Flat Five News Today

LaRob K. Rafael will narrate The Rose of Sonora at the Evanston Symphony Orchestra concert on April 7. Photo credit:  Aidan Kranz Every week brings

Since 2019, Inside Appalachia has brought you stories from our Folkways Reporting Project. Folkways was created to boost awareness of Appalachian folk traditions and how they’re passed between people. In 2023, we added 25 stories to our growing archive that explore diverse arts, culture, food and people of Appalachia. This week, look back at some of the past year’s Folkways highlights.

Check out all the things to do around Maui for New Yearʻs Eve, including a fireworks show in Wailea. Find our comprehensive listing HERE.

A 22-year-old jazz musician is playing to hometown gatherings before heading for the big time in New Orleans.

This week, we drop by Flat Five Studio in Salem, Virginia. It had a reputation for recording bluegrass bands, but caught a big break in the early 1990s when the Dave Matthews Band needed a quiet place to record its debut album. We also learn a little about primordial forests, and we visit a small nonprofit company in West Virginia that’s making solar powered light kits for families in war-torn Ukraine.

Flat Five Studio has frequently evolved to keep track with the rapidly changing music industry. Now, as a new owner takes the helm, the studio is trying new things while still remaining grounded in the fundamental art of expert music production.

The Brookneal Womans Club hosted its inaugural Brookneal Farm To Table Dinner on Aug. 19 with a harvest-style spread on Main Street in the town of Brookneal to help showcase the abundance of locally sourced food produced by the town farm community.

The Venue will be celebrating its fourth anniversary of bringing live music to the Aurora area with a double album cover Beatles tribute show on Friday, June 2.

Isthmus Picks for Feb. 27-March 2 includes tour stops by The Flat Five, Lúnasa and Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros; the annual La Follette Forum.

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