I've lived on Route 40, the original "West National Road" most of my life. Back in 2000, while my family was involved in a lot of high school and community theater projects, I thought it would be fun to have a 4-6-person show celebrating the history of the road and the culture of the "Heartland," featuring folk-style and folk songs. In part I was inspired by the Smoke on the Mountain plays, except I wanted to focus on styles of music that predated Bluegrass. I posted the play's resources online to make it easier to explain to people.

When the play was ready to start shopping around, life took some unexpected turns, and it went on the back burner. It's still here, and the songs are still great (if I say so myself). (I've had requests from folk and Celtic groups to use some of them, but I don't know if that's actually happened.)

Although it's based largely on events that happened in Donnelsville, Ohio, between 1813 and 2000, it could easily be adapted to ANY point along Route 40 between Cumberland Narrows and Salt Lake City.

Here's the link to the play's online resources.

http://creekdontrise.com/index_play.htm

If you'd like to see the full script, song arrangements, etc., please contact me using the following link:

http://creekdontrise.com/contact.htm

In the meantime, I have answered dozens of questions about acoustic instruments, folk songs, and related topics, so I started posting those to the site as well. I also have been teaching folk-style guitar and banjo for years, and have written my own materials for some of those lessons. These are not complete but I hope to get back to them eventually.

If you have any questions or feedback, you may contact me using the link above or sign up for the forums and post them yourself.

To sign up for the forums, follow this link: http://www.creekdontrise.com/creek_forum_signup.htm

At any rate, I hope you enjoy digging through what we have too offer so far.

- Paul D. Race

Well, we're way over 1000 hits on these forum pages since we started a few weeks ago. VERY few posts besides me, so a lot of folks are reading, even if they're not speaking up. So we'll keep posting, since I know we're being read. But it WOULD BE NICE to have more folks' opinions and tips here. Hint hint. Here's the link to sign up for the forum:

http://www.creekdontrise.com/creek_forum_signup.htm

Also, you can use the same form to sign up for our "Momma Don't 'Low" newsletter about acoustic and americana music and related topics.

You can find more information about that here:

http://creekdontrise.com/newsletter/mdl_index.htm

We're close to the 100,000 hit mark on these forums, even though I'm doing something like 90% of the posts. Time for some other folks to chime in.

In the meantime, if you want to get signed up so you can post and respond to posts, please use this link:

http://www.creekdontrise.com/creek_forum_signup.htm

If you want to get ahold of me directly, please use the following link:

http://www.creekdontrise.com/contact.htm

I've also added a facebook page for my music:

http://www.facebook.com/paulracemusic

And a blog:

http://www.paulracemusic.com/blog

And a You-Tube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC66hkh ... FlbA5C85Xw

The latter three are new as of July and August, 2015, so there's not that much there yet, but they're coming along.