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 the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he decided to pick up the banjo. 

Hello from the nearly empty bar counter of the Vail House Oyster Bar & Grille on the outskirts of downtown Goldsboro, North Carolina — a city seemingly forgotten by the sands of time and 21st century progress elsewhere. 

It was just about four years ago when Josh Weeks and his wife, McRae Davis, were at the stoplight on the corner of Depot Street and Branner Avenue in downtown Waynesville ­­­­when Davis pointed over at the former Walker Service Station. 

And so, we enter the whirlwind holiday season once again. Honestly, it feels like I was just in Knoxville, Tennessee, leaning against the bar on the second floor of the Preservation Pub in Market Square on New Year’s Eve when the clock struck midnight. 

Performer. Writer. Director. Instructor. Photographer. 

Hello from Room 1029 in the Blue Valley Cottage at the Old Edwards Inn, situated near the intersection of U.S. 64 and Main Street in downtown Highlands. 

In this current, uncertain era of the music industry, bands and artists alike are forging into uncharted waters, ready to face whatever challenges may lie ahead — this juncture of persistence, passion and purpose, culminating in dreams realized in real time. 

Hello from Room 6102 at the Sonder motel on the edge of Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s 80 degrees outside in the late morning, with the dry heat of the Southwest steadily rising like the hot sun above the high desert prairie surrounding this vast, metropolitan area. 

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. 

It was at 7:27 a.m. Monday when the red ball of fire broke the horizon line at Wrightsville Beach.

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

A soothing mid-fall breeze floats across my front porch, through the screen door and into the apartment, ultimately swirling around the writing desk facing a bustling Russ Avenue within sight. 

It was an otherwise quiet Tuesday evening when my girlfriend started in on me once again that it was high time to get rid of the old couch in our apartment in downtown Waynesville. By last count, it was probably the fifth or sixth time she’d said that this year.

Stepping outside the small log cabin, I took a moment to collect my thoughts. Vast farm fields and ancient dirt in the rural countryside outside of Goldsboro, the cool air of an impending fall was felt with a sense of relief in a place where heat and humidity reign supreme. 

Standing in a narrow, dimly-lit alley behind The Remington Bar — a century-old watering hole in the heart of Whitefish, Montana — this past summer, Brandon Coleman leans against his band van following a fiery performance and slowly gazes up at the twinkling stars high above. 

Somewhere around Schroon Lake, New York, just following a quick hike in the Adirondack Mountains, it was decided to head further down Interstate 87 to I-78, onward through Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to get to Raleigh, North Carolina, for the International Bluegrass Music Association award show last Thursday. 

On the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, in a building within earshot of the football stadium, there’s a small, unassuming office at the end of a quiet, dead-end hallway. 

It’s never easy to go home. And I think it only seems to get harder, perhaps more abstract and blurry, as one gets older — further and farther between from the starting line, literally and figuratively. Case-in-point, I recently returned home to my native North Country. 

It’s 9:54 a.m. Tuesday. I’m sitting at the old wooden kitchen table at my parents’ farmhouse in rural Upstate New York, within close range of the Canadian border, just a few farm fields away from the mighty, ancient Lake Champlain. 

With a motto of “Your Taste is Our Desire,” Absolutely Yummy Catering has been a longtime mainstay in the Haywood County and greater Western North Carolina culinary scene. 

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.

In the winter of 1978, Terryll Evans was a ninth grader in Orlando, Florida. But, by March, she and her family would pack up everything and move hundreds of miles away to the mountains of Haywood County — an unknown landscape for the teenager. 

The alarm on my smart phone echoed throughout the small cabin. It was 7:30 a.m. Saturday and I had to be somewhere in an hour — hopping onto a saddle for an early morning horse ride. 

Sitting in the Innovation Brewing outpost taproom at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, writer David Joy takes a sip of his craft ale and pauses for a moment, slowly scanning the mountains cradling the school. That evening, Joy would give a book talk across campus for an eager crowd awaiting this rare appearance of his. 

Emerging from the rental car, a slight drizzle from an early evening storm rolled across the high-desert landscape of Morrison, Colorado. The Western skies overhead turned dark and ominous, only to quickly retreat and head for the skyline of nearby Denver. 

Covered in sweat, I was about three miles into a Friday afternoon run around Lake Johnson on the outskirts of Raleigh.

Last Tuesday morning, Doug Gray was standing outside his hotel room in Jackson, Wyoming.

Mailbox 278 (pictured) along Route 581 in the unincorporated community of Nahunta, North Carolina. In the rural depths of Wayne County on the outskirts of the small city of Goldsboro. 

Exiting the elevator of the Cambria Hotel in downtown Asheville on Monday morning, I noticed the “Sunset Time” scribbled on the lobby sign said 8:29 p.m. Four minutes shorter than what I first saw when checking into the Cambria last Thursday evening. 

Parking the truck at the intersection of the Appalachian Trail and the Nolichucky River on the outskirts of the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, early Monday afternoon, a hot sun kissed my forehead emerging from the vehicle all while lacing up the ole trail running shoes.

On Oct. 20, 1977, a plane carrying southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed into the woods near Gillsburg, Mississippi.

Hello from Room 209 at the Super 8 on the outskirts of Rawlins, Wyoming. Late morning and taking my time to get my bags packed and tossed into the back of the rental car.

Hello from Room 312 at the Apres hotel in Whitefish, Montana. Late Sunday morning. High of 91 degrees with low humidity and hot sun high above the desolate Rocky Mountains in this remote part of the lower 48 states. 

With a hot sun slowly fading behind the Great Balsam Mountains cradling Waynesville, Outlaw Whiskey hopped onto the stage for a recent performance at Furman’s Burger Bar on the west side of town.

Hello from 36,000 feet above the Midwest on this otherwise quiet Monday afternoon.

Since its inception in 2000, Greensky Bluegrass has grown from a scrappy string ensemble to one of the premier live stage acts currently touring the country.

At 6 p.m. this past Friday, I was supposed to be walking into my 20th high school reunion at the Latitude 45 bar in the small Canadian Border town of Rouses Point, New York (population: 2,225).