Kids and bluegrass blend at upcoming festival

Kids and bluegrass blend at upcoming festival


By Terry Cregar
STAFF WRITER

PICKENS -- For the past 20 years, Dan and Norma Hendricks have spent most of their Friday nights picking and singing bluegrass with fellow local musicians at the Oolenoy Community Building in Pumpkintown.

Now, the couple and others have brought their talents, and their music, a few miles west to Holly Springs Elementary School north of Pickens. There they have joined with Betty McDonald in the second year of YAMs (Young Appalachian Musicians), a program aimed at introducing young students to the traditions of bluegrass music, as they learn to play a stringed instrument.

Diane Yother says her fourth-grade daughter, Danielle, has "found her passion" since picking up the guitar a year ago.

"She’s constantly playing," Yother said. "If it wasn’t for Betty, she never would have picked up a guitar."

McDonald is a media specialist at Holly Springs. She said she got the idea for the music program after she, her husband, Ed, and the Hendrickses made a trip three years ago to Sparta, N.C., a small mountain community near the Virginia – North Carolina border.

- more at www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090316/NEWS01/90316013/1004