Lee and Scott sit down with Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle, and if you've been anywhere near live music in this region over the last three decades, you've felt their fingerprints on it whether you knew their names or not. They got married in '97, quit their jobs, and opened Appalachian Music Exchange on East Broadway, all in the same year. Jeff's a vintage guitar expert, so the shop moved a lot of serious instruments on consignment, Martins from the thirties and forties. They lived in a tiny apartment out back, so folks knocked on the door Sunday mornings wanting strings. Then came Behind the Barn. They launched it on WDVX in '98 out of Barley's in Knoxville's Old City, back before live music was much of a thing in this town, hauling their own PA in every single week because the venue didn't have one. Jeff was booking all three Barley's locations at the time. Over that run they had John Cowan, Chris Knight, Rosie Flores, Larry Cordle, Tony Furtado, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Chip Taylor. They booked Steep Canyon Rangers off a press kit that arrived as part of a torn open Cheerios box with a phone number scrawled on it and a cassette taped over an old Def Leppard tape. And there was the night David Allan Coe wandered over from across the street, got onstage with Chip Taylor, and became the first guy to drop an F bomb live on public radio. These days Behind the Barn lives at the Blue Tick Tavern on Broadway, third Thursday of every month, 7 to 9. Jeff and Sarah play two songs live in the studio. "Sweet Creation," the title cut from their last record, is about how good we've got it right here, all the beautiful places in East Tennessee you can go to find a little solace for your soul. Then Jeff plays "My God," a song Lee flat out calls a classic, and the story behind it came out of years of writing sessions at Jay Clark's old place on Alcoa Highway, right down from the Green Acres Flea Market, where the two of them would drink beer, write songs, then go heckle the heels at professional wrestling. (Jeff and Jay also did shows in luchador masks. That happened.) The recording came together when Jeff played it for his old engineer TJ up in Johnson City, and TJ said it had to go down that minute, Jeff sitting on the man's bed with two mics. Sarah's in the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. The two of them won the gospel division of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest in 2000 with "When I Come Home," and by their own admission have milked it ever since. Their assessment of their record sales: some songs go gold and platinum, theirs went cardboard. But the part that might matter most is what they're doing now. Sarah runs the Smoky Mountain JAM program, Junior Appalachian Musicians, at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend, teaching kids the traditional music of this region on Mondays after school. Instruments are provided for kids who need to borrow them, financial aid is available, and they can take 40 kids but have never had more than 30. The tagline is "building community one tune at a time," and they mean it. Some of those kids have graduated high school and asked to come back anyway. Millie Rochelle started taking lessons from Sarah at five years old. Wes Lunsford of the Young Fables came up through them too, playing left handed, and Jeff never could break him of it. JeffandSarahMusic.com for their full catalog Behind the Barn, third Thursday monthly, Blue Tick Tavern, 7 to 9 PM Sign up for JAM at gsmheritagecenter.org, Mondays 4 to 6, starts the Monday after Labor Day "Maryville" by Wyatt Ellis Thanks to Volunteer Home Mortgage for sponsoring this episode
