Nest Of Singing Birds

Our Story

A “nest of singing birds” was the name Cecil Sharp gave to the Sodom Laurel Community of Madison County, NC when he visited the area in 1916 to collect the ancient ballads that had survived there, being gently passed from hand to hand and knee to knee. The county is still known for this rich tradition that goes back at least nine generations.

The moniker has now been adopted by a cooperative of singers in the region that are keeping this art form alive. Centering around Sheila Kay Adams, the matriarch of the traditional music community in Western North Carolina, the group is led by her daughter Melanie Rice and her niece Donna Ray Norton, the 8th generation of their family to keep alive these songs of love and loss and the stories surrounding them. Through activities like Ballad Night at the Old Marshall Jail, and through performances at festivals and performing arts center across the US and the world, these a cappella songs are shared between the singers and also the wider community, offering exposure to a viable living, breathing tradition not yet lost to time and technology.

A swap is a time honored tradition that brings singers and ballad lovers together to share the old “love songs” and keep the tradition alive and breathing. In Marshall, NC in 2022, Josh Copus, Donna Ray Norton and Melanie Rice hatched a plan to bring this time honored tradition to the renovated Old Marshall Jail - a hotel and restaurant housed in the meticulously curated renovated jail. By inviting the wider community into the fold, the group hopes to protect and spread an appreciation of the art.

The Old Marshall Jail Ballad Swap is a celebration of Appalachian heritage, hosted by Copus, Norton, Sheila Kay Adams, and Melanie Rice. This casual “front porch” gathering brings together ballad singers from across the region to share stories and songs that have been passed down for generations. Madison County, known for its rich ballad tradition, was famously described by English folk song collector Cecil Sharp as a “nest of singing birds” in 1916. The ballad tradition here goes back at least nine generations, making it one of the oldest unbroken oral traditions in the U.S.

The Marshall Sessions

In 2023 a group of singers came together in the Old Marshall Jail, where they had been hosting the monthly swap, to record a set of songs. Currently in production, the project is a capsule of the past brought forward into the present. With support from the North Carolina Arts Council and the North Carolina Music Office, an album is slated for vinyl and digital release in the spring of 2025. Below is a sample of more than 20 songs collected.

Members of the Nest of Singing Birds were featured in a Dec 2023 article in Oxford American that does an amazing job of capturing the spirit and essence of the work we are do doing. Read the article.

Listen to the Marshall Session
(Select tracks)