Sheila Kay Adams

2013 NEA National Heritage Fellow
Sheila Kay Adams
  Photo by Kim Dryden

Sheila Kay Adams: It's really funny because storytelling was not something that was taught and learned over home; it was called having a conversation; my father called it holding forth. Daddy was the best storyteller I've ever heard in my life and if you tried to interrupt him when he was holding forth he would say, "No. I'm holding forth right now and if you've got anything interesting to say you can hold forth here in a minute" and he'd go on with his story…

Jo Reed: That is 2013 National Heritage Award recipient, Sheila Kay Adams.

Welcome to Art Works, the program that goes behind the scenes with some of the nation's great artists to explore how art works. I'm your host, Josephine Reed.

Sheila Kay Adams is a renowned musician, singer, and storyteller. I visited her in her home in Madison County soon after she found out she received the National Heritage award.  This is the second of a two-part interview. Last week, we focused on her music, this week we turn her attention to her storytelling. Although performing since she was a teenager, Sheila didn't add storytelling to her onstage repertoire until later in life. But once she did, she found great acclaim for those tales she told about the good people of Sodom, North Carolina—whose business she knew as well as her own: she was after all related to most of them, she had 72 first cousins. Sheila's told her stories at festivals throughout the country including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival held during the Bicentennial and the acclaimed International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

But Sheila was a little shy about telling stories on stage because as we just heard, storytelling was just a way of life for her and her kin.

Sheila Kay Adams:  I started performing on stage telling stories and had no idea that I was a storyteller. I got recommended for the big national storytelling festival over in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I had no idea what I was doing when I went over there, not a clue what I was doing, and David Holt told me, "Just go out there and be yourself. That's all you have to do. Just go out there and talk to them and tell them about Sodom" and I was scared to death, but I learned how to tell a story. I can tell you the exact date. It was the first Friday in October in 19 and 97 because at Jonesborough during a full hour set they will pair you with somebody, another storyteller, and the first person that I got paired with at 11 o'clock in the morning on that Friday in 1997 was a man by the name of Donald Davis who is recognized as Mr. Storyteller in this country and he went on before I did. So I had to figure out a story pretty quick because he was fabulously amazing at telling stories and he sounded a lot like my daddy, and so I thought well, all I know to do is go out there and just tell some daddy stories and that's what I did.

Jo Reed:  What story did you tell?

Sheila Kay Adams:  I told one that actually me and Daddy were a part of that was when snake handlers came to Sodom and I got Inez Chandler to go with me to the snake handling 'cause I knew there'd be stories to tell for years and that was in 19 and 70, thereabouts, when I graduated from high school and I'm telling it in 2013, the same story. We went up to the Lowgap Church house and Inez was a character; she didn't have a filter between her brain and mouth. Now this is about a 30-minute story but I'll shorten it for you. She had a way of putting herself into and then extracting herself out of a car and there's an old saying over Sodom now, "Inezin' it" into and out of a car 'cause she would back up and flop down and then she had all this double-knit polyester on because she was a big and stout woman; that's how she referred to herself. And so we went up to the snake handling and Inez was suspicious from the get-go. She said, "You know, I don't know that we ought to do this. Either it just it's going to be a big gom up there, a big mess, or else nobody's going to show up and we're just going to all look like fools," but I finally talked her into going and we did. Well, they came, the snake handlers did. There were six of them, three men and three women, and two of the men was carrying boxes and they set one box on either side of this little pulpit at the front of the church. Well, somebody in the church house—and it was smack packed full of people—I bet you there was 450 people up there at this little one-room church on the side of Lonesome Mountain. They hadn't all come for the right reasons and this woman stood up, we'd gone to see the show. I mean that's what everybody had-- that's what Inez said later, "You know, why we was a mindin' our own business up there just to see the show." Well, somebody that was a member of that church got up and was just giving us down the road for not coming for the right reasons. Well, she pointed her finger right before she set down and said, "And now my opinion of all of this business is you'ns ought not to do this" and she hadn't no more than got settled on that bench to where that preacher jumped straight up off the floor off both feet and when he hit the floor he was running back and forth going "Chi ma ma ma" and Inez said, "Yes, sir, they'll get them snakes out now for sure. He's done talking in tongues" and that went on for a while. And then all of a sudden he charged one of them boxes and flipped up the lid on it and he reached down in there and disappeared up to his elbows and brought out one of the biggest diamondback rattlesnakes that I have ever seen in my life in full sing and was carrying it in his hands around in amongst the congregation. And Inez I don't know what she expected but now remember there was no filter between her brain and mouth. She, her hind end come up off of that bench and she turned around and faced the congregation and it was just packed and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Hell, them's real snakes." I don't know what she thought was coming out of them boxes but when she done that the whole congregation blew up and headed for the door, which opened to the inside, and they'd closed the door when they came in. So there's all these people up against the wall and I followed Inez Chandler out of that church house, her with her pocketbook raised up like a wedge, and she beat people in the head with that big, old ball of a clasp of a thing on that pocketbook and we were one of the first ones out onto the porch, but I'll tell you one thing. When we got down to the car there was none of this "Inezin' it" into the car. She was slick as a ribbon in that car with the door shut and locked before I could get from the back bumper up to the driver's side, and she told me after I'd got her to the house, "Don't you never come down here and try to take me off to no religious goin's on 'cause I done see that me and you don't gee haw when it comes to that religion business," but that was what I told when I had to follow Donald Davis and it was just that recollection and memory and having this kind of weird something going on up there for detail in my brain that…

