The Shaped by Sound podcast is made possible through support from Come Hear NC, a program of the North Carolina Arts Council within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Charly Lowry.

Yes.

Thank you so much for being on Shaped by Sound.

We are so excited to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited.

Oh, good.

And you look incredible.

Thank you.

I figured I'd put my suit on for this portion of the programming.

Yes.

Well, you know, you did the appropriate thing.

I put on my sweatshirt and hat and yeah, I promise I'm a normal human being, everyone.

Anyway.

So, Charly, I think to start, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about where you're from.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

I'm an Eastern North Carolina girl.

Born and raised in Robeson County.

Yeah.

I'm specifically from the Union Chapel community, which is very important to note.

Yeah.

Whenever we talk about our area of the state and then when you get into the microcosm of the counties and the towns, then you get into the communities between Pembroke and Lumberton, North Carolina.

Yeah.

I'm from the swamps, I'm from the fields, and I'm pretty much dead center in between Lumberton, Pembroke, and then Red Springs, North Carolina.

An equal distance to all three.

So I claim all of them.

Yeah.

Maybe talk to us a little bit about those identities maybe within those communities because they seem uniquely different, but they're all part of you, right?

Yes.

In what way?

Well, I'm Native.

I'm Indigenous.

So those communities have high populations of Indigenous folks where faith is strong, education is very important.

And so is kinship and all of our families live in that area.

It's kind of rare for our family members to move away to other counties, other states.

And so all of my immediate family, all of my cousins, my aunts and uncles are in that area.

Yeah.

It's a place where everyone knows everybody and everybody knows your business.

And they'll tell it, especially now with social media.

And we love hard.

Family is super important.

It's a great place to be brought up.

I bet.

Yeah.

It must be difficult when you have everybody you know, knowing all your business and being there around all the time.

And how do you sort of become your own person that way when you have all of that around you?

Well, thankfully, I've always been drawn to music.

And I would say that sports are a big thing around home.

And so I grew up as an athlete.

And that helps you to gain some discipline and focus.

And then when you have something else that you enjoy doing, that carries over.

So being an athlete and training, I also carried that same focus into my music and kind of you put your blinders on.

But that's also a great thing about being from home.

Folks are so supportive.

And when they do see someone stepping out of the norm, they'll stand behind you and support you.

Yeah.

What were you playing?

What were your sports?

I started playing Little League Baseball when I was 12.

Right on.

What was your position?

I was right field.

Okay.

They put me, you know.

Did you have a good arm for right field so you could throw somebody out at home?

I could throw.

I could throw a ball, but I had a hard time as a batter.

Always swung late.

Yeah.

I was like, "If you needed a foul ball, I could surely hit one."

Yeah.

Feels like there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

But once I got into middle school, I started playing softball and I was a cheerleader and I played basketball.

Yeah.

So you were- And that carried over to Purnell Swett High School where I did those three sports in addition to cross country and track.

I've always been a runner ever since I was a child, fast.

And then I loved it when I actually had the opportunity to play an organized sport and track events.

So I did relays.

I was on the relay team and jumped hurdles and made it to the States.

Really?

So you were good.

I was athleted a year in my 11th grade year.

I think everybody was surprised and I was shocked.

But yeah, I kept my grades up and played all those sports, but I always sang all throughout that.

I was going to ask you, for you, how did music come to the surface then?

It seems like it did, sort of.

You were doing all these things and involved in all these sports and extracurriculars.

Yeah.

Well, when I was 12 was really the turning point when I won Junior Miss Lumbee and I became a dignitary for our people, the Lumbee tribe.

And so I was Junior Miss Lumbee and spent 1996 and '97 was my reign.

And so I started traveling.

I grew up in the church and that's pretty much where I grew up singing.

Once I became Junior Miss Lumbee, I started traveling away from the community more, visiting other churches, attending conferences, youth conferences, leadership conferences, and they all always needed entertainment.

And so I sang and then it kind of had a snowball effect.

Word just got around that I could sing.

And back then I didn't play an instrument, so I was singing to instrumental cassette tapes that my mother would order off of Sound Choice and they would come in the mail, those tapes.

Yeah, that must have been exciting.

Yeah, I would receive, yeah.

Celine Dion and Christina Aguilera once I got into high school.

And so it didn't just stop when I was 12.

I continued to sing at various events and then started traveling out of the state to visit other tribes.

I remember going to the Baltimore Pow Wow, so I was up in that area and also attended culture classes.

I attended culture classes.

What is that?

Wait, can you impact that a bit?

What is a culture class?

Well, we were fortunate to have great mentors growing up who were culture bearers and workers and that were willing to share their knowledge of some of our ancestral teachings and practices from our ancestors and from other tribes.

And so on Tuesday nights in our, it was very similar to a longhouse.

On the outskirts of Pembroke, we formed a youth organization, a youth cultural group called the Seventh Generation Society.

