Valerie Horn
Valerie Horn is the Director at Cowan Community Action Group, Inc. Valerie is a lifelong resident of Cowan and always had a strong relationship with Cowan Community Center. She is a retired school counselor and is beginning again.
She serves as Director of Programs at Cowan including the Grow Appalachia, Levitt Amp Whitesburg Music Series, USDA Summer Food Service Program and Kids on the Creek Camps. Her most admirable trait is pure luck that she was born the daughter of Kendall and Carol Ison and learned the value of community from a very early age.
She hopes to continue growing a stronger community for the community’s sake as well as her grandchildren Eliza Jane and Owen. She is a partner in Appalachian Groundswell, a stream mitigation banking company that hopes to give back to the community. She wants to meet you and know your story.
Grace Rogers
CCMMS Artistic Director, CCAG Cultural Arts Coordinator
Grace Rogers (Artistic Director) is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who grew up in a Bath County family steeped in old time music. She first attended CCMMS at age 7 as a beginning fiddler and went on to learn guitar and banjo.
Grace focused on southeast Kentucky banjo traditions as the 2022-23 Charlie Whitaker Memorial Apprentice to John Haywood and served an archival fellowship at Berea College’s Appalachian Sound Archive, studying the recordings and documentation of Magoffin banjo players. Grace performs her original music solo and frequently collaborates with Blakeley Burger and Nadia Ramlagan. Her EP Cowpocalypse was released on the Louisville label Obsolete Staircases.
Stacy Dollarhide
Program Coordinator
Stacy Dollarhide (Program Coordinator) grew up in Letcher County and has been blessed to live on Cowan Creek for over 20 years, since marrying her high school sweetheart and making their home there.
For the past 19 years, Stacy has been in involved in Cowan Community Center programs such as Save the Children, Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, and Grow Appalachia.
She has served in several capacities, including Center Coordinator for the Save the Children program from 2004-2007, Administrative Assistant from 2007-2009, and has consistently served as Bookkeeper since 2004.
Hearing music live played on the banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and guitar has been a most wonderful experience for her. She is grateful the music school has provided an outlet for creativity for so many local youth, including her own two children, Logan and Autumn.
The week of the music school to her is likened to “heaven on earth.”
Yoko Nogami
Cultural Arts Specialist
Yoko Nogami is a resident of Blackey, Kentucky and has worked for Cowan since 2022