Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
April 17, 2008 issue
Singer-Songwriter Shannon Wurst Returns to the High Country for a Pair of Shows
Former Boone Resident Plays Woodlands and Our Daily Bread April 22 to 23
Story by David Brewer
You might remember her smiling face as she opened bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Boone Saloon, or you might remember her sweet voice singing on the front porch of the Jones House at weekly jams. Shannon Wurst—an Arkansas native, former Boone resident and singer-songwriter—will return to the High Country next week for a pair of shows to promote her album, Sunday Pie.
On Tuesday, April 22, Wurst will join Jon Jon Davis and Friends for a performance at Woodlands BBQ in Blowing Rock. On Wednesday, Wurst will be the first performer to take the stage at the newly renovated Our Daily Bread in downtown Boone. She was originally scheduled to perform at Boone Saloon.
Wurst’s music is Americana through and through. Her sound is a mouth-watering mix of traditional and original mountain tunes with a pinch of bluegrass and a dash of old time, leaving you with a hankering for a second helping. She hails from Alma, Arkansas, the self-proclaimed spinach capital of the world, a small town in the Ozark mountain foothills.
Although she has developed her own style of mountain music, Wurst’s biggest influences have been women with the same pioneering spirit such as Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch. However, Wurst's closest influences were right in her living room while growing up.
"We always had people over for picking parties and house concerts," said Wurst.
Wurst has been singing and playing alongside her flatpicking stepfather, Ed Carr, since she was a teen. She also performs with her dad, Ronnie Wurst, a southern rock musician and singer-songwriter.
For most of her life, Wurst has attended the Walnut Valley Festival, where the National Flatpicking Championships are held in Winfield, Kansas. This annual festival experience seasoned her to staying up all night to play music, playing with a variety of musicians, and regularly performing on one of its stages.
Although she has been known to ramble far from her Arkansas roots to places such as Vermont to dog mush, to Colorado to whitewater raft guide and to North Carolina to plant herself in the bluegrass hotbed, she returned to Arkansas to record Sunday Pie with her many talented Ozark musician friends. A compilation of original songs, traditional Appalachian tunes and gems gathered from songwriter friends, the project was partially funded by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council.
Sunday Pie has been reviewed in several trade magazines, including Bluegrass Unlimited and London-based Americana music magazine, Maverick. Wurst was also selected as an official Performance Alley Showcase artist at the North American Folk Alliance Conferenceat the May in Memphis festival. Most recently, Garrison Keillor named Wurst a semifinalist in his Prairie Home Companion's Talented Twenties Contest.
For more info and to hear songs by Wurst, click to www.shannonwurst.com or www.myspace.com/shannonwurst.