Crooked Road CD Series [Back]

Linda Lay & Sammy Shellor:
Taking the Crooked Road Home

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Linda and Sammy come from legendary musical communities on Virginia’s Crooked Road. The Meadows of Dan and Clayman Valley are tiny mountain places separated by 150 miles of hairpin turns, old mills, crossroads stores, mom and pop eateries, and towns with one stop light or none, but only 90 miles by the way the crow flies.

This is their first recording together, but Linda and Sammy share a legacy of music that binds them to place and family.  “Someone asked, ‘How long have you known Sammy?’” Linda tells. “I don’t like to think about it, that would tell my age. “David and I feel like we have known him forever.”

Sammy is from the Meadows of Dan,  an achingly beautiful spot where a branch that becomes the Dan River rises, and begins its tumble down the escarpment of the first wave of blue mountains. This is Patrick County, named for Patrick Henry, a fiddler, Virginia governor, and architect of the American Revolution. 

The seat of Patrick County is tiny Stuart, named for Major General James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart, a famous calvary leader during the Civil War.  Reared here, Stuart is perhaps the greatest fan the banjo has had.  He kept a banjo player on this staff (Sam Sweeney, younger brother of Joel Walker Sweeny), had a string band during the war, and was lead singer. He rose from Captain to Major General in two and a half years, before being killed in battle at age 31.  Sweeney also died during the war. But their songs are known. Sammy almost burned down the studio with a version of Angeline the Baker, a melody kept for them in Patrick County.

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