Mountain Stage: An Oral History
A new, four-part look at the NPR music show that marked its 40th anniversary in 2023
Last March, on an assignment for the online publication Americana Highways, I spent a day behind the scenes at Mountain Stage, the National Public Radio program that marked its 40th anniversary in 2023.
An institution in Charleston, W.Va., the two-hour show is taped live and airs more than two dozen new episodes a year (the rest are reruns) on more than 280 stations across the U.S. Most are taped at the 460-seat Cultural Center Theater in the state’s capital city, which has a population of just over 46,000.
Over several hours, I interviewed co-founder and longtime host Larry Groce and his replacement, Grammy Award winning singer Kathy Mattea. I also spoke with executive producer Adam Harris as well as musical director Ron Sowell and house pianist Bob Thompson, both of whom performed on the show’s pilot in 1981.
Working with an always-lean budget, Mountain Stage runs like a well-oiled machine thanks to a veteran staff and crew that is doing what it loves — rehearsing, playing, and performing music from all types of different genres. Watching and photographing the taping of that evening’s show, I wanted to do a deeper dive into its storied history.
Afterward, I talked by phone with co-founder Andy Ridenour, who retired as the show’s executive producer in 2011, as well as Grammy Award-winning bluegrass musician Tim O’Brien, and Bertis Downs, the manager of R.E.M., whose 1991 appearance brought the show international attention.
R.E.M.’s performance is part of Mountain Stage folklore, and the story behind it is a segment in this series. But one look at some of the other singers and bands who have performed on the show is an example of how eclectic and deep its history is: Dave Alvin, Tori Amos, Joan Baez, Tyler Childers, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, John Hartford, Jason Isbell, Norah Jones, Wynonna Judd, Alison Krauss, the Del McCoury Band, Bill Monroe, Randy Newman, Phish, John Prine, Chuck Profit, Patti Smith, Pops Staples, Chris Stapleton, Townes Van Zandt, Loudon Wainwright, Widespread Panic, Lucinda Williams, and Warren Zevon.
Most of those artists — and countless others — are featured on the two-dozen plus mixtapes of Mountain Stage performances that you can find on streaming services. All but one or two of those compilations were released in the mid 1990s on BMG, but a new one to mark the 40th anniversary was announced in January. “Mountain Stage: Outlaws and Outliers,” to be released on April 19, will feature 21 tracks from many of those artists.
The news of the new compilation’s release, along with the end of the 40th anniversary year, led me to revisit the interviews I had done during and after my visit. For Americana Highways, an online publication, I wrote a series of Q&As with Groce, Mattea, and O’Brien that also are part of my “Conversations” series on this site.
Narrative features were written on the show in Rolling Stone and Garden & Gun, among others, during 2023 to mark the anniversary. Still, I held on to the notes with plans to write a longer story about a show that has seen so many of my favorite artists grace its stage.
I’ve long enjoyed oral histories but have never attempted one myself in my 40 years — see the symmetry there? — as a professional writer. For this series, which will appear on Wednesdays for the next four weeks, I decided to take that approach, in effect letting you hear the stories from the people themselves.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. If you would like to get a head start, check out this 30-minute documentary released last month by West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
To read the additional parts of this series, click on the links below:
I have not seen Larry Groce in years, but I've certainly heard from him over the years having kids who loved Disney movies and music. My first meeting with him was in the early 1980s when he played at the Caswell County Civic Center. There were no hotels in Caswell at that time, so he stayed with my first wife and I at our home in the Locust Hill section of the county. He was not only a great entertainer, but a great houseguest as well. He gave me a copy of his album, "The Wheat Lies Low." I still have it to this day. I'm sure he's long forgotten his time with us, but I'll never forget his visit.