Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music 2023 Matinee Concert Series
receives Jane Lonon Legacy Fund Grant
Mountain Times
July 3, 2023
News for 2019
Mountain Home Music names new Executive Director
December 2021
The Board of Directors has selected Boone native, Courtney Wheeler to serve as the newest Executive Director of Mountain Home Music, the position vacated by Rodney Sutton. Courtney joins the Mountain Home Music family after a 10-year career with the award-winning non-profit, PineCone, the Piedmont Council for Traditional Music in Raleigh, NC, and work with numerous festivals across North Carolina and Virginia including the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Wide Open Bluegrass Festival in Raleigh, NC.
Courtney got her love of music from her late father. After graduating from Watauga High School, she attended Salem College where she earned her degree in Communications with a minor in Not-for-Profit Management. She began volunteering at Merlefest in 1996 and fell in love with the volunteer experience. Her non-profit career and volunteer experience eventually lead her to a full-time career in concert and festival production, box office management, and more.
Courtney earned the Betty Siegel Award for Universal Access & the Arts and served as a member of the City of Raleigh Office of Raleigh Arts Learning Community. She attended the Leadership Exchange on Arts & Disability Conference for several years and took what she learned to become a staunch advocate for making the arts accessible to folks with disabilities. In her role with PineCone she helped develop and implement a sighted guide program to better serve low and no-vision patrons of the arts. The award-winning program continues today and has been replicated by the North Carolina Folks Festival, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, and El Fiesta del Pueblo. She also helped spearhead the implementation of offering assisted listening devices, accessible seating areas for the conference, and quiet spaces at the Wide Open Bluegrass Festival.
Courtney “Booneranged” back to Boone in 2020 and serves on the board of the Watauga Arts Council and the planning committee for the Boonerang Music and Arts Festival, which is sure to become Boone’s signature event. She is thrilled to be serving as the Executive Director for Mountain Home Music and looks forward to carrying on the legacy of Joe Shannon and making her father proud.
News for 2019
JSMHM’s Director Awarded South Arts Fellowship
Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music’s board of directors would like to congratulate its director, Rodney Sutton, who was recently selected as a 2019 Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship recipient. South Arts, of Atlanta, selected a total of nine Appalachian artist – three each from North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky – from over 800 applications in its first year of offering these prestigious fellowships.
The following is excerpted from the South Arts website
Rodney Sutton. Flatfoot Dancer; Clogger; Dance Caller.
A resident of Buncombe County in Asheville North Carolina, Rodney Sutton is a flatfoot dancer, clogger, and dance caller who has taught and advocated for traditional percussive step dances since the 1970s. One of many several American step dances, flatfooting (also known as buckdancing) developed from the intermingling of English, Scottish, and Irish step dances with African American dance styles in Southern Appalachia. Accompanied by old time or bluegrass music, flatfooting and other mountain dances had been a staple of birthdays, holidays, wedding days, and other social gatherings for decades; in his youth, Sutton first attended such community dances where his father would play old time guitar, banjo, and piano.
Mentored by North Carolina Heritage Awardee Robert Dotson, Sutton has spent decades bearing, preserving, and passing down mountain dance traditions. In 1972, he joined the Green Grass Cloggers, with whom he has performed, developed workshops, and acted as director and booking coordinator. In 1979, co-founded the Fiddle Puppet Dancers (Footworks), contributing as a dancer, road manager, and booking agent for over ten years. In North Carolina alone, Sutton has taken a multitude of roles as an instructor, curriculum coordinator, event organizer, board member, and executive director in various folklife organizations and festivals, including Bluff Mountain Festival, Shindig on the Green, Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, and Swannanoa Gathering.
As the 2012 recipient of Asheville’s Folk Heritage Committee’s Sam Queen Award, Sutton has found no lack of motivation to keep his feet moving and hands busy. With the support of the Folk and Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship, Sutton intends to explore the roots of his flat foot style by learning from Sean-nós dancers in Ireland who share his passion for preserving, performing, and passing down their vibrant step-dance traditions.
News for 2018
JSMHM presents “Big Check” to Boone JAM for 2018
Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 2018 by presenting a check in the amount of $1,600 to the Boone Junior Appalachian Musicians program. The ceremony of presenting the “Big Check” was held on January 11th, at the Jones House where JAM classes take place. JSMHM director, Rodney Sutton had the honor of handing over the check to Mark Freed, the Director of the JAM program. Also attending the event were a number of JAM instructors, including Cecil Gurganus, who holds the distinction of having taught at JAM longer than anyone, plus a large number of current JAM students and their parents.
