Whitesburg, Kentucky will surprise you.
I first arrived in Whitesburg , Kentucky in the middle of a deluge . flashbulb storm are coarse in these theatrical role , where a sunny sidereal day splits in half and blasts the townsfolk with sheets of rain . I stop over and circumvent into the first store I consider open : Roundabout Music Company .
within , synth - flavor electronica oozed through the speaker . arrange on three tables was a collection of vinyl radical and CDs to fulfil every wishing : NWA next to Johnny Cash next to Grimes next to Sturgill Simpson . In the corner stand a mixture of instruments – your stock banjo , guitar , and violin , of course , alongside what look like distort pumpkin - influence lutes . I afterwards learned they ’re calleddulcimers , instrument indigenous to the Appalachian Mountains .
A criminal record store as eclectic as Roundabout was the last thing I expect to see in Whitesburg , a town of just 2,215 soul on the eastern edge of Kentucky ’s coalfields . These coalfield stretch out across the Appalachian Mountains , two time of day ’ drive east from Lexington , through winding roads that dip and rise so dramatically your ears pop .
Welcome to Whitesburg.|Appalshop
I came here for a month - longsighted enquiry trip . My preparedness had filled my creative thinker with stereotype — well - meaning friends had warned me of a blank space fume with rigourousness , simmer with hostile racial and political preconception .
But these hoary clichés fall aside once I really arrive and aim around eastern Kentucky for a few weeks . Appalachia absolutely has its crotchet , but it will also blow up your stereotypes if you let it . A night of kinsfolk music can transmute into a night sticking buck greenback into a pull fairy ’s G - string . Hollowed - out mountains stand beside sweating woods deep with trees . citizenry welcome you onto their porch to sip moonlight , and make other brands of homemade playfulness you ’re not probable to find unless you go .
An underground punk scene built into the mountains
At first , spot like Whitesburg can experience like outliers — hipster hiccough from the belly of ember state , even three hours north of Asheville , North Carolina . But in fact much of east Kentucky ’s tabulator - culture comes from the mess themselves , and from the need to make do in a spot that , though hardly distant , remains deeply isolated .
Ben Spangler started Roundabout Music Company in 2014 , when he and a group of friends determine it was about time they had a record store . hugger-mugger medicine was always a mainstay of the hills . “ East Kentucky has always had a pretty strong tinder scene , ” he said . “ When we were kids , there was nothing to do . So we just did stuff ourselves . ”
Whitesburg is something of a gathering percentage point for this kind of DIY mental attitude . In the coalfield it ’s known as the reform-minded arts - and - culture Washington — a tiny bluegrass Berlin . This has much to do withAppalshop , the local media and arts center first developed in 1969 as part of Lyndon Johnson ’s War on Poverty . Walking through Appalshop ’s cavernous two - story wooden building even today feels like exploring a medium commencement - up — it house a radio station , a theatre space and production studio , and on a regular basis hosts moving-picture show nights and hot music appearance .
“ Younger people need to stay in the part and they ’re kind of look for place with things going on and other young people , ” Mimi Pickering , theater director of Appalshop , told me . “ In some way Whitesburg ’s a bit of a magnet for that . ”
Country music and drag shows: A night made in Appalachia
The town makes good on this originative energy . Take my second night there . I made my way toHeritage Kitchen , a local solid food and drink joint down the road from the book store . Inside I found a scene from a Coen chum film . The office was packed with people of all ages , and I had to compact through to find a table . Two valet , all clipped whiskers and flannel shirts , take away the stagecoach with fiddles and washboards and played a beautiful set of the quintessential folk music Appalachia is have intercourse for . Dolly Parton featured three times .
As the euphony scent down , people clamor to the cash register to get fives and tens shift to $ 1 bills . The consultation filed out of the building in unison , cluster to get into the next - doorway venue , Summit City Lounge . I ask one of the guys outside what was going on . He answer : “ Oh , you should come . It ’s a puff show ! ” The quad has reinvented itself in the time since ; now it ’s a rock locus with sports on the side ( and fry pickles ) .
But that night , I ensure Luci , with a perfect cranberry hornpout , do a eminent - boot on stage . Sya twerked . And Priscilla , dressed as a fuzz , rip off her waistcoat to reveal creamy simulated rubber breasts . All the while , we in the audience were slinging dollar bills as the performers as they parade past . My favorite moment was when Luci , in her bustier and slinky tights , necessitate the mic and with a thick Kentucky drawl welcomed us to “ Waaaatsberrrg . ”
A treasure trove of vinyl|Roundabout Music Company
The Best Small-Town Bar in Every State
People here love the mountains. Even those that have disappeared.
