FREE: Asheville Sessions Symposium & Panels

This event is free to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 10:00 am. No ticket needed -- just show up!

Dive deep into the history and legacy of Asheville's landmark 1925 recording sessions with a day of free panels and discussions. The day features a look at "Asheville in 1925" with Katherine Cutshall, Special Collections Manager, Buncombe County Libraries and the art of "Remastering Acoustic Recordings" with Bryan Wright of Rivermont Records. In the afternoon, music historians Ted Olson and Tony Russell will discuss the lasting significance of the sessions. The day concludes with a special "Gathering of Descendants," as relatives of the original recording artists share their family stories and musical legacies.

10:30-12:00 Asheville and an Emerging Record Industry in 1925

What kind of city did Ralph Peer visit one hundred years ago? Katherine Cutshall, Director of Special Collections at Pack Memorial Library, will delve into the social, cultural, and economic forces shaping Asheville when Peer arrived at the Vanderbilt Hotel to make records for the OKeh Phonograph Corporation. Bryan Wright, the founder of Rivermont Records and an expert in the restoration of acoustic audio recordings, will describe the recording technology used in 1925 as well as the process of restoring the original recordings for the reissue album, Music From The Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions.

Noon-1:30 pm - Lunch

1:30-3:00 The 1925 OKeh Sessions: What Occurred and Why Is It Significant?

The field sessions in Asheville produced the first performances of traditional music recorded in the Appalachians for the purpose of commercial sale to a broader American audience. This event accelerated the integration ofSouthern stringband music, balladry, and sacred song into an emerging genre that was eventually branded as Country and Western. Music historians Tony Russell and Ted Olson, authors of the notes to Music From The Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions, will explore how the Asheville recordings came to be made and the impact of the sessions on the trajectory of Appalachian and American music.

3:30-5:00 Gathering of Descendants of the Musicians Who Recorded in Asheville in 1925

Most of the musicians documented in the Asheville sessions lived in western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia and east Tennessee. Several passed down to their children both a love of traditional music and an appreciation of its cultural value to the region, and beyond. Hear descendants of Kelly Harrell, Blackwell and Bascom Lunsford, and J.D. McFarlane tell family stories and speak to the ways that music has influenced their lives and shaped family identity.

----------------------

Asheville wrote the first chapter of America’s country music story by producing the earliest commercial recordings of Appalachian music two years before any other city. A century ago, in the heart of downtown Asheville, a mobile recording studio was set up at the George Vanderbilt Hotel to capture the voices of a region rarely heard beyond its mountain borders. Known as “The Asheville Sessions,” the 1925 recordings brought together fiddlers, banjo players, guitarists, ballad singers, and family groups. The recordings became one of the first commercial projects to preserve the musical traditions of Appalachia and helped lay the foundation for what would become American roots and country music.

That legacy didn’t fade. Today, Asheville produces stars like country giant Luke Combs and guitar legend Warren Haynes, alongside a burgeoning generation redefining music for the next century.

Explore Asheville is the presenting sponsor of “The Asheville Sessions: Celebrating 100 years of Americana & Appalachia,” a November weekend filled with concerts and events linking the groundbreaking work of 1925 to the city’s thriving modern music scene.