This summer marks a milestone for the Music Maker Foundation. For the first time, we will have three exhibitions on view at three different museums around the South. “Our Living Past” is already on view in the Museum of the Birthplace of Country Music in Bristol, Tennessee. In June, the “Hanging Tree Guitars” exhibition will […]

As it did for every touring musician, the pandemic changed everything for Dom Flemons, a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a 15-year friend of the Music Maker Foundation, and a member of our board of directors for almost 12 years.  For all of those 15 years, Flemons’ live shows and education programs have […]

By Gabi Mendick Ring up Benjamin Tehoval and you might be taken aback by the thick, jovial French accent on the other end of the line. When you listen to Benjamin’s one-man-band take on the classic Roosevelt Sykes song “44 Blues,” you could reasonably assume he had deeper roots in the South, or had at […]

Please read our full 2020 Program and Activities report here

By Scott Zuppardo “People say I was born with the blues,” Willie Farmer says. “The blues is in me.”  There’s a loneliness that goes with growing up in the rural South. Willie Farmer has embraced that loneliness for years, but its spell on him is waning. He’s a self-taught auto mechanic who, for most of […]