Michael and Carrie Kline (Special Event)

Singing to audiences of all ages, the Klines perform in a variety of situations, from classrooms to prisons, from coffee houses and concert halls to porches and picket lines. Michael and Carrie Kline have been studying and chronicling the history and culture of Appalachia for thirty years. Michael, with a Ph.D. in Public Folklore from Boston University, and Carrie, with a Master's Degree in American Studies from SUNY/Buffalo, have cumulatively written twenty articles for Goldenseal Magazine since 1978, when Michael served on Goldenseal's editorial staff at the West Virginia Department of Culture and History. Michael's efforts to document 20th Century West Virginia life were supported in the early 1970s with receipt of a Ford Fellowship Award, and with a grant from the West Virginia Humanities in 1980. He has served on the Citizen's Advisory Board of the West Virginia Humanities Council and has far ranging contacts throughout the State with historians, Appalachian Studies scholars, artists and musicians. He has conducted extensive oral interviews with farmers, home makers and workers in most of the State's industries and communities.Michael was employed during most of the 1980s as Folklife Specialist for the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins. While there he researched, wrote and narrated a documentary film on West Virginia traditional music called "Play It For the Trees" for BBC-TV in Cardiff, Wales. His experience in creating public programs extends to Cullowhee, North Carolina, where he was employed by the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University. Later with the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society he documented New American cultures of Western Massachusetts.Carrie joined the research shortly before the duo contracted to complete an ethnographic survey of the City of Wheeling for the National Parks Service. During the course of their two years of research in that city, they produced an array of audio tapes designed to complement museum exhibits. They have completed an audio documentary of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley and a 90 minute audio history of navigation on the Ohio River called "Working a Square Watch" for the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Their radio programs have aired on West Virginia Public Radio and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" as well as WWVA-AM in Wheeling. Now available is the Klines' 4-part audio history series on life along the historic Staunton to Parkersburg Turnpike under contract with the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation, along with eight other recordings of folklore and music of West Virginia and Southern Maryland.

Their sweet, tight harmonies are a scintillating meshing of the American folk tradition.Michael and Carrie Kline are soulful singers. At the center of their repertoire are West Virginia songs, ranging from the ancient ballads of the Hammons Family in the central highlands to mining laments and songs of resistance in the coal fields. As two people absorbed in the study of oral tradition, they spend time with old-time singers and tellers winding out their lives in remote corners of the country. They've been working as folklorists in and around St. Mary's County, Maryland, of late, and they'll also present some of what they've learned and documented of the lore of Southern Maryland.The Klines weave their sweet, tight high mountain harmonies into love ballads and country duets, especially the poignant imagery of Kate Wolf and Laurie Lewis. The Klines present their music, both as entertainment and social history, with engaging ease and hard-hitting passion. Their memorable style is an amalgamation of primary musical and oral sources representative of places like the Appalachian coal fields and industrial cities of the American Heartland.