The tune of Appalachia: a combination of community and place

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in TNPs spring print.

Cole Chaney performs in Goins' front yard in 2020. Photo by Madylin Goins.

Eastern Kentucky natives Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers have achieved mainstream success in recent years, with each receiving multiple Grammy nominations and topping the country charts with an album. Their success seems to have opened the door for other Appalachian artists.

As country fans have looked beyond Nashville, there has been a boom of talent in the region, or maybe it is just that Appalachia is finally receiving its due attention. Artists from the region such as Cole Chaney, Charles Wesley Godwin, JR Miller, Logan Halstead, The Local Honeys and Tim Goodin are all quickly gaining fans.

Chaney is a young country artist from Boyd County, Kentucky, which sits on the eastern border of Kentucky against West Virginia and southern Ohio. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the county’s population at 47,899 in 2021. 

Chaney has followed in the footsteps of Childers and many other Appalachian artists. Like Childers and the even younger Halstead, Chaney has played around Lexington, Kentucky, on Red Barn Radio and recorded an OurVinyl session. 

He is just about to turn 23 years old, but he has been playing music full-time since he quit his job as a welder at 19. Chaney released his debut album, Mercy, in 2021 and has been generating buzz in the industry. Bloggers at Whiskey Riff, a prominent outlet covering mostly independent country music, have referred to him at various points as a “rising star,” “hidden gem” and “force to be reckoned with.”

Chaney expressed gratitude for Childers’ breakthrough: “People will always compare me to Tyler, especially coming from one county over from him, and that's something I've come to love and embrace, where my ego once wanted me to deny and run from that. He blazed the trail for guys and gals like me to do what we love, and I'm forever grateful for his passage through the frontier that I'm now traversing.”

Tyler Childers fills in for Town Mountain at Fallsburg Summer Stage. Photo by Madylin Goins.

Because Appalachia is a region that is difficult to clearly mark the borders of, it makes sense that the same can be said of its music. Artists from as far as Canadian Bella White and Alabamian Drayton Farley blur this border through their sound and engagement with Appalachian artists.

Lexington, Kentucky and The Burl, a historic Lexington music venue, have been important to many of these artists’ careers, yet Lexington falls one county outside the Appalachian Regional Commission’s borders of the region. A strict, geographical definition is probably not equipped to encompass the region, community or genre.

Nonetheless, a sense of community seems to be central to Appalachia and its music. Up-and-coming acts commonly tour with and open for more established artists, as Childers did with Simpson, Chaney has for 49 Winchester and Brother Smith has for Nicholas Jamerson. 

Prior to Childers’ rise to stardom, Jamerson and Kris Bentley inspired artists with their duo Sundy Best, albeit reaching a more local audience. Chaney pointed to Jamerson as his biggest influence early on. 

Aaron Smith, of the band Brother Smith, said of the relationship that, “people are raising other people up as performing artists instead of just trying to outdo you or write better songs than you. When I first met (Jamerson and Bentley,) they talked a lot about using the Sundy Best name as a platform to help other Kentucky artists and friends of theirs just achieve what they want to with their music careers.”

Madylin Goins, a Kentucky native, singer, college student, Lexington news station employee and photographer, has worked with acts such as Childers and the Turnpike Troubadours, echoed this idea of community.

“It’s really cool to see when you’re at these festivals, we always joke it goes like one big family reunion,” Goins said.

Festivals featuring primarily artists from the region such as the Laurel Cove Music Festival and the Master Musicians Festival have grown, and philanthropic efforts for the region like the Hickman Holler Relief Fund, established by Childers and his wife, Senora May, have been widely supported by artists.

“Cole (Chaney), when he first moved to Lexington and was trying to get places to play and didn’t know anybody, he would come play in my parents’ front yard. My parents would invite their friends over, and we would sit in the front yard and listen to Cole play, and that’s how Cole was introduced to people around Lexington,” Goins described.

An emphasis on storytelling is another common element of Appalachian music. 

“Storytelling was a major aspect of my life growing up,” Chaney said. “I've always described someone's ability to capture an audience and tell a story as currency, a very valuable and increasingly rare quality found in a person.” 

Chaney has been praised for this ability, and it is a large part of the reason that he is compared to Childers.

Cole Chaney warms up with Wolfpen Branch before his debut at Exit/In in Nashville. Photo by Madylin Goins.

This storytelling often reflects a regional pride, also seen in the collaborative relationships between many Appalachian artists, while also addressing the area’s flaws forthrightly. 

Chaney’s songs are quintessentially Appalachian. His lyrics are replete with references to hollers, mountains and hills, to coal, family and suffering. Some of his songs may be bleak at times, but Chaney always seems to have hope, whether it is by speeding up to get out or slowing down to enjoy what is in front of him.

Chaney described the creation of his debut album, “Mercy”, as therapeutic. He expresses a strong desire to escape his home in “Leave” and “Mercy” that he felt after high school and during his time as a pipe welder. 

Conversely, he looks fondly on his home in “Another Day in the Life” and “Back to Kentucky,” and he said this is more reflective of his attitude now. Chaney currently lives in his hometown and called it “refreshing.” 

Sturgill Simpson, the aforementioned pioneer, seems to have undergone a similar yet longer development. His music has explored genres and themes from traditional country to psychedelia, motown and prog rock influences. However, his three most recent releases are as Appalachian as it gets: two LPs that are largely bluegrass versions of his prior music and an album length folk ballad set in “the trails of ol’ Cantuckee hills.”

Childers wrote the foreword for Kentucky author Silas House’s book “Clay’s Quilt,” in which he asks: “You can take the boy out of Lawrence County, but who else would claim him? And what else could I be but a backslid Baptist honky-tonker from Hickman Holler?” 

Going beyond just another display of community engagement, Childers also conveys an ethos evident in his and many of his Appalachian peers’ work.

This kind of regional pride and identity has served the Appalachian music community well and is a reason to be optimistic about its future. Chaney declared, “The Appalachian music community is absolutely very strong and self-sufficient, much like most other things in Appalachia.”