Jo Reed:  I was just thinking that. It's the detail.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yeah.

Jo Reed: It's a crazy story to begin with and what's wonderful about your stories is the sense as a listener that I completely believe them.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Right.

Jo Reed:  I absolutely believe them and the detail just adds so much to it so you're talking and I'm seeing this whole thing play out in my mind.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Oh, yeah, and I left out most of that story because I can remember hanging on the wall in the Lowgap Church house was one of those little wooden plaque-like things where you put in how many people were there the Sunday before and how much collection they had taken up and all this, that and the other, and they'd taken up a dollar and 17 cents and there was 23 people there the Sunday before. And I bet you there was over 400, I know there were over 400 people there that night and so she had some right to get up and complain a little bit but that preacher didn't think-- he didn't appreciate it too much and so see, in my mind I can see all of that just like it's unfolding in my mind just like a love song, like I learned the love song, about attention to detail, and I embellish a little bit but not a whole lot. Pretty much it's a true story but it's just I was blessed with this kind of funky memory.

Jo Reed:  Well, they're memorable stories.

Sheila Kay Adams:  They well, they are memorable stories and I think that's part of it too.

Jo Reed:  I love the story of little Peggy.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Oh, little Betty and Amos.

Jo Reed:  I mean little Betty-- I'm sorry-- little Betty and Amos.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Right, yeah, little Betty and Amos. He was a great, big feller.

He's about 6'6" and weighed probably 400 pounds and he got real sick one winter and got double pneumonia and I mean Daddy used to say, "Amos Lundy is older than God's dog," and that's why he passed on.  So he was an older fellow and he did pass up in the spring and back then they had the setting-ups as they called them at home and so the undertaker would come and get the body and take him off down to Marshall and fix him up in whatever clothes you sent with him.  Well, Daddy used to say all Baptist over at home and he would tick off all the Baptists, the free will and the hard shell and the regular and the southern and the primitive and progressive primitive and foot washing and the holy rolling and then he'd get to the buzzard Baptists and I would always bust out laughing because I'd say, "What's a buzzard Baptist, Daddy?" and he's say, "They're Baptist that only go to church when there's a funeral, so I call them the buzzard Baptist," and he said every time he cut down a tree, they'd have a big swarm in some Baptist church over at home and they'd go down the road wherever they cut that tree down and build a new hive like bees swarming all. So they'd had a big swarm and the people that were left in the church and I think it was the regular Baptists that Amos and Little Betty belonged to, but they had had a swarm and part of them had gone off down the road and built them a church.  So the ones left in the church took up money, bought Amos a suit.  He had never owned a suit all his life.  I'd only seen him in overalls and then the swarm down the road were not going to be outdone, so they bought Amos another suit, a different color.  So there was Amos at his death with two suits.  Bless his heart.  He never owned one his whole life.  So Little Betty decided on the green suit because he was green-eyed.  Now I don't know why she would think-- that's kind of odd if you study on it that she was going to pick out a suit to match his eyes after he had passed.  So anyhow, they brought him back to the house, undertaker did, and set him up there in the front room for the setting-up.  That was the wake and people would bring food and they'd have three or four tables set up and the weight of the food would just have them tables sagging.  So she was getting ready, preparing for the setting-up and the first person to show up was Vine and that was Little Betty's sister.  Well, they got into a conversation about how he didn't look natural.  His hair weren't parted on the right side, so they fixed that. Then Little Betty got to looking at him and said, "Well you know I never thought about the fact that his eyes would be closed.  That green suit don't look near as good as that blue suit would look, so I believe we ought to change his clothes."  Now he was in his coffin up on those stands and somehow them two women wallowed him out of that coffin, got him jerked up onto the side, the lip of it, and it's sort of narrow up there and so Amos, you know gravity works and he fell on the end of the floor and then they changed his clothes and then they couldn't pick him up, get him back over in the coffin.  So Little Betty came up the house to get Daddy and Daddy is watching a baseball game, totally engrossed in the ballgame. He loved baseball, Lord, Lord. 

