[gentle music] - [Elizabeth] Coming up on "Best of Our State", the story behind one of our state's most ambitious and historically significant pieces of architecture and this trio followed the sound of the music they love all the way to North Carolina.

♪ Yet the picture in my mind I see ♪ ♪ When I think about it all ♪ ♪ Is the color of leaves in Carolina ♪ ♪ In the fall ♪ - That's next on "Best of Our State".

[gentle music continues] We dip into treasured stories for a look at all the beauty and character of North Carolina.

[gentle music continues] Hello, I'm Elizabeth Hudson, editor-in-chief of "Our State" magazine.

[upbeat inspiring music] Affectionately nicknamed The Big Chip and the Cow Palace, Dorton Arena had its beginnings as an exhibition hall on the grounds of the North Carolina State Fair.

Its unexpected and innovative design broke new ground in modern architecture.

We delve into the captivating tale of Dorton Arena.

[upbeat inspiring music continues] - [Narrator] In the late 1940s, a livestock judging pavilion was designed for the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, a livestock judging pavilion that turned out like nothing anybody had ever seen, thanks to the vision of this man, Maciej Nowicki, who came here from Poland to head the new architecture department at North Carolina State College.

He imagined a public space on a symphonic scale.

- It is such a powerful gesture and I don't know of a single space in the world where the nature of the space is so beautifully expressed.

- [Narrator] It's located right in the middle of the fairgrounds, but even so, this architectural wonder readily blends into the background, amid the cacophony of a full-blown state fair.

Thousands pass it by, not noticing its groundbreaking elliptical shape, knowing nothing about the engineering innovations or how modern architecture came to Tobacco Road.

[inspiring music] - Good morning, Bill.

It's a pleasure to see you again.

- Good to see you.

Glad to have you back to Dorton Arena.

- [Narrator] N.C. State Facility Engineer Bill McClure and Wayne Place, Professor of Architecture in the College of Design, give us a tour of one of our state's most architecturally important and influential buildings, the Dorton arena.

- [Wayne] Sometimes, people will walk into a space like this, and then they walk away and they don't even quite realize what they've been in.

They come here focused so much on whatever their business is and they don't take time to look up.

- [Narrator] Up is where it all comes together.

Design materials, construction, each married to the other, working together in a still and silent dance that combines look with function to a perfection that's almost beyond words, just as Nowicki envisioned.

Tragically, he died in a plane crash and never saw the project completed, but his drawings captured the vision and that vision had to be realized.

His sweeping lines were converted to precise measurements by architect William Henley Deitrick.

- And I think what's remarkable is that they're able to create the spatial richness and the complex form out of such simple elements.

- [Narrator] Elements that combine to create a design like no other in the world.

- This is not a building where you establish a set of columns on a very regular rectangular grid.

This is a building where absolutely every foundation was a challenge and every column had to be very carefully located.

They were pushing the envelope in ways that are almost unimaginable.

- [Narrator] Deitrick worked with Muirhead Construction to bring Nowicki's vision to life, including a roof with a 300-foot free-span and no interior columns, supported by high strength steel cables draped across the span, inspired by the cables supporting San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

- So, these cables, which are there to resist gravity, are very poor in terms of resisting wind.

In fact, they put up no resistance to wind, so this roof would literally kite under that kind of wind suction.

So, to hold the roof down, we have a series of cables running in this direction, which we sometimes call them wind-resisting cables, and they're there to keep the roof from flying away, basically.

They have to be counter-tensioned, so that no flutter develops in the roof under any kind of wind disturbance [inspiring music continues] and Nowicki needed a structure around the boundary that would be comparably efficient in resisting gravity forces, and so just as he chose a parabola for the shape of these gravity cables, he also used a compression arch around the boundary, which is parabolic in shape, also.

- [Narrator] The two arches that support the roof are key to the way this building works, architecturally and visually.

- [Wayne] The history of architecture during World War II placed a lot of emphasis on what we call fascist architecture.

