By the time you have reached southern Pennsylvania on I-79 you know you have left your flat world well behind. The road begins to wind like the tangled twine of harvest time as you climb and fall ever more steeply over the ancient crumbled paper on the floor of god’s library. You roll down the window while shifting down to fourth to the protest of an aging transaxle. Its whine and purr follow the flow of asphalt beneath you.
By the time you cross the New River Gorge bridge in West Virginia, there is no mistaking it, you are in the mountains now.
Before long you pass through the smokies of Tennessee and into North Carolina. The wine-fields of the flatlands have given way to endless rolling woods. Once common open spaces have become impossible developments. Your kindred occupy small homesteads, clamped along the ridges by their swollen toes. All evening their woodstoves cough and spit mocking songs from black metal throats to the forest below, as your kindred play a host of stringed instruments from their front porches: guitar; mandolin; bass; banjo; violin; dobro; and dulcimer.
But your kindred know better than to mock the wisdom of the woods. The local folk songs warn of the fools who dared to climb Devil’s Pass after dark for a cord of wood: Cold still hands clutching the smooth hard ash of an axe handle; the edge of a fence post; or the rope of a recently felled tree (the morning after a winter’s storm). These are the images that fill your mind as you scale down the ridge to the pit and mound landscape below.
“But what’s the worry today?” you say. It’s spring and the towering tulip trees are showing off their green-camo’d flowers to the gathering birds and bees who have left their winter slumber. You spend the morning negotiating slippery ridges down into the valley as a gentle rain trickles down your neck and past your shoes, inching slowly towards Bent Creek.
The red muck trail climbs like a Stairway to Heaven, but you stop at the Blueridge Parkway where your ride – and the familiar whine and purr of that aging transaxle – awaits. It’s just a few more miles down to Asheville and the Grey Eagle, where you will join a CD-release celebration for Dehlia Low, with special guests, Spring Creek.
1) Pickin’ on Zeppelin – The Battle Of Evermore – 4:29
2) Plum Creek String Band – I am a Man of Constant Sorrow – 4:54
3) Ani Difranco and Utah Phillips – The Most Dangerous Woman – 3:43
4) Spring Creek – Tangled in the Pines – 4:11
5) John Prine – Day is Done – 3:29
6) Steve Earle – Lonelier Than This – 3:11
7) Dehlia Low – Wilkins County Wood – 3:20
8) Plum Creek String Band – Cade’s Rosy Cheeks – 3:12
9) Pickin’ on Zeppelin – Going To California – 3:39
10) Dehlia Low – Take Me Back – 3:36
11) Dehlia Low – Climbing Devil’s Pass – 3:36
12) Steve Earle – Until The Day I Die – 3:22
13) Pickin’ on Zeppelin – D’yer Mak’er – 3:55
14) Spring Creek – Cuba Vera Swing – 3:13
15) Pickin’ on Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven – 5:21
16) John Prine – He Forgot That it Was Sunday – 5:37
17) Michelle Shocked – The Secret Admirer – 2:28
18) Michelle Shocked – Fogtown – 3:29
19) Michelle Shocked – The Secret To A Long Life (is knowing when it’s time to go) – 2:16
I am the creator and site administrator at The Basement Rug. I have been collecting LP's and CD's for more than 30 years. I 
Great writing, and even better tunes. Keep up the good work with the audio road log. I can almost smell the pine wood and feel the morning dew.
Thanks Miles. I am currently ripping some bluegrass LP’s for my outlaws down south, so I may post some of them here – including some excellent Canadian recordings.