This story was published on 100 Days in Appalachia on July 30, 2019. The sound of twanging electric guitars fills the Madison Civic Center, a small gymnasium in the heart of southern West Virginia’s coalfields. It’s “Ride Stallion Ride,” the entrance music for WWE Hall…
This story originally appeared in the spring 2017 issue of WV Living magazine. Angel Acevedo was known to Saturday Nite Wrestlin’ fans as Assassin No. 1 of the tag-team duo The Cuban Assassins. Richie Acevedo did not doubt his father’s stories about being Fidel Castro’s…
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Wednesday, May 7, 2012. Jina Jordan has held several jobs in her life. She owned a cleaning business and then worked as a pizza dough maker at Gino’s Pizza in Sissonville. She drives cars for the…
This is an excerpt of a story that first appeared online at Rolling Stone Country on November 10, 2016. Read the rest of the story here. Early afternoons were pretty quiet at the Lyric Springs Country Inn. The previous night’s guests usually left in the morning,…
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Thursday, March 20, 2014. Carrie Kirk was acting angry. In a pivotal scene in the Kanawha Players’ production of “Extremities,” Kirk’s character Terry is in the middle of a heated argument with her roommates when…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. My conversation with songwriter Todd Snider started off pretty normal. Normal, at least, considering Snider’s confessed love of psychedelic drugs. We talked about Snider’s upcoming appearance on this Sunday’s “Mountain…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Oct. 28, 2014. A little more than six weeks after it went on the air, Charleston’s first community radio station is nothing but static. The community radio station collapsed in a heap of dysfunction….
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014. “Live it” has become a mantra for Charleston blues-rock duo Farnsworth. It’s the name of group’s first full-length album, which will be released this Saturday. But “Live it” is also…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on June 19, 2014. Bryan Boyd remembers everything about the last gig he played with Derick Kirk. Boyd had booked a gig at Soho’s at the Capitol Market and asked Kirk to come along and…