Written by Carter Graham

Street lights glow along the dark path of the St. Elmo Historic District when the twang of a banjo breaks the night’s silence; coming from The Woodshop Listening Room, bluegrass is in the air tonight. 

Cindy Pinion and Laura Walker are the folks fighting to preserve, in their different ways, an art form that has been at the center of their lives for decades. 

Pinion, the daughter of the iconic bassist Thomas “Boxcar” Pinion, has made it her mission to preserve traditional bluegrass through her organization Forever Bluegrass and its festivals. Walker is a singer and multipurpose musician who has been performing with the famous New Dismembered Tennesseans—as well as a few other bands she performs in—for the last 30 years.

Forever Bluegrass is an organization that honors Boxcar and his love for music. They organize annual festivals and weekly shows at the Woodshop Listening Room in St. Elmo. A portion of the festival’s proceeds go to the American Cancer Society in honor of her father’s legacy.

The two have been involved with music for as long as they can remember—Walker through her love of performing and Pinion through her family. 

“My daddy played in a country band, and they would have rehearsal here [Pinion’s home],” Pinion said. “There wasn’t a night, hardly, there wasn’t somebody sitting here picking and grinning. If we didn’t have company, daddy had the guitar, and I know that influenced–actually, both of my sisters played–so yes, I think that being exposed to it at a young age is really, really important.” 

The two met, unsurprisingly, at a bluegrass concert. 

“I came to a barbecue, and Cindy was buck dancing on the stage,” Walker said. “I could remember thinking, oh my gosh, I’d give anything to know how to dance like that.”

Since that concert, the two have been sisters in a large bluegrass family. After several awards ceremonies and TV shows hosted together, they still enjoy the music, and Pinion still loves to hear her friend sing. 

“Laura can tell you, when I first got acquainted with her, I about drove her nuts because I was like, sing this one, sing that one, sing this one because her voice is amazing,” Pinion said. “And then, of course, we just have a whole lot of fun. I don’t know if you’ve been around a lot of musicians, but they’re like a barrel of monkeys.”

Traditional bluegrass consists of five core instruments: banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and upright bass, but perhaps just as important… absolutely no drums. Originating in the 1600s, bluegrass blends gospel and blues influences and usually describes the singer’s surroundings or experiences. 

This history is what Pinion is trying to preserve and protect with Forever Bluegrass. 

“I’m hardcore tradition, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep it like that,” Pinion said. “No drums or electric instruments. Sorry, that’s just not traditional bluegrass. And Laura can tell you, I paddle upstream all the time, but I stand fast, and everybody knows if Cindy Pinion and Forever Bluegrass are putting on a show. It’s going to be traditional bluegrass music.”

The two have traveled across the nation—from Alaska to Massachusetts—performing or attending festivals and meeting people from different countries and cultures. 

“You know, we’ve got friends in Japan. I slapped one of them bumper stickers in Jamaica last year. I mean, you know, it’s all over.

“Now, if you listen to bluegrass, that’s great, but once you get involved with it, when you go to festivals and meet the people, it forms a community. And so there is a worldwide Bluegrass Community that we’re a part of,” Walker said. 

Bluegrass performers aren’t paid much, usually a couple of hundred dollars for the group and all the barbeque they can ask for—and they’ll tell you, they are sick of barbeque—yet, the community keeps them coming back. One of Pinion and Walker’s most rewarding experiences is seeing the younger generation fall in love with bluegrass through their shows. 

“[Creating] ‘The Feel Good’, that’s what we’ve done at the woodshop… the feel good that we get there on Friday night, those people are overwhelmed with it,” Pinion said. “And to see these young people, I get so darn excited. I mean, I can’t hardly stand it, because they could be doing anything but playing bluegrass music.” 

What matters most is highlighting the artists who spend long hours traveling from gig to gig and getting to experience shows as a community, like at the festivals and the weekly shows at the Woodshop.

“The comfort of knowing my family is there for me–because that’s what we are, a family,” Pinion said. “You know, after they pick me up when I’ve fallen down, they’re going to sing to me.” 

Every Friday night at The Woodshop Listening Room in St. Elmo, Chattanooga family and friends come together, cemented with the bonds of bluegrass music.

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Grass Roots

Written by Ava Nessell

Armed with a peacock feather on the brim of his hat, Thomas “Boxcar” Pinion steps on the stage, ready to give a performance that touches mind and soul. Boxcar strums at the body of his blonde double bass, affectionately named Ole Yeller, as a crowd hangs on every note.

“Daddy was unique in the fact that he loved the music. I mean, it was in his blood,” founder of Forever Bluegrass and Boxcar’s daughter, Cindy Pinion, said. 

At the heart of Forever Bluegrass lies Boxcar—the man who exposed Cindy to a love of music, specifically traditional bluegrass.

Every weekend of Cindy’s childhood was spent on the road, traveling to bluegrass concerts. Boxcar would rush home after work as a welder and pack a converted school bus or hearse to travel to a festival. 

“He wanted to be a musician for a living, but, you know, we lived out here, we had to eat,” Cindy said.

He jumped on any opportunity Boxcar had to play or, moreover, help his community. He would fill in for any band down a member at a moment’s notice. He regularly played benefits to uplift his bluegrass family. 

In 1988, Boxcar was diagnosed with lung cancer. His bluegrass family rallied around him, just as he would’ve for them, and hosted a benefit for him. Boxcar’s love for music never wavered. Even after his diagnosis, he spent his weekends surrounded by music from his community.

“Just the number of people that came out in droves will tell you how much everybody loved him and how much fun he was,” Cindy said. 

After her father passed in 1990, Cindy knew her father’s legacy needed to be preserved. She began Forever Bluegrass that year to honor her father’s love for music. Now, 34 years later, Forever Bluegrass hosts a yearly festival that uplifts the community that was so formative to Cindy’s childhood and abundantly compassionate to her father. 

Boxcar and his trusty bass are now the face of Forever Bluegrass, honored every day as a symbol of a community that loves music and one another fiercely. 

“We had a local philosopher, Dalton Roberts–he actually delivered dad’s eulogy–wrote a story on him one time,” Cindy said. “About how once Boxcar grabbed that old bass… he said the bass and Boxcar became one whenever they played.”

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