Jo Reed:  A Yankee fan.

Sheila Kay Adams:  He was a Yankees fan right up until Atlanta came along, but he was a Yankees fan and I was about eight years old sitting on the couch watching Daddy because he was a lot more fun to watch and listen to than Howard Cosell or whoever it was on the radio, whatever announcer was announcing that day, and all of a sudden the door swings open and there's Little Betty hanging onto the doorknob, breathing hard because she's walked up the hill from down at her house.  She said, "Irving, you've got to come down to the house and help us get Amos back in his coffin," and I'll never ever forget the look on Daddy's face.  It was just like this "Huh?" and he looked over at her and said, "Well, where in the world is he, Little Betty?  I thought he was dead," and Little Betty said, "Irving, you fool.  He is dead. Me and Vine got him out of the coffin to change his clothes and we can't pick him up off of the floor to get him back over in his coffin.  He's laying there on the floor and people will talk," and Daddy said, "Little Betty, damned if you didn't worry him to death the whole time he was living and you're still after him."  So, but anyhow, Daddy being the kind of person he was, he stood up and Daddy had a little devil man in him, but so did I.  Eight years old, I stood up.  I wasn't going to miss that.  I mean have Amos laying out on the floor that way down there.  I had to tell all 72 of my first cousins.  So down the road we went and we got down there and sure enough there laid Amos on the floor, Vine a keeping watch.  I don't know where she thought he was going, but she was watching him just like he might _________ off at any minute and Daddy and Little Betty and Vine couldn't pick him up.  Daddy finally went down to the store where there was a crowd of men watching the ballgame, had ganged up down there to watch the ballgame, and he come back with a carload of men and that was back when they had running boards on the side of cars and there was men standing on the running board.  There was three or four on the running boards and they all came in the house and between all of the men and Vine and Little Betty, they kind of picked him, scooped him up off the floor and pressed him back down in his coffin, shuffled over there and pressed him back down in it and then they stepped back and started talking about the ballgame just like nothing had happened, left me and Vine and Little Betty standing there looking over in the coffin and I'll be dipped if Little Betty didn't straighten his tie up, smooth his hair down, and then looked at Vine, her sister, and said, "Well, now that I look at him laying there, I believe I did like him better in that other suit," but now they left him in the blue one.  They didn't change his clothes anymore. I thought everybody lived that same way.  I thought that same stuff happened to everybody and I found out when I went to Mars Hill College that I was wrong.  Not everybody did grow up like I did in Sodom.

Jo Reed:  It was a town of characters.

Sheila Kay Adams:  It absolutely was and it was just this little mountain community that everybody knew everybody's business and nobody cared that everybody knew.

Jo Reed:  How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Sheila Kay Adams:  I had one sister.  Coming from families like my mother had a big family, Daddy had a big family, and they had two daughters and that was it, but now with Daddy's brothers and two sisters and Momma's brother and her sisters, I had 72 first cousins at one time because they came from such big families.

Jo Reed:  Now you tour.

Sheila Kay Adams:  I do.

Jo Reed: You've lived in Madison County all your life.  You have the best of both worlds, don't you?

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yes, I do.

Jo Reed:  You live in Madison County and you also travel fairly extensively.

Sheila Kay Adams:  I do.

Jo Reed:  How is it translating the stories outside of Madison County for you?

