Nearly 90 years after Ralph Peer ran a newspaper advertisement seeking regional musicians to sing for Victor Company’s new recording machine, the States of Tennessee and Virginia are putting out a call for artists and actors to participate in a new film celebrating the Bristol Sessions and the “Big Bang of Country Music.”
Plan A Films, led by Sundance Award-winning director Chusy Haney-Jardine, will hold a casting session at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. this Friday, November 13, 2015. Men, women and children ages five (5) to seventy (70) who can sing and play instruments, and musicians with no acting experience, are invited to audition.
Those interested in advance consideration, please submit a video (QuikTime or .mp4) singing and playing an instrument, along with a 30-second self-introduction using a Southern accent, to bristolsessionscasting@gmail.com. Filming will take place in Bristol in early December.
The film, commissioned by the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development and Virginia Tourism Corporation, is scheduled for release in Spring 2016 and will complement last year’s release of Orthophonic Joy: The 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisited, which features popular modern artists’ re-recordings of original 1927 Bristol Sessions classics such as “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Black Eyed Susie,” and “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.”