Southern by Choice or Birth
A story about one who wasn’t born Southern but got here as quick as he could, plus two more from folks whose roots are deep in Appalachian soil.
Some weeks, I’m so glad to have this job I can’t hardly see straight. This is one of those weeks.
This week, three Salvation South contributors dive smack dab into the middle of the mud over this question: Just what is it about this place that makes us love it so?
We start with the story of musician M.C. Taylor, who grew up, in his own words, as a “typical beach and skateboard kid” in Orange County, California. About two decades ago, he moved eastward to study in the renowned graduate program in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When Taylor moved to the South, the place that was, again in his words, “where so much of what I love was created,” he found a new musical voice. And that became a band which, over the last dozen or so years, has become one of the South’s most beloved: Hiss Golden Messenger.
Asheville writer Jay Moye, himself a musician, this week shares his deep and enlightening interview with Taylor. Last year, Jay brought us the story of a little Carolina town in transformation, Old Fort.
Another previous contributor, Mikala Jones-Wall, has a story about how growing up in a Blairsville, Georgia, family that has helped keep the sorghum-syrup production of their community going for more than a half-century. This weekend, the fifty-fourth annual Blairsville Sorghum Festival kicks off. You might find that Mikala’s look at how her hometown keeps the culture of southern Appalachia alive makes you want to road-trip to the mountains this weekend or next.
And finally, we welcome a new contributor, Eleni Karelis, a young woman of Hazard County, Kentucky, whose writing makes me want to (if I may borrow the title of the latest Hiss album) jump for joy. Her mastery of the poetic voice of Appalachia is stunning, particularly given the fact that she had barely graduated from the University of Kentucky when she sent these three poems to us. Her love of the place that raised her is beautifully clear in her writing. She is now pursuing her writer’s education further at the University of Westminster in London. You must read her work, so you can one day say, “I read her when…”
—“Blue Country Mystic”: Jay Moye on Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor
—“A Whole-Town Family Reunion”: Mikala Jones-Wall on sorghum
—“Real Love”: Kentucky poetry from Eleni Karelis
We hope you have a wonderful Sunday of reading.
Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.