PUTNEY — Haunting, high-mountain vocal harmonies will intertwine with the hard-driven, flat-picked guitars of visiting West Virginia-based folklorists Michael and Carrie Kline when they join Brattleboro's own blues guitarist and old-time fiddle and banjo player Scott Ainslie.
The three present what organizers promise is a tour-de-force of Southern-style music and stories in a Friday-night concert at Next Stage Arts on May 9, and Saturday morning workshops at Putney Cares in Putney on Mother's Day weekend.
The concert and workshops focus on a shared passion for the music and friendships of members of the iconic Hammons Family of Pocahontas County, W.Va.
The Klines have spent years recording music and narratives from Cherokee, N.C., throughout the Southern coal fields and mountainside farms of Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. They present music and stories with authenticity and power for entertainment and as social history.
Ainslie's slide and Blues guitar playing and singing is well-known to area music fans, but in the 1970s both he and Michael Kline were drawn independently into the sphere of influence of the Hammonses, one of America's most influential and iconic musical families.