Way out in the Smoky Mountains, there sits a little community known as Oldham. At least, that’s the formal name. To others, it is Oldham’s Creek, named for settler Stephen Oldham, who came to the area from South Carolina in 1807. These are good, respectable names, tied to the history of the place, but they are not the names I prefer. In my mind, this little community in Sevier County will always be known as Boogertown.

Boogertown is the name that Keith Watson and Ruth Barber use when referring to the place. The Boogertown Gap is a low space between the community and nearby King Branch. It’s also the name that the two adopted for their musical duo. As you would expect this deep in the heart of Appalachia, Barber and Watson play Old-Time music. To be clear, it isn’t bluegrass. The flashy, three finger banjo picking of players like Earl Scruggs is missing from their music. Instead, Watson plays in the traditional clawhammer style, accompanied by Barber on the guitar, spoons, washboard, and tin-whistle (not all at the same time). Unlike bluegrass, which is built around intricate solos, Old-Time focuses on group playing. The music was traditionally used at community events like square dances. If you distilled all the sounds of Appalachia, the wild bird song coming from the hickory and fir trees, the wind whistling through the hollers, the playful gurgle of the creeks running over limestone rocks in Cades Cove, then you’d have something approaching the feel of Old-Time music.

I first heard the music of Boogertown Gap while on a family trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We spent our days hiking through Great Smoky Mountains National Park and our evenings exploring the town. It was summer, and Gatlinburg was hosting their Smoky Mountain Tunes & Tales program, a celebration of Appalachian culture that includes street musicians, clog dancers, fiber craft demonstrations, and storytellers, all scattered along the streets.

We saw Boogertown Gap perform several times over the course of our visit. They played songs like Sugar Babe (the Crawdad Song), Black Eyed Daisy, and Say Darlin’ Say. A buck dancer named Leo, who danced on a small plywood board set on the sidewalk, joined them during one performance.

One evening as we sat on benches and listened to Boogertown perform, Keith or Ruth (I can’t remember which) asked if anyone had a request. They indulged me by performing Black Jack Davey, after politely suggesting that Fair Margaret and Sweet William (my first request) might be a bit too morose for their street performances. The performance was all the more memorable in that it was my wife’s birthday. The day before we had purchased a copy of their album “Fried Okra” at a store in nearby Cades Cove, and they signed the disc for us.

The album stayed in my regular rotation for months. I loved the playful banter on Sugar Babe, and the ethereal beauty of Ruth’s tin whistle on Waynesboro. Keith’s mournful take on Train 45 was another one of the album’s highlights. Unlike most of Boogertown’s songs, the song is built on minor progressions, and Keith’s vocals and clawhammer perfectly capture the world weary feel suggested by the lyrics. Listening to the album transported me back to the Smoky Mountains. It made me want to give up suburban life and find a little cabin by a stream where I could cook on cast iron pots and pans and spend my evenings on the porch playing music with my wife and kids. It made me slow down and savor things in a way that is hard to express. It was the musical equivalent of eating a hot, fresh-bake biscuit drizzled with wild honey. Listening to it made (and still makes) me feel good and generally happy to be alive.

As you would expect of musicians who play a type of music called Old Time, Boogertown Gap’s repertoire is rooted deep in Appalachian tradition. Listening to their music provides a tour of Southern history. Waynesboro traces its roots all the way back to an Irish reel called O’er the Moor to Maggie. In fact, a great deal of Old Time music traces back to the British Isles, brought to the Appalachians by Irish and Scotch settlers who moved to the region in the 18th and 19th century. Shady Grove, which appears on their first album, Old-Time Appalachian Music, and on their most recent album, The Place, The Band, The Music, traces its roots to Scotland in the 1600s, where it appeared as a song called Matty Groves. The African American musical tradition and impact on the South can also be felt throughout Boogertown’s music in songs like Mary Don’t You Weep, a spiritual composed by slaves before the Civil War. Likewise, the song Wayfaring Stranger is often tied back to the spiritual tradition and the banjo itself has African roots. On their album Old-Time Appalachian Christmas, the group features Sacred Harp singing on the track Antioch (Joy To The World). Sacred Harp, a form of shape-note singing, is one of America’s oldest musical forms. It originated in New England but became a staple throughout the South, through singing schools and books like The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. All day singings of Sacred Harp hymns remain a staple in the South, bringing people, music, and food together. Even the minstrel show appears in Boogertown’s music through songs like Buffalo Gals which was (ostensibly) composed by black face minstrel performer John Hodges.

This deep tie to the region’s history seems to pervade everything about Boogertown Gap. Pay a visit to their webpage (www.boogertowngap.com) and you’ll find a brief history of Old-Time Music, and Boogertown the place (including personal anecdotes about things like where Keith’s cousin, “fell out of the back of her dad’s moving Model T pickup truck and tumbled through the briars.”) The page also contains details of family history, noting that Keith’s family has lived in the area since the 1700s, and that Ruth first began learning music at her father’s knee as a toddler.

As mentioned above, the name of Boogertown Gap’s most recent album is titled The Place, The Band, The Music. The title captures the essence of the duo. In the end, there’s no way to separate the three.