Come hear Thomas Goldsmith talk about one of the founders of modern
bluegrass, Earl Scruggs, and his seminal work, “Foggy Mountain
Breakdown.” Thomas (Tommy) Goldsmith is a journalist and musician
based in Raleigh. A North Carolina native, Goldsmith worked as a
singer, songwriter, guitarist and record producer in North Carolina,
Tennessee and Texas from the late ‘60s until 1982, remaining active
in the field after starting a career in daily newspapers in 1983. As a
musician, he worked with artists including Hazel Dickens, Alice
Gerrard, Marcia Ball, Alvin Crow, the Contenders, Riders in the Sky,
Tim Krekel, and David Olney and the X-Rays. His songs have been
recorded by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Riders in the Sky, Uncle
Walt’s Band and Elise Witt. He produced records by Tracy Nelson, Tom
House, Olney, Witt and the Nashville Jug Band. During a journalism
career of 33 years and counting, he performed a variety of reporting
and editing roles at the Tennessean in Nashville and the News &
Observer in Raleigh, retiring in May 2016 as the N&O’s Wake County
editor and taking on a role as reporter for the nonprofit North
Carolina Health News. As a music journalist, he spent seven years
covering the Nashville scene at the Tennessean, wrote for consumer and
trade publications including Billboard, the Journal of Country Music,
Bluegrass Unlimited and Country Song Roundup. His book The Bluegrass
Reader (University of Illinois, 2004) won the Print Personality of the
Year award from the International Bluegrass Music Association. His
book on Earl Scruggs and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” also for
Illinois, is [now available.] The Illinois, Oxford, Vanderbilt and
North Carolina university presses have also published book chapters,
encyclopedia entries and anthologized pieces by Goldsmith. He is in
the early stages of another bluegrass volume, an analysis of the music
of the Stanley Brothers. He continues to play music in a variety of
settings in North Carolina’s Triangle area and beyond. This event is
hosted by Creative Writing at Carolina & the UNC Department of Music
and is free and open to the public.
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18/09/2019 Last update