Songwriter Adam Pope shares a story of sorrow and solidarity 

Hundreds of people gathered at Pack Square Park in downtown Asheville on Oct. 22 to participate in a candlelight vigil to mourn the dreadful toll Tropical Storm Helene inflicted on the region.

Following an opening invocation by the Rev. Jim Abbot, Asheville City Council member Maggie Ullman introduced singer-songwriter Adam Pope, whose song, “Five Hundred Year Flood,” Ullman had first heard on TikTok.

Pope downplayed his online reach. “Until two weeks ago, I didn’t know how to work TikTok or even spell it,” he said to a wave of laughter from the audience.

Over a cantering locomotive strum, Pope’s fine-grained baritone launched into the tense and coiling tune: “They called it a five hundred year flood/Darkness descended on the Blue Ridge and swallowed it up.”

With imagery both homespun and apocalyptic, Pope’s rough-hewn tune seemed immediate yet ancient: “I thought the devil dealt with only fire and flame/’Til I saw Satan surfing in from hell on a hurricane.”

The performance received a loud ovation from the audience.

“When I finished the song and walked offstage, I put my guitar in the case and I just broke down crying because there was so much emotion,” Pope told Xpress a few days after the event. “I don’t think that’s ever happened to me.”

Old soul

Born and raised near Winston-Salem, Pope is currently based in Nashville, Tenn. But he has deep ties to Western North Carolina.

After falling in love with the storytelling songs of Alan Jackson, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, Pope prevailed on his father to buy him a guitar. At age 15, Pope learned to play from his 80-year-old great-grandfather, Bud McCurdy, a Pennsylvania coal miner who moved his family to North Carolina in the 1960s.

“I learned to play from [my great-grandfather] who played and sang like Jimmie Rodgers,” Pope says. Rodgers, one of country music’s first superstars, got his big break on Asheville radio station WWNC in 1927. A historical marker honoring Rogers is at the intersection of Haywood Street and Battery Park Avenue in downtown Asheville.

“I was around a lot of historical old-school music, and I learned I was an old soul,” Pope says.

‘Middle of my world’

The musician’s ties to WNC strengthened after he moved to Nashville intending to become a songwriter.

The first people he befriended were a couple from Burnsville. Through this connection, Pope made music business contacts that led to gigs at Carolina Barbeque in Newland; the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk; and the Feed & Seed music venue and church in Fletcher. 

With his wife, Amy, Pope also writes and performs Americana and gospel music. The couple’s latest album, Chances Worth Taking was recorded in 2022 and 2023 in Candler at The Shop Studio, owned and operated by engineer Van Atkins.

“Western North Carolina is the middle of my world,” Pope says. “Between Nashville and the Piedmont, I go through Western North Carolina to get to where I’m going or to go home.”

What would Cash do?

When Helene hit, Pope explains, he was on the road out West.

“I was trying to complete these projects in this space, a beautiful place in Paradise Valley, Mont., [but] I kept getting distracted with all the news about Helene,” he recalls. “I was waiting to hear back from family members and friends, and I hadn’t heard back from quite a few of them. So, it was weighing on me.”

Ultimately, his sense of guilt and dread led him to grab his guitar and channel one of his biggest influences.

“I thought, ‘What would Johnny Cash say?’ And I saw this headline on my laptop. It said, ‘Five Hundred Year Flood.’ So I just took that and I sang.”

The rest is history, albeit unplanned.

“I had no real intention of doing much of anything with it,” Pope says. “I was just in the moment, experiencing my own grief and sadness with the song.”

To hear Pope’s song, visit avl.mx/e8s.