To celebrate its Silver Anniversary, the Board of Directors for JSMHM had been considering ways to pay tribute to Joe Shannon, the founder of Mountain Home Music. “The mission of Mountain Home Music is to celebrate diverse styles of Appalachian performing arts. Mountain Home Music strives to educate and build community through the arts, providing accessible cross-generational experiences.” The board recommended that JSMHM donate any monies collected above the cost of presenting our “Pay as You Exit” 2017 Matinee Concert Series to JAM to be used for scholarships so that no kid would be turned away from the opportunity to learn old-time Appalachian music.
When asked about the decision to make the donation to JAM, Sutton said, “Joe was an educator who loved kids. He taught in the public schools and also was a special education professor at ASU. He performed and offered dulcimer workshops to kids in the region before there was a JAM program – what better way to honor Joe’s memory!”
Sutton added, “Every member and sponsor of JSMHM has had a hand in making this donation doable. Our board and I would like to thank everyone for their support of JSMHM and we welcome new members and sponsors as we prepare to announce other new special projects to reach out to the citizens of The High Country in honoring Joe in the coming year”.
Information on how to sign up as a member or sponsor of JSMHM can be found here.
May 2014
A Note from Rodney Sutton
My name is Rodney Sutton and as some of you have probably already read in other articles covering my becoming the new director of Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music (JSMHM), I never met Joe Shannon in person. I continue to be amazed at how many of my friends from across the tri-state region were also very close friends with Joe. In addition to mutual friends, another wonderful aspect of the similarities that Joe and I shared is our involvement and passion for promoting traditional mountain culture. I have had the pleasure of serving on the board of directors of a number of highly respected educational non-profits that have a shared mission with JSMHM – to provide an opportunity for audiences to experience the talents of traditional mountain musicians, singers, storytellers and dancers. These organizations include; the Folk Heritage Committee which produces Shindig on the Green and The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, the Regional Junior Appalachian Musicians, the Madison County Arts Council and the Green Grass Cloggers.
Mountain Home Music is a gift given to the folks of The High Country by Joe Shannon. It belongs to each of you who will attend a concert this summer and to everyone who has ever been an audience member in the past 24 years. My goal is to make this transitional period from the MHM that Joe created, to what it might be going forward without him, as seamless as possible. Your thoughts and input on how to proceed will be much appreciated. Each of you can play a role in the continued success of JSMHM by attending some of our incredible concerts.
Mountain Home Music Names New Executive Director
April, 2014
The Board of Directors has selected Rodney Sutton of Marshall NC as Executive Director of Mountain Home Music, the position vacated by Joe Shannon after 20+ years, due to terminal illness. Like Joe, Rodney is a member of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Traditional Arts Directory. A native of rural eastern North Carolina, where his family has danced and played music for generations, Rodney Sutton is a prominent and highly respected representative of the dance and music traditions of his home state.
Sutton is particularly known for his expertise in traditional mountain dance. He is adept at both flatfooting and clogging, and is also in demand as a dance caller. In recent years, Rodney has honed his skills in both storytelling and ballad singing.
Sutton was an early member of the Green Grass Cloggers, and today is part of the GGC Asheville Team, who have danced in recent years at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF), the Appalachian Stringband Music Festival, and MerleFest. The Green Grass Cloggers were inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Trail Hall of Fame in 2014. Sutton is also a co-founder of the Fiddle Puppets, now known as Footworks, a traditionally based dance team that has toured around the world. Rodney Sutton has traveled across the United States and Canada and throughout the British Isles performing, teaching, and calling dances. He has taught traditional dance in western North Carolina schools through the NC Visiting Artist Program, and is a regular instructor at such camps as the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, Augusta Heritage Center programs in West Virginia, and Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camps in New York.
In 1995, Rodney organized and produced the Bluff Mountain Festival in Hot Springs NC, featuring traditional mountain music and dance. Though he stepped down as director of the festival after 15 years, he still plays an integral part in its production. The Bluff Mountain Festival has grown to become one of the largest fund raisers for the Madison County Arts Council.
Over the years, Sutton has served on the Board of Directors of many nonprofits whose missions closely match Joe Shannon’s Mountain Home Music. These boards include the Mountain Heritage Committee that produces Shindig and the Mountain Music and Dance Festival in Asheville and the Regional Junior Appalachian Musicians that oversees over 40 JAM groups that are teaching hundreds of kids to play traditional music.In 2012, Sutton was received the prestigious Sam Queen Award, presented annually by the Mountain Music and Dance Festival Committee. The award is inscribed – “For your enthusiasm in keeping smooth and clog dance styles a vital part of recreation and entertainment!”
Currently, Rodney lives near Marshall in Madison County with his wife, Jennie Barnhardt and their daughter Kelsey, a Morehead-Cain Scholar, is a sophomore at UNC at Chapel Hill. Their son, Clay, graduated from UNC Chapel Hill on May 8th, 2016.