Elkville String Band

The Elkville String Band, from Wilkes County, performs old-time mountain music, playing mostly older music, but also some newer compositions from band members Drake Walsh and Jeff Michael. The band consists of Drake Walsh (fiddle and mandolin), Herb Key (guitar and singing), Bill Williams (harmony singing and bass), and Jeff Michael (banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and singing). Band members are very interested in local and regional music. The band was formed by Jerry Lankford and served for three years as house band for the Wilkes Playmakers annual production of "Tom Dooley, a Wilkes County Legend". The original Elkville String Band members were Jerry Lankford, Herb Key, Drake Walsh, Nicole Vidrine & Bill Williams. The Elkville String Band has also won two Paul Green Multimedia Awards presented by The North Carolina Society of Historians, Inc. In 2006, they recorded a version of the ballad “Otto Wood” on the 75th anniversary of the year Otto Wood was shot. The song was released as a single and was included on the album, “Carolina Scrap Book - Volume Two,” which was produced by the Kruger Brothers and features Wilkes County and regional musicians.

All the Elkville String Band members are also members of the Wilkes Acoustic Folk Society. The WAFS meets on the 4th Monday of every month. The meetings are open to the public and everyone is invited to come and see what the WAFS does. Meetings are followed by a "jam session" where everyone can join in and pick. Please check out their web site, there is a link on our "Links" page.

Some of you might be interested in how we got our name. The band was formed in 2001 by Jerry Lankford to play live music for the play "Tom Dooley, A Wilkes County Legend", written by Karen Wheeling Reynolds and produced by the Wilkes Playmakers. We did not have a name for the band and we were all trying to come up with a good name. Herb Key said, "Well, since we are going to be playing music for a play about Tom Dooley and since Tom was born in Elkville, NC (now called Ferguson, NC), why don't we call it the Elkville String Band". Everyone thought that was a great idea, so that is how we got our name.