There was a deliberate attempt to obscure the purpose of buildings and to hide what went on inside of buildings.

One of the ways that modern architecture expressed its optimism and its desire to get away from that was to be as open as possible.

Buildings expressing their purpose was a huge part of what modern architecture was about and certainly, Maciej Nowicki embraced that philosophy and that idea and brought it to an amazing expression in this building.

[inspiring music continues] - [Narrator] Dorton Arena is an architectural marvel, the first building in the world to have a roof supported with suspended steel cables.

[inspiring music continues] - Okay, so that's Bill over there.

He's 300 feet from where we are right now and that's the length of a football field and there are no columns between here and there, just these cables that are draped across the space.

- [Narrator] Gravity and the innovative cable system keep the arches in constant tension.

Hidden underground are abutments crucial to maintaining Dorton Aren's structural integrity.

- So, this is the pit at the end of this long concrete footing.

It looks like these devices are designed to tension that cable and I guess if these cables weren't running underground from the base of one arch to the other, under load, these arches would tend to splay apart and the building would collapse.

- [Bill] So, this is what holds the building up.

[inspiring music continues] - [Narrator] This building made a progressive political statement to the world about North Carolina during the anything's possible years following World War II.

- And sometimes, the politicians are the visionaries.

Somebody had to go along with approving this building and it took a certain amount of courage to make a commitment to something like this, because it was so unusual.

- Politically, you gotta take a look at Governor Kerr Scott whose campaign was to move forward.

We have Dr. Dorton, who's manager of the North Carolina State Fair who was wanting the North Carolina State Fair to be self-supporting.

What did we have in the central part of North Carolina as an entertainment venue?

And the answer's nothing.

When Dr. Dorton realized the livestock judging pavilion, I think that Dr. Dorton had it in the back of their mind that this would be an entertainment venue, too.

So, politically, the stage was ripe to get the funding to build this building.

- [Narrator] Over the decades, the arena has hosted everything from tractor pulls to ice hockey, from big time concerts to livestock judging.

[train horn wails] Although Dorton is no longer the only venue in town, this national historic civil engineering landmark remains open for business in a big way.

People never forget the impression it makes the first time they see it.

- [Wayne] This building is so beautiful and so remarkable that we have people from around the world that come to Raleigh, North Carolina just to see this building.

Whenever I have visitors from out of town, this is the one place I always make sure that I take them and they're always blown away by the experience of being inside of this building.

- And we sit down, and then they can begin to conceive what this building is, 'cause it takes a minute or two for it to sink in what exactly you're looking at.

- [Narrator] That's especially true, considering that Dorton arena almost didn't get built.

Story says that if dirt wasn't turned on the site by a certain time on a certain date, the project wouldn't go.

Enter one contractor, one shovel, and a highway patrolman to get 'em there, courtesy of Governor Kerr Scott.

- Got a shovel, dug a hole, mixed up some cement in the wheelbarrow, and poured it in a hole.

Turned to the highway patrolman, he says, "I have started construction on Dorton Arena."

Highway Patrolman thanked him real big and said he would go back and report to the governor that construction had started.

- [Narrator] Shortly thereafter, President Truman ordered a moratorium on all construction projects.

The money and resources were needed to fight the Korean War, but luckily for North Carolina, projects already underway were exempt.

- [Bill] If that hole wouldn't have been dug and that concrete wouldn't have been poured, Dorton Arena may not have been started.

The funding for Dorton Arena might've gone other places and that little window of time that everything came together with the state of North Carolina, the Department of Agriculture, and North Carolina State University, that window might've closed.

This building might not be here.

- This is like a gym that just was created in a flash, a moment in history.

We could learn a lesson from this building about what enthusiasm and optimism can do when people really embrace it.

[inspiring music continues] [upbeat guitar music] - [Elizabeth] This musical trio of German immigrants grew up in Switzerland and followed the sound of the music they loved all the way to the hills of North Carolina.

