PineCone & NC Museum of History present The Mostly Mountain Boys in Free Concert in Raleigh

Nov. 29, 2011 - PRLog -- The Mostly Mountain Boys (Paul Brown, Terri McMurray, and John Schwab) will perform a set full of songs from the Southern mountains and the Piedmont, and part of the performance will also focus on the mountain holiday tradition "Breaking Up Christmas" and the dance tune by the same name. The catchy tune was frequently played in the Round Peak section of North Carolina's Surry County and in neighboring Virginia. Brown won a National Federation of Community Broadcasters Silver Reel Award for his NPR music documentary Breaking Up Christmas: A Blue Ridge Mountain Holiday. This free concert will be at the NC Museum of History on Sunday, Dec. 11 at 3 p.m. The concert is part of the Music of the Carolinas series, presented in partnership by PineCone and the NC Museum of History.

Canned food donations will be accepted for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC at this concert. More than 545,000 people in central and eastern North Carolina are at risk of hunger, and of these approximately one-third are children. When school is out, children who usually receive free or reduced-price lunch at school cannot always be assured a meal each day. You can help by bringing at least two cans of food to The Mostly Mountain Boys concert and help bring some holiday cheer to members of your community this season. Child-friendly items such as pop-top cans, cereal bars, fruit cups, and juice boxes are particularly needed. Holiday food drives are a very important part of the Food Bank's year-end efforts, and this is PineCone and the Museum's third year pairing a food drive with the December Music of the Carolinas concert.

Paul Brown is a musician and NPR correspondent who started playing banjo when he was a kid. Today, in addition to banjo, he also plays guitar and fiddle. He learned his core collection of North Carolina and Virginia songs directly from his mother and other great singers, including Fields Ward and Paul Sutphin. His fiddle tunes come from icons including Tommy Jarrell, Benton Flippen, and many others. For more than three decades, Brown has played with a long list of outstanding old time musicians young and old, from Anday Cahan and Mike Seeger in the Bent Mountain Band to Benton Flippen and the Smokey Valley Boys.

Brown continues to record and document music, produce albums, and present and teach traditional music in programs featuring its historical and cultural contexts.

Terri McMurray started banjo uke and banjo when she was pint-sized. She co-founded the Old Hollow String Band with Riley Baugus and Kirk Sutphin, and dug deep into clawhammer banjo with Tommy Jarrell in North Carolina.

John Schwab is a powerhouse old time guitar player of singular style, long experience and unmatched enthusiasm. He was a member of City Ducks, and now plays with The Hoover Uprights as well as with The Mostly Mountain Boys.

As more and more nonprofits are facing the realities of decreased funding and struggling to maintain programs with fewer resources, the 13-year-old partnership between the North Carolina Museum of History and PineCone-the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music was in danger of becoming one more casualty of state budget cuts. But local law firm Williams Mullen and the NC Museum of History Associates have joined forces to keep the Music of the Carolinas Series active for another season.

Thanks to funding from these sponsors, along with donations from individuals who attended last season’s concerts and in-kind marketing sponsorship from WLHC and WLQC, the series has the funding to continue for the 2011-2012 season.

“Williams Mullen, through our foundation, looks for opportunities to support the communities in which we operate. Our attorneys volunteer on the Boards of both PineCone and the Museum of History Associates. Since the Music of the Carolinas series is a successful long-term joint project of both organizations, it made a lot of sense to combine our foundation dollars to allow this program to continue to serve the Raleigh community,” said Ronald Raxter, a PineCone Board member. “This project exposes more visitors to the NC Museum of History, allows PineCone to further its educational mission of showcasing home-grown North Carolina traditional artists and advances Raleigh as a home for the traditional performing arts. It is a win-win for everyone.”

This band's fun, lively show is one you won't soon forget. You'll hear haunting banjo tunes, entertaining string band numbers, and rare fiddle classics learned in person from old timers famous and obscure. The Mostly Mountain Boys will leave you panting for still more stomp-down old time dance music and songs. Don't miss The Mostly Mountain Boys on Dec. 11 at the NC Museum of History!

Learn more: http://www.pinecone.org/event-detail.php?id=58

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PineCone—the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, is a private, nonprofit, charitable membership organization dedicated to preserving, presenting and promoting traditional music, dance and other folk performing arts.