Larry VanHouse
This Little Light of Mine
In Alleghany County, music is not something we dust off once a year and place on a stage. It is woven into everyday life here. Around these mountains, bluegrass, old-time, gospel, country, folk, Americana, and mountain music still drift through the air as naturally as creek water over rock.
I have often thought one of the reasons music feels different here is because so much of it still happens for the right reasons. Around Alleghany County, people do not always gather because there is a big production, expensive tickets, or flashing lights. They gather because somebody brought a guitar. Because somebody knows an old fiddle tune. Because after a long week, music still feels like one of the best reasons in the world to sit down beside people you care about and stay awhile.
On any given week, you can hear live music somewhere in Alleghany County. Maybe it is a packed room at Muddy Creek Café & Music Hall. Maybe it is somebody picking on stage at Main Street Pizzeria & Taphouse, a songwriter set at Laconia Ale Works, music on the porch at Thistle Meadow Winery or Williamson Mead and Brewing, or neighbors gathered for monthly jam sessions and special music events at Blue Ridge Wine & Music. Then there is the Alleghany Jubilee, where the music and dancing have been bringing people together for decades and where strangers do not stay strangers very long.
The larger events only add to the rhythm. The Alleghany County Fiddlers Convention draws musicians and listeners from across the region, while the Blue Ridge Mountain Heritage Festival fills downtown Sparta each September with handmade crafts, mountain foodways, dancing, and the sounds of Appalachian tradition echoing through Main Street.
Truthfully, places like this are becoming harder to find. We live in a world where so much entertainment is streamed through screens and earbuds that sometimes we forget what it feels like to hear music played live in the same room by people whose musical heritage runs deep and who mean every note. There is something different about hearing a mandolin ring through an old building or watching somebody tap their foot to a song they have known their entire life.
What makes the music scene here special is that it still feels real. It has not been polished into something manufactured. It is front porches and festival stages. Church hymns and dance floors. Old songs, new songs, and the stories in between.
And maybe that is why people keep finding their way to Alleghany County. Not because we are trying to be the loudest place in the mountains, but because there is still something genuine here worth hearing.
To learn more about upcoming music events in Alleghany County, visit the Chamber’s event calendar at Alleghany County Chamber of Commerce or call the Alleghany Chamber of Commerce at 336.372.5473.