- Uwe said, "You see, this is where I wanna be."

I said, "Where is this?"

He said, "In Wilkesboro, North Carolina," and I said, "Yeah, why would we ever play there?"

- Welcome to the enchanting world of the Kruger Brothers, where borders dissolve and the beauty of human connection through music takes center stage.

[folk music] - Brahms said, "If music doesn't leave you long, then it's useless," because that's how we felt when we listened to good music when we were kids.

That's what we needed out of the music.

That's what we got out of the music and it was like magic spells.

How could these people do things that make us sleepless, that are so beautiful, that make us long for other worlds and other places?

And it's a longing that gives you energy, that makes you do things better and sometimes, we achieve that in our concerts.

This is our goal.

This is what we try.

It's what we aim for, and then we can go and sleep well, right?

And be happy about what we do.

[upbeat folk music] - [Narrator] They play hundreds of shows a year from big time festivals like MerleFest to small intimate stages like the Ash County Arts Center, but wherever they're playing, the Kruger Brothers, Uwe, Jens, and bassist, Joel Landsberg, bring a sense of discovery to their music and invite their listeners to join them on their remarkable journey and it's been quite a ride.

[upbeat country music] Uwe and his younger brother Jens grew up in Switzerland as the children of German immigrants.

- My mom was a kindergarten teacher and both my mom and my dad, they both played the accordion and guitars and harmonicas and my mom had like a song for everything that we did.

- We would sing in the evenings together and what she would do is she would then sing the second, the harmony to it and Uwe would then sing the harmony while she would sing with Uwe together, while I would then sing maybe the lead, and then we could sing in three-part harmonies together and that was already when we were 5, 6, 7 years old.

- [Uwe] And since I was the older brother, for me, it was always clear that I would play guitar.

- I always wanted to play the banjo since I was about seven, eight years old.

- Once we started playing, that was it.

I mean, you couldn't interest for us for anything else, really.

- Those happy years as a small close-knit family were not to last.

Margarete Kruger died young and their father's second marriage crumbled.

By the time the Kruger brothers were in their teens, they were essentially on their own.

- And then in 1979, in November, we left home, just the two of us, and never to return, [soft folk music] and then we started playing on the streets.

- [Uwe] It was an adventure.

I mean, I was like 18, Jens was like 16, 17 years old.

- [Jens] And it was fantastic.

- It was incredible.

We saw Europe.

I mean, it was- - And completely detached.

- Freedom.

Yes, from everything.

- From home, school, society, anything.

It's just like completely free like a bird.

The relation between playing together and seeing what's happening when we play and look at the faces of people and see that.

We also had this discussions with Doc Watson, because he played also on the streets and he always said if he would not have done that, he wouldn't have been able to do what he was doing later and we feel also very much like that.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, here in the United States, Joel Landsberg was embarking on his own musical journey.

- In fifth grade in elementary school in New York, the Suzuki method was very popular and everybody played violin.

So, everybody was doing the whole Suzuki method thing, and then first day of junior high school, which was seventh grade in the New York City system, I joined the orchestra and went to the orchestra class and the teacher, Mr. Goldberg, bless his heart, stood in front of the room and said, "Okay, who wants to play violin?"

And of course, everybody's hands shot up, 'cause we all came from the elementary school, so we all played Suzuki violin and he looks at this room full of kids with their hands up and he says, "You know, this would be a very, very sad orchestra if all of you only played violin.

There are so many other wonderful instruments available, like the bass," and he just pointed over to the corner, my head looked and something went click, and my hand shot up and I just said, "I'm there," and from that moment on, there was no turning back.

I was 11 years old and playing bass.

- [Narrator] After several years performing all over Europe, Jens and Uwe separated.

Jens focused primarily on bluegrass and the banjo and ultimately, went to America.

Uwe went country.

