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“Music from the Land of the Sky� is being released by Rivermont Records on CD and vinyl. The vinyl reissue is being made by Asheville-based Citizen Vinyl.

The remastered recordings include 28 restored tracks, many sourced from original 78-rpm discs held for decades in private collections. Each has been meticulously remastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Bryan Wright to bring out details not heard since the recordings were first made. The recordings highlight pioneering artists such as Kelly Harrell and Henry Whitter, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Wade Ward, Ernest V. Stoneman, Emmett Miller and Foor-Robinson Carolina Club Orchestra, along with several lesser-known performers whose music has rarely been heard beyond these original recordings.

The story of this important event in the history of American music is captured in vivid detail within the liner notes, essays and artist biographies compiled by renowned scholars and music historians Ted Olson and Tony Russell, who draw upon years of painstaking research.

This collection brings together for the first time a representative sampling of the recordings made by OKeh in Asheville in the late summer of 1925. These recordings predate the more famous Bristol sessions by two years, marking the first effort by a commercial recording company to capture the sounds of Appalachian musicians on their home turf. Recorded far from the bustling recording centers of New York and Chicago, they offer a rare glimpse of mountain music-making rooted in the era just before the widespread commercialization of radio, records and the explosion of mass media dissemination.

These recordings have received scant attention over the past century because, with only a few exceptions, the performers who recorded in Asheville did not become well known, and the fidelity of the original recordings is rather poor and the original discs quite rare.

Preorders for the CD and vinyl editions of “Music from the Land of the Sky” can be ordered at .

Celebrating 100 years of Americana & Appalachia

In tribute to the centennial of the historic 1925 OKeh recording session in Asheville, the Blue Ridge Music Center, in collaboration with Explore Asheville, AVLFest and Buncombe County Library System/Pack Memorial Library, will present The Asheville Sessions: Celebrating 100 years of Americana & Appalachia Nov. 6-8 with concerts and additional events linking the groundbreaking work of 1925 to the city’s thriving modern music scene. Two significant concerts anchor the weekend:

Friday, Nov. 7, The Grey Eagle: Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show will perform, along with Nest of Singing Birds and Jesse Smathers

Saturday, Nov. 8, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium: A hometown showcase featuring nationally recognized, Asheville-based artists River Whyless, Tyler Ramsey, Toubab Krewe and Floating Action

Tickets for both shows go on presale at 10 a.m., Thursday, Aug. 21. Tickets go on sale to the public at 10 a.m., Friday, Aug. 22, at .

“Asheville’s music story began with the early echoes of country and Appalachian folk, and that spirit still resonates through the city’s vibrant music community today,� said Vic Isley, president and CEO of Explore Asheville and the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. “This celebration is just the beginning of connecting our earliest contributions to recorded music with the sound and creativity of Asheville’s thriving scene now, while shining a spotlight on the artists who will carry that legacy into the next century.�

Jeff Whitworth, owner of Worthwhile Sounds and cofounder of AVLFest, said, “The best way to honor history is to let it live, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing this November when the Asheville Sessions centennial celebration becomes the flagship event for AVLFest. After Hurricane Helene forced the cancellation of AVLFest 2025, we’re proud to continue the tradition through this once-in-a-century milestone with concerts that create a bridge between the songs captured here a century ago and the music being made in Asheville right now.�

Panels, history and the bigger story

In addition to the concerts, Explore Asheville, in partnership with the North Carolina Arts Foundation and Blue Ridge Music Center, will mark the centennial of the Asheville Sessions with a weekend of panels and symposiums celebrating the city’s role in early recorded music.

The following public events are scheduled:

Thursday, Nov. 6, Wicked Weed Funkatorium: Kickoff history event with a panel on the Asheville Sessions featuring music historians Ted Olson and Tony Russell, introduced by Brody Hunt, and a performance by the Russ Wilson Jazz Orchestra

Friday, Nov. 7, Pack Library: A day of free sessions with Katherine Cutshall on Asheville in 1925, Bryan Wright on remastering acoustic recordings, Olson and Russell on the sessions’ significance, and a Gathering of Descendants sharing family legacies

Saturday, Nov. 8, Pack Library: Symposiums continue with panels on music as a tool for disaster recovery, the continuing legacy of live performance in Asheville, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee’s influence on traditional music in Western North Carolina

The panels trace themes first captured in 1925, when Ralph Peer made his way to Asheville from New York City, ultimately recording 60 wax masters at the George Vanderbilt Hotel for OKeh Records. Long before Peer arrived in Asheville, the region’s folk traditions had been carried forward for centuries. From the time the ballads, hymns, and danceable fiddle reels and jigs of the British Isles met the percussive and rhythmic drive of the banjo from the coast of West Africa these sounds took root and grew prominent in the relative isolation of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Over time, those melodies were carried forward and adapted by mountain settlers and merged with the cadence and rhythm of Cherokee storytelling and dance traditions. That fusion of traditions gave rise to a new style ― Americana ― a convergence of folk, country, blues, and spirituals that formed the bedrock of country music.

“The Asheville Sessions represent one of the first large-scale efforts to share Appalachian music with the rest of the nation and shaped how the outside world heard and understood the culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains,� said Richard Emmett of Blue Ridge Music Center. “These restored recordings give us an irreplaceable record of variety of voices and styles of the musicians from Asheville, Western North Carolina, and Blue Ridge Mountains at a time before making music as a vocation was a possibility. The Appalachian musicians who recorded in Asheville were ahead of their time and many of the songs they recorded are mainstays of roots and Americana music to this day. The Asheville Sessions prove that Asheville was an innovative music town even 100 years ago.�

Together with the concerts, panels and community events, the release of “Music from the Land of the Sky� ensures that Asheville’s role as the fuse that lit the fire of country music’s first recordings of Appalachian musicians in the mountains is celebrated on stage and on record.

The centennial celebration highlights Asheville’s role as a thriving cultural destination and an early and pivotal chapter in the story of recorded music in America. Music lovers are invited to experience the city’s past, present, and future in one unforgettable weekend. To learn more, purchase tickets or preorder the album, visit .