Today’s premiere is a duet featuring Ed Snodderly and the awesome Amythyst Kiah, and is taken from Ed Snodderly’s new album ‘Chimney Smoke’ which is released on July 21st. Ed Snodderly and Amythyst Kiah haven’t just come together in a random way – he teaches the Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music program at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee and that is where he taught Amythyst Kiah songwriting.
Ed has a storied musical career – he has previously released nine full-length featured recordings, including two on Sugar Hill Records (Home to such acts as Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, New Grass Revival, Nickel Creek, Tim O’Brien, and Dolly Parton.) Born and raised in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, he comes from a musical background – his grandfather was a farmer and an old-time fiddler who, along with his brother, won ribbons galore at Knoxville-area fiddlers’ conventions in the 1920s and ’30s. And it was in his grandparents’ attic that he found a quaint three-stringed guitar adorned with elegant señor and señorita silhouettes and a majestic palm tree. The instrument had been passed down through generations and was acquired by Snodderly’s dad and uncles in the 1930s after they had bartered their hard work on neighbouring tobacco fields in Union County, Tennessee. It would be this instrument that would spark his lifelong love affair with music. A significant claim to fame is that Ed Snodderly appeared in the Coen Brothers’ 2000 award-winning film ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou‘ as the Village Idiot, and again as a ballroom musician alongside Alison Krauss’s band.
His new album ‘Chimney Smoke’ had its origins in Snodderly’s desire not only to make the best record possible but in the concept of creating a quintessential “Southern” album, a chronicle of both his Appalachian roots and his own personal upbringing.
