Back in the steep mountain valleys of Dickenson County in Southwest Virginia, you’ll find the small town of Haysi about 20 minutes from the Kentucky line.
This corner of Virginia is known for its ongoing legacy of traditional music, passed on through families in living rooms and churches. This is coal country, high on the crest of the Cumberland Mountains in the Appalachian plateau. From bluegrass and old-time, to hymns and ballads, the region’s songs feature lyrics centering love, faith, loss, and the hardships of daily life.
Renowned bluegrass musician and banjo player Dr. Ralph Stanley was born and raised in Dickenson County, and his fame helped bring attention to the hymn singing of Old Regular Baptists. This denomination is one of the oldest in Appalachia, and its churches are only found in this region along the VA-KY border. Old Regular Baptist hymns, according to Smithsonian Folkways, are the “oldest English-language religious music in oral tradition in North America.” The hymns are sung line-by-line, without music, with the congregation following queues from a lead singer.
National Heritage Fellow and Old Regular Baptist singer Frank Newsome is from Haysi, and was a dear friend of Dr. Ralph Stanley. When Frank visited his home, he’d bring his grandson, Sammy Yates.
Sammy Yates, center, performs with his grandfather Rev. Frank Newsome at the 2009 Richmond Folk Festival. Photo by Jon Lohman/Virginia Humanities Rev. Frank Newsome sings with Sammy Yates, center, and Logan Raines while hosting family supper at his Haysi home in 2025. Photo by Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities
Now in his mid 20s, Sammy remembers these visits fondly and acknowledges how much they influenced him. Sammy performed with his band, The Clinch Mountain Echo, at Virginia Folklife’s Mural & Mountain Traditions Festival in Clintwood on June 14, 2025.
I sat down with Sammy to chat about the ways in which he is now carrying on the traditional music of the region in his own right, inspired by both his family and community.
Who are some of your musical influences, and how did you get started learning music?
Sammy: Probably my biggest musical influence in bluegrass would be Ralph Stanley. Other musical influences would probably be the 70s outlaw country, and early 80s-90s style of country — I guess I’ve heard it my whole life. Being around my grandfather [Frank Newsome] and going up to his home, he would always get his guitar out and play and sing.
I took a really big interest in it at five years old, and they bought me a little guitar. I would always play it, and my grandfather would tune it for me. I started learning from him. He taught me my first couple chords. And it didn’t take long after that for me to learn on my own. And then I could play by ear, I could listen to a song and then pretty much figure it out on my own
I’ve always loved his [Ralph Stanley’s] music, even at a young age. I would travel to his festival with my grandparents and I just always wanted to do that style of music.
And how would you describe that style of music?
Very soulful and meaningful. You can feel it when you hear it. It’s like it speaks to you, that old time mountain style of music.
My grandfather was so well thought of in the Old Regular Baptist Church that it spiked interest from Ralph Stanley. He became really good friends with Ralph during the 80s. And when I came along, we would go to Ralph’s house quite a bit. That was probably one of my biggest impacts, getting to know Ralph through my grandfather and talking to him and just getting to know everybody that would come up to his festival.
You also play with your band, The Clinch Mountain Echo. How would you describe your own music style and the music you primarily play today?
We play bluegrass and we try to lean on the Stanley-style sound, but we’ve also got our own twist to it. We do a lot of harmonizing. Most all songs that we sing are three-part harmony, I’ll be singing lead, and then I’ll have a tenor singer and maybe a baritone singer. We play a lot of standards. Our band name is The Clinch Mountain Echo, and Ralph Stanley’s band was The Clinch Mountain Boys, so we keep it to the Clinch Mountain sound.
When did you get the courage to kind of start performing on stage, and what was that first experience like?
It all started at a bluegrass festival in Kentucky when I got to sing backstage with the late Dave Evans, when I was maybe 16 years old. From there, I went to Indiana and stayed out there for probably three months with a band and we got to travel to quite a few places in that state, and I got some really good experience. Recently, we’ve been staying in our hometown, doing quite a few shows around here.
Do you feel that you are a part of keeping this traditional music alive?
I would like to think so. I think a lot of the new musicians coming up in bluegrass, they’re taking up the newer style, mainstream sound. There’s not so many people doing the traditional style, like we are. We just want to try to keep that alive. Being around it pretty much my whole life, it’s meaningful to me.
Who would you most like to collaborate with, musically, past or present?
Ralph Stanley. I would have loved to be on stage with him. I had the privilege of singing for him at his home. We would go visit them quite a bit, but when I sang for him, it was maybe a year before he passed away. It was just such a great honor and experience for me. We visited them often, but it wasn’t until I got older that I realized how much that music meant and how good and talented those people really were.
Toni Doman-Vandyke received a 2023-24 Fulbright Award for her project “Contemporaries Technologies and the Traditional Music of Cape Breton.” Toni earned her Master’s Degree in Communications and Media Arts and Studies from Ohio and is one of the few students to earn the world’s first four-year degree in traditional bluegrass music offered at Glenville State University in West Virginia.
Toni is currently performing in the folk and country music duo Virginia West. Through all of her creative outlets, Toni aims to promote arts and culture for a greater understanding of the Appalachian region.
