Jesse Smathers gives Dixie Hall’s humorous “Sally in Poor Valley” a full string-band treatment on his new Mountain Home Music Company single, available Friday, Sept. 25.
The cheerful recording follows the sparse, melancholy “Gambler’s Last Game.” This time, Smathers trades restraint for an old-timey rhythm and a story built to keep dancers moving.
Jesse Smathers Builds a Band Around Sally
Smathers said he recognized the song’s potential when he first heard it years ago.
“I thought immediately that it would lend itself to a full string band rendition,” Smathers said.
He fronts that band on guitar, joined by Corbin Hayslett on banjo, Nick Goad on mandolin, Hunter Berry on fiddle and Joe Hannabach on bass. Together, they give Hall’s mountain poetry the forward momentum Smathers heard in it from the beginning.
The song introduces Sally as a hardworking mountain woman with an unusual collection of talents. She plays banjo, cooks, keeps the house warm and even whispers sweet nothings to the narrator’s mule. The exaggerated details make her courtship funny without turning Sally herself into the joke.
Hall’s song previously appeared on Heather Berry and Tony Mabe’s 2008 album, Before Bluegrass. Smathers keeps its Appalachian storytelling intact while expanding the earlier arrangement into a complete string-band performance.
Beyond his solo work, Smathers plays guitar and sings with Lonesome River Band. The group recently brought bluesy swing to “Hit the Nail on the Head.” He joined the band in 2015 as its mandolin player before moving to guitar in 2021.
Smathers won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Momentum Award for Vocalist of the Year in 2017. When he is not touring, he teaches through the Handmade Music School near his home in southwest Virginia.