- I started out by learning 50 Johnny Cash songs and 50 songs by Hank Williams and I made myself a catalog and just learned all these songs, and so we played everywhere in Switzerland.

I mean, I knew all these little bars and it was an incredible time for me.

- [Narrator] Back in America, Jens played with his boyhood idol, Bill Monroe.

- I didn't have a suit to play at the Grand Ole Opry, so I found one in Bill Monroe's closets, one of one of his old, I think it was one of his bus drivers suits that I wore for the show, but he was really nice to me and he also told me, he said to me, "You have your own music.

Don't play bluegrass, necessarily, because you're from a different culture, a different country.

You have to find your own music, and then if you find that, come back."

- [Narrator] Jens and Uwe finally reunited and formed a band called The Appalachian Barn Orchestra.

They soon met Joel, who was also performing in Europe.

- Coming from New York City, though, I was never really confronted with bluegrass per se or roots, American roots music.

- American folk music.

- Yeah, American folk music.

- And we would rehearse forever.

We would play hours and hours and hours and because of these hundreds of instrumentals, literally, and songs that he never heard or knew, we never told him the title.

We just let him play along to it.

I said, "You just have to intuitively know them, and then I went to the point where I would show on his- - Yeah, we'd be driving to the gig and I'd be driving or something and he'd be sitting behind me or next to me and he'd take his hand and he'd go, "All right, what song is this?"

- And I'd play it with my hands on his back.

- And I had to recognize from the pattern of his fingers what song it was.

I was pretty good at it for a while there.

[both laugh] - [Narrator] Although the Kruger Brothers were no strangers to the music of Doc Watson, that meeting in 1977 changed their lives.

[gentle folk music] Here at the Sugar Grove Festival, a festival created in Doc's honor, the Kruger Brothers are among old friends and precious memories.

♪ Fish is jumpin' ♪ ♪ And the cotton is high ♪ - It inspired us to come to this country.

We really wanted to meet Doc Watson.

Uwe said once, "We really, we saw him play once he came to Zurich with T. Michael and Merle and they played there, and then was the advertisement for MerleFest and Uwe, I went, we got together, and Uwe said, "You see, this is where I wanna be."

I said, "Where is this?"

He said, "In Wilkesboro, North Carolina," [people laughing] and I said, "Yeah, why would we ever play there?"

[people laughing] And you see, and Uwe said, "You just wait.

We gonna get there someday."

And one day, we got the letter to to go and play there and we got to meet Doc backstage and I remember for two strangers, foreigners, he shook Uwe's hands and he said, "So, you play the guitar and you're the singer and oh, that's beautiful," and he was just as nice as it could be.

- Doc was always so supportive of us and what we did and there really was just such a wonderful friendship that developed over the years.

- It wasn't about how well we played or how good it sounded.

It was just about the songs and the joy we had about the songs and instrumentals and- - And sharing that sentiment, again, it was like sitting at home with our parents.

- Yes.

- It was the same feeling again.

- [Jens] Completely normal.

- But just a different language, but the same humanity.

♪ Now for 30 years I sang the songs ♪ ♪ Doc had taught to me ♪ ♪ And the things that he would sing about ♪ ♪ I never dreamed I'd see ♪ ♪ In the hills of Carolina ♪ ♪ Folks have opened up the door ♪ ♪ And for the first time in my life ♪ ♪ I'm not a stranger anymore ♪ - [Jens] At one point, we decided either we go to America or we let it be.

- [Uwe] People here in Wilkesboro were so helpful, because I remember that day when Jens called me and said, "We need to buy some land.

We gonna move here."

People really wanted us to be here.

♪ And I've seen sunsets on the ocean ♪ ♪ I've seen the desert blues ♪ ♪ Drove the endless highways ♪ ♪ Beneath the prairie moon ♪ - [Narrator] When they're not on the road, Uwe, Jens, and Joel settle into their lives in Wilkes County.

Jens works on his original compositions.

