Listen!  Hear the Sound that Stirs the Soul of Appalachia!

Festival Music, Arts, Storytelling in the Norris Highlands

            String band music, art, storytelling and Appalachian hand made crafts from the Cumberland Mountain/Norris Highland region will be featured in a one day festival at Cove Lake State Park in Caryville, Tennessee on June 14, 2008 from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m.

            Hear the sound that beckons families and visitors near and far seeking foot-tapping, hand-clapping music, good food and uncomplicated entertainment, and a connection with like-minded folks who share, or would like to share, the heritage and culture nestled against the beautiful Cumberland Mountains and scenic Cove Lake. Admission is free.

            The festival is named for Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong who grew up in LaFollette in the 1920s and became one of the finest black string-band musicians in the nation, as well as an artist whose legacy of paintings are sought by collectors. Among numerous lifetime accomplishments, he was recipient of National Endowment for the Art's National Heritage Fellowship, and the Tennessee Governor's Folk Heritage Award.

            The Louie Bluie Music Stage showcases touring artists who play old-time string-band, Americana, gospel, traditional, blues or bluegrass, and have east Tennessee roots or knew and/or played with Armstrong.      

            The afternoon program, hosted by the Cumberland Trail State Park, will showcase a reunion after 40 years of the Pinnacle Mountain Boys in the persons of Charlie Collins, Larry McNeely, Buster Turner, and Don Gulley. It will also revive - by featuring fiddlers related to or old fiddlers who actually competed - the LaFollette Fiddler's Contest and Convention which took place from about 1906 until the beginning of WWII. The contest judged and awarded both individual fiddlers and string bands. Also featured will be Earl T. Bridgeman from Tennessee's Sequatchie Valley, the last living blues legend, whose father was also a legendary black fiddler.

            The Louie Bluie Stage's evening program will feature a return of Hokum's Heroes (including members of Armstrong's band), Ann Rabson (member of Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women), Hector Qirko Band, Lonetones, Sparky and Rhonda Rucker (blues and harmonica players from Morristown); Wallace Coleman (international harmonica performer), Knoxville's Nancy Brennan Strange, and former LaFollette native, composer and singer Maggie Longmire.

            Inside the Park Pavilion, the Community Stage will feature a variety of Campbell County musicians and groups who play roots music, and in an adjoining room - another new addition to