The opening day of the Appalachian Uprising festival provides a good reason to take a day off from work on Thursday to listen to some good bluegrass music in nearby Scottown, Ohio. The festival takes place in the beautiful serpentine-shaped hollow on Eden Valley Farm in the Appalachian foothills about 15 miles from Huntington.

With one of the best lineups ever to be featured at the get-together, the Uprising will run from Thursday through Saturday, June 3-5.

Three-day tickets are $100 at the gate or $35 daily. Children 12 and under get in free.

The list of bands performing on Thursday includes International Bluegrass Music Association hall of famers Bobby Osborne and Melvin Goins. Also on the bill is Lorraine Jordan and Carolina Road, Step Into The Blue, Randy Wilson and Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers. Finishing off the night is Drew Emmitt of Leftover Salmon fame.

Joe Mullins is an acclaimed banjo player who grew up as the son of a popular bluegrass radio deejay and musician, the late Paul "Moon" Mullins. "Moon" Mullins was an eastern Kentucky native who performed and worked on radio stations throughout the region, including here in the Tri-State. Eventually, "Moon" Mullins headed to southwestern Ohio and settled in for a long and memorable stint on WPFB radio broadcast from the city of Middletown, "where the holler hits the hardtop." Joe Mullins picked up a love for both radio and playing bluegrass music from his father and he has been pursuing both successfully as a profession.

"Maybe at times," said Mullins, when asked if it was hard to be the son of such a strong personality. "Hank Williams Jr. had a big song in the 1960s when he first started called 'Standing In The Shadows.' And, here in southwestern Ohio, if you showed up playing the banjo with Paul 'Moon' Mullins, there wasn't any doubt about who the star of the show was going to be. My dad, he was a household name and folks included him as a member of the family."

Joe Mullins has successfully stepped out to make his own mark on the bluegrass world with a distinctive and recognizable style of playing the banjo. And, like his father, he is also in the radio business.

Mullins is the owner of three small town AM radio stations in southwestern Ohio that focus on bluegrass and traditional country music. The stations also employ an old school approach to local broadcasting that isn't found much anymore in this day and age of corporate radio. Mullins hosts a radio show every week day from 1 to 3 p.m. You can listen to the radio programs live online at www.myclassiccountry.com.

"Real radio still works and we have been so blessed to have made a living out of this," said Mullins. "Local radio is dead, coast to coast. Man, it's tough for the local radio. You have satellite radio and the Internet and then corporate radio in the major metropolitan areas and all of that has downsized and shoved locally owned and operated radio stations into the ditch. We have been fortunate. We hit thousands of people every day and they still appreciate fine local radio that's got some flavor and personality to it. And for the radio programmer, there is more good bluegrass these days than ever."

On the performing side of Mullins' life, he and his appropriately titled band, The Radio Ramblers, have a new album out on Rebel Records called "Rambler's Call." The group features Mullins on banjo, Mike Terry on mandolin, Adam McIntosh on guitar, Tim Kidd on bass and a hot fiddler player creating some buzz named Evan McGregor. All the members of the band sing as well.

"The variety of the material on our current CD has got just as much attention as the playing and singing has because it's very refreshing for a lot of folks," said Mullins. "I'm glad of that. And, I like variety. Every tune on there isn't about somebody's girlfriend has gone off and left him or the old home place. There are new and old songs on there. There's a lot of songs on there that I learned from old country records from when my dad was on radio. My dad was always a real renegade. He was always very independent about what he would play on the radio. He did not care what Nashville sent as a single. He did not care what was on the top 40 or the top 100. He didn't pay a bit of attention to any of that."

Toril Lavender/For The Herald-Dispatch

The 8th Annual Appalachian Uprising music festival at Scottown, Ohio Eden Valley Farm in 2009.

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