And in our culture, the seven generations is an important teaching.

And it teaches you that no matter what you do in life, that you do it with your ancestors, seven generations behind you and the future generations, seven generations ahead of you.

You keep that in mind.

And so you pair that with the discipline from athletics and you got the culture.

And so I was kind of on a focused path.

But on Tuesday nights, we would meet at the culture center and our instructors were Purifay, the incomparable Purifay, let me add that.

She's a great friend of mine and an artist.

And she had ties to the community at that time.

And we were very fortunate that she was there during that period of our lives.

Also Carl Anthony Hunt, who is an amazing artist and just a smart man, just really intelligent guy.

And then Reggie Brewer, who has a wealth of knowledge about our people and other tribes of the region.

And so we were kids ranging from ages nine to probably 16, 17.

And so we were like brothers and sisters.

We became very close and we would meet on those Tuesday nights.

Our parents would take us, our parents would sit in there with us.

I did that from probably 12 till about the age of 16.

Just about every Tuesday night, that's where you could find me and some of my, we're still friends to this day.

How incredible.

We were a special group, I think.

Yeah.

It kept us off the streets, kept us out of trouble.

And that was a different path.

Yeah.

And I feel like you probably learned so much about yourself.

We did.

We did.

And can you kind of tell me a little bit about identity and how you were learning about that and maybe starting to articulate that, like maybe through your music?

During that time, we were able to learn more about our traditional songs, our dances that we hadn't heard about growing up.

And that was the kicker.

We were learning these songs and dances that we didn't know in elementary.

Some of us didn't grow up with in elementary school and it's like, "Where is this coming from?"

Yeah.

Because we were brought up in a church very different from the traditional aspect of being Native.

But we were told that those were ours.

These are your songs and dances.

And it's like, where have they been?

Where have these songs and dances been?

And then you start to question identity and question what you've been taught.

And that kind of sparked the notion and the truth in me that things aren't always as they seem.

Question.

Question everything.

And that became a part of my identity.

I was always a curious child and asked a lot of questions, but that helped me to realize that it was okay to do that because you actually uncover a lot more by doing that, by questioning adults and keeping them on their toes.

Yeah.

So as you're learning more through these cultural meetings and starting to understand more of the music, you're uncovering a lot more that you had no idea about.

Yeah.

And then I started uncovering more about our place in the state, in the state of North Carolina and our identity as being Lumbee and where that came from.

And then you start, you're in this bubble living in this time period that you're in.

And then as a youth at the time, I started wondering, well, if this is how this came about during this time, what was going on in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s around here?

And then you start digging.

And then I went off to college at UNC Chapel Hill.

And so at home, I was kind of a big fish in a small pond because I was into sports.

I was into singing, had built up that identity and persona.

A lot of folks knew me, but then I go to Chapel Hill where there's 30,000 plus students and about a hundred of us identify as indigenous.

And I had been going to these powwows across the state, really getting a sense of who we were in those circles.

But then when I go to UNC Chapel Hill and I speak to non-natives, their first question is, "What are you?"

And I was like, "What do you mean, what am I?"

Like no one had asked me that question because I grew up in a community full of people who identified as native.

In my mind, I thought that everyone knew who the Lumbee were.

I thought that everyone knew who the Coharie were, or the Cherokee and the Wacamasu one and the Halawasapone and the Tuscarora and the Meharon.

I thought that they knew.

But I had a, you know, it was a bit of culture shock all four years at UNC Chapel Hill.

Yeah, I feel like it's an understatement, huh?

Yeah, of explaining and saying, "Okay, I know we've been taught that there are natives out West, but, you know, even in our education, in our communities, our people weren't highlighted the way that they should have been."

Right.

Yeah.

Even like history books, like textbooks.

Yes.

Right?

It's a modern picture of a lot of what's gone on in our state, right?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And along the East Coast.

And so you get into this thing of questioning, "Am I a real Indian?

Am I a real Indian?"

Because we see, you know, Plains tribes, Plains natives, Western tribes on television growing up and our grandparents watched Westerns.

My granddaddy loved Westerns.

And so I saw those, but I didn't see folks who looked like us.

And so we were kind of in this place where we knew we were Indian, but we didn't talk about it a lot.

And so that's where the culture classes were so important.

Because we were seeing this thing and then like accepting, there was years of acceptance that this is you.

This is, you know, there's a lot of history that you don't know about.

Right.

That even your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents don't know about.

And it was by design.

Yeah.

It was by design.

And so discovering that, and it's like, you know, I've had a few identity crises throughout the years of uncovering things and what I've learned throughout the years.

But then you find that strength and resiliency and remember those songs, remember those teachings, remember the things that you did on the land and the swamp at certain times of the year.

Practices, picking pecans, picking up pecans, using those pecans to then make food.

That's a native thing, living off the land.

