Enjoy Tennessee old-time music over tea

Press release
The Corn Pone Stars from Nashville, Tenn. will play an old-time music concert with special guests from the Von Sack Family Singers at Great Lakes Tea and Spice in Glen Arbor on Tuesday, August 5 at 7:30 p.m. The tea shop is located behind the Sleeping Bear Animal Clinic on Lake Isle Street. Tea and wine tasting will be provided by Great Lakes Tea and Spice and Blackstar Farms.
The Corn Pone Stars hit the Nashville scene in 2006, reviving old-time mountain songs, bluegrass gems and early classic country favorites.
Corn Pone Star ‘Kernals’ Christopher Cheatham and Linda Sack are the core of the Corn Pone Stars band, joined by talented musicians and singers such as Jacob “Green Bean” Gordon, National Dulcimer Champion Lee Rowe and “Daybreak”s fiddle wonder Deann Whalen.

Christopher Cheatham’s pure, old-timey vocals resonate like that of bluegrass giants Ralph and Carter Stanley, taking audiences to mountainsides and generations past. Linda Sack adds sweet harmonies, and charms audiences with 1920’s Carter Family solos, classic country hits like “Ring of Fire” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and a capella ballads from obscure mountain crooners.
The Corn Pone Stars music is all about the story and visual images it evokes, from recycled train songs, to murder ballads, to antique gospel tunes. Cheatham’s instrumentals catch you off guard. He handles both the bluegrass and the old-time banjo with ingenious creativity, conjuring up unusual, sometimes delicate, sometimes raucous rifts, connecting audiences with how mountain songwriters lived, both the harshness and the simplicity. His hands weave beautiful melodies on the acoustic guitar, rendering old-time and blues favorites with gentleness and style.
With thoughtful skill, Sack reaches back to her earliest memories of singing with a musical family, to layer harmonies among Cheatham’s melodies and carry solos as haunting as the Irish aire, Si Bheag, Si Mohr, or as stylized as ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ With personality and warmth, she engages adults and children in dancing tunes like “Old Joe Clark,” and in tragic ballads, like “Georgie.”
From the hills and farms of south central Kentucky, Christopher Cheatham weaves images of his family history into the instrumentals and songs he writes. Generations of tobacco farming on Kentucky’s rolling hills and singing sweet gospel hymns at granny’s small church influence his arrangements, along with a huge collection of renowned southern musicians.
Sack’s first hands-on instrumental experience was strumming her mother’s autoharp as a child, singing with two sisters and mom in Maidenhead, England. From there, she moved in 1973 to be raised in the Detroit area, influenced by Motown’s talents, and the Big Band, Classical and Choral musical tastes of her parents. A six-month internship in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains introduced her to the Mountain Dulcimer and new musical genres like “Old-Time,” Bluegrass, and Classic Country. Totally unaware of the musical journey ahead of her, she moved to Nashville, in 1993 to work at Vanderbilt University and explore a creative life.
Eleven years studying with America’s premiere mountain dulcimist, David Schnaufer, shaped Sack’s musicianship and musical skill. A member of the nationally acclaimed Nashville Dulcimer Quartet since 1997, she has played on stages all over the Midwest and Southeast, including repeat performances on Nashville’s Public Radio Show, “Live in Studio C.” She has shared the stage with the likes of the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, Bela Fleck, Dierks Bently, and folk/dulcimer legend, Jean Ritchie. David Schnaufer produced the Nashville Dulcimer Quartet’s first album, “Four Part Inventions” released in 2002. A company called “The Nashville Nobody Knows” produced a documentary for television about Schnaufer and the Nashville Dulcimer Quartet, created in 2006 just before Schnaufer’s untimely death at the age of 53.
The Corn Pone Stars have performed on stages and in coffee shops and private venues throughout the Southeast, hosting concerts regularly at Lulu’s Café in Watertown, Tenn. and entertaining music lovers at Nashville’s annual Dulcimer Festival. The Corn Pone Stars are currently recording their first CD, anticipating its release in early 2009.
Learn more about the Corn Pone Stars at www.myspace.com/cornponestars.