Category: Traditional Music

Flamekeeper is an apt name for the band of award-winning bluegrass fiddler Michael Cleveland. It’s a band on fire and a man on fire, for sure. In the first concert of the Sounds of the Mountains series’ eighth season, the musicians all played as if they were on fire or about to burst into flames.

The Sounds of the Mountains series is an inspired collaboration between the Willingham Theatre at the Yadkin Arts Council in Yadkinville and the Blue Ridge Music Center near Galax, Virginia. The Music Center holds concerts in its amphitheater May through September. By partnering with the Willingham Theatre, they can keep giving fans the great bluegrass and Americana music that they’re missing when it’s too cold for music out of doors.

Cleveland and Flamekeeper warmed the 30-degree night right up, as they kicked off the three-concert series with two sets of tunes that managed to be both nostalgic and avant-garde simultaneously. I promise you that Cleveland’s mind-blowing rendition of “Orange Blossom Special” opened up new pathways in my brain. I’ve never heard anything like it.