But it wasn't so apparent, you know, because we were so programmed to believe that natives ride horses and shoot bows and arrows and that kind of thing.

Yeah.

So.

How did you start to approach just like your daily life as you're starting to realize that people aren't seeing you for who you are?

Like how did that start to just like change you, you know, when your people aren't seeing you or they're misinterpreting?

Just dug deeper into music and used it as a tool.

And like music for me is just synonymous with, it's just me wanting the same.

I am music.

I breathe it, live it.

And so I'm always doing something with music or trying to think of how can I use music as the universal language to make this palatable for people and for me to help me understand the working, the outer workings or the way things work and as a form of therapy.

And so that's how a song like "Brown Skin" came about.

You know, I grappled with all of those questions at UNC, "What are you?"

because of my curly hair, which I wore it a little straighter for this interview.

And you'll see it different.

And that's on purpose because I want people to see that we can have straight, straighter hair.

We can have curly hair.

It doesn't make us any less native.

And so those are kind of the things that I struggled with.

Like when do I straighten my hair?

When do I pull it back?

Or... Right.

I cannot even do these things.

Yeah.

And so, you know, "Brown Skin" came as a young woman struggling with those questions of identity.

And but again, that's where those culture classes came from.

That's where that support came from.

And me saying, "If I'm having a hard time dealing with it and I've had all this support, then what about the little girl back home who doesn't have as much support, who doesn't have as much knowledge, as much teachings?

How can she... What will help her?"

Yeah.

And I started feeling sad.

I started feeling sad for our girls, sad for our people.

And like, there were a few years that when I sang "Brown Skin," I would just cry.

I would just cry on stage while I was performing it.

And one of my bandmates at the time, he was like, "You gotta stop.

You gotta stop crying when you sing that song."

And I was like, "I just can't help it."

It's just so... You know, the story is, it's the reality that we're faced with as Native women growing up in this age and time when Eastern Native issues aren't talked about enough.

And when we're still uncovering so much that's been hidden from us.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, to have such an emotional reaction to that for such a long time speaks to the true impact of that.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And I know of some of my elders who are still, they're still feeling that.

Yeah.

Now that you're kind of talking to us about that, how does it feel to be such a representative for your community?

I feel like you always have to be on.

Do you feel that way?

Yeah.

I mean, that must be incredibly difficult.

I've gotten to an age now to where I'm kind of, I realize that I am kind of quirky and eccentric and I'm embracing that.

And I think part of that comes from watching my father.

He's a guy who he's kind of petite in stature, but that doesn't stop him from putting the biggest and baddest person in their place.

And he has a great moral compass of right and wrong, and he'll tell it like it is.

And so I've learned to embrace some of that.

And also some of the health issues that I've had throughout the years have helped me a lot.

Yeah.

Near death experiences.

I've survived two kidney transplants.

Two?

Two.

Not one, not two.

Just a life altering experience.

Embracing that Lowry, that Lowry last name and our history, our ancestors and how they fought and how resilient we've been.

Embracing those stories.

Like I said, my father and being on dialysis for five years was a game changer.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Going to UNC Chapel Hill was a game changer for me.

But yeah, I had my first kidney transplant when I was 25, and then I had the second one back in 2020.

And so I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when I was 18, and I didn't understand at the time the magnitude of what was being handed to me.

So I kind of just went about my everyday life until I actually had to have that kidney transplant.

But music is what kept me going.

It gave me that drive.

And just like wishing people would stop, just be real.

Just be real.

Just remember that we all put our pants on the same way.

I know there's different classes.

There's different classes of people, but there's no reason to, you know, the song Brown Skin encourages women, but it encourages people to just be authentic because each person has something unique to bring to the table.

And if you're trying to be like everybody else, trying to be uptight or uppity or just present yourself in a certain way as not to, you know, to try and belong, to try and fit in, then you're dimming your own light.

And how does that help push humanity forward if we're all the same?

You know, just life is short.

You know, I could have been gone all those times.

All the times I've been under the knife, I couldn't have, you know, so I'm still letting go.

I'm still shedding layers of just oppression and just things that are happening now.

You know, you just have to block it out and be like, like we all say, some of it's a distraction and realizing that.

But for you, your tool for a lot of getting through that is music, I guess.

Yeah, for sure.

It's helped me to stay the path, to stay focused, to create, to think of new ways of saying the same things.

That's a challenge, like to pull the best out of yourself, knowing you got something better.

Like, okay, I got this line, but I know I can do better.

And just that translates to other avenues of my life.

Yeah.

Speaking of really good lines, you had a really great one when we were talking to you.

I mean, you have a lot of great ones, but when we were talking to you about the set and designing the set, I feel like very quickly you were like, oh, I want to do something on Swamp Magic.

And can you just tell us a little bit about Swamp Magic?

I love the swamp.

I love it.

I've spent hours out there in solitude as a child.

