Dan Boner - West of West Virginia (2020)

Professor Dan Boner has more than a few things to occupy his time. He’s the Director of the Bluegrass, Old Time & Country Music Studies program at East Tennessee State University, which is a full time job in itself. On top of that, he tours regularly with The Becky Buller Band, and is developing a line of audiophile studio pre-amps in his spare time.

Dan is also a serious photographer, spends fall days in the woods hunting wild game, and plays all the instruments in the bluegrass band at a professional level.

Oh… and he has a new solo album coming up which he is promoting as well.

A first single from that album is available to radio today, written by our own Terry Herd and Tim Stafford, called West Of West Virginia. It tells a familiar story of the migration of Appalachian people to northern cities where they could find work as employment dried up in the coal towns of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia during and after the Great Depression.

Boner says that he was taken by the song right away, as it was the story of his own family, in which his dad moved to New Jersey while his grandfather stayed behind in West Virginia during this period in the first half of the 20th century.