Sheila Kay Adams

North Carolina musician and storyteller Sheila Kay Adams performs.
Speaker Biography: A seventh-generation ballad singer, storyteller and musician, Sheila Kay Adams was born and raised in the Sodom Laurel community of Madison County, N.C., an area renowned for its unbroken tradition of unaccompanied ballad singing that dates back to the early Scots/Irish and English settlers in the mid-17th Century. Adams learned to sing from her great-aunt Dellie Chandler Norton and other notable singers in the community, such as Dillard Chandler and the Wallin family (including NEA National Heritage Fellow Doug Wallin). In addition to ballad singing, Adams is an accomplished clawhammer-style banjo player and storyteller. Adams began performing in public in her teens, and throughout her career she has performed at festivals, events, music camps and workshops around the country and the United Kingdom, including the acclaimed International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenn., and the 1976 and 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival as part of The Bicentennial Celebration and Appalachia: Heritage and Harmony.
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