Editor’s Note: Since first rolling into Haywood County in August 2012 to start work as the arts and entertainment editor for The Smoky Mountain News, Garret K. Woodward has been extensively documenting banjo players around our backyard.

In the mid-1960s, when Bill Allsbrook was a med school student at Duke University in Durham, he decided to pick up the banjo. 

Award-winning violinist Andrew Finn Magill will play a program of holiday music at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28, at the First Presbyterian Sanctuary in Highlands.

Upon first listen to Vincent Neil Emerson, one immediately feels this deep sense of familiarity and timelessness, this poignancy of sound and tone that echoes out in search of connection with fellow human beings — all together on this chaotic, hurtling rock through space and time. 

If there ever was a common denominator of the upper echelon of rock-n-roll royalty, it would be Chuck Leavell. 

There will be a stage production of “Good Ol’ Girls” at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 22-23, 29-30, Oct. 5-7 and 2 p.m. Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and 8 on the Fangmeyer Stage at the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in Waynesville. 

A community jam will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 5, at the Marianna Black Library in Bryson City. 

It’s 11 a.m. Monday. Currently sitting in the rec room of my aunt’s high-end apartment complex on the outskirts of Charlotte.

This past spring, guitarist Seth Taylor and his band, longtime bluegrass staple Mountain Heart, once again took the stage under the bright lights at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. 

In an effort to preserve and perpetuate the heritage arts and lore of the Great Smoky Mountains and greater Southern Appalachia, the Smoky Mountain Heritage Center has now come to fruition at the Meadowlark Motel in Maggie Valley.