Click here for important updates to our privacy policy.
MADISON
Asheville Citizen Times
MARSHALL - A newly-released vinyl album recorded in Madison County will not only provide residents with an emotional piece of artwork to help them continue to process a natural disaster, but benefit a number of local organizations, too.
The Resonance Sessions is a new album recorded at Old Marshall Jail after Tropical Storm Helene ran through downtown Marshall and Western North Carolina.
The project proceeds will be split between the Madison County Arts Council and Rare Bird Cultural Arts, the new nonprofit organization associated with Rare Bird Farm, in Spring Creek. The album was pressed on vinyl by Citizen Vinyl in Asheville.
Marshall resident Clay White produced the project. White, a trumpet player and multi-instrumentalist, also performed on a number of tracks.
The vinyl album will feature art and local photos on its six-panel trifold jacket, along with a booklet with more photos, stories and song lyrics.
The idea for the album originated with Old Marshall Jail owner Josh Copus sharing videos of Madison County ballad singers Donna Ray Norton and Sheila Kay Adams performing in the mostly-empty building just a few weeks after Helene tore through downtown Marshall.
Luke Mitchell owns Out There Studios, a recording studio in the Shelton Laurel community of Marshall. Mitchell and Bridger Dunnagan, who owns production studio Parkway Studios with Aaron Stone, performed the audio engineering.
Stone also filmed and edited video for the project, and music videos for the project are available on the Parkway Sessions YouTube page.
The team said there were concerns about the recording quality at first, as they prepared to bring a bunch of really expensive, fragile audio equipment into a dirty, flooded-out building.
But as time went on, the group discovered Old Marshall Jail's layout made for a gritty ambiance that captured the hustle and bustle of the town amid the rebuild. including the U.S. Army soldiers assigned to 1st Battalion, 502nd Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in downtown Marshall, and the heavy equipment operators working to clean up debris.
"I was just really happy to listen to the masters and everything and realize that it just made everything better," Mitchell said. "It feels so real, to hear Tyler Ramsey finish a beautiful song on acoustic guitar, and then you hear an Army convoy truck going by right as he finishes. It made it that much more authentic and interesting."
Mitchell praised White, who has been booking artists at Zadie's since 2024, for his efficiency in bringing artists on for the project.
"Nobody else could have wrangled that many people and had them in and out like clockwork," he said. "It was pretty incredible."
The project was very visual too, according to White, as John DuPre was on hand to take behind-the-scenes photos throughout the project, in addition to Stone's videos.
Hearing from the artists
In all, roughly 50 people, including 35 artists, helped bring the project to life.
Among the musical projects featured on the record is Doug Carr, a Marshall resident and employee at Marshall Relief Alliance.
Carr's music lives on two extreme ends, in his own words. On one extreme, his music is a "maximalist" glitchy experimental pop. But for the Resonance Sessions piece, he used a more stripped-down approach.
White and Carr said one of the silver linings of Helene was the new friends they made through their work on the album and in helping out with relief work around town.
Becca Nicholson is one of the artists featured on the benefit album.
Nicholson has performed with Dr. Dog founding member Scott McMicken.
Nicholson said one of the side effects of trauma is losing one's sense of self. But the people of Marshall's response to Helene helped the town preserve its core identity.
"Marshall stayed very Marshall during the cleanup effort," she said. "That was another reason why I felt so grateful to do a project like this, because it felt like, to me, it was coming back to myself, just for a minute, to inject something really beautiful into this very weird and terrible scenario."
Mitchell said one of his favorite moments from the process was seeing Kevin Williams and McMicken pushing a piano down Baileys Branch Road to bring in to Old Marshall Jail for the recordings.
"That was really inspiring," he said. "Seeing people kind of take it in when they first got there, it was tough to see people realize, 'Oh, this is really bad.'"
Mitchell and White were in a serious collision when a semi truck T-boned their vehicle while on tour together in 2017. Luke and his wife Mary Alice Mitchell also moved to Nashville, Tennessee, just one day before the May 1-2, 2010, Tennessee floods. So, the traumatic images were in some ways retraumatizing for them.
But the sense of community resilience and spirit was something that drove the artists.
Mitchell pointed to a quote from River Whyless fiddle player Halli Anderson about the importance of music and art in the aftermath of Helene.
"She was like, 'I see people with huge machines moving dirt and stuff, but this is just as important. It takes all kinds to be a part of a community,'" Luke said. "The whole community just got busy and kind of didn't take a break for months. It felt nice to just slow down and hear some really beautiful music. It made me feel human again, instead of just in that trauma, PTSD-brain."
Mitchell, Nicholson and White grew up in the lowcountry of South Carolina. Luke and Mary Alice Mitchell perform in The High Divers, along with White.
Luke and Mary Alice Mitchell finished writing their song the night before recording, making the performance even more cathartic for the couple, Luke Mitchell said.
Governor's visit
During one of the days of recording, then-Attorney General Josh Stein joined Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood and Judge Larry Leake on a tour through Marshall. During the tour, Stein was invited in to witness eighth-generation Madison County ballad singer Donna Ray Norton performing in Old Marshall Jail.
"I totally did not sing the song that I was going to sing, because I was a nervous wreck immediately," Norton said.
"When I got done performing, he pulled me in for a hug, and he said, 'Girl, you just did that.' It really meant a lot that he was there."
Norton said the moment was a very emotional one for her. She said she spoke with Stein after the recording and told him about musicologist Cecil Sharp's trip to Madison County immediately after the 1916 flood, and what the ballad singing tradition means to Madison County.
"In his journal, he talks about how he had to cross these foot bridges, and he got mud all over his shoes," Norton said. "In August of 1916, the day Sheila (Kay Adams') mom was being born across the mountain in Sodom, he recorded our great-great-great aunt Mary Sands singing over 20-something ballads, and she was eight months pregnant."
Sharp's seminal book, "One Hundred English Folk Songs for Medium Voice" spotlights many Madison County ballad singers. Sharp dubbed the county and its outsized talent as "a nest of singing birds."
In the weeks following Norton's recording, Stein asked Norton to perform at his gubernatorial inauguration, but the performance was canceled due to weather.
Resonance
According to White, the team did not have a name for the project before recording.
"Resonance," a word suggested by Stone, was an idea that connected with White on a number of levels, he said.
"The word made sense because of the resonance of the stairwell, the money getting turned into something that will help people," White said. "It just felt good. It rolls off the tongue."
While Cecil Sharp's book is still being talked about in Madison County more than 100 years after its publication, White and the team said they hope 100 years from now, Marshall and Madison County residents will be able to revisit Resonance Sessions.
"I'd love for them to grab a copy from the Marshall Museum, the Helene Museum," White said.
"That was one thought that was on my mind — what will all the people who have lived here for generations, and what will all the people who moved here think about this project, think about it, and remember it? Let's have a real impact."
The album is available to purchase digitally at the Resonance Sessions Bandcamp site.
To view live music videos of the project, visit the Parkway Sessions YouTube page.
Johnny Casey is the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or [email protected].