Editor’s Note: Several of the artists in this playlist are taking part in a benefit concert to raise funds for western North Carolina on October 27. Click here to learn more about Music for the Mountains and purchase tickets.
Nothing could be finer than to drive through Carolina with a soundtrack. For that, Our State has you covered. When you take I-95 south from Roanoke Rapids and head down to Lumberton, check out all of the wonderful spots featured in the July issue — and groove to our playlist along the way.
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We’ve included songs about North Carolina and travel both by homegrown artists (The Avett Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, Eric Church, Doc Watson, Anthony Hamilton, and many more) as well as singers who just love to come visit with us (like Jimmy Buffett, Merle Haggard, Lou Rawls, and Dean Martin). We’ve even sprinkled in songs about some of the specific towns you’ll be visiting, or by artists who hail from those towns. For example, there’s “Home” by American Idol finalist Chris Daughtry, who sings about his hometown of Roanoke Rapids, and “Trouble in My Way,” written and performed by gospel singer Luther Barnes of Rocky Mount. Then there’s the traditional civil rights anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” performed here by Mary D. Williams, who spent her summers in Smithfield listening to the gospel music that she’d hear her grandparents sing. In his loving ode to “Fayetteville,” Britt Uzzell, who goes by the stage name Snuzz, apologizes for criticizing the dusty military town when he was a kid growing up there, singing, “I swore I’d leave you, but I never will.” And in “Hometown Hero,” Charly Lowry, the Lumbee frontwoman for the band Dark Water Rising, pays tribute to a fellow member of her Lumbee community in Robeson County near Lumberton.
Our playlist also extends beyond the I-95 corridor, bringing songs about other specific North Carolina towns (“Rockingham” by BJ Barham, “Reidsville” by American Aquarium, “Wilson Rag” by Elizabeth Cotten, “From Me to Clayton” by 6 String Drag, “Leaving Eden” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, “Chapel Hill Boogie” by John Dee Holeman, “Charlotte’s in North Carolina” by Keith Whitley, and more) together with generalized salutes to our state (“Carolina in My Mind” by Chapel Hill native James Taylor, “Cackalack!” by Jonathan Byrd, “Carolina” by Willie Nelson’s son Lucas, “Gone to Carolina” by Waylon Jennings’s son Shooter, and “Wagon Wheel,” by Darius Rucker — from that other Carolina).
You won’t find more musical love for North Carolina packed into one playlist. Enjoy the ride.
The influence of a mother’s love — and sometimes her recipes — can be found in restaurant kitchens and on plates in dining rooms across North Carolina.
The oldest hotel in North Carolina was saved from the wrecking ball and has returned to its former glory on the square in downtown Burnsville.
For one family, summiting Stone Mountain is a tradition that strengthens the bond between parent and child.
When a young chef met an aspiring farmer, the two formed a friendship as strong as their love of the land and all it provides.
