"We could do it in A. Or do you want to do it in G?" asked one man, leaning over the strings of his guitar. "Can you do it in A?" asked a second man who, even to a novice's ear, knew how to pick his guitar better than the first.

"I'll try it in A and murder it, then let you do it," the lesser player cackled.

About then, as the man began murdering it in A, Jennie Robinson, 92, settled onto a hard-back bench covered with plastic cushions.

She smiled as she asked, because she knew that for a Northerner on the trail of bluegrass in southern Appalachia, it doesn't get much better than this.

Mrs. Hyatt's, as everyone around here calls it, is a low, gray garage with enough folding chairs to seat the dozens of people who stop by every Thursday evening to pick and chat and cheer and dance. There is a double door that rises in summertime, two old fans when that's not enough, and, outside, a concrete table, two benches, and plenty of space for a fiddle and mandolin to send songs into the Blue Ridge sky.

On this night, Nelia Hyatt, 84, sat across the garage, on the other side of the six guitars and banjo and bass, tapping her toes and smiling at the crowd, just as she has since her late husband, Wayne, first opened the doors of the family home, then led the way to the garage, some 50 years ago. When Mrs. Hyatt did something she really enjoyed - like hoisting her great-great-grandson, a sturdy blond toddler, into her lap, or leaning over to talk with an old friend - her eyes sparked and her mouth drew down to a little "o."

But it was Mrs. Robinson, in her flower-print blazer, peach slacks, and teal blouse, who set to talking as the musicians finished up in A and played a tune in the slower, steadier "old-time" style.

"Mother would bake stack cakes and pies and Daddy would get up and dance. There was a fiddle and a banjo and a guitar," Mrs. Robinson said, recalling childhood days in the mountains of western North Carolina. "I've danced my whole life."

The musicians had stopped, only for a moment, and then the banjo set off on a furious run. The bass and guitars dropped in behind, and Mrs. Robinson, who had been dancing since 6 p.m., jumped to her feet. She swiveled her hips, slipped a bit, and nearly fell. She threw back her head and laughed.

Across the room, one man, who, like everyone here, spoke with the calm cadence of the mountains, described good bluegrass this way: "You can see that steam train rolling down the track."

Another, Lawrence Dillingham, a redheaded, 30-year-old guitar player with a lean jaw and soft voice, said, "You can get in your car with a tape of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and if you're in the right mood, you'll just about wreck."

There's no stopping that bluegrass drive these days. Some 60 years after Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys took the music mainstream on the Grand Ole Opry stage, the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack, a celebration of Southern sound, won the Grammy for top album and still sits atop Billboard charts.

Even here, among the hollows and ridges that cradled mountain music and much of bluegrass's evolution, the "O Brother" revival will stoke spring and summer festivals, bar gigs, and backyard jams.

Wayne Erbsen, a banjo teacher and author who hosts a weekly radio program called "Country Roots" on Asheville's WCQS, likens the revival to that seen after the "Deliverance" soundtrack brought back "Dueling Banjos" in the early 1970s.

This is sweet justice for bluegrass fans who have seen their beloved acoustic picking and harmonic singing suffer at the hands of an electrified, synthesized modern country music scene.

"Now, any kind of group, no matter how bad or how good, can walk on stage and play `Man of Constant Sorrow' and bring the house down," said Mary Ruth Stamey, Transylvania County tax collector, onetime president of the fan club for James Monroe, Bill's son, and organizer of bluegrass concerts at Brevard's Union Hall.

But little has changed for the regulars at Mrs. Hyatt's garage, set back from the road on the western edge of Asheville. Take, for example, the answer Dillingham gave when asked about a song he'd just picked on guitar, singing lead:

"Oh, `In the Jailhouse Now.' That song was on the `O Brother' soundtrack. I haven't learned to play that version, though. I learned the one I play off of an old 78, a Jimmie Rodgers recording."

Out by the concrete picnic table, Earl Taylor, 71, talked about his musical sons and the problems diabetes has caused his guitar-playing hands.

"I can still play chords. But sometimes when I flat pick I get started and miss it, or I can make it the whole way through and not miss it," Taylor said. "So I don't flat pick much anymore, unless I show them boys."

Back inside, past the circle of seats where two fiddles and a mandolin had joined in, by the long table with baked beans, potato chips, and soft drinks, Ruby Ballew, 67, leaned over and shared a small regret. It was 8:45 p.m. A couple danced a slow waltz, and there'd be more driving bluegrass to come.

"I work at McDonald's, and I have to get up at 3 o'clock. Down at the McDonald's in Weaverville, I make the biscuits," she said. "So I'll be leaving in a little while."

But first she talked about a passion she's had since growing up in nearby Sandy Mush.

"I just listen. I love music," she said. "They have a jam up at Marshall, in the old depot. You been there? They also have one over at Mills River, and another at Cherokee. That's strictly bluegrass. They say it's the best around."

To better understand this musical trail, it's worth heading west of Asheville, south of Sylva, east of Cullowhee. There, past the wide bends of Caney Fork Creek, several miles beyond the Methodist church, up along John's Creek, Mary Jane Queen and her son, Henry, spent a Friday afternoon on the back porch.

The thing about music in these parts is that different influences slide together: ballads brought over from England, Scotland, and Ireland; old-time melodies crafted in the hollows; African and African-American rhythmic and vocal styles that helped shape bluegrass; electric sounds of today.

In those days, her family name was Prince, and it wasn't until she had met Claude Queen that she moved over the ridge to the small house by John's Creek. The top of the narrow valley, which sits above 3,200 feet, is still dotted with Queen homes, brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts. The paved road, which arrived in the early 1980s, dead-ends less than half a mile up past Mary Jane's house. In her kitchen, spring-fed water runs continuously from the sink tap.

