Event

Sheila Kay Adams

Few people embody such a depth of family and regional tradition, or represent it to the rest of the world with so much authority and affection, as Madison County's Sheila Kay Adams. Adams is the seventh-generation bearer of her family's two-hundred-year-old ballad-singing tradition, and is the mother and teacher of the eighth generation.

After teaching in the North Carolina public schools for seventeen years, Sheila Kay Adams now devotes her attention full-time to music and storytelling. One of the best-known living ballad singers in North Carolina, as well as a fine oldtime banjo player, she has recorded prolifically and performed at many dozens of venues and festivals in the United States and Great Britain. She performs and has recorded solo, as well as with her late husband Jim Taylor and other musical partners. Adams' talent has even caught the attention of Hollywood. She made a musical appearance in the 1992 film Last of the Mohicans, and was a technical advisor and singing coach for the movie Songcatcher.