We had a great time visiting the Queen City to debut the pilot episode of Southern Songs and Stories at the Mid-Atlantic Music Conference.

Thanks to Tony Preston for his many hours of filming and editing the first draft of our documentary, and to Aaron Burdett and his band for being so gracious and professional in all their work with us. We would be remiss to leave out James Caldwell and his staff at the conference who believed in our project enough to feature it without having anything more to go on than my own description and our previous Lingua Musica Show productions. We thank our audience as well, including Myra Chapman of All Indianz, Jennifer Allison of EXE Media Group and Jaclyn Anthony of the Lincoln Times News for coming out, as well as my wife Amy for being there and giving key support to make it possible for me to take the time to work on the project.

Next step: the final draft of the documentary. We'll be adding a bit more to the storyline and will shoot a few more scenes to help put Aaron in the larger context of the music scene and the western NC community. Stay tuned for further updates as we finalize the film and prepare to screen the documentary at other venues in our region.

Joe Kendrick

Artist stereotypes do not apply

How many times have parents cringed when their children fell in love with a musician? Let's be honest, the world has looked askance at artists of all stripes (with notable exceptions) for most of our history. Musicians tend to be thought of as people who may be great at their art but who are nonetheless pretty bad at life skills like paying bills, getting to work on time, and sticking with the missus.

Aaron turns all those stereotypes on their head; he is not only a fantastic songwriter and musician, but he also runs his own construction business and is a devoted family man living a stone's throw from where he grew up in the western NC mountains. He is as meticulous and intense about his guitar and ballads as he is about his green built homes and raising his two girls.

As you'll see in our pilot episode, Aaron does both life and art exceptionally well. The folks around him are a big part of that.