"Every ballad tells a story," said Mary Jane, whose singing voice has been archived in museums and earned honors as a symbol of mountain culture.

"When there's music played with a ballad, it goes so fast you can't get the meaning," she said. "Or if you play slow, it drags your music too much."

Mary Jane closed her eyes and sang "Liza Jane," her throaty voice sweet when it needed to be.

"Mother sings about the only version of it quite like that," Henry said. "There're a lot of versions of it, of course."

Henry, 50, picked up the guitar and his mother sang an upbeat "I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again."

"This is an old mountain song if there was ever one wrote," she said, letting loose a laugh.

When I was single, he used to come to court,
He always brought me candy, and I thought he was a sport. . . .
Now I am married, and what do you think,
He bought a checkered apron, and he showed me to the sink! . . .
Lord, I wish I was a single girl again
Lord, I wish I was a single girl again. . . .

"See, he puts the music to it and I do the singing," Mary Jane said. "We don't call it a ballad. Well you could call it bluegrass, maybe, whatever."

Henry took up the banjo and, with birds chirping on that late winter afternoon, showed the different styles of playing that have followed old-time music into bluegrass. He played his mother's two-finger up-pickin' style, then the three-finger style pioneered by bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs. Then he switched back to the classic old-time clawhammer, more of a rhythmic strumming motion.

He played a mean "Cripple Creek," ending with a finger roll on the drum of the banjo.

"Well no, that's old time," Henry said. "Some of the old time . . . when they took the fiddle and `banjer,' there wasn't much bluegrass faster than that, 'cause they really sheared down on it."

Henry, who has an iMac and a mixing board in his bedroom, knows there's been a lot of change since the 1930s, when guys like Wiley and Zeke Morris, from North Carolina, and Bill and Charlie Monroe, from Kentucky, toured Appalachia singing harmonies. Musicians from Virginia, Tennessee, and elsewhere in the South helped further the emphasis on banjo and fiddle solos. Then, Bill Monroe's regular gig on the Grand Ole Opry in the 1940s defined early bluegrass, with that "high lonesome" singing, and spread the music across the South and into the Midwest.

Back up near Asheville, not a mile from Mrs. Hyatt's, Ralph Lewis sat over a coffee in the Moose Cafe on a recent rainy Saturday morning. Lewis, 73, grew up in Madison County, to the north, itself a hotbed of mountain music.

Two of Lewis's older brothers had their own harmony singing act and traveled to sing on the radio in Asheville and, later, up to Buffalo. When one brother was killed in World War II, Ralph headed north to take his place on stage. That was during the first boom, when musicians like Monroe, with his mandolin, Scruggs on his banjo, and Chubby Wise on fiddle, blazed new trails.

"When Elvis came along that shot everybody dead in the water, country and bluegrass," Lewis said. "And then came the Beatles."

Still, in the 1970s, Lewis joined Monroe touring for bluegrass faithful from Japan to Europe.

"It's a good thing for that pushin' beat," Lewis said. "That will put the hair up on the back of your neck."

Now Lewis splits his time between a commercial refrigeration business and playing with his boys, Marty and Don, in "Sons of Ralph." The band packs them in at Jack of the Wood in downtown Asheville many Saturday nights, playing bluegrass classics and a modern style they call "la twang," part of the broader "newgrass" trend. It was popular enough to score "Sons of Ralph" more than 60 wedding gigs last year and upcoming festival spots in Missouri and Montana.

"I step on a lot of toes by doing the music I do now," Lewis said, thinking of the bluegrass traditionalists he knows. "They relate me with Monroe. No matter the era, they want to hear the old stuff."

Nineteen miles east, along main street in Old Fort, population 963, Coy Robinson leaned against the white Toyota station wagon and picked his banjo. His brother Cam joined in on guitar. Brenda Moore backed them on bass.

Across the narrow parking lot, players milled about with their fiddles and mandolins and shouts of "Hey, how you doing tonight?"

It's been like this every Friday evening for 14 years. Most Fridays, there are at least 300 in the audience. Some weeks it gets so crowded, with folks parking in the bank lot, behind the fire hall, around the Amoco pumps, that the local mechanic just closes up early and goes home.

Over by the Toyota station wagon, Coy and Cam and Brenda flew through "Sitting on Top of the World," and then Coy really bent those strings on "Home Sweet Home." Three older men, one with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, stood only a few feet away and watched.

Inside, Gene Padgett stood on the low stage and spelled out the rules. Each band gets 20 minutes or so to play.

"For those of you who haven't been here before, this is a no smoking building, no drinking, no drunks. Period. We don't put up with it. Enough about that," Padgett said.

Brian Arrowood, a quiet 20-year-old who's already won two statewide fiddle competitions, took the stage with his granddaddy and a friend.

Arrowood got that bow moving, and hollers filled the air. Grandkids and grandparents jumped up and danced.

Behind the long glass counter, where sourdough apple fritters sell for 50 cents each, Barbara Jean Willis talked of visitors who've signed the guest book over the years, leaving addresses in Tennessee and Virginia, Massachusetts and Germany.

A bit later, the Robinson brothers, joined by Moore on bass, a mandolin player and another on guitar, took the stage.

Padgett leaned against the wall on the far side of the room and counted his list. There were nine bands so far and more forming out in the lot.

"I'll run through all the bands and start over," he said. "It's just a quarter to nine."

For the next long minute they started that slow, back-and-forth "Dueling Banjos" build. Each exchange got closer and closer. Faster and faster. Then, they were off.

The band joined in. Padgett clapped his hands and let out a yell. Folks jumped up.


		If you go Asheville, N.C. Biltmore a grand house More on the South