I created, like I go back and think about it, like my goals when I was a kid was, all right, I'm gonna go home when I get off the school bus.

Like I would be thinking about this.

When I go home and I get off the school bus, I'm gonna make me a sandwich.

I'm gonna take it out there and I'm gonna get to work.

I'm gonna build these tunnels with these vines.

I'm gonna build these structures.

I'm gonna go to the farthest log that I can.

That one log, I'm gonna get to it.

Just weird, just like what in the world?

But it was a magical place for me.

And it still is, watching the seasons change and how it affects the landscape, seeing the wildlife, trying to sneak up on something just to not disturb it and see what happens.

There's medicine out there, tons of medicine in the plants, but I'm trying to learn more about that, gathering as much as I can throughout the years.

But there is a magic, there's a type of magic in the swamp.

And the swamp has, it's been a source of protection for our people because when that area, like I believe that there's always been Native people in that area.

But a large portion of our bloodlines come from Northeastern North Carolina.

And when our people migrated to that area, the settlers didn't want that land.

- Right.

- Our people took refuge in it and basically made something out of what other people viewed as nothing.

And so I've always had that type of respect for it.

The world we're living in today is so fast, so loud at times.

I know when I drive downhill and drive, and I hit that dead end and it breaks off into the dirt road, as my father can say, the whole world slows down and it does.

When I get on my family's land and we're back there and it's peaceful and you can just hear the wind blowing, there's medicine in that.

And so that's magical to me.

- Yeah, it's incredible.

And it seems like such a well for you to kind of always go back to.

- Yes, I'll never sell my land, my family's land.

I'm gonna always do my best to keep it.

That's why I got to write this hit, so I can just buy all of it and just... So to ensure that our future generations can have that same experience.

And I'm seeing it in my niece and my nephews, how they've taken to the land and how it's important for them and how they can just go out and be free.

- That's incredible.

And thank you for sharing it with us.

I know that some of our production crew went down there with you, went to the Lumber River with you and you were showing them places to film and it made it into the set.

So what people are seeing as a backdrop there, that's your place.

- It's beautiful and that's what we get to see and experience.

We're blessed in that way.

- It's really cool.

And thank you again for sharing it with us.

I wanna know a little bit about your songwriting process.

How does, where does your music come from?

Where do you start from?

- It varies from song to song.

Like some songs, like I have a song called "Hometown Hero" and that's a song about loss, losing someone that you love and always kind of trying to find spiritual connections to them on your daily walks.

And that one was inspired by the death of a young lady from our community.

She was an acquaintance of mine.

Her name was Christa Dees and she was 19 when she passed away in a car accident.

She had such a beautiful, bubbly personality and I went on Facebook and folks were posting their condolences and "Hometown Hero" came right away.

It was like, it was just poured into me.

The song, it was so easy to write.

We were at band practice at the time I was performing with my band, Dark Water Rising.

And we were at the end of the practice at the end of the night and the band left to go home and I was like, "It's okay, I'm gonna stay here and work on this song."

And I started finishing it up and I just started crying and just weeping in there by myself.

And I was like, "This is a good song."

Yeah, it's a good song.

- When you can feel it like that.

- When I can feel it like that, when it comes easily, that's one way.

I love songs that talk about connecting to the other side, the spiritual side of things.

But that's, you know, some songs come easily like that.

Then there's others that, you know, you might write the verse and chorus and the rest of it comes eight months later when you're outside raking leaves.

That's happened to me before.

Sometimes the melody is in my head and then I'll translate it into with an instrument.

And sometimes it's the other way, the other way around.

You're sitting there and you find something on the instrument and you're like, I can hear the words go along with the melody.

So it just varies from song to song.

One song, I have a gospel song called "Shed Your Light."

And I was vacuuming in my closet, a very small closet.

And that song is another one that just came like that.

- Do you feel like in ways, like there's, I mean, you can just sort of pluck something out of the air or it's just floating around above you somehow and all of a sudden it's just boom, you got it.

Like you were able to just find it or it found you.

Like is it, are some- - Oh, sure, yeah.

- Sort of like, they have like mysticism like that, do you think?

- Well, I like to think that I'm a vessel.

You know, I'm a conduit for something greater to get those messages out.

And then a lot of times I'm inspired by just people talking and they'll say something and I'm just like, that's a song.

Sometimes I think that it's weird or aggravating because I have a tendency to do it a lot.

But I try to be careful to write it down, to remember it, to record something on my phone, you know, just like don't forget it.

So that's part of the process, the songwriting process is to know when you have something, to recognize it and capture it.

- Yeah, I would love to hear some of the notes that are probably on your phone of like you just like talking about song ideas.

- I listen to them all the time.

I was just, well, not all the time, but recently, like two days ago, I went through listening to some stuff and, you know, just piecing, I've got to sit down and piece it together.

That's another step, it's like realizing you've got something there and putting the pieces together like a puzzle.

