Monthly Live Variety Show at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum
Bristol, Va./Tenn. (October 21, 2019) – The Birthplace of Country Music (BCM) presents Radio Bristol’s Farm and Fun Time live variety show featuring acclaimed Smithsonian Folkways Recording act Lula Wiles and traditional country duet McKay & Leigh. The concert will broadcast live from the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Historic Downtown Bristol on Thursday, November 14 at 7:00 p.m. EST.
Anchoring Lula Wiles’ sharp, provocative songcraft is a mastery of folk music and a willingness to subvert its hallowed conventions. The band infuses its sound with distinctly modern sounds: pop hooks, distorted electric guitars, and dissonant multi-layered vocals, all employed in the service of songs that reclaim folk music in their own voice. All three members grew up in small-town Maine, and the band came of age in Boston’s lively roots scene. Lula Wiles has toured internationally, winning fans at the Newport Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Festival, garnering acclaim from NPR Music and two Boston Music Awards nominations, and sharing stages with the likes of Aoife O’Donovan, the Wood Brothers, and Tim O’Brien. Lula Wiles exists in the tense space where tradition and revolution meet, from which their harmonies rise into the air to create new American music.
Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay craft story songs with equal measures heart (“Before the World Was Made”) and humor (“Breaking Up and Making Up Again”). The Nashville-based songwriters celebrate troubadors in peak form. “These are modern day country duets a la George Jones and Melba Montgomery,” producer Gurf Morlix says, “but with very sophisticated songwriting.”
Farm and Fun Time pays homage to the classic WCYB Radio program that broadcast from Bristol in the 1940s and 1950s. Farm and Fun Time continues the tradition of the classic program by introducing audiences to the very best in local, regional, and internationally touring acts with a side of homespun humor and storytelling. Hosted by Kris Truelsen, Farm and Fun Time also features live radio jingles written and performed by his band Bill & the Belles.
Tickets to be part of the studio audience for Farm and Fun Time are $30 and can be purchased online at ListenRadioBristol.org. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and guests are asked to be seated by 6:55 p.m.
Farm and Fun Time may also be viewed in its entirety on Radio Bristol’s Facebook Live at Facebook.com/WBCMRadioBristol. Radio Bristol can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on 100.1 FM in the Bristol area, online at ListenRadioBristol.org, and through the station’s free mobile app.