Sheila Kay Adams:  Well, I was just up in Lowell, Massachusetts at the Lowell Folk Festival and they loved the stories, they loved the songs.  People would come up to me once I'd finished a performance.  They'd be waiting backstage or else they'd walk up to me at some point during the festival, having seen me out in the crowd, and they'd say, "I just loved your stories.  It reminded me so much of the way my grandmother said things were or the way I remember my grandmother when I would visit with her out in rural Massachusetts."  See, I've always thought of Massachusetts as being one big Boston, but that's not true.  Everywhere we go in this world, I've performed in upstate New York, even over in Scotland and England and Ireland and it's still-- I've had men, older men come up to me after a concert with tears in their eyes and saying, "I had not thought of a wood cook stove since my grandmother made porridge for me on a wood cook stove in 1928," or whatever.  So I think it's just finding that human connection that all of us are a part of.  We are all connected, so we all have the same wants and needs and desires for ourselves and for our children, our grandchildren, and if you go back far enough, we all come from a rural background.  Every single one of us do.  You might have to go back a little further for some folks, but there's just something about that that touches a chord with everybody that I get up in front of, whether it's the stories, the songs, banjo tunes.  It all seems like it's just a really good way of connecting with people even of different backgrounds, different religions, different ethnic backgrounds.  It doesn't matter because we all want the same thing.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yes, they are and I'm just so thankful that I was blessed with a family that held all those traditions in loving hands and passed them on to me.  I really am.  I am so grateful.

Jo Reed:  And you're also very committed to passing them on to the next generation.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Absolutely I am because some of the people I learned from had doubts as to whether it would last into the 21st century and wherever they are, I hope they know that it's lasted.  It's lasted well into the 21st century and I have a bunch of young people, Elizabeth Laprell [ph?], Sam Gleaves [ph?], that are two of the best singers of these old love songs I've ever heard and both of them-- I think Elizabeth's in her 20s and Sam might be 20 by now, so Josh Goforth [ph?], a cousin of mine who is out there playing music in the big world and telling stories and singing the old love songs, so they're going right on through the generations and now my grandson Ezra, who's 7 years old, can already sing three love songs.  So I'm committed to getting them right on up into the 22nd century.

Jo Reed:  It's interesting, there really has been such a revitalization I think for traditional music, traditional stories.  People I think are appreciating what a just wonderfully rich and uniquely American art form this is and not wanting to let it go and not even from a, "We need to preserve this because it's an art form," but just plain loving it.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Absolutely.  It's like hearing my granny and her sister sing those old songs took me back to a time when things were simple. As Granny used to say, "Don't get that confused with easy.  They were simpler times," but it was like each time they would sing one of those songs was the first time they had sung that song.  I have seen Berzille crank up and cry on the same verse in the same song at least 30 times.  She would start crying at that particular verse and the first time it happened, I said, "Little Granny, are you all right?" and she said, "I'm all right.  It just breaks my heart what that poor little old girl let herself into whenever she done that deed that she did."  Every time she would crank up and cry.  So those songs meant a lot to them.  They were a part of their everyday life and they were in context and I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time in the ‘50s and ‘60s when that was still true because this little community of Sodom was still extremely rural.  Everybody had cows and nobody had telephones until I was 15, so things hadn't changed very much.

 

Jo Reed:  You did something that's almost impossible which is you took these stories that obviously come from an oral tradition and you wrote them down.  You put them to page and without losing that sense of authenticity.  What made you decide?  You've written a book of short stories, "Come Go Home With Me," and a novel, "My Old True Love."  What made you decide to do that?

Sheila Kay Adams:  Wow.  Well, I started telling my children stories when they were small and they got to the point and my youngest son, Andrew, was the one that really loved-- he would say, "Momma, don't read a book tonight.  Tell one of them stories from the olden times," and what he was talking about was when I was a little girl and so they would get to the point, my three kids, to where if I went off of the story just a little bit from the way I'd been telling it, they would've said, "That's not right.  That's not right.  We remember what you said," and so I wrote them down as a result of that so I could not read them, but just have sort of a reference so that I could tell them the same way each time.  Now they were perfectly fine if I brought in new information and told them I was going-- that I'd just remembered something different that I needed to put in that story, but they didn't like for me to change it much, so I went down to the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching down in Cullowhee at Western Carolina University for a week when I was teaching school because I taught school for 17 years before I became a performer, or on the road full time performer, and so I went down there for a week and because Lee Smith, the author Lee Smith was one of the facilitators at this weeklong seminar down there and she's one of my favorite authors and so while I was down there the woman who had put that session together with Lee Smith and Kay Byer who was our poet laureate for a while, her name was Jodie and I was sitting next to Lee at supper and Jodie come up to the table and said, "So Sheila, have you shown Lee Smith any of your stories?" and I was mortified because this was Lee Smith.  I mean the real writer Lee Smith and I just had these little bunch of stories that I told my kids and told my family and caused them to like and I said, "Oh no," and Lee said, "Well, I'd like to look at them," and so she took them with her that night and read over them and the next day asked me if I thought I'd like to get them published and I said, "Oh, there wouldn't be nobody that was interested in publishing those things," and she said, "I think so."  So she took them to the University of North Carolina Press and the next thing I knew I had a book of short stories out and the novel--

Jo Reed:  And the book of short stories won prizes.