- Yeah, well, how does it feel when you do that, when that works out, when you piece those pieces together?

- I just get so giddy inside.

- Yeah.

- Just like, ooh, this is gonna be a good one.

- How do you sort of hope that your music will affect other people when you do get that song and it feels like it's just right?

- A wise gentleman said that it's not art unless someone else experiences it.

Like you can play a song all day in your room, you can practice all day, but until somebody else says, "Thank you for that, like I really enjoyed that," or "I'm really inspired by that," then that's what I, I want it to touch someone.

I want it to make them feel something.

I want it to give people courage.

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- I want it to be relevant.

I would love to make songs that make people dance, but those seem like they're some of the hardest ones to write.

- I bet.

- Dance songs.

- Well, I'm sure you can, I'm sure you do.

- Yeah.

- I mean, we were dancing in the studio earlier.

- Yeah.

- Come on.

- You know what else?

Brown Skin, I wrote that song probably 20 years ago.

And I have little kids that are like nine and 10 coming up to me and they'll say, "Miss," I'm gonna say, "Miss Eustacia," 'cause she's a real person, a real teacher, a phenomenal teacher and matriarch from our community.

They'll say, "Miss Eustacia let us listen to Brown Skin in class."

And I'm just like, "Yes."

- How cool.

- That's where you get into the teachings of the seven generations.

Like I wrote that song back then, but they're feeling it now.

- Yeah.

- As kids in this day and time.

- Yeah.

- And so that's important for me.

- I will pass down.

- Yeah.

- Pass down.

- Yeah, that's important.

- So we've talked a bit about adversity and resilience and a little bit about hope, but I would like to know, Charly, how do you celebrate?

- Going to sleep.

I'm like, "Hmm, I'm gonna take a nap on that."

- Yeah.

- I'm gonna rest.

I can rest and feel okay about resting.

- Yeah, okay.

- I'm not feeling like I should be up doing something.

'Cause it's hard for me to do that.

- Yeah.

- To say, "It's okay, you've done good work.

Lay down, take it easy, take a load off."

- Yeah.

- And I can celebrate in that, that's peaceful to me.

- So for you, it's less of a party, it's more of a go to bed.

- Rest, yeah.

- Take that time for yourself.

- Yep, mm-hmm.

- In what ways do you do that?

Do you take time for yourself?

- Well, I spend a lot of time by myself.

- Okay.

- I spend a lot of time by myself and I like to shop.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I do like to shop.

I love clothes.

When I got some money, I'm trying to be better about buying quality, quality over quantity.

- Mm, that's a good one, yeah.

- I like eating a good meal and I like to cook Southern meals that I was brought up on.

- Yeah, I like that.

- You know, like just going to the farm stand, the produce stand.

- Right.

- Like going to the produce stand and buying something and then taking it home.

You know, okra, cornbread.

- Collards?

- Collards.

I'm better at turnips.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- I was gonna say, you can't go to where you're from and not get a collard green sandwich, right?

- Collard sandwich.

- Yeah.

- I had one at Lumbee Homecoming not long ago and it blew my mind.

- Did you?

- Yeah, it was awesome.

- Cornbread's my favorite food.

- Oh gosh, yeah.

- Say less.

- Our fried cornbread.

- Yep.

- Heart, it's okay.

- What are the ways that Charly celebrates cornbread?

- Yeah, eating some cornbread, but.

- Awesome.

- Yeah.

And those meals, you know, it takes time to cook those meals.

- Right.

- You and I, like an hour and a half, you're in there just preparing it and I like to meditate.

I meditate on my, and think about my mother, my grandmother, and how they took care of us.

Their love language was food.

- Right.

- And so that to me is celebratory.

To celebrate your elders, those who have already gone to meditate and pray and.

- Yeah.

- It's like you're, you know, doing something honorable or you realize that they sacrificed so that you could be doing this.

- Yeah.

- And so that's a reason to celebrate for me.

- Another question I wanted to ask you, and this is something that we ask all of our guests on the show because, you know, one of the reasons why we came up with this show is because we were starting to ask questions about how music sort of shapes us as people.

It shapes us as communities and forms new identities.

So Charly, in what ways are you shaped by sound?

- Well, I'm sitting here today as like in the physical realm as a miracle.

And I owe a lot of it to music and sound and believing in the power of music as medicine and frequencies to heal your body.

You know, I've read, I haven't, I'm not gonna say that I have done a lot of research on it, but I have read a lot about using sound and frequencies and just the power of humming and to move that energy through your body.

And I think a lot of that had a hand in my healing and getting through the transplants, getting through dialysis.

So it's kept me alive.

Sound has kept me alive.

And yeah, just, I performed and sang all throughout my sickness.

It's rare for me to be to the point to where I can't perform, even with my kidneys functioning at 7%.

I was still playing shows because I just love to sing.

I love to perform and yeah, it shaped me into healing.

