Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Emma John’s memorable journey to master one of the hardest musical styles on earth
Wayfaring Stranger: A Musical Journey in the American South
What you need to know before your trail
Can you feel nostalgic for a life you’ve never known?
Suffused with her much-loved warmth and wit, Emma John’s memoir follows her moving and memorable journey to master one of the hardest musical styles on earth – and to find her place in an alien world.
Emma had fallen out of love with her violin when a chance trip to the American South introduced her to bluegrass music. Classically trained, highly strung and wedded to London life, Emma was about as country as a gin martini. So why did it feel like a homecoming?
Travel Guide
Travel BookTrail style along the trail of Bluegrass music in America’s Deep South
Blue grass music was the sound of an America of long ago: of railroads and prison gangs, of church revival and illegal liquor. One you;’d heard it and loved it, you could never mistake it for anything else. Country music sounded slow, languid, doleful by comparison; folk seemed simplistic.Only Jazz could compare to its orgy of invention, and to be played well, it had to touched by genius.”
Nashville Grand Old Oprey
America’s most famous and popular music show from the heart of Nashville.
Taylorsville
It used to be a furniture town , she told me , but the manufacturing plants and the textile mills had mostly moved out or shut down.” This is where the Apple Festival takes place in the fall.There’s also the Apple Butter Festival. If you like apples, she quips in the book, this is the place to be.
Boone
A town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the band Cane Mil Road are based.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Wayfaring Stranger
Destination: Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina Author/guide: Emma John Departure Time: 2000s
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