Sheila Kay Adams:  It did.

Jo Reed:  <inaudible>.

Sheila Kay Adams:  The short stories won the North Carolina Award for Historical Fiction the year it came out and it got a lot of good reviews, one of them from "Life" magazine, so it was quite an experience.  Well, that was in 1995 and then around 2000-- my father passed away in 1998 and I kept thinking about this story Daddy told me that had to do with it would've been my great-great-aunt Artie [ph?] who raised a cousin of hers and was his surrogate mother who grew up and was best friends with her brother Hackley and they went off to the Civil War together and this horrible thing happened and so I kept thinking to myself that's a story that ought to be told.  It really ought to be, but it's a long story, so how am I going to tell that story?  I can't tell it in segments because when you get up in front of an audience, they expect you to start a story and give them the meat of it and then end it, so I thought, "Well, I reckon the only thing I can do is write a novel," and at that time I was working on a little movie called "Song Catcher" and Aiden Quinn convinced me that I ought to write a book about that story because I told it to him.  I told him the story over about a three-year span and he said, "You really ought to write that as a book," and so that got me started and then Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill picked it up and then Balentine got the paperback rights for it and it's still out there going.

Jo Reed:  It sure is.  Going pretty well.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yeah.  "Come Go Home With Me," the book of short stories is the longest running in-print book that UNC Press has had because it's still going, almost 30 years later.

Jo Reed:  Those stories about the old days.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yeah, the olden days.  He'd say the olden days.

Jo Reed:  I used to say the old days.  I used to say to my gra-- tell me about the old days.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Old days, right.

Jo Reed:  It's so interesting how kids, they really are interested in where they come from and what went on before.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yes, they are and I'm just so thankful that I was blessed with a family that held all those traditions in loving hands and passed them on to me.  I really am.  I am so grateful.

Jo Reed:  And you're also very committed to passing them on to the next generation.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Absolutely I am because some of the people I learned from had doubts as to whether it would last into the 21st century and wherever they are, I hope they know that it's lasted.  It's lasted well into the 21st century and I have a bunch of young people, Elizabeth Laprell, Sam Gleaves that are two of the best singers of these old love songs I've ever heard and both of them, I think Elizabeth's in her 20s and Sam might be 20 by now, so Josh Goforth, a cousin of mine who is out there playing music in the big world and telling stories and singing the old love songs, so they're going right on through the generations and now my grandson Ezra, who's 7 years old, can already sing three love songs. So I'm committed to getting them right on up into the 22nd century.

Jo Reed:  It's interesting, there really has been such a revitalization I think for traditional music, traditional stories.  People I think are appreciating what a just wonderfully rich and uniquely American art form this is and not wanting to let it go and not even from a, "We need to preserve this because it's an art form," but just plain loving it.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Absolutely.  It's like hearing my granny and her sister sing those old songs took me back to a time when things were simple.  As Granny used to say, "Don't get that confused with easy.  They were simpler times," but also it was like each time they would sing one of those songs was the first time they had sung that song.  I have seen __________ crank up and cry on the same verse in the same song at least 30 times.  She would start crying at that particular verse and the first time it happened, I said, "Little Granny, are you all right?" and she said, "I'm all right.  It just breaks my heart what that poor little old girl let herself into whenever she done that deed that she did."  Every time she would crank up and cry.  So those songs meant a lot to them.  They were a part of their everyday life and they were in context and I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time in the ‘50s and ‘60s when that was still true because this little community of Sodom was still extremely rural.  Everybody had cows and nobody had telephones until I was 15, so things hadn't changed very much.

Jo Reed:  I'm going to ask you, if you don't mind, if you don't mind playing another song for me?

Sheila Kay Adams:  I don't mind a bit.  <tunes instrument> I don't know if you knew this or not, but my husband took his life on March 7 in 2009.

Jo Reed:  Yeah, I had heard he had been ill.  That must've been very hard.

Sheila Kay Adams:  It destroyed my world, Jo.  I couldn't even play banjo because he was not just my companion and partner in life and the love of my life and best friend and lovers and all that, husband, he was also my business partner.  He was a great musician.  But he developed Lyme's disease and didn't take all of his antibiotics and so he created a super strain of that spirochete, it went straight to his brain and Jim lost his mind for the last 18 months of our marriage and I didn't have a clue what was going on….

