with Terri  McMurray and Chester McMillian
North Carolina
fiddle, banjo, guitar

Paul Brown is an award–winning fiddler and banjoist who offers unique insights into evolving fiddle styles of southwest Virginia and northwest North Carolina

As a young man who’d learned his first songs from his mother’s Virginia repertoire, heimmersed himself in the old, nearly Celtic-sounding fiddle styles of Virginia artists Luther Davis, Parley Parsons and others, plus the stunningly rich Round Peak community tradition of players including Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, Earnest East and Fred Cockerham. He also focused on musicians bridging old-time and bluegrass fiddling, including once again Fred Cockerham, plus Robert Sykes, Benton Flippen, Whit Sizemore, and Benny Jarrell. He considers all of these artists his main direct fiddle mentors.

Paul has produced and recorded several albums documenting fiddlers young and old. He co-founded the Mount Airy Hometown Opry, and created the Across the Blue Ridge public radio music program. He received the North Carolina Folklore Society’s Brown-Hudson Award for contributions to cultural preservation. He’s a veteran of the Smokey Valley Boys, the Toast String Stretchers and other bands, and still loves to play square dance music for hours at a time.

After years as a general laborer in factory work, painting and furniture upholstery, Paul started aradio career at Mount Airy, NC old-time and bluegrass station WPAQ in the 1980s. He moved tolocal and network public radio, and retired from NPR in 2013. In addition to newscasting and general assignment work, he produced many stories on old-time, bluegrass, jazz and blues musicians. He’s shared music, and what he’s learned about it, at festivals, camps, concerts and schools since the 1970s.

paulbrown.us.com

Terri McMurray is a sought-after teacher of the traditional music of the Blue Ridge region, with decades of performing and recording experience as a string band banjo, guitar and ukulele player. Music drew her from Wisconsin to the southern Appalachian mountains in 1982, when she came to study banjo with Tommy Jarrell of Surry County, North Carolina. She played with many other great banjoists including Dix Freeman, Fields Ward, Earnest East, Benton Flippen, Matokie Slaughter, and Kyle Creed. She won the 1982 banjo prize at the Old Fiddlers Convention in Galax, Virginia. Terri co-founded the Old Hollow String Band with Riley Baugus and Kirk Sutphin. She performed for 25 years with the Toast String Stretchers. More recently, she has played in duos and string bands with Paul Brown, including the Mostly Mountain Boys and the Mountain Birch Duo. As a teacher, Terri is well loved for her engaging manner, patience, and ability to work with students of all ages and abilities.

Chester McMillian is a 2025 winner of the North Carolina Heritage Award.
He was born in Carroll County, Va., into a musical family and community. His family moved to Surry County, N.C., so that his father could work in the Mount Airy granite industry, and at eight years old he began playing mandolin and guitar with his brothers. When Chester married the daughter of Dix Freeman, a well-known old-time musician from the Round Peak community of Surry County, he was drawn in to the old-time music scene and started playing guitar alongside the legends of that region. Chester’s most influential musical mentor was Tommy Jarrell, a master of Round Peak fiddle and banjo, who quickly picked Chester as his preferred guitarist. Chester developed a unique guitar-strumming style that is now admired and imitated by younger old-time musicians who still flock to Surry County to be part of its music tradition. Chester played with Tommy Jarrell for 15 years; founded his own group, Backstep; became a fixture of the fiddlers convention circuit; and began to teach local children to play guitar through private lessons and local Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) programs. With every free moment and every spare dollar, Chester has been giving back to young people in Surry County through free lessons and charitable drives, donating food, shoes, and instruments to schools across the county. Chester is still teaching every week at Elkin JAM and his own Round Peak School of Music.