Straight-up pickin’ on The Crooked Road
By Jayne Clark, USA Today, 8/7/2006
The object of Wood’s evil eye is an overalls-clad man in the back row at the Floyd Country Store Friday Night Jamboree who’s jabbering away as a gospel group performs before a packed audience.
“I don’t like them talkin’ or dancin’ when there’s gospel,” says Wood, stretching the wand from behind the store’s wooden counter to poke the offender’s shoulder.
There’ll be time for that later during the bluegrass performances, when old and young, city and country folk, the rhythmically gifted and challenged, swarm the dance floor and pound out a flat-footin’ beat so fierce that just standing nearby makes the soles of your feet tingle.
The Country Store is just one stop along Virginia’s Crooked Road, a 253-mile route that weaves through lush hemlock and hardwood forests, stitching together dozens of small-town venues in the region where old-time American music first took root.
Read more at USA Today.