Rockingham Road

John Fleenor

My earliest musical experiences came from my mother’s singing. She is a very good singer and often sang in church and around our house. I can also remember listening to my Aunt Evelyn (on my father’s side), who sang and played piano with a gospel quartet, and a neighbor lady named Lily Jones, who was one of the best shape-note quartet singers in our area. They were some of my first influences. 

I began my formal musical training with piano lessons at the young age of seven. Like most boys I didn’t care for the piano lessons, so I stopped after a couple of years. When I was 11 or 12, I saw an all-black traveling carnival road show and was amazed by the sound of the guitar.  It made me want to learn how to play, and a few months later, when I saw the Beatles on TV, I knew I had to learn.  I got my first guitar when I was around 12.

During high school, I played in Rock n Roll and Blues bands with my brothers.  We played in various teen venues and on several TV shows, including the Cas Walker Show which was broadcast from WBIR Knoxville TN.

When I went to college, I decided to major in music. While I was there, I was able to sing and tour with several choirs. Some of the early tours involved traveling across the south singing in a very diverse group of churches and school auditoriums. I think that is when I fell in love with touring. One of the most memorable performances of my life was singing with the ETSU Men’s Choir at the White House.

But choir music wasn’t the whole story during my college years.  I was involved in the resurgence of acoustic music during that time period, and I began playing folk music and country blues at local coffee houses and other venues.  Some of the artists who most influenced me during that period were Bob Dylan, John Hartford, Gordon Lightfoot, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Howling Wolf, Woody Guthrie, and others.  Later, I joined a Bluegrass band called “Up Country” and began playing bluegrass standards as well as more modern tunes arranged in the Bluegrass format. After five years with “Up Country”, I began playing with a southern rock / blues band once again. I toured for three years with this band working in various nightclubs across the southeast. Then I worked as a solo singer/guitar player for the next 8 years.

In 1989 I stopped touring and went into business, but it turned out that I couldn’t leave the music behind and ten years later I started playing again, this time as a hobby. I had always been intrigued by the sound of the reso-phonic guitar, or Dobro as it is more commonly called. I had listened to players such as Josh Graves and Mike Auldridge for many years, but the newer sounds of Jerry Douglas and particularly the bluesy sound of Rob Ickes captured my attention.

Currently, besides playing the Dobro with Rockingham Road, my wife Angela and I perform in churches as a gospel duo, “The Fleenors”.  We have two sons Taylor and Wes.

My day job is at East Tennessee State University in the Archives of Appalachia as a Media Preservationist.

For information and/or bookings, call Jim Hunter at (423) 928-7914
or email at hunterjr@chartertn.net.