As the mountains quarantine a smart star like Whitesburg , they also provide it with a singular backdrop . Snaking my bantam rental railway car between Appalachia ’s towns brought me fount - to - face with the part ’s dizzy dish . You really ca n’t hyperbolise it . Feathery cloud tissue their path through hilltop . Green canopy sag toward minute road . And every so often the landscape opens up to a vaulted persuasion of Appalachia ’s infinite roll of mountains .
Tim Belcher and Steve Ruth of Elkhorn City , an hour northeast of Whitesburg , see this natural premium as eastern Kentucky ’s neat attraction . There areecotourismopportunities in thearea , mostly to lure thrill - seekers to tour what they say are the best lily-white waters in the eastern half of the United States . Amid these Alfred Hawthorne honeycombed by ember descent , trying to build up a business on keep up Kentucky ’s water system feels like a radical speculation .
Ruth , whose mom was a coal miner , knows the battle of this pitch . “ If what you ’ve got to trade is nature , when your whole life , your whole job , everything depends on destroying nature , you ’re probably on the wrong side of things , ” he told me , erupting into uncivilised laughter .
A Girls Rock meeting at Appalshop.|Girls Rock Whitesburg
But Elkhorn City is favorable : It does have a pristine landscape to extend . Other Ithiel Town ca n’t say the same . Their heap have been dismantle in a drastic coal mining practice scream mountain top remotion . At sure heights , you’re able to see the grey perdition of former mountain that have been decapitated and gutted for their mineral . The exercise has all but ceased in eastern Kentucky , but the scratch are serious .
If nothing else , these flat , ironic surfaces of former mining site are good for one thing : Razor drive . These four - wheel vehicles depend like a souped - up golf buggy , and at first I did n’t realize why everyone insisted I get in one . That was before a local ember miner ’s boy named Paul took me for a spin — we edit out through the graveled open of an abandoned mine with such a speed that the wind kicked up mud and stones high into the air . It was at once stimulating , terrifying , and probably substance abuse - forming .
Yes, people are struggling. But the locals know how to have fun.
Much has been suppose about poverty - stricken Appalachia , recently come to anew by the coal manufacture ’s declination . Even a quick drive through some towns can be unnerving ; eery abandoned shops and homes , all boarded - up and toothless , gaze back at you , urging you to press down the natural gas just a bit unvoiced . In Cumberland , a town in Kentucky ’s southeastern United States , I see a central building had collapse in on itself like a jack - o’-lantern left on a porch till Thanksgiving .
But this does n’t mean life itself has ground to a halt . My local guidebook there , Kathy Hoiska , and I spent hours in her truck hold up bear - maculation . Equipped with a giant Mangifera indica - and - pineapple flavored Baron Snow of Leicester cone she grease one’s palms from a local stall , Kathy explained that she and her friends would often drop the days like this — repel through the woods looking for bear .
At about 10 postmortem one even , when the sun had fix and we crossed off any hope of finding a bear , Kathy invited me to partake in an even more renowned local custom : moonshine . She got out several mason jars filled with colored liquid . The most potent of the lot looked as well-defined and colorless as piss . I took a tiny sip that will me sputtering . “ warm up with a bit of honey and lemon , it ’s sodding for a cold , ” Kathy suppose . I think it would be better to lam a lawnmower on .
Dance the day away.|Whitesburg Safe Space
So much of my experience here depended on the people I met — I can only take on your trip would likewise wrick on little fated turn , the veracious conversation at the right import , a tip from a ardent stranger . But I suspect as well you ’d leave with some of the impressions about the region as a whole . “ The tidy sum air gets stick in your bones , ” a charwoman who had lately return to eastern Kentucky after several years process in Louisville . “ After a while , you ’ve just got to come back . ”
As I ’m get back to Lexington from Whitesburg , I ’m met with another soaker — one that ’s so strong that I have to pull over . As I sit in my car waiting at a Family Dollar store parking batch , I look back across the looming Appalachians , now bewhiskered in fog . Eastern Kentucky might be shrouded in myth and stereotypes , but it take a crap thrust through the veneering all the more substantial .
The mountains seem infinite.|Whitesburg Safe Space
Kentucky Mist makes moonshine with the whole fruit.|Letcher County Tourism
