Fiddlers saw away in the Historic Earle Theatre as Mount Airy native Wes Clifton strums his mandolin. His right hand flies across the strings at the speed of a wet dog shaking itself dry. His left barely moves — only his fingers dance around the fretboard as he helps fill the downtown theater with music.

Clifton now lives in Raleigh, but he returns home regularly to play and teach old-time music. He hosts the mandolin workshop at the annual Tommy Jarrell Celebration, a gathering in honor of one of his hometown music idols, which takes place each year on the weekend of Jarrell’s birth. This year, he would have turned 124 years old.

Wes Clifton photograph by Hobart Jones, Courtesy of Surry Arts Council

Jarrell’s music emerged from the Foothills, cultivated by generations of pickers playing for square dances and other gatherings. Clifton’s grandfather Verlen played mandolin and picked with Jarrell regularly.

Clifton himself was drawn to music at an early age. He first fell in love with punk rock before learning the old-time styles that his grandfather played with friends. “To me, good music is good music,” he says, “especially no-frills roots music.”

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In the lobby of the Earle, a circle of fiddlers plays in unison. In the auditorium, men of all ages — linked by both their instruments and their ubiquitous plaid shirts — work on banjo licks. Legends of Surry County music — including Jarrell and Verlen Clifton — gaze down from giant photos on the walls of the venue, which doubles as the Old-Time Music Heritage Hall.

Jarrell played both fiddle and banjo, learning from his father, his uncle, and 19th-century musicians like the Civil War veteran who taught him the lively tune “Devil in the Strawstack.” Clifton was just a baby when Jarrell died in 1985. But the sounds of generations past filled Clifton’s childhood in Toast, the same community where Jarrell once lived just outside of Mount Airy.

Jarrell’s music emerged from the Foothills, cultivated by generations of pickers.

Clifton’s playing style echoes that of his grandfather Verlen. “He had a pretty interesting strumming pattern — somewhere between a guitar strum and more choppy, bluegrass-style mandolin,” he says. “Grandpa said he liked to put a little more music in it than just a straight chop.”

Jarrell was a legend among traditional musicians worldwide. He played an old-time style called Round Peak, named for the Surry County region where it originated. His fiddling influenced a generation of musicians during the folk revival that began in the 1960s, though Clifton appreciates him just as much for his clawhammer banjo picking. The National Endowment for the Arts named Jarrell a National Heritage Fellow in 1982, and filmmaker Les Blank traveled from California to make two documentaries about him.

Jarrell welcomed musical pilgrims from around the globe to the Foothills, loading them up with music, jokes, and home-cooked food. “Tommy became sort of an ambassador for Surry County old-time music,” Clifton says, “because he was such a welcoming figure.”

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The Tommy Jarrell celebration continues in the Surry Arts Council Art Center, where a new generation of musicians gathers. The youth competition welcomes kids born more than a century after the contest’s namesake. The boys sport trucker hats and boots, while the girls wear Sunday dresses and hair bows. They play old-time Appalachian folk standards like “New River Train,” “Soldier’s Joy,” and “The Eighth of January,” which supplied the melody for the 1959 novelty hit “The Battle of New Orleans.”

Like Clifton, the young’uns playing at the Tommy Jarrell Celebration Youth Competition never met the event’s namesake, but his sound has inspired them to carry on the legacy of Round Peak music. photograph by Hobart Jones, Courtesy of Surry Arts Council

The host of the contest is local musician Jim Vipperman, who for many years owned the Mount Airy shop Vip’s Violins & Music. He’s got a dad joke or a corny comment for almost every contestant. When he introduces a boy from Lowgap to play “Black Eyed Susie,” Vipperman asks, “Has she been fighting or something? Why’s she got a black eye?”

The festival concludes back at the Earle with an evening concert and dance featuring performances by a variety of musicians, including Clifton and his fellow instructors. Even though he never met Jarrell, Clifton had many years to learn his music firsthand from his grandfather, who lived to be 92. Now, he hopes to carry the sounds of Surry County forward for the next generation to play.

Tommy Jarrell Celebration
March 1
Locations in Mount Airy
(336) 786-7998
surryarts.org/shows/tommyjarrell.html