- Yeah.

It physically changed you.

- Physically, yeah.

Yeah.

And mentally, you know, there were times when I was in the chair and I would think, as soon as I get this transplant, like I'm going full forward, full, just forging ahead with music and trying to get to the next level.

So it motivated me, gave me strength and hope for sure.

- That's incredible.

Thanks for sharing that with us.

I'd like to kind of go through the songs that you've added for the set list for the show.

And if you can, maybe just give us a little bit of a backstory on them or some context.

Just some things that you think are really interesting about them that people should know.

And so we'll start off, you know, you've talked a lot about Brown Skin, but is there anything else that you'd like to add for Brown Skin?

- Well, I like the simplicity of Brown Skin and its origins in that at the time when I wrote it, I didn't play the guitar.

I hadn't started playing guitar yet.

I was maybe a junior in college and I had the hand drum.

And the hand drum came from Purifay and her teachings and showing me that it was okay as a woman to play the drum.

And so I had a hand drum and came up with the drum beat.

And that was the first part of it was that beat and how the melody and the rhythm of the song go together with the simplicity of that beat.

So there's a lot of power in it because in our culture, the drum represents the heartbeat of mother earth.

And so whenever I sing that song and whenever I have that drum in my hands, I feel grounded, feel like it's good medicine going out into the world and a good message overall.

- Can you talk to us about Catfish Cole?

- Catfish Cole is one of my newest songs.

And I had the honor and opportunity to open up for Rhiannon Giddens, had the opportunity to open up for Rhiannon Giddens on her You're the One Tour.

And if you don't know Rhiannon, get to know her music.

She's a prolific player, artist, and she's also a Renaissance woman and does amazing work on the banjo and educating people of the origins of the banjo.

And while we were on tour, I was like, "Rhiannon, I wanna learn how to play the banjo."

Because there are stories of some of our ancestors, and I'll tell you about that, playing banjo back in the 1800s, but had me intrigued.

And just to see her play, it is inspiring.

And so I was like, "I wanna learn how to play the banjo and the fiddle."

And she sent me home with one of her banjos.

- Oh, how cool.

- So cool.

And this is a high quality banjo.

So I was like, "Oh, God."

And then- - A lot of pressure, right?

- A lot of pressure.

You gotta learn this thing.

She means for you to learn it.

And then I got invited to play her inaugural festival, Biscuits and Banjos.

- Yeah, incredible.

- Phenomenal.

It's coming back in 2027.

- Cool, okay.

I saw your set there this year.

Y'all crushed it.

It was awesome.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

But yeah, I was like, "You're playing Biscuits and Banjos.

You better have at least one banjo song."

So I picked up that banjo and I started looking up chords, fingerings and how to play.

And for some reason, G minor was the first chord that I latched onto.

And as soon as I hit that chord, there's something about playing that banjo.

It's very hypnotic.

Once I get started, I don't know if some of Rhiannon's magic is in it.

- Yeah.

Is that the one you're using on our show as well?

So you have Rhiannon's banjo still.

- Yeah.

- Wow, that's really cool.

- Yeah, it's very cool.

- Wow.

- But as soon as I struck that chord, I thought about the Battle of Hays Pond.

And I'm working on a musical.

And this song, I was like, "This is gonna be great for the musical."

But it tells the story of when our people defeated and sent the KKK packing back in January of 1958.

And the story goes that there was an Indian, a native man, young man, I'm not even sure.

I need to get the details on that.

But he was fooling around with a white lady, Caucasian lady, and she was married.

And whenever she went to court, the judge found out that she was having an affair with this native man.

And that wasn't taken too kindly, too fondly in the '50s for sure.

Especially in Robeson County, where during that time, it's a tri-racial county, so there was segregation three ways.

So water fountains for natives, for colored, and for whites.

That's the way it was back home in certain places.

And so word got out to the Klan, in particular to Evangelist Catfish Cole from South Carolina.

And he said, "Oh, no, we're not going to have this.

There's too much mixing going on.

We're going up there.

We're going to show these Indians that we're not about this.

We're not about that life.

We're going to hold a rally."

And even against the sheriff saying, "That's not a good idea.

You don't want to mess with those people.

That's their territory.

They're going to stand their ground."

But Catfish Cole insisted and started putting up flyers everywhere around town.

And word got around to our people, and the efforts were led by a World War II veteran named Simeon Oxendine.

Simeon rallied, started spreading the word that the Klan was coming.

And the night of the rally, their proposed rally, they had one light, and they powered it by a battery on a car.

And as Catfish Cole was about to begin his speech, about 500 of our men and women came from the woods, the surrounding area, the swamp, and surrounded about 50 Klansmen.

And so this is a story that we've been told growing up.

It was kind of romanticized.

We were like, "Oh, yeah.

Wow, tell us that story again."

But it was really a brawl.

It was men were out there with their rifles, and we grew up thinking it was just men, or I did.

