About Janie’s Jamstart Location and Host, Will Carter

Lewisburg, featured as one of America’s “Coolest Small Towns” and “100 Best Small Arts

Towns” featured by Budget is a charming small town of artisanal shops and restaurants with

lots of hospitality and outdoor recreational offerings in the immediate vicinity. Downtown

Lewisburg is less than a mile from where JamStart - Lewisburg WV is happening.

JamStart - Lewisburg co-host Will Carter is a lifelong West Virginians who is best known in old

time circles as the founder of the Appalachian String Band Music Festival (better known as

“Clifftop”). He started playing string band music as a teenager in the 1970s when he saw how

much fun his two cousins Fred and Lewis Prichard were having blending old time and bluegrass

music with the newly arrived hippies and old timers living around Lewisburg WV, where his

extended family has been spending summers since the 1930s in the house and grounds where

the JamStart weekend will occur.

In addition to his business/legal and civic/political day jobs, Will plays bass and guitar, and after

two decades in the Contrarians, a regional touring contradance band, has since 2013 been

performing with acoustic trios (Blue Yonder until 2020, and more recently Slow Train) featuring

a mix of original and classic Americana songs drawing from the evolving traditions of

songwriters like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Garcia. As the originator of

Clifftop’s “Neo-Traditional Band Contest” Will enjoys mixing up the genres as much as straight

ahead traditional old time and bluegrass music.