Beth Lee is a bluegrass and folk musician who was raised on the sounds of the Washington, D.C. bluegrass scene, The Country Gentlemen, the Seldom Scene, and the region’s vibrant festival culture. She became a songwriter, taking inspiration from her roots in the Hill Country of Austin, Texas and her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.
Her new song Life Keeps Moving On is not a contribution to the perennial topic of driving or railroading or by other means heading on out there, rather it has a more philosophical concern with life and ageing. As Beth Lee explains: “This song opens the doorway to that familiar feeling of lying awake in the night, listening to the world outside while your mind wanders the winding path of life. Written in the Swannanoa River Valley, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, the song grew out of those quiet nighttime hours when the forest seems to come alive with a whippoorwill calling, wind moving through the trees, moonlight slipping between the branches, and a distant train whistle carrying across the valley.”
An added twist in the songwriting is the reference to the train whistle in the distant valley; a sound that, in the Swannanoa River Valley, vanished for a year after Hurricane Helene, and that was a cause of celebration for local communities when it finally returned.
