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Award winning bluegrass artist Carley Arrowood is bringing her music and talents back to her home county this weekend.
She will perform at Spindale's Centennial Block Party on Saturday, August 5 at 6pm and the next day at Florence Baptist Church in Forest City (Sunday, August 6) also at 6pm.
She returns on August 19 for the annual Sportsman Banquet at Floyd's Creek Baptist at 5:30pm.
Carley grew up in Rutherford County, a daughter of Yancey and Cindy Arrowood of Union Mills, and has been playing music since she was 10 years old. She was joined by her sister Autumn, who started playing at age 8.
The full band will be at the Spindale celebration and at Florence Baptist. In addition to Autumn on mandolin/vocals, others are Carley's husband Daniel Thrailkill, guitar and vocals, Paul Watson on bass and Sawyer Whitman, banjo.
"I played the fiddle and she played the mandolin," Carley said of her younger sister, taking lessons at young ages from Dennis McEntire at the Pick Shack in Shingle Hollow.
"Dennis put our first band together with our cousin Katie McEntire on the bass," she said.
When the Arrowood children started playing music, they appeared several times in the local newspaper.
"We'd talk about music and things when we were little, and we had small gigs here and there," she said.
Carley said she loves performing with Autumn, who she describes as "a wonderful mandolin player, a lovely vocalist and an amazing songwriter. I love being in a band with her."
After Carley graduated from high school in 2014 (she was homeschooled) she was hired as the fiddle player for Darin and Brooks Aldridge.
"I toured with them for five years and played at venues and festivals all over the country. I even had the privilege of playing overseas in Prague, Czech Republic with them and John Cowan, and at a festival in Ireland. I also got to play the Grand Ole Opry stage with them about 13 times during the time I was with them," she said. (Darin and Brooks, award-winning duo of American/Country/Bluegrass will be among artists at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival in September at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring.)
In 2017, Carley was awarded the International Bluegrass Music Association's (IBMA) Monumental Award as Instrumentalist of the Year.
She became a solo artist and signed with Mountain Home Music Company in 2020, a record label out of Arden, that helped her record and release her debut solo album last spring," Goin' Home Comin' On." About half of the songs on the album are her original songs.
"Some of them made appearances on the Bluegrass Today Weekly Airplay Chart. (Bluegrass Today is an online magazine that features all the latest news in the bluegrass music community).
This year Carley has recorded her second solo album for Mountain Home and it features all-new music, over half of which is her original music.
Carley has also released three singles so far, all which have done well on streaming and on live radio.
"The first song we released is one called 'Deeper In Love', written by Josh Shilling and Bill Whyte, two amazing artists and songwriters. The second one we released is an instrumental tune I wrote called "Tsali's Run", about the Cherokee hero, Tsali, and his escape into the hills of western NC before the Trail of Tears in 1838," Carley said. This week, 'Tsali's Run' is #3 on the Bluegrass Today Weekly Airplay Chart and is #8 on their Monthly Airplay Chart (the charts log how much airtime a song gets from contributing radio stations).
Her latest single, co-written by her husband Daniel, is "Chasin' Indigo."
"Bluegrass is what brought us together, meeting in 2014 at a festival. The rest is history," she said.
Daniel plays guitar and is the lead vocalist in a band called "The Trailblazers" as well as singing and playing guitar in Carley's band.
The couple was married in 2021 and on June 7 they welcomed their "pride and joy," a daughter, Eliana Hope. The family lives in Newton.
"She is our biggest blessing. We love her a whole lot."
Carley said Eliana is familiar with all the new songs since Carley was recording her new album when she was about six months pregnant with Eliana.
"A couple weeks ago she was a little fussy so I decided to try and play "Chasin' Indigo" for her on my phone and she immediately calmed down. She heard it so much before she was born and it's her favorite song now. It's the sweetest thing," Carley added.
Carley was just recently nominated for the 2023 IBMA Monumental Vocalist of the Year.