I was like, but now they're starting to do more interviews with some of the elders that are still living who experienced that, and we're finding out that there were women.

Their husbands were like, "All right, we're going to this rally."

And the women are like, "Hold on.

You ain't going without me.

Hold on, I'm coming."

And so the women were there too.

That's incredible.

So it was a full-on stand.

It was a full-on stand.

Sent them packing.

And then after that, we received national attention, media attention.

And you'll see a photo of Simeon Oxendine and Charly Warwicks with the KKK flag on their back, and that was on the cover of Life magazine at the time.

Wow.

This was like national news.

It was national news.

Yeah.

A great part of our history.

That's not told.

That's another one that the history books just don't cover it in the detail to the magnitude that it was.

Yeah.

Absolutely, especially at that time in America and at that time in the South.

Yeah.

It's very similar to today's times.

So it's crucial that we continue to tell those stories.

And that's what you're doing.

Yeah, by writing a song like Catfish Cole.

Yeah.

On Rhiannon Giddens' banjo.

Yeah.

Wow.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the song Backbone?

Backbone is a song that I co-wrote with a great songwriter and drummer and percussionist from home, a Lumbee man named Shea Jones.

And for me, it was inspired by the story of Henry Berry Lowry, who was a Tuscarora revolutionary, a freedom fighter back around the times of the Civil War, when the General Assembly passed legislation rounding up some of our men or minority men and forcing them to go to Wilmington, North Carolina, forced labor to build Fort Fisher.

There were a lot of injustices going on around the county at that time.

The Confederate Home Guard was there framing people for anything.

And in Henry's case, he's the ancestor that I mentioned.

He's a distant cousin of mine.

And there are stories of Henry and the Lowry gang, which was a multicultural gang that he formed to stand up to the Confederate Home Guard.

And there are stories that took place during that 10-year guerrilla warfare that Henry led, of them trying to escape the Home Guard and just evading captivity to retreat to the swamps and have a jam session.

You know, there are stories of them playing banjo, fiddle.

And so that goes back to the whole banjo story.

But yes, it was inspired by Henry Berry's resiliency.

You know, no one knows his whereabouts.

He wasn't killed.

You know, no one killed him.

And we don't know where his remains are.

There are several stories that float around about what happened to him.

There's some that say he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.

There are stories that say he eventually escaped and just left the area altogether and headed out west.

So it's a great story.

- Sort of a mystery.

- Yes.

Yeah.

And he's legendary in our communities.

It's like when we think of resiliency, when we think of our fight, our continued fights for recognition, we think about Henry's fight and how Henry stood up for our people and how the Lowry gang just gave him hell.

They had that backbone.

In the story, there's a line that says, "What about Martin?

What about Franklin?

What about Henry Berry?"

It's talking about Henry Berry Lowry.

It's talking about Dr.

Martin Luther King and how he led the civil rights fight.

And it also talks about Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers.

And my personal respect that even though they were committing all kinds of wrong and genocide against our people, they did have some backbone to lay down the foundations for our country.

- Right, there's resiliency there as well.

- Yeah.

And so I can respect that.

I don't respect their approach, but I respect the vision.

And so there's that aspect of it.

And that's where Backbone came about.

- It feels like it's sort of similar to how you were saying earlier, again, seven generations.

- Yes.

- Seven generations in the future.

And then my own personal journey with the health, just like the line that says, "When you're down in the valley, when you're down so low, you got to stand up and remember you have backbone."

So there were times that I physically couldn't put one foot in front of the other.

And it sounds like something so simple, but when your body gives up on you and you're in that position, it becomes a reality.

And so I can remember when I couldn't do it, but then when I could, when I was like, "Okay, I can get up."

It's like you force that, the fighter, the champion inside of you to have that backbone and remember who you are.

- Yeah.

Can you talk to us about the song "Kind Heart"?

- "Kind Heart."

It's another recent composition that I wrote with a friend in Tennessee.

We were in White Bluff, Tennessee and just having a late night jam out in Hartwood Park.

And her name is Chelsea Thompson.

And Chelsea was just playing around on the keyboard and started coming up with the melody, "I never knew how much you loved me."

And then that's one of those songs that it didn't come right away, but through working outside on the land, I was out there working with my chainsaw.

- You kind of came up with the song "Kind Heart" with you doing work with a chainsaw.

That's beautifully ironic.

- Working with a chainsaw outside.

And also thinking about a certain person who came into my life and has a very kind heart and showed me a softer side.

It's okay to be softer.

It's okay to slow down and be patient, to move slower.

You don't have to be in a rush for everything.

And so that's where that song came about.

The line, "People like you and me, a little different, a little hard to read.

You saw yourself when you looked at me, a trouble passed from a wild breed."

It's like we're from the same tribe, we're from the same people, a people who are often misunderstood in America's, the fabric of America, our history, who we are as a people, we're very misunderstood.

