful title, 21:03 [SPEAKER_00]: a way to get people interested in what this story is and it's impact, but people mistake that it's the first and they weren't the first and they weren't the last but they were significant and that's why that birthplace title was given to us and that's why I said earlier and when we were speaking that there's a lot of other places that can be part of that that are part of that birthplace story. 21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So you think about Fiddling John Carson who recorded down in Atlanta. 21:26 [SPEAKER_00]: in, I believe, 1924 or 23, 1908 or 24, and that was the first time that Southern music had been recorded in the south, where before, like it had been someone traveling up to the New York, for instance. 21:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So there are a lot of other parts of the story at other places that play into that. 21:47 [SPEAKER_01]: I got you. 21:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So for the significance for your museum to be called the birthplace, are you saying it's because of the amount of songs that were recorded in the type of technology that was used at the time? 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, the way we look at it is that early, the birth of early commercial country music. 22:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So the fact that, like you said, a lot of recordings all at once, the technology and recently changed, so they sold better, a producer who knew how to really make the 22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: the music that he found and that he recorded, but also that had a more a fairly far reaching effect on the music industry as a whole and how it functions today. 22:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the fact that you have a recording veteran like Ernest Steneman and his wife Hadrian, his friends and family here, but then you had 22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: the Carter family and Jimmy Rogers recruiting in Bristol, that was their very first time recording and having records released. 22:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And because of their huge foundational impact on country music as a whole, that is why we look at it as the early commercial country music beginnings. 22:54 [SPEAKER_01]: I got it. 22:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So the event that happened was just a huge enough event that it helped project country music. 23:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it helped spirit forward. 23:04 [SPEAKER_01]: for the birthplace of country music, for your museum, what kind of exhibits and things would people be able to see when they come visit you? 23:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're a really interactive museum. 23:13 [SPEAKER_00]: We're a two stories. 23:14 [SPEAKER_00]: All of the upstairs is dedicated to the permanent exhibit. 23:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is all of the different galleries that helped to tell the story of the 1927 Bristol Session. 23:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So providing the context of what you and I were just talking about, that there were other recording sessions that happened before and after, that there were other things going on in this world of early hillbilling music that had impact. 23:34 [SPEAKER_00]: But also then looking at the very, the specifics of the 1927 Bristol sessions story giving viewers our visitors a chance to dig deep into that music, learn more about each and every artist or band that performed and then looking beyond it to the way that the music from those sessions and that early country traditional old time music as a whole has been influential beyond. 23:57 [SPEAKER_00]: That moment in time. 23:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And then also a lot of our museum permanent exhibits talk about the impact of technology at how important technology was because around the same time, not only were we having the recording industry blossoming, but you have the beginnings of the radio industry and radio is a huge part of why this music was so popular because of. 24:16 [SPEAKER_00]: How widely it was distributing. 24:18 [SPEAKER_00]: You're building music in the bar and dances that were coming up in the 1920s and 30s and like sharing this music. 24:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So like the grandaloperate, the national bar and dance. 24:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And then more local ones like we had that we had went here in Bristol, called Farm and Fun Time in the 1940s and 50s. 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It was really a big starting point for several well-known bluegrass artists, like Ralph Stanley and Jim and Jesse McRenalds. 24:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So the upstairs does that, but it doesn't in a really interactive way. 24:41 [SPEAKER_00]: There's four film experiences where you get to play on the touch screens and listen to the music and pick what you're going to do. 24:46 [SPEAKER_00]: You get to mix your music. 24:48 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to get a chance to sing the music and record yourself and see if you can yodel like Jimmy Rogers, which is a lot harder than you would think. 24:55 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the films is in a nice wide open space because the ideas that we want people to dance kids are way better at that than adults because adults get embarrassed but kids are like wide open and there it's great. 25:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And every room is a sound scape so every room has music playing of some sort. 25:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that we did is set the context of Bristol itself. 25:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So we tell the history of Bristol leading up to when the sessions happened here. 25:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, the really cool thing in our upstairs is that we have a live working radio station, radio Bristol. 25:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Part of the exhibit, so you can see into the radio booth and the radio studio from the exhibit, so when we have any of our DJs in there, you can see them and listen to, you can put on here your phones and listen to what they're doing in the booth. 25:36 [SPEAKER_00]: That's unusual. 25:37 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not something you get in many museums. 25:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And then on our lower level, we have a performance CDR that is about a 100-seat performance CDR, which is wonderful, acoustically designed theater for performances, but also we can screen films there. 25:51 [SPEAKER_00]: We do a lot of programming in that room. 25:53 [SPEAKER_00]: educational and public programming and performances. 25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And we also have our 2,000 square foot special exhibits gallery downstairs. 26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we rotate out different temporary exhibits about two or three times a year. 26:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We're about to open exhibit. 26:07 [SPEAKER_00]: In March, in March, on women and old-time music specifically. 26:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's one that we did in-house. 26:13 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the exhibits we bring from other places. 26:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But this is one that we created in-house. 26:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing that's cool about our museum is that we're a Smithsonian affiliated museum. 26:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So that means that we have access to a wide range of Smithsonian resources that we can bring into our communities. 26:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And we brought several Smithsonian exhibits and programs. 26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully one day we're bringing a Smithsonian artifact to display here. 26:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But we haven't done that yet. 26:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's pretty cool. 26:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a favor artifact or exhibit? 26:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a hard one because it depends on the day sometime. 26:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I really like that we have a Western electric micro France. 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have the one that was at the 1927 Bristol sessions, but we have the same make and model of the one that was used at the Bristol sessions and that's a pretty cool thing to have. 26:57 [SPEAKER_00]: We also have some cool instruments that I get excited about. 27:01 [SPEAKER_00]: We have some wonderful, we have various instruments on loan to us from a local collector that are just wonderful. 27:07 [SPEAKER_00]: One of which is a harp guitar, which is a very unusual instrument that a lot of people don't have never heard of or know about, and I love the look of it. 27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But right now, we also have on display Jimmy Rogers blue, yellow guitar, which is on loan to us. 27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's pretty special. 27:23 [SPEAKER_01]: That's very special, that's pretty cool. 27:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that I like about our museum is that we've been very fortunate that we met and built relationships with several family members of artists who recorded here back in the 1920s and they have been so generous with their stories, their oral histories and also giving us items that are related just to the. 27:44 [SPEAKER_00]: personal side of their family numbers, which I really appreciate because I think it's nice to have all sides of this of that person's life, and able to talk about it. 27:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's been really special to us that people have shared that with us. 27:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 27:57 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things I saw on your website was called the Bristol Rhythm and Roach reunion. 28:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Could you explain that? 28:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we, the museum is part of a larger organization, just called the birthplace of Pensionesek and the birthplace of Pensionesek runs the museum. 28:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It runs the radio station that I mentioned earlier, a radio, WBCM radio Bristol, and it runs Bristol rhythm and roots reunion, which is an annual music festival. 28:20 [SPEAKER_00]: We are in our, we will be going into our 22nd year this year because, 28:25 [SPEAKER_00]: We were meant to be at our 23rd, but we had to skip COVID year in 2020. 28:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But it was born out of again, the idea of celebrating the musical heritage and Bristol and the region. 28:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of what, a lot, that came from that idea. 28:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And it grew from something that was quite small to the festival that it is today that has about 100 artists over three weekends on about 15 different stages and inside out. 28:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really 28:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of being in a field somewhere, which is the typical music festival experience, we closed down our entire historic downtown and have a festival in that public downtown area. 29:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So outdoor stages, different bars and restaurants help us to host the indoor stages. 29:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a bit of a different experience than what most music festivals feel like. 29:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Could you talk a little bit about the artists that participate in the festival? 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, yeah, so let's see, last year we had Rosanne Cash, which was pretty exciting for the last several years, we've had Warren peace, which are a great band duo. 29:29 [SPEAKER_00]: We've had Oklahoma's and show, we've had Emilew Harris, the Indigo girls, Marty Stewart is a big regular, we've had White Oakham, we've had um. 29:42 [SPEAKER_00]: big names that you would recognize from countries like that. 29:44 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not all necessarily just big country artists. 29:48 [SPEAKER_00]: There's also like a lot of Americana and REITs music thrown in there and country and blues even. 29:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really diverse line-up of artists. 29:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have in a small group of Headliners. 29:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We always train really highlight a lot of wonderful local and regional artists. 30:05 [SPEAKER_01]: This is my final question for you. 30:07 [SPEAKER_01]: But I wonder if you could just say a few more things about the museum, like maybe the hours, your website. 30:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's anything else in town that you think people who would be listening might find interesting if they come to visit the museum. 30:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the birthplace of country music museum is open two days through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays 1 to 5 we are not open on Mondays and there's a few national holidays that we're not open on but if you go on website you can find out information our website is birthplace of country music dot org and from that main website you can dig deeper and each of the branches so you can go down and learn more about the museum. 30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: and visiting the museum, you can learn more about the festival and how to get tickets and all the cool things you need to know about that. 30:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can also learn more about the radio station and listen to that online. 30:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So the radio station is a well-powered station, but you can listen to it online or stream it by an app. 31:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can kill it or us. 31:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And the variety of digital ways. 31:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Bristol has a lot to offer. 31:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a really 31:06 [SPEAKER_00]: nice downtown that has retained a lot of its historic character and is walkable. 31:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a great place to just base yourself at a day and what's cool about the museum is that once you bought your ticket at the museum, you can come in and out on your wristband all day long. 31:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can come in for an hour and then go get some lunch and come back. 31:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can really have a spin of old day in our downtown. 31:24 [SPEAKER_00]: There's some great independent restaurants downtown. 31:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Lots of independent stores and boutiques and art gallery. 31:31 [SPEAKER_00]: a couple of art galleries, and then if you want to get a little bit further afield from the downtown, we're being near some wonderful hiking trails. 31:38 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're into NASCAR, we have the fastest quarter mile track in the world at Norstellar Speedway with regular races there, and to spring and fall. 31:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's also some great places nearby, like Abmington, Virginia is only 15 minute drives north. 31:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's another great historic little town with the way I'm King Museum of Art. 31:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Wonderful restaurants. 31:59 [SPEAKER_00]: You can get on the Virginia Creeper Trail there. 32:02 [SPEAKER_00]: If you go a little bit further, feel a little bit of a detailed amount of Rogers, which is the highest peak in Virginia, which is a really great height. 32:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the wild ponies. 32:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We're also really well known in this area. 32:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're fishing and outdoor recreational activities canoeing kayaking. 32:15 [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing, there's a great, there's some great places to listen to music. 32:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So the Carter Family Fouls, Hilton's Virginia, which was started by Jeanette Carter, AP Carter's daughter back in the late 1970s and is still being run by his granddaughter, Rita Forster. 32:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They have wonderful music every Saturday night and also Carter Family Museum there. 32:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The downtown in Johnson City is another great music venue for listening to live music. 32:39 [SPEAKER_00]: We've got the, we've got a casino opening up, we've got the casino that's 32:44 [SPEAKER_00]: halfway opened up it is going to be opening up into a much bigger facility in the near future in Bristol, Virginia. 32:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a lot to do here. 32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: It is worth a visit for sure. 32:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And you have two Tesla chargers. 32:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, which I didn't know. 32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It's there you go. 32:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and one of our places downtown, the burger bar is supposedly the last place that Hank Williams senior was seen alive. 33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't eat there because the food is delicious. 33:11 [SPEAKER_00]: But his driver stopped there to get something to eat on it when they were driving to his gig. 33:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And supposedly he was still alive, because his driver asked him if he needed anything, if he wanted any food, and he said no, driver went in and got some food, and they got back on the road, and unfortunately he passed away on the way from Bristol to the gig, supposedly. 33:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's another country music sort of connection here in Bristol with the Varver Bar. 33:36 [SPEAKER_01]: How, well, the next time I'm in Bristol, I'm gonna have to go there. 33:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and one more thing, Tennessee Arne Ford was born here who is not from not in 1920s artists, but a 19 sort of 40s, 50s, 60s artists, but also very well-known in country music, but also because he had a prime time show where he talked about country music and had his Tennessee Arne Ford persona. 33:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He was born in Bristol, so you can also go see his homeplace. 34:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome. 34:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. 34:04 [SPEAKER_01]: All right. 34:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you very much. 34:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. 34:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you having me on. 34:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you, too, for listening.
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