The Resonance Sessions was recorded in the arts hub of Marshall, North Carolina
The day before Hurricane Helene raised rivers to historic levels in Western North Carolina, Clay White got a sinking feeling. About three years earlier, he and his girlfriend, singer-songwriter Becca Leigh, had left Charleston to settle in Marshall, North Carolina, a small-town hub for musicians and artists north of Asheville. White, who often plays trumpet for The High Divers and is a key figure behind the Awendaw Green music venue (his father, Eddie, is the founder), considered the Lowcountry’s hurricanes and rising sea levels when he settled in the mountains.
Helene showed him that no place is immune. In the hours before the September 2024 storm, Marshall’s store owners began to move inventory upstairs as the river rose. But the crest proved higher than anyone expected. On the evening of the hurricane, White walked from his house to downtown and was floored by the smell of gas fumes and the sight of buildings washing downriver. “I realized in a moment that things were not going to be the same around here, ever, and not anywhere near normal for a long time,” he recalls.
The Old Marshall Jail Hotel and its sister restaurant, Zadie’s Market, had served as a cultural hub for the town. Standing amid the mud and debris of its gutted, brick-walled ground floor, White and hotel owner Josh Copus formed an idea to bring together musicians with connections to the area. White sent a flurry of texts and made a few phone calls. Within days, a volunteer audio and film crew from Parkway Studios began four days of capturing the intimate, stripped-down recordings of the 35-track Resonance Sessions. “I didn’t really put parameters on the artists,” explains White, who asked fellow musicians to “contribute any song that’s been resonating with you or that’s helped you heal throughout this process.”
The artist list includes some big names—Tyler Ramsey (formerly of Band of Horses), Scott McMicken (Dr. Dog), Avey Tare (Animal Collective), Rising Appalachia, the Dead Tongues—plus several with Charleston roots and ties: Slow Runner (aka Michael Flynn) rewrote a verse of “Fight Songs” in the storm’s aftermath. Infinitikiss (Nic Jenkins) sang and played classical guitar over synth on “All That I Have.” Leigh performed her song “The River” with four-part harmonies and deep ripples of new meaning. And The High Divers finalized the lyrics to “Better Days,” marking the official release of a new song that reflects the collection’s feeling of hope emerging from despair.
“Usually when bad things happen, it takes years to consolidate in your mind to be able to write about it. This was an instant need for that,” says The High Divers’ Luke Mitchell, another Charleston expat.
Mitchell founded Out There Studios in Marshall and served as one of the recording engineers on the project, sweating as nearby generators hummed and Army trucks rolled by. “That kind of stuff is terrifying when you’re recording intimate, acoustic music, but I actually think it makes the recordings feel even more real to the moment,” he says.
The Resonance Sessions also includes several ballad singers, who contribute a distinctly Appalachian style of storytelling through a cappella song. The Old Marshall Jail Hotel has resumed hosting regular “ballad swaps.”
Proceeds from the recording support the Madison County Arts Council. The Resonance Sessions can be heard with a donation at resonancesessions.bandcamp.com, and a second printing of the three-record vinyl edition is underway. “We’re hoping that this project lives on as a beautiful artistic expression that emerged organically from the tragedy of the storm,” says White. “We’re just doing what we can to make art and help our community move forward.”
