Appalachians

Featuring a full seventeen songs whose history can be traced back decades or even centuries through the Appalachian region, From The Mountaintop, and renowned Cellist, Dave Eggar, assemble an all-star cast of musicians set to treat your ears and transport you to the Appalachian region of years long passed.

With its dense forests and plentiful rainfall, West Virginia and the rest of the Central Appalachian region is an almost perfect habitat for hundreds of varieties of wild mushrooms. For the mushroom hunter, this vast bounty provides sheer delight and considerable challenge, for every outdoor excursion offers the chance of finding a mushroom not previously encountered.

The Appalachian Mountains stretch from New England to Georgia, encompassing 18 states during their southward sprawl. The music of the area began with folk tunes imported by Scots-Irish and British settlers, pockets of whom were landlocked for decades. Visiting missionaries and schoolteachers were sometimes surprised to find small groups of their descendants still speaking antique English and singing songs that had long since been outmoded back in Great Britain. Outgrowths of this tradition became known as old timey music and was primarily played on instruments like the dulcimer, fiddle, and harmonica. However, with the coming of the railroad and the proliferation of the radio and other forms of mass-market communication, these populations not only began to learn from each other but to pick up outside influences from banjo-picking freed slaves, black and white church services, and Grand Ol' Opry broadcasts.