AVAILABLE NOW AT WWW.DANSMUSICONLINE.COM

For immediate release – March 30, 2020

JOHNSON CITY, TN – Daysight Music is excited to announce today’s long-awaited release of WEST OF WEST VIRGINIA by Professor Dan Boner. This full album boasts new original material, several classics, and exciting collaborations with a lineup of beloved bluegrass artists.

The title track “West of West Virginia” rose to prominence in the bluegrass world last year and was accompanied by a video series documenting a way of life known by generations who grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia. Professor Dan’s father and grandfather share their stories of mining, one room schools, farming, and leaving the mountains for a different life. Composed by Terry Herd and Tim Stafford, the song spent several weeks in the Bluegrass Today! charts.

Among new songs are “Quiet House” and “You’re Not Fooling Me,” both penned by Professor Dan. His musical colleague Becky Buller provided her award-winning balladry-songwriting and to “Raven Tresses.”

A duet with the newest Grand Ole Opry star Rhonda Vincent nods to her first professional job in Nashville with Jim Ed Brown, who co-wrote with his sister Maxine “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow.” The triple fiddles on this cut are sure to put a smile on the faces of the most dedicated traditional bluegrass and country music fans.

50 years after Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton recorded the Tom Paxton hit “The Last Thing on My Mind,” Wagonmaster Buck Trent again lends his signature electric banjo to the song as performed by Professor Dan and Sally Lea Sandker.

Ten songs in total make up West of West Virginia, which is available now directly as a digital download or physical CD at www.DansMusicOnline.com, or wherever you prefer to shop for music. Broadcasters may find the album at AirPlayDirect.com/ProfDan.

Professor Dan is Director of the renowned Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies at East Tennessee State University. He tours and records as a member of the award-winning Becky Buller Band and serves on the IBMA Board of Directors representing Print, Media, and Education.

Professor Dan | dan@dansmusiconline.com | 423-895-1624

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY: WEST OF WEST VIRGINIA

Professor Dan: Joining the Family Fold 

by Ted Olson

When released as a single in November 2018, Professor Dan Boner's “West of West Virginia” stood out as one of those rare recordings that tells a story simultaneously and equally relevant to the singer performing it and the community hearing it. Through the alchemy of song and performance, “West of West Virginia” invited the listener to encounter a vividly rendered memory from a beloved time and place, and that confluence created for performer and audience a reimagined, shared experience. Professor Dan’s single immediately drew attention for its accessibility and authenticity, quickly rising to #3 on the Bluegrass Today! National Airplay Chart. The song has since become known far and wide. Professor Dan, Director of East Tennessee State University's Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies Program as well as a member of the Becky Buller Band, can't leave the stage while on tour unless he performs "West of West Virginia"--and whether or not audiences have ever set foot in the Mountain State they respond with standing ovations.

Reminiscent of certain classic recordings that invoke the spirit of the Appalachian folk narrative, such as Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter," Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors," Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road," and Darrell Scott's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive," “West of West Virginia,” unlike those songs, was not composed by its performer; instead, it was crafted by the songwriting partnership of Terry Herd and Tim Stafford, neither of whom need an introduction in the world of bluegrass. But those established veterans entrusted their song to Professor Dan for this album because "West of West Virginia" was, figuratively if not literally, his song—it reflected his own family’s hardscrabble life in the West Virginia hills. He makes the song his own through his restrained but emotionally resonant command of the song's sweetly sad evocation of a way of life that, though gone, is not forgotten. Anyone wishing to witness Professor Dan’s personal connection to the song’s theme should watch the moving video that he posted on YouTube to accompany the single’s original release. Documenting his return to his family's homeplace in Kanawha County, West Virginia, the video features interviews with his grandfather and father who both reflect upon the wisdom of experience they gained through hard times and through good times. 

That powerful recording becomes the final track of Professor Dan's album of the same name, and those impressed by his single can now appreciate the range of his talents on his new album: his expressive yet understated—and admirably pitch-perfect—vocals, whether in solo or group vocal settings; his strong instrumental interplay, on fiddle and guitar, with established as well as emerging bluegrass musicians; his imaginative song and tune arrangements; and his pleasing mix of original songs, borrowed chestnuts from the bluegrass and country songbag, and at least one modern bluegrass classic, “West of West Virginia,” the song. 

On West of West Virginia (the album) as in his video documentary, Professor Dan transports us to his West Virginia mountain homeplace and invites us to experience and enjoy the cultural wisdom and musical legacy found there in his—and, if we join him on the journey, our—family fold.