Folk Music Rewind: From the Little Red Barn to The Ozark American Songbook

Folk Music Rewind™ began with a simple idea: sit down with the people carrying Ozark music forward, listen to their stories, and preserve those voices for another generation. Its roots reach back to the little red barn, the early radio-station days, a small desk, a microphone, and interviews made in and around Mountain View, Arkansas.

The Early Interviews

Among the early interviews were conversations with musicians and tradition-bearers including Mary Parker and the Parker family circle, banjo player Lillian McCool, and Dwayne Porterfield, representing the mountain dulcimer tradition, the dulcimer shop, and connections with the Ozark Folk Center. These early Mountain View interviews helped establish the pattern that still guides Folk Music Rewind: the music matters, but so do the people, instruments, memories, families and places behind it.

From a Radio Program to a Living Archive

As the project grew, Folk Music Rewind moved beyond a single interview format. The microphones and cameras followed musicians into studios, festivals, front-porch gatherings, courthouses, parks and community stages. KWMV 88.5 FM in Mountain View became an important broadcast home for that work, allowing interviews, recordings and stories to be presented to listeners while the original material could also be preserved as an archive.

The Ozark American Songbook

Out of that preservation work grew The Ozark American Songbook™—a broader effort to connect the music of the Ozarks with the larger American story. Folk, old-time, bluegrass, gospel, country, Americana and related traditions are not treated as museum pieces. They are living music, still being played by working musicians and still being handed from one generation to the next.

The American Songbook work now reaches beyond Arkansas through interviews, field recordings, festival visits and special recognitions. The United States 250th anniversary has become another opportunity to document the songs, performers and community traditions that help tell the American story.

Rewinding the Tape—and Carrying It Forward

The phrase “Let’s rewind that tape” captures the heart of the project. Rewinding is not simply looking backward. It means returning to a recording, a memory or a song so it can be heard again, understood in context and carried forward.

From the little red barn and the first small interview setup to KWMV, the McSpadden studio, festival roads and the growing Timberlane archive, Folk Music Rewind and The Ozark American Songbook continue with the same purpose: preserve the music, preserve the people and preserve the stories.

Folk Music Rewind™ | The Ozark American Songbook™ | Timberlane Entertainment LLC | Mountain View, Arkansas