Tennessee folkies

The Maryville, Tenn., folk duo of Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform this weekend in the Sugarlands Visitor Center at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. My Mountain Press preview is here:

Sparky worked as a schoolteacher after he graduated from the University of Tennessee. He also worked for the Council of the Southern Mountains, “doing social-change work,” he said, “basically trying to make Southern Appalachian lives better – fighting mountaintop removal, getting benefits for black lung disease, trying to get unions organized in various areas. I’m quite a rabble-rouser.”