If you were lucky enough to spend time with Jimmy Boyd, you’d quickly lose track of it. Jimmy was a storyteller who would spin a yarn about the old timers he grew up with, a meandering joke, or stories about the moonshining culture he loved in and around Ferrum, his hometown. The Banjo player, storyteller, and Franklin County moonshine legend Jimmy Boyd passed away on July 20 at the age of 78.
Jimmy grew up around Franklin County’s moonshine trade, an industry that sprang up in response to Prohibition in the 20th century, and earned the area the monicker “The Wettest County in the World.”
During an interview with folklorist, scholar and banjo player Malcolm Smith, Jimmy fondly recalled being carried to the still place by his father, and smelling the sweet corn mash mixing with the smell of blooming flowers in the woods.
In his 2021 essay for Appalachian Holler, Malcolm writes “One of the things that I was most curious to find out from Jimmy was what he saw as the relationship that has always seemed to exist between making and drinking moonshine and old- time music. He believes they go hand-in-hand because ‘They’re both about having fun, dancing, and having a party. But they’re also both something you can make yourself. Self-made fun!’ he said. ‘But moonshine, it settles your nerves and you’re more carefree when you take a drink.’”
Jimmy became well known for his hard-driving banjo playing with the legendary dance group he founded, The Dry Hill Draggers. The band is still active; Jimmy’s son Stacy plays bass and his grandson Jared is at the helm on the banjo, driving that dance rhythm just like his grandfather. Jimmy was known for his rhythmic playing, with minimal thumb drop and catchy dance licks. The Dry Hill Draggers became known around the country as one of the best old-time dance bands, performing at folk festivals, jamborees, and even the World’s Fair in Knoxville in 1982.
Despite his band’s success, Jimmy never really strayed far from his roots in moonshining. As he told Malcolm, “I always figured that when your music and your moonshine get together, they flow.”
He was a fixture at the annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival in Ferrum. You could find him operating the demonstration still or telling stories onstage about his life avoiding the ABC agents in the hollers and the history of Franklin County’s “liquid assets.”
Clover Lynn, a banjo player and leader of Clover Lynn and the Hellfires, remembers Jimmy from the Blue Ridge Folklife Festivals she attended with her uncle. She said she felt like “a little shadow trying to absorb his sound and his way of storytelling.” She notes that Jimmy’s “thrashdown” style of picking informs her music today.
Beth Worley, executive director of the Blue Ridge Institute hired Jimmy to run the demonstration still. She remembers the crowds he would draw. “The masterful storyteller that he was, folks would gather round him and listen to the real-life stories that he loved to share,” she recently remembered. “I always loved that he was always surrounded by his family, passing on his knowledge of moonshine making to the next generations.”
In 2013, Jimmy took on his grandson Jared as an apprentice in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, where they practiced Jimmy’s unique and percussive clawhammer banjo playing and shared the stories of making corn liquor. Jared regularly wins first place at festivals for his banjo playing now, keeping alive the sound and spirit of his grandfather’s playing. Malcolm coined this “genetics and tradition, the Boyd Family way.”
Jimmy’s legacy lives on in his family line, but also with the music he made with the Dry Hill Draggers and the Twin Creeks String Band, lead by Chris Prillaman, who made his first batch of corn liquor under the tutelage of Jimmy. Chris owns and operates Twin Creeks Distillery in Rocky Mount, where the moonshine and music both flow freely.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made to Carilion Hospice of Franklin County, 453 South Main Street, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.
