Throughout history, music has steadied people in uncertain times. When Sparky and Rhonda Rucker take the stage at Laurel Theater this Saturday, Feb. 7, they’ll do as they’ve always done: telling stories through music, remembering and inviting people to sing along.
“We do our best to give people hope and understanding that they’re not alone,” Sparky says. “History is tied into all of this. Knowing where we came from, and what we’ve already survived.”
The concert comes three months after Sparky received a Tennessee Governor’s Folklife Heritage Award, recognizing more than 50 years of work preserving and carrying forward American folk traditions.
“I feel privileged to live in this area,” he says. “People have come into the region from other places and it’s all blended to create this unique Southern Appalachian sound. It’s just beautiful and both of us love the old songs that come from here.”
Sparky was born in Knoxville and came of age here during a period of enormous social upheaval. As one of the first African American undergraduates at the University of Tennessee (and vice president of the Black Student Union), he experienced campus life at a moment shaped by the Vietnam War, civil rights activism and student protest.
“We were right there in the middle of it,” he recalls. “Thousands of students refusing to go to class. People being drafted and dropping out. There was a lot going on.”
After graduating Sparky participated in workshops at the Highlander Center, working with figures like Rosa Parks, Myles Horton and Bernice Johnson Reagon. Music ran alongside the activism. He played freedom songs at rallies and marches with fellow activists and musicians including Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger.
“When you think about it, music has always been part of movements for change,” Sparky says. “A lot of those songs were borrowed from slave times and updated, which tells you something about how cycles of oppression repeat.”
Rhonda came to this work by a different route. Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, she began piano lessons at age four. She learned hymns and spirituals through church, studied ecology and science, wrote poetry and fell in love with folk music’s ability to inspire social and environmental change.
Medical school at the University of Kentucky led to a residency that took her into small towns in eastern Kentucky. She practiced internal medicine for five years in Maryville before meeting Sparky and choosing a different path to affect change.
Together, Sparky and Rhonda have spent decades performing across the United States and abroad at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the International Storytelling Festival, and on NPR programs including Prairie Home Companion, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Their recording Treasures & Tears was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their work appears on the Grammy-nominated anthology Singing Through the Hard Times.
But the heart of their work is often found in smaller rooms. “We like to do a lot of singalongs,” Rhonda says. “Music can be so healing. It brings back deep memories from childhood. It’s balm.”
That feeling is especially strong at the Laurel Theater, a space the Ruckers know well. Sparky says, “It’s a beautiful venue with great acoustics. Friends show up. Sometimes they heckle.”
Rhonda laughs. “We say Sparky brings his own hecklers.”
Sparky’s mother took him to his first civil rights demonstration at age 14, an experience that later inspired Rhonda’s children’s book Make a Change. Another of her books, Welcome to Bombingham, is rooted in the Birmingham movement, where children and teenagers played critical roles.
“You’re never too young to make a difference,” Sparky says. “We need the wisdom of the elders and the fire of young people.”
I ask about today’s youth, noting that Laurel Theater is just blocks from where Knox County School students organized a demonstration against ICE last week.
“I call these kids my reinforcements,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for them a long time.”
Sparky often compares his life’s work to the Dutch folktale of the boy with his finger in the dike. “I can’t fix the whole thing,” he says. “But I can plug up that hole and save a few.”
Saturday night’s concert will include songs from Southern Appalachia, moments of humor and remembrance, and space for people to breathe together.
“My heart bleeds for people who are afraid to come outside their homes,” Sparky says. “This country is built on freedoms. That will find its way into this concert, along with songs to uplift people and songs that tell the old stories.”
What: Sparky & Rhonda Rucker
Where: Laurel Theater, 1538 Laurel Avenue in Fort Sanders. Tickets begin at $15.75 and are available through the Jubilee Community Arts website here.
When: Saturday, Feb. 7, 8 p.m.
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