A Remastered Album and New Festival Pay Tribute to the Pivotal Asheville Sessions – Garden & Gun

In 1925, New York City producer Ralph Peer made his way to Asheville to record sixty wax masters—the earliest form of audio recording—at the George Vanderbilt Hotel for OKeh Records. He would capture for the first time Appalachia’s unique, generations-in-the-making sound, which spanned family string bands, blues, jazz, and even a little pop, and in the process lay the groundwork for the more famous Bristol Sessions of 1927. Now, a hundred years later, Rivermont Records is releasing a remastered version of those original sessions, and Asheville is hosting a festival to connect that history to the city’s thriving music scene today. 

Photo: Courtesy of Explore Asheville

The George Vanderbilt Hotel.

“The music that was recorded was unique and authentic and had never been heard by the rest of the world,” says Richard Emmett, the program director for the Blue Ridge Music Center. “It lit the fuse that led to the growth and development of country, bluegrass, and Americana music.” But the recording industry was still so young that few copies of the record were printed, most of which fell into private hands, and the Asheville Sessions were largely forgotten. 

This year, Grammy-nominated engineer Bryan Wright remastered the recordings, and the resulting album, Music from the Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions, includes twenty-eight restored tracks. Emmett says listeners might be surprised by what they recognize. “These are old songs still played today by lots of bands,” he says. They include. “Arkansas Traveler,” “I’m Going Back to North Carolina,” and a track later made famous by Hank Williams, “Lovesick Blues,” performed in this case by Emmett Miller.

Photo: Courtesy of Explore Asheville

The album includes the track, “Let Your Shack Burn Down,” from Fisher Hendley, a North Carolina banjo picker.

“Asheville helped shape the sound of country and Americana music, and that spirit still runs through our community today,” says Vic Isley, president of Explore Asheville and the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. The celebration (November 6–9) isn’t all about the past—it will feature performances by Tyler Ramsey, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, the band Nest of Singing Birds, Jesse Smathers, River Whyless, Toubab Krewe, and Floating Action. Plus, panel discussions will dive into the diverse roots of Appalachian music and bring in family members of those who played on the original recordings, including a fiddler of Cherokee heritage who will speak to how Native American cadence and dance influenced the region’s sound. 

“This music has been passed down in families and communities, and I just love that we can connect that past with contemporary traditions and what people are listening to today,” Emmett says. “Asheville is one of the great music cities of the country, and we want that to carry forward into the future.”