You can find Uwe at Main Street Music and Loan, meeting old friends.

- Alrighty.

- [Narrator] And trying out vintage guitars.

♪ Oh sweet woman ♪ ♪ Your daddy's got them deep elem blues ♪ - [Narrator] And Joel serves as an EMT for the Wilkes County rescue squad.

- You know, the folks here in North Carolina, the folks in Wilkes County, especially, have given us so much and made life so wonderful for us that yes, through our music, that's how, ultimately, we really give back to the people, but I enjoy being able to go out and help my brother firemen when it really hits the fan and when they're really in bad shape, that I can go and I can do something, I can help save a life.

It's an amazing, amazing feeling.

- [Jens] And we're proud of it, to do something.

Yeah.

♪ That the future's ♪ ♪ Meant to be ♪ ♪ And the choices you recall ♪ ♪ Were no choices after all ♪ ♪ There's no reason to despair ♪ ♪ For there's always ♪ - [Narrator] Life on the road has so many special moments.

Here at the International Bluegrass Music Expo in Raleigh, Jens meets a young fan who is quite a musician in her own right.

[upbeat banjo music] - Yeah!

- Yeah!

- I love Jens Kruger.

He's one of my banjo heroes and to play with him is just the best day of my life, honestly.

- [Narrator] And later that day Jens wins the Steve Martin Award for Banjo Excellence.

- It says in the paper, North Carolina banjo player wins prize.

[laughs] Yes.

[people cheering] North Carolina banjo player.

[people cheering] Not Swiss, not German, not immigrant.

North Carolina.

That's cool.

[people cheering] - I feel like, yes, I'm home here.

That means a lot to me to be accepted as being home.

We have never lived in a place where we were citizens and are able to vote, but to be accepted as one of theirs, great.

[people clapping] - So, you see, this is America.

There's a little Jewish boy from New York sitting here playing the bass.

We got a Wilkes County boy playing the drums.

We got two German boys who grew up in Switzerland and moved over here to Wilkes County and we have Jean from Chicago.

I from Tokyo, Frances from... - [Frances] South Africa.

- South Africa and Dmitri from Russia.

We all play music together.

[people cheering and clapping] For us, this is America.

Peace, peace, peace.

- Our mother, had a good saying.

She said, "For everything you take in, you gotta pay and for everything you give out, you get something."

So, music is really a trade.

If we could say in one sentence or is really the base of what we do is if we could leave people after a show with a little bit more hope and a little bit more energy, a little bit more encouragement for their own life, then we're perfectly happy.

It's like, who said that?

The every life ends, but the good ones with a gift.

[people cheering] - [Elizabeth] Thank you for joining us for "Best of Our State".

We have enjoyed sharing North Carolina stories with you.

See you next time.

[upbeat folk music] - That little spot down there, the red paint's been scraped off and it looks like a different color.

- You caught me.

These aren't the original seats to Dorton Arena.

These seats actually came from Carmichael Gym at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

These seats were taken out of there and our old seats here were removed, were broken and replaced with these.

So, talking about replacing seats on a budget.

♪ Now for 30 years I sang the songs ♪ ♪ Doc had taught to me ♪ ♪ And the things that he would sing about ♪ ♪ I never dreamed I'd see ♪ ♪ But in the hills of Carolina ♪ ♪ Folks have opened up the door ♪ ♪ For the first time in my life.

♪ ♪ I'm not a stranger anymore ♪ [people cheering] ♪ I have seen sunsets on the ocean ♪ ♪ I've see the desert bloom ♪ ♪ Drove the endless highways ♪ ♪ Beneath the prairie moon ♪ ♪ And the picture in my mind I see ♪ ♪ When I think about it all ♪ ♪ Is the color of the leaves in Carolina ♪ ♪ In the fall ♪ [upbeat folk music] [upbeat folk music continues] - [Narrator] More information about "Our State" magazine is available at ourstate.com or 1-800-948-1409.

[people cheering]