News/Thoughts

Filled Up With The Stories

The heartache and grit that much bluegrass music encapsulates expresses Corrie Lynn Green’s growing up years perfectly. No wonder she was drawn to the genre early on. Stuck in severe poverty, her family moved around the Harrisonburg, Virginia area frequently when she was younger. Then she moved to a home in Elkton, Virginia, just under the shadow of the Shenandoah National Park in 1990 when she was 14 years old. There she spent the second half of her childhood among the Appalachian Mountains hearing stories of families pushed off their land (to make way for the national park), and she began to wrestle with deep questions about life.

Corrie recalls, “I was just filled up with those stories of joy and hardship and nature an all that came with that…the tragedies of losing family land that had been theirs for a long, long time.” She acknowledges the impact that being in this milieu had on her later efforts at musical self-expression: “…that was the second part of my childhood, sort of the saving grace of my childhood in many ways…I’m really thankful for the first half, because of knowing all kinds of music, then coming into this music that I didn’t fully understand, learning stories, it allowed me to have an expanded version in my own mind of what I wanted to create for myself…”

Corrie spent the pandemic working with acclaimed producer Douglass Fearn on a groundbreaking, stripped back version of her unmatched style, capturing her “old mountain voice,” which can cut through time and mesmerize audiences. She was recently awarded a grant from the Harrisonburg/Rockingham Arts Council of Virginia to share her debut album release concert right in the heart of her hometown at the historic downtown Court Square Theater. Thus Corrie was fortunate enough to perform her songs for a sold-out crowd in the valley where she was born. In April of 2022, she was also awarded a top ten songwriter placement at The Tuscon Folk Festival, and took home a third place.

To find out more, visit www.corrielynngreenmusic.com. Listen to the full interview here.