Where the Music Lives
She was on her way out. He was on his way back.
Justin Edwards wrote his first song when he was in high school, and the words—and the music—have never stopped flowing. Through his four years at East Carolina University. Through his four years in the U.S. Army. When he was as far away from home as Afghanistan and Alaska, homesick for home, homesick for the girl he left behind, homesick for fried chicken, the music always brought him home.
He has written hundreds of songs.
He’s writing a few more at this very moment.
Bear Grass, North Carolina
Justin Edwards was born in Rocky Mount, but he calls Bear Grass home. It’s a tiny community just south of Williamston, in Martin County, between the Roanoke and Tar rivers. Population 84, give or take. It’s hard to say how many of that number are relatives of Justin—aunts, uncles, cousins. Ask him why he returned to Bear Grass, and he doesn’t skip a beat before answering: Family. Bear Grass is a place he left and a place to which he returned, and he doesn’t have plans to leave again.
Not when the local music scene is as white-hot as it is right now.
For Bear Grass, at least.
From the Classroom to the Stage
Five days a week, Justin is a history teacher at Bear Grass High School, but he’s a history teacher with a pretty cool side gig or three. Justin plays acoustic guitar and banjo for the bluegrass band Screaming Ditches. He plays electric guitar for the Southern rock band Martin County Ramblers, which he helped start while in high school.
It’s a tough touring schedule. One night at Nash Chicken in Greenville. Another gig at Sunnyside Oyster Bar in Williamston. Rocky Mountain Mills. He helped start a music festival in Windsor called Pickin’ on the Cashie.
It’s enough to wear a Bear Grass boy out.
What Home Looks Like
Home is what Justin writes about, and sings about. But what does home mean? And what does home look like and smell like and feel like?
For Justin, it looks and smells and feels like a wisteria vine on a tupelo tree along the Roanoke River. An old family story about an old horse thief. Songs about Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony.
He has a new album that just came out. East Carolina Folk Songs. He wrote all 11 songs on the album. Songs about a guitar’s travels from Pennsylvania to Japan to North Carolina. An acoustic finger-picking number he calls “Bigger Fish to Fry. And then there’s “Modern Family Blues,” which pokes fun at how much time we all tend to spend on our cellphones.
The music and the words are inside him and they just have to come out, Justin says. He’s a lucky man that there are other people in the world who love tupelo trees and fried catfish and big gardens that grow so much you hardly know what to do with all the bounty. He’s a lucky man to live around so many other people who love home.
The Old Farmhouse
“I like the small-town life,” Justin says. “I like the big fields and the old farmhouses.” About a year ago, Justin and his wife, Kathryn, a librarian at Williamston High School, bought one of those old farmhouses. (Yes, Kathryn is the girl he missed years and a million miles ago.) They’ve fixed it up and made a home for their two children. Two little boys who love to run and roam.
It’s hard to say where that next generation of Edwards will end up. The roads out of Bear Grass, North Carolina, stretch to the ends of the earth.
Which is just fine with Justin Edwards. He’s traveled those roads enough to know that they also lead right back to home.
