WNC artists shine on ‘The Resonance Sessions’ benefit album

In mid-October, eighth-generation Madison County ballad singer Donna Ray Norton was all set to record a new song when a friend asked her if then-attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein could watch.

At the time, Stein was touring the damage from Tropical Storm Helene on Marshall’s Main Street with local officials. Norton was among a group of area musicians at the Old Marshall Jail hotel and bar that day, participating in The Resonance Sessions project, which will release an album Monday, March 10, to benefit Madison County’s music community. 

“ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know. I’m singing this new song, and if I mess up, I might die,’” she recalls.

After reassurances from the Old Marshall Jail owner Josh Copus, Norton agreed. But she was still nervous. A friend suggested she sing a more familiar song, “Fine Sally,” as a warmup. Norton felt a burst of confidence. 

“ In a lot of the ballads, the women die, or they’re murdered,” she says. “I’m totally a child of the ’90s and ‘Girl Power.’ So, ‘Fine Sally’ is a fun song to sing for me, and the woman’s a badass in it.”

After Norton delivered a stirring rendition of the ballad, Stein walked over, extended his hand in congratulations, then pivoted to pull her in for a huge hug, telling her, “Girl, you just did that!”

With the politician all ears, Norton noted the importance of his presence in Marshall and urged him to continue then-Gov. Roy Cooper‘s tradition of supporting the arts in North Carolina. Norton was invited to perform at Stein’s inauguration a few weeks later, but the event was canceled due to winter weather.

Supporting the arts at the local level, net proceeds from The Resonance Sessions’ triple-vinyl and digital editions will go to the Madison County Arts Council for rebuilding the county’s musical community and to the nonprofit Rare Bird Cultural Arts to offer direct assistance to affected musicians. And while not every Resonance Sessions story is as dramatic as Norton’s, the benefit album’s cumulative power is something participating artists hope will echo for years to come.

‘I think we can do one better’

In the warm months, Marshall-based singer-songwriter Clay White programs live music at Zadie’s, the Copus-owned restaurant next to the Old Marshall Jail. Through that work, he befriended Norton, who had co-hosted a monthly ballad swap at the Old Marshall Jail, as well as such fellow ballad singers as her cousin, Sheila Kay Adams. All three helped clean up downtown Marshall in the wake of Helene.

While mucking out the Old Marshall Jail, Norton and Adams organically began singing ballads. Copus captured the impromptu songs on his phone and shared the videos to Instagram, where they received positive comments. Wanting to revive music on the property, Copus floated the idea to White of posting more cellphone performance videos.

“I was like, ‘That’s cool, but I think we can do one better,’” White recalls.

White then recruited his friend Luke Mitchell, an audio engineer who runs Out There Recordings in Marshall, as well as videographer Aaron Stone and audio engineer Bridger Dunnagan of Asheville-based Parkway Studios for an ambitious, multiday recording project.

With the A/V crew in place, White began contacting Western North Carolina artists who’d played at Zadie’s, then reached out to others around Marshall and Asheville. Those available to participate included Rising Appalachia, River Whyless, Avey Tare (Animal Collective), Tyler Ramsey and Scott McMicken (Dr. Dog).

White initially proposed having the ballads on their own, separate album, but Norton pushed to have them included with the modern selections. White agreed and asked her to recruit a handful of ballad singers, which led to each LP side of the three-vinyl collection featuring one ballad. Not including them, White says, would be an inauthentic representation of the local scene.

“They are a part of the new musical landscape in Madison County,” he says. “It’s not like they just resurrected these songs just for this after having the songs sit in a closet for a decade or whatever. They still sing these songs regularly.”

Recording history

Running a total of four days, the sessions began Oct. 20 with most tunes tracked over the middle two days. Artists were scheduled in 30-minute slots — a tight but workable window that, coupled with no guarantees of sufficient electricity for amplification in the still-damaged Old Marshall Jail, all but necessitated acoustic performances. According to White, a few artists plugged in a drum machine or tape loop machine, but since he and his team were shooting for general sonic cohesion, full drum kits and electric guitar solos didn’t fit the bill.

The musicians were invited to play any song they wanted. Most chose thematically appropriate compositions they’d already recorded, including Ramsey’s “Fire” and Floating Action’s “Don’t You Wanna Be Ready?” However, in some instances, White requested that an artist play a particular song. Such was the case with Pierce Edens’ “Bells of Marshall,” which opens The Resonance Sessions, setting a haunting yet resilient tone for the collection.

“ It’s so crazy. He wrote this song with these nautical themes about sitting on the courthouse steps in Marshall,” White says. “It feels so prescient of what was to come.”

A few artists performed songs they’d written after Helene. Among them was David Wimbish, who moved from Saxapahaw to Asheville just three days before the storm. Though he’d spent a lot of time in Asheville over the past 15 years, the oddity of his relocation’s timing wasn’t lost on him. Upon seeing White’s posts about cleanup efforts in Marshall, Wimbish drove up to volunteer and was soon invited to participate in The Resonance Sessions.

“ I didn’t know what to play, but then I ended up writing [‘Peace Ain’t Cheap’] sort of processing my own experience in this space,” Wimbish says. “In that time, I was starting to get to know some of the people in Marshall and the music community there. Even though I didn’t know them superwell, they felt like my kind of people.”

Though the recording space had been power-washed twice by the time White and his team set up, dust persisted, necessitating that the crew wipe down cables, stands and microphones at the end of each recording day.

“And on the first day, we didn’t even have power yet in the building,” White recalls. “We had a huge extension cord and ran the generator out on the back side of the building.”

Background noise remained a concern but gave the recordings an extra layer of character. In addition to the constant flow of military vehicles, dump trucks and an industrial steam cleaner, White and his team negotiated with neighbors to turn off their generators when mics were live. They even had to shush Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood and comically motion for him to wait outside when he accidentally barged in on Norton’s session.

“ But when you listen to [the collection], you’ll barely notice [any interference],” says White. “There are a few times where you can hear truck noises and stuff, but the fidelity and quality and isolation that we achieved in there is incredible. It helps that the building has thick brick walls.”

Lasting legacy

White and his team tossed around titles for the project that name-checked Marshall or the Old Marshall Jail but ultimately sought something more universal. Stone suggested the word “resonance,” at which point White realized he’d often said, “Pick any song that’s been resonating with you,” while communicating with artists.

As The Resonance Sessions team puts the finishing touches on its Monday, March 10, digital release and the Monday, March 17, release of the vinyl edition, White stresses that there’s still plenty of rebuilding left to do in Marshall; many places still look as decimated now as they did in late September.

“ This big thing happened, and then there was this huge outpouring in the beginning. But will people remember us? Will the media still be paying attention months and years later?” White posits. “One good thing about it taking a while for us to produce [The Resonance Sessions] is that we’re having opportunities to keep the conversation alive.”

One of White’s nonnegotiables for the project was that the album cover must include the word “Marshall.” His rationale was that if someone on the other side of the world picks up the album and sees the town’s name, it might prompt them to research the place and what it endured in fall 2024.

“I hope that it has a wide reach and a long life,” he says. “There are albums that have come out of stuff like [Hurricane] Katrina that’s still relevant and still part of the discussion today. So, I’m hoping we can have a strong addition to that repertoire, that catalog — something that is making a difference 10-20 years later. We want Marshall to be proud of this thing forever.”

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