Jo Reed:  When did you find out what was happening?

Sheila Kay Adams: He had gone out to the shop out there and had taken his own life, shot himself.  And my world fell apart right there.  Everything about my world just went.  It was just like this big bubble of glass had blew up and just shattered, went rolling off down over the hill out there.  And it took me four years to decide that I was going to be able to live and part of what happened to me was being awarded the NEA award.  That gave me something that I really needed other than just winning this award.

Jo Reed: Of course.  I understand that completely.

Sheila Kay Adams: This is some kind of story.  This time a year ago I would've been in no shape to have done this, but the timing was just perfect. And that's why that I have such a grateful attitude about this NEA award because it is like it came at the perfect time. It came at a time when I was healed enough from that trauma to be able to accept it because I had just made the decision to move on, to try to move on with my life in literally February and then the news came in that I'd gotten the NEA award in April.

Jo Reed:  That is timing.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Is that not timing?

Jo Reed:  Yeah, that's amazing.

Sheila Kay Adams:  It is amazing and I don't know how many recipients of the NEA award have ever said this award validated my existence on this planet and really truly and honestly from their heart meant it, but for me, this award validated my existence.

Jo Reed:  And it also validated that decision you made in February.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Absolutely, but isn't it funny how I had to make that decision before…

Jo Reed:  This would come, yeah.  It makes perfect sense, though, doesn't it?

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yes it does. Yes it does to me too. I had just decided that the only thing that went to the grave with Jim were the dreams I had with Jim.  I had finally made that distinction that it wasn't 100 percent of my life, it was just 100 percent of the dreams with Jim that went into the grave and then that's when I started to fight for my life, to get my life back.  And I always get real emotional about it because then in April I got this call from Barry that changed my whole world.  I mean it put me right back there where I needed to be. Even though I couldn't tell anybody, it was still the two best days of my life after I talked to Barry and found out that I had received this award because it has been a life-changing experience for me. So that's what's in my heart. I don't I've ever experienced this much joy.

Sheila Kay Adams:  And this is actually a song that came from the Civil War era that probably some young man from North Carolina wrote when he was going off to war and my late husband Jim used to sing this song.  It's called "I'm Going Back to North Carolina." <plays music> <sings>

"I'm going back to North Carolina.  I'm going back to North Carolina.  I'm going back to North Carolina and I never expect to see you anymore.  How can I ever keep from crying?  How can I ever keep from crying?  How can I ever keep from crying?  I never expect to see you anymore."

Jo Reed:  Thank you.

Sheila Kay Adams:  You're welcome.

Jo Reed:  And it's beautiful to hear it sitting on the porch with the rain …

Sheila Kay Adams:  With the rain in the background, yeah.

Jo Reed: … at this beautiful, beautiful mountain.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Yeah, it's the prettiest place in the world and I've been all over the world doing this.

Jo Reed:  Sheila, thank you so much, truly--

Sheila Kay Adams:  You are so much welcome.

Jo Reed:  and many congratulations, truly.

Sheila Kay Adams:  Thank you.

Jo Reed:  I was very, very happy to see your name on that list and I am even happier now.

Sheila Kay Adams: Well, thank you very much, Jo.

Jo Reed:  Sure, thank you.

Sheila Kay Adams:  It's been my pleasure.

Jo Reed:  Thank you.

That was 2013 National Heritage Fellow, Sheila Kay Adams.

You can hear Sheila perform live at The National Heritage Fellowships Concert which takes place here in Washington, DC in the Lisner Audiortium on Friday, September 27, 2013 at 8 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. You can find them at lisner.org  and if you can't make it to Washington DC, we're live streaming the concert on our website at arts.gov.

You've been listening to "Art Works," produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Adam Kampe is the musical supervisor. 

You heard excerpts from "St. Anne's Reel" and "I'm Going Back to North Carolina" both performed by Sheila Kay Adams.

The "Art Works" podcast is posted every Thursday at arts.gov.  You can subscribe to "Art Works" at iTunes U.  Just click on the iTunes link on our podcast page.  To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the "Art Works" blog, or follow us @NEAARTS on Twitter.  For the National Endowment for the arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

In the second part of a two-part interview, we hear Sheila as storyteller and learn about some of the folks who lived in Sodom, North Carolina.