But he and I see the same things in each other and try to go out in the world and make a difference.

- Yeah.

Can you talk to us about "A Bit of Time"?

- "A Bit of a Time."

- "A Bit of a Time," excuse me.

Yeah, "A Bit of a Time."

Yeah.

- "A Bit of a Time" speaks to the past seven, eight years of my life.

Yeah, with my mother's death, she was my best friend and I try to honor her the best way I can, but she was such an amazing person with such a kind heart.

And she passed away from cancer in 2017 and I was on dialysis while she was undergoing chemo.

I was her primary caregiver and so we were- - You were fighting together.

- Yeah, we were fighting together.

And there was a time when I looked at her and I was like, "Mama, what happens if you don't make it?"

There is a, you know, 'cause it was kind of getting to where it was looking like she wasn't gonna make it, but we were still, still had that hope.

I was like, "What if you don't make it and I get a transplant?"

So you're telling me I'm supposed to just go forward without you.

And you're telling me that that's God's perfect will, that His will be done.

And she was like, "Yes, yes, that's the Lord's work, that's the perfect will and you just accept it and honor it."

And so that was tough.

That was tough to have that conversation with her.

- Did your mom give you like the transplant?

- No, no.

This transplant came from a young man in his 20s.

Yeah, I need to reach out to the family or I'd like to, to get up with my medical team at MUSC and figure out how we can do that.

My first transplant came from a distant relative of mine.

Ronald Deeringwater.

So I went through, had the transplant, lost her.

It's been a bit of a time.

Some other personal things that have happened within the past eight years, it's just like, "Man, I'm going through it.

This is a bit of a time here.

If you wanna talk about one, this is it.

This is what it looks like."

And it's like, I'm trying to laugh to avoid crying through all of this.

There were some things that I did that brought shame upon me as an individual, but I had to just live through it, just go through it, accept it as, "This is a bit of a time."

You suffer the consequences of your actions and just keep it in stride.

- What does it feel like for you to play that song now?

Do you feel like you're on the other side of this period?

- It feels like it's such a beautiful song to sing now.

It feels whimsical, and I don't know if it's 'cause it's a waltz.

The timing is a waltz, which I think is kind of ironic.

But I enjoy singing "A Bit of a Time."

- Yeah, it kind of takes on a new life then.

Can you tell us about the song "Giddy Up?"

- "Giddy Up" is a fun, lighthearted song.

One night I had just finished playing a three-hour show at Duck Dive, Wood Breaks.

- Wait, Duck Dive.

- Wood Breaks.

Duck Dive is in Cherry Grove, South Carolina.

Duck Dive Bar and Grill.

And had just finished playing and went inside.

And per usual, I like to hang out.

We make friends and become family with the bartenders, the staff there, the owners.

And so I was hanging out with Whitney.

Whitney was behind the bar, and she was talking to everybody.

And she was like, "All right, y'all, we gotta giddy up.

We gotta hurry up and get out of here."

And that's one of those instances where I was like, "That's a song."

- Yeah.

"Whitney, you've done it."

- I was like, "Whitney, that's a song."

I was like, "I'm serious.

That is a song."

- Yeah.

- But we put a twist on it.

Instead of using it like usual, like, "Let's giddy up and get out of here."

I used it as in, "You want to give someone the giddy up?"

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, "You wanna put a little pep in that step?"

And whatever that means to you, take it as such.

And there's a line that's, "Hop in my truck, let's try our luck.

I don't mind if we get stuck.

Wind in our hair in the middle of nowhere, with no cares."

It's like, "I don't care where we're at.

We can get stuck.

Let's sit in a truck for all I care, just as long as we're together."

That feels like a giddy up to me.

That's putting a little pep in my step, giving me life.

- Yeah.

How cool.

I love that.

I'm gonna use that now.

Well, I'll tell you what.

I mean, just being here chatting with you, that's given me some giddy up.

- Good, good.

- And I've really, really appreciated it.

Thank you so much, Charly, for being here and chatting with us and playing for us.

It's been incredible.

I wanna just end today's conversation by just asking if you had anything else that you would like to add that maybe we haven't covered yet.

- I just hope that y'all can continue this.

I hope that you can continue this programming.

It's very much needed, I think.

Just everything from the set design to the well-curated lineup of artists showcasing art in our state is very important to me.

And I think that generations to come, this will be something that they can look at.

So, yeah.

Hopefully we get another season.

- We hope so, too.

- Let those donations start rolling in.

- Keep it up.

- Viewers like you.

You heard Charly.

- Viewers like you.

- Well, thank you so much for being here.

Again, just incredibly grateful to have you here.

Just so amazing.

Charly Lowry, we appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Awesome.

Thanks for joining us on the Shaped by Sound podcast.

If you'd like to hear some of the songs we discussed today, you can find them on our website, pbsnc.org/shapedbysound.

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