This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. 

Old Fort Mountain Music actually got started five miles from here. Five miles down to Woody’s Chair Shop between Old Fort and Marion. It started out with a few locals wanting to do a jam session. You had Max Wood, you had Jim Duckworth, you had two or three more. Harley Walker, I forget a few more of them. They kind of got there and wanted to start jamming and do a few things. So they’d sit there, pick a little bit, and people started hearing about it. So they started coming in, listening to it. [Wood] had coffee for the musicians. It was real nice. It got overcrowded so they decided they needed some place to go. They actually talked to the mayor about the Gateway Museum. This was back in the summer of ’86. People come up there and pick every Friday night and it got huge. Mountain Gateway Music, I think, was the name of it. Everybody loved it. Well that went on right on through the summer without missing any Friday nights. Took them up to the winter time, they didn’t have anywhere to go. They didn’t want to stop, the people wanted to keep hearing it, so they talked to Bob Wilson, the mayor. They said “we need some place to go.” He talked to the board and said let’s go to the old Rockett building. When they came up through the Rockett building, they decided they would change the name. So they changed it to Old Fort Mountain Music. The audience loves mountain music because it’s a good safe place for people to come. Whether you got on a mink, or whether you got on just your everyday blue jeans, you’re more than welcome. Come in here and people treat you like family. It’s just like going to your grandmother’s house. That’s how great Old Fort is.