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A Coincidental Career

Fiddler-Guitarist Mike Cross at Hayes Center March 15

Story by Anna Oakes

The musical career of Mike Cross is a story of coincidence and circumstance. Born in eastern Tennessee and raised Lenoir, Cross didn’t learn a single guitar chord until he was a junior in college. But it’s his mountain upbringing, the guitarist and fiddler said, that makes his love for Appalachian folk music seem so natural now.

Cross will perform a concert at the Hayes Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock on Saturday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m.

Cross’s career spans several decades, 13 albums and hundreds of concerts—from Boston’s Symphony Hall to outdoor music festivals. In addition to his fiddle and guitar playing, Cross’s singing style has the warm, welcoming tone of old-fashioned mountain storytellers. In his own words, he’s a “wandering hillbilly hippie folk singer.”

After he was born in Maryville, Tenn., in 1946, Cross’ family moved to Boone, where his father finished college at Appalachian State University. His earliest memories are watching his father practice football on the old field as one of the legendary “Duggins Boys” who played for Coach E.C. Duggins. Cross then spent most of his formative years in Lenoir, where he attended the old Lenoir High School.

Cross was immersed in sports as a child, earning a golf scholarship to UNC-Chapel Hill. He gave that up to pursue medicine so he could impress a high school sweetheart, but when the relationship ended, Cross was without his golf clubs and without a clear direction.

During his junior year of college, Cross came down with an illness. To pass the time, he learned a few chords and songs on his friend’s guitar. He’s been playing music ever since.

“Almost everything I’ve done has been an accident,” said Cross.

The same is true for his fiddle playing. At one point, Cross decided that he wanted to attend law school, and he came home to Lenoir from Chapel Hill to tell his parents. They happened to be out of town, however, so Cross took a stroll downtown to look around. There, in a pawn shop window, an old, beat-up fiddle caught his eye. He bought the fiddle and bow and decided to try to learn how to play it while he waited for his family to return.

“I enjoy doing things with my hands,” he said. “For me, really, guitar and fiddle were more a tactile experience than an auditory experience.”

In fact, he said, it took his untrained ear at least six months after learning to play the guitar before he could discern the difference in the sound of A major and A minor.

“At that moment in time, someone threw a switch in my head, and I could hear music better than before,” he said.

The music Cross learned to love to play wasn’t what he listened to while growing up. Although Appalachian folk music was a strong part of his home, his interests as a youth spanned the Top 40 rock and roll charts. At that time, music seemed like such a foreign thing, Cross said.

“Mandarin Chinese wouldn’t have been more complicated for me than learning to play music,” he joked.

But as he was learning to play his instruments, he was drawn to the accessible sounds of the blues, and the folk revival of the 1960s eventually acquainted him with the traditional music of Appalachia.

“The people who introduced me to music from my own backyard were grad students from New York City,” he laughed.

And the romantic in Cross insists that his style of music—very much in the spirit of traditional Appalachian tunes—feels more natural to him because of his mountain origins. The songs he sings convey stories that pop into his head, and he strives to achieve authentic sounds and emotions evoking the region’s past.

“The music that I really learned to love and play was the music of the folk tradition,” he said.

Tickets are $26 for adults and $20 for students. For tickets or more information, call the Hayes Center Box Office at 828-295-9627.

Want To Go?

Date: Saturday, March 15
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Hayes Center
Cost: $26 adults/$20 students