The Nest of Singing Birds at the 2025 Earl Scruggs Music Fest – photo © Cora Wagoner
The Nest of Singing Birds is a group of ballad singers composed of artists from western North Carolina and beyond who have all come together to preserve the tradition of presenting and passing down the old lovesongs to the next generation. Seventh and eighth generation ballad singers Sheila Kay Adams and Donna Ray Norton, the leaders and two constant members of the Nest of Singing Birds, sat down for an interview with me after the Healing the Hollers show Saturday afternoon at the Earl Scruggs Music Fest, a set of music featuring western North Carolina artists, in which they played a central role. They explained how the group came about when they took their ballad swap, that takes place the second Wednesday of every month at the Old Marshall Jail in Marshall, NC, on the road to raise awareness for the ballads, the town of Marshall, and all of western North Carolina after hurricane Helene.
Donna Ray “The Nest of Singing Birds is a collective of individual musicians. When we took it on tour, we had to come up with an official name for our group of musicians because you can’t just say ‘ballad swap;’ nobody knows who’s coming or who the artists are. When English folklorist Cecil Sharp came through the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina collecting ballads in 1916, he said that Madison County was like a ‘nest of singing birds,’ so we felt like that was the perfect name for our group. It’s something new for us, but Sheila and I are the main birds in the nest [the constants in the group that features a varying lineup of musicians at each show].”
They also shared their thoughts on the importance of having ballad singing present at Scruggs Fest, and representing the ballads as a living tradition that remains unbroken, not just a part of history.
Donna Ray “We share one of the oldest, unbroken, oral, non-indigenous traditions in the United States. Cecil Sharp recorded over twenty-five songs from my great-great-great aunt and Sheila’s great-great aunt, Mary Sands, so our family’s history has been documented throughout time, even before Sharp came through.”
Sheila “Ballads are the foundation of all kinds of different traditional music like bluegrass, old-time, and country. When I was growing up, it was all the same, nobody separated those groups of people. I actually met Earl Scruggs and interviewed him when he received the North Carolina Heritage Award because I was the MC. He told me he learned a lot of stuff from Obray Ramsey, who was a cousin to Donna Ray’s grandfather and my uncle, Byard Ray. Earl Scruggs also told me that his mama sang the lovesongs [ballads], and was the one who got him started playing banjo. I think that’s the reason Donna Ray and I are here, because if you take away the ballads, where would this music be? The ballads are the starting place.”
Donna Ray “The ballads are the main vein in the roots of traditional music; without the roots, the tree would fall.”
Sheila “Those roots go down deep.”
