In the weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded their town, residents of Marshall spent most of their time on the bare necessities – finding food and water – and digging themselves out of the mud.
But in the midst of survival mode, the tiny town also made music.
In one memorable performance, folk duo Rising Appalachia strummed a banjo and sang in front of a muddy, storm-weary crowd of volunteers in a parking lot filled with rubble and damaged buildings. They sang: “I am resilient. I trust the movement.”
And the crowd, who knew all the words, sang along with them.
Some of those melodies and ballads, including a piece from Rising Appalachia, have been preserved permanently as part of “The Resonance Sessions,” a compilation of 35 songs that were recorded in the then-dusty, flood-damaged Old Marshall Jail along the French Broad River.
The album is a vestige of the impromptu musical performances that lit up the storm-torn streets of Marshall after the French Broad River engulfed downtown in mud and debris. These live shows cropped up in between grueling days of storm cleanup.
“For the entire day leading up to that moment you were sweating, breaking your back, shoveling mud out of crawl spaces,” Clay White, a local musician and producer, said. “The live performances were a time to cut loose and, you know, do some dancing and laugh with your friends.”
White, one of the main forces behind “The Resonance Sessions,” said he wanted to create an “artistic time capsule” that would honor all of the art that was made “in response to tragedy.”
To that end, White along with Aaron Stone of Parkway Studios and Luke Mitchell of Out There Studios, set to work on making an album in the middle of the storm wreckage.
They texted musicians from all over the region, inviting them to come to town and record something.
“Basically, the prompt for the artists was just to come and that we would trust them to choose a song, whatever song had been speaking to them or helping them process this experience,” he said.
In many places, power, water and roads were still out of commission. Some musicians had evacuated and weren’t able to make it, but others stuck around and figured out a way into town.
“We had to tell people, you know, like, don't follow Google Maps. Go this way – or else you'll be driving an extra hour and a half. But it totally worked out,” White said.
Over a period of a few days, around 50 musicians showed up. Each group had about half an hour to perform.
“Normally when you do something like this, it's in a pristine studio,” White laughed.
That was not the case at the Old Marshall Jail, which was damaged from more than twenty feet of floodwater and caked in dust from all the mud.
On the first day of recording, they ran the high-tech equipment on generators and prayed it wouldn’t tarnish the sound, White said. That was just one of many technical challenges.
“There were dump trucks, army trucks, all sorts of heavy machinery,” White said. “Dust over all of the cables. We had some really nice microphones that we threw garbage bags over in between takes.”
At one point, now-Governor Josh Stein, on a tour of the town, popped into a session while ballad singer Donna Ray Norton performed “Fine Sally,” recalled William Ritter, another folk artist on the album.
“It was like capturing lightning in a bottle. It was all just surreal,” Ritter said. “We're going down there with all our own personal storms of feelings that we're navigating – and then we just go down there and just close our eyes and then sing a song.”
White said he wants the album to serve as a "long-lasting contribution to the art that was made in response to a tragedy."
“We hope that it will stay in people's memories and be a part of the living memory of what happened last year," he said.
Singer-songwriter Becca Leigh said recording her song for the album was a special moment.
“It was just really touching, everything about it,” she said. “To just kind of suspend the reality of the tragedy for just, like, a couple minutes to go into a space of togetherness and just pausing to really feel those feelings.”
Leigh performed the song “The River,” an airy, ethereal track with vocals from Dulci Ellenberger, Alyse Baca and Julie Odell.
Leigh wrote the song a long time ago, but she said it took on a new meaning for her after Helene.
“The spirit behind the song is that so many times in life there are situations where you just really don't have a lot of control over what's going on and you have to kind of just let things go,” she said.
She said when White first asked her to record a song for the album, she felt like she was too busy. Like many people, Leigh had spent her days doing cleanup and volunteer work in town.
But she’s glad she changed her mind. And all that cleanup in the background added some cool texture to the album, she said.
“There was a lot of machinery going by and a lot of that ambient noise ended up in the recordings, not in a significantly bothersome way, but there's definitely some of that in there,” she laughed.
“I felt it on my heart”
In addition to dozens of original songs on the album, “The Resonance Sessions” includes seven folk ballads that people in Madison County have been singing for decades.
Ritter sings a version of the “Flood of 1916,” a dark, mournful ballad about a family who experienced a landslide during the second-worst flood in the region’s history (behind Helene).
There are numerous ballads written about the flood, but Ritter chose this iteration for its powerful imagery and heartbreaking tribute to lives lost, and people who went missing in the storm.
“There's a lot of really vivid imagery in there,” he said, including a scene where a young boy disappeared in a landslide.
The song reminds him of fiddler, Lenny Widawski, who is still missing months after Helene.
“I don't sing that song very much,” Ritter said. “But for the album it just seemed like it was something that needed to be shared. I felt it on my heart.”
In times of turmoil, old ballads offer a sense of wisdom, he said. And a way to process.
“You step across that chasm of time and you just realize that people have been dealing with the same things,” he said. “And, you know, what many people reached for was art.”
Album release party
This weekend, Zadie’s Market will host an album release party, including performances from members of Dr. Dog, River Whyless and other Western North Carolina musicians who made live recordings for the album.
It takes place at Zadie’s Market in Marshall on Saturday, July 5 at 4 p.m. There will be vinyl copies of the album, pressed by Citizen Vinyl, available for sale. Performances include:
- A set of songs by Dr. Dog, performed by Scott McMicken and Lil Frankies
- A collaborative set by Slow Packer, Night Walks and Zack Kardon
- Piano pop offerings by Slow Runner
- Fiddle tunes by Casey Driessen
- Traditional ballad singing by Sarah "Songbird" Burkey
- Intimate sets by Ryan O'Keefe (of River Whyless) and the High Divers.
