Mountaineer Week will showcase local West Virginia music talents starting Friday, Nov. 13 with An Evening of Appalachian Music. The event will be held at the Gluck Theatre in the Mountainlair at 7:30 p.m.

The audience of Appalachian music will get to experience the sound of mountain music shaped by generations of eastern and southern European immigrants and African Americans who came to the mountains in the 20th century looking for work in the coal mines.

Martinsburg’s The Fox Hunt will perform the same evening in the Mountainlair food court at 9 p.m. The band plays songs about topics which anyone who has lived in West Virginia can relate to: substance misuse, quiet highways, betrayal, damnation and liberation.

The Fox Hunt fuses intense harmony and acoustic instruments characteristic of early country/folk with rough, smoky, rock and roll lyrics and arrangements.

The sounds of mountain music will continue the following day with a Mountaineer Week Fiddle Contest. The Appalachian-style Fiddle Contest is one of Mountaineer Week’s biggest events. The event will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Gluck Theatre in the Mountainlair. Cash prizes will be awarded to first to fifth places.

This year, Mountaineer Week is introducing a new Heritage Award for a fiddler with a lifetime contribution to fiddling in West Virginia. The event will be sponsored by The Purple Fiddle, the Waterfront Place Hotel and Bath Fitters.

A performance by local band The New Relics will follow the contest at 9:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair food court. The New Relics mix sounds of country, rock, Americana and bluegrass.

For more information, contact Appalachian Music Advisor Marianne Kovatch at mkovatch@mindspring.com or Mountaineer Week Advisor Sonja Wilson at sonja.wilson@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU –

lz/11/03/09

CONTACT: Sonja Wilson, Mountaineer Week
304-293-2702