LEWISBURG W.Va. (WVDN) – Musician Chris Haddox played for an adoring crowd at Carnegie Hall this week. Haddox is a Logan, West Virginia-born and raised songwriter/singer/multi-instrumentalist, who is now based out of Morgantown, West Virginia. He writes and sings his voluminous collection of songs about “religion, firearms, courthouse squares, goats on trampolines, shoes, fiddles and hurricanes,” or whatever catches his attention. He deftly combines humor, sarcasm and blunt honesty to create songs that are accessible and relatable to a wide variety of audiences.
This stellar musician is also a community leader who has directed Habitat for Humanity and worked to preserve old neighborhoods, a WVU professor of sustainable design, and an amateur musicologist who researches musicians from the southern coalfields of West Virginia. That’s a lot of breadth for someone the music community knows as a well-loved, easygoing consummate picker and gifted songwriter in the traditional folk, country, and Americana vein.
According to Haddox’s bio, he “released his first album on March 25, 2022, at the age of 61. By April, it had climbed to number 11 on the Folk Alliance International Chart, with all tracks from the album receiving steady airplay on 60 or so stations across the US and a few further afield.”
“Like most writers, I tried to find new ways to address old topics. Some songs are funny, some sad, some sarcastic, but they are all honest – even the ones that are full of lies,” says Haddox.
His bio also notes, “He was born in 1960 into a musical family in Logan, West Virginia. Chris started playing piano at age 6 and moved on to guitar when he was influenced by his uncle Jim, a fantastic country blues singer and picker. In college, he picked up the dobro and just kept going. Playing the fiddle, banjo, and mandolin; he seems to have an innate facility with those strings. Galvanized by the Delmore Brothers, Chris moved to Nashville in 1981 to dedicate himself to making it as a songwriter. Over the course of three healthy stints in the Music City, he learned about the music business [and] made some great friends and contacts but he eventually decided that the time was just not right for him. His time illustrates a principle from the age-old question, ‘Do you want to be a professional songwriter or do you want to write songs?’
“After leaving Nashville, Chris never stopped writing, and we’re all the better for it. Chris’s work and avocation come together in his passion and talent for lending voice to forgotten musicians, bringing them alive for all of us. To hear him sing and play over the graves of lost and forgotten musicians in remote and overgrown mountain cemeteries, he reveals their humanity and rescues ours. Chris Haddox represents everything that is good about Appalachia.”
Hopefully, Haddox will return to Lewisburg and Greenbrier County but until then, you may learn all about him or listen to his music through any of the following:
https://www.chrishaddoxmusic.com/
https://chrishaddox.bandcamp.com/album/chris-haddox
https://www.facebook.com/WVSongwriter
