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West Virginia Music Hall of Fame benefit

With James Price and Vintage Country, Tim O'Brien, Nat Reese, The Songcatchers with Everett Lilly, Larry Groce, Robert Shafer, Todd Burge and The Carpenter Ants

WHERE: Walker Theater, Clay Center

WHEN: 6:30 p.m. (reception), 7:30 p.m. (concert) Saturday

TICKETS: $50 (a portion is tax deductible)

INFO: www.wvmusichalloffame.com

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Country singer, fiddler and bluegrass picker James Price remembers when he first fell in love with mountain music. It was a Saturday in the summer of 1971. Price was 6 or 7 years old when his father took the family to the park at Lake Stephens in Raleigh County. Coming down from the hills, they could hear music.

"It sounded haunting," Price said, "but in a good way."

Over the hill, Bill Monroe was playing "Sweetheart of mine, can't you hear me calling?" It sounded wonderful to Price, and he wanted to hear more. He asked his dad as much as he could about what it was and if they could get closer, but they couldn't.

"My dad was a coal miner in Boone County," Price explained. "He'd been laid off and couldn't afford to take the family."

So Price and his family listened through the trees. It was the best they could do at the time, but Price's father promised that if he was working the next year, they'd come back to see the show. A year later, the family finances were more secure. He kept his word, and took Price to see where the sound was coming from.

"It was better than Christmas morning."

That afternoon in summer 1971 ignited a musical passion for Price. In time, it would lead him to sharing a stage with many bluegrass and country artists and, eventually, to a career, which has lasted more than 25 years. Price and his band, Vintage Country, perform Saturday at the Clay Center's Walker Theater in a benefit for the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, an organization he hopes one day to be honored by.

He has a fair chance.

The 45 year-old has appeared on more than 150 albums; performed with Marty Stuart, Johnny Paycheck and Porter Waggoner and spent more than 10 years as the fiddle player for Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. In 2002, as a member of the Clinch Mountain Boys, he won a Grammy for best bluegrass album. He has four International Bluegrass Music Association awards.

He sighed, "I don't even know what they're all for."

Price says he spent much of his teenage years traveling to bluegrass and traditional-music festivals. He was a kid with a fiddle who was interested in the music. First-generation bluegrass players like Monroe and Melvin Goins let him hang around on the fringes where he could pick up technique.

"I realized early on if I was going to learn to play like them," Price said, "I had to hang around people like them."

After he graduated from high school, he applied for a fiddle job he'd heard about in Bill Monroe's band. He was a little late, but Monroe helped him get a job with another band in Michigan. From there, he bounced from project to project and band to band.

"I'd work for this one, then that one, which is how you do it," he said. "I got to know everyone in the business."

His longest stretch with one band was with the Clinch Mountain Boys, of which he's no longer a member. He's reluctant to say much about his time with the band.

"Ralph and I aren't calling each other much right now," he said.

Regardless of tensions between old friends, Price says he's incredibly grateful to have spent so much time with some of the men who pioneered the music he loves. He's lucky. A lot of the country music players who've come later, he has no idea where their roots are.

"You get these kids," he said distastefully. "Guys wearing muscle shirts. They have the messed up hair, the leather bands on their wrists and what they play doesn't sound country to me. They sound like pop and look like the Backstreet Boys." 

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5195.