Two campfires, s’mores, storyteller Beverly Burnette and musicians Phil and Gaye Johnson will be filling the Peterson Amphitheater at Tryon Fine Arts Center with food and fun on Sunday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m.  This is the final event of the Spring 2015 Amphitheater Series, and is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by a Polk County Community Foundation ‘Free Event’ grant.

 

Phil and Gaye Johnson have lived the country music tradition incorporating into their sound almost all aspects of American acoustic music. Gaye, a native of Green Creek, grew up singing and playing music with her family and friends. Phil, on the other side of the country, discovered the roots of country music as a youth in Southern California.  Phil and Gaye came together by accident backstage at play at Santa Monica College during the fall of 1969.  In 1972, the pair married, moved back East and became involved in radio and television productions from “A Prairie Home Companion” to “Fire on the Mountain.”

 

Beverly Burnette is a social worker, published poet and storyteller. She has written for a local children’s television show and edited a children’s advice column for a local newspaper. “Miz Bee” is a member of the NC Association of Black Storytellers and the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective.  Burnette, originally from Asheville, is a cousin of Tryon natives James Payne and Barbara and Sammie Qualls. Her organization, the North Carolina Association of Black Storytellers, promotes and perpetuates the art of black storytelling, an art form that embodies the history and cultures of Africans and African Americans. NCABS preserves, protects and passes on historical truths, folklore, legends, myths and fables important to African American traditions.

Burnette will appear as Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), an American folklorist, anthropologist and author, best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The group members enjoy many professions including teachers, ministers, parents, drummers, librarians, flight attendants, students and retirees.

-Submitted by Susan Brady