DOC STOCK III
In partnership with the Ramkat

Wayne Henderson & Friends
A showcase of musicians and music of the Blue Ridge Mountains
Saturday, March, 1, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
The Ramkat, 170 W 9th St, Winston-Salem, NC
Tickets$30-$50

his event is part of DocStock III, our annual birthday celebration honoring Doc Watson!

Join us for an evening showcasing musicians and music of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in tribute to master mountain music and North Carolina legend Doc Watson, in honor of his 102nd Birthday. Featuring Wayne Henderson & Friends (Herb Key, Randy Greer, Josh Scott), Sammy Shelor & Jesse Smathers  Quartet, Blue Ridge Girls, Laura Boosinger, and Riley Baugus.

7:30-7:50 pm – Laura Boosinger
7:50-8:10 pm – Riley Baugus
8:15-9 pm – Wayne Henderson & Friends
9-9:35 pm – Blue Ridge Girls
9:45-10:30 pm – Sammy Shelor + Jesse Smathers Quartet (Lonesome River Band)

Wayne Henderson

Wayne Henderson’s top-notch guitar finger-picking is a source of great pleasure and pride to folks in Grayson County, Virginia, as is his storytelling. His guitar playing has also been enjoyed at Carnegie Hall, in three national tours of Masters of the Steel-String Guitar, and in seven nations in Asia.

In addition to his reputation as a guitarist, Henderson is a luthier of great renown whose instruments are highly respected for their volume, tone, and resonance. He is a recipient of a 1995 National Heritage Award presented by the National Endowment for the Arts. He produces about 20 instruments a year, mostly guitars; he is almost as well-known for the mandolins he has made. The late Doc Watson said of his Henderson mandolin “That Henderson mandolin is as good as any I’ve had my hands on. And that’s saying a lot, because I’ve picked up some good ones.”

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Wayne Henderson

Sammy Shelor & Jesse Smathers Quartet

Sammy Shelor is a 5-time IBMA Banjo Player of the Year, 2011 recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo & Bluegrass, and long-time member and band leader of Lonesome River Band. Since its formation decades ago, Lonesome River Band continues its reputation as one of the most respected names in bluegrass music.

The Shelor Family has a long banjo tradition. Charlie Poole taught Shelor’s grandfather the banjo, and Shelor’s grandfather in turn taught Sammy. When Shelor was four years old, growing up in southwestern Virginia, his grandfather fashioned a banjo for him from an old pressure cooker lid. His other grandfather promised to buy Shelor a real banjo if he learned to play two songs.Sam met the challenge, his grandfather bought him a Ventura banjo, and by age 10 Shelor was performing in local bands.

Currently performing on mandolin and singing lead and tenor vocals with the Lonesome River Band, Jesse Smathers is an accomplished mandolinist, guitarist, and singer from Eden, North Carolina. Heavily influenced by the music that runs in his family, Jesse has found inspiration and takes pride in his musical family lineage. His grandfather, Harold Smathers, and grand uncle, Luke Smathers, recorded for June Apple and were awarded the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1993 for their contributions to North Carolina Folk Music with the Luke Smathers String Band.

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Sammy Shelor
Jesse Smathers

Blue Ridge Girls

The Blue Ridge Girls, like their name, invoke a picturesque simplicity with their take on traditional mountain music.  The trio features Martha Spencer, Jamie Collins and Brett Morris.  They feature a variety of old time, bluegrass and country songs, flatfooting to fiddle and banjo tunes, with original songwriting and a unique take on other familiar crowd-pleasers.  All three women grew up in musical families and are working to preserve and promote the Blue Ridge’s rich musical heritage.

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Blue Ridge Girls

Laura Boosinger

Laura Boosinger’s concert performances and recordings have earned for her a well-deserved reputation as one of North Carolina’s most talented singers and interpreters of the music of the Southern mountains. She is known for her virtuosity on a variety of traditional stringed instruments, including old-time banjo, guitar, Appalachian dulcimer and fingerstyle Autoharp.

In 1984 she took over David Holt’s chair in the Luke Smathers Band, driving to Canton, NC for practice every Sunday through 1997. She learned the mountain swing style that the Smathers brothers created after hearing swing music on the radio in their formative days.

Boosinger has been a mainstay at numerous festivals in western North Carolina for decades and serves as a Master of Ceremonies for The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, the oldest folk festival in the nation, and at Shindig on the Green every summer in downtown Asheville, NC. She also serves as a consultant to the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina project which strives to sustain the rich music traditions of the western North Carolina and the region. In that capacity she hosted, and scripted 6 seasons of the “Down The Road on The Blue Ridge Music Trails” Podcast which sought to highlight bluegrass and old-time music stories, performers, and traditions across the mountain and foothills counties of Western North Carolina, aired on WNCW 88.7 FM and can be found online.

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Laura Boosinger

Riley Baugus

Riley Baugus, a North Carolina native who lives in Walkertown, began singing and playing music at an early age. Raised in a household where recordings of old-time music were often played, he developed a love and appreciation for traditional southern Appalachian music. Baugus began playing the fiddle at age ten. Soon after that he took up the guitar. By the time he was twelve, he and his father built a banjo from scrap wood, and he once again began to learn another instrument.

Baugus honed his musical skills with a close friend and neighbor, fiddler Kirk Sutphin. Together they visited elder traditional musicians in and around Grayson County, Virginia, and Surry County, North Carolina. He often visited, played with, and learned from fiddlers Tommy Jarrell, a National Heritage Fellowship recipient from Surry County, as well as fiddler Robert Sykes, and banjo player Dix Freeman. During these visits he also met and learned from many other traditional musicians of the area, including former Camp Creek Boys members Verlen Clifton and Paul Sutphin.

Baugus has played with numerous old-time string bands, including the Red Hots, Backstep, and Old Hollow Stringband. His singing is featured on the soundtrack of the Academy Award-winning film Cold Mountain. He built the antebellum-style banjos that were used in the film.

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Riley Baugus

About The Ramkat

The Ramkat is a two-level, 11,670- square-foot, 1,000-person-capacity live music venue, handicap-accessible, and serviced by three bars serving a wide variety of beer, wine, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages. The Ramkat continues to build on the long legacy of live music in Winston-Salem that borrows from the best of our musical heritage and other great rooms around the world, while at the same time harkening back to the basic philosophy of the Sixth Room…without the temperance talks.

The Ramkat is located at 170 W. 9th St., Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

About The Gas Hill Drinking Room

Gas Hill is an intimate craft cocktail lounge, drinking room and gathering space with a mix of deep-seated couches, comfortable bar stools and community tables. Connected to the balcony level of the venue, Gas Hill is located at the northernmost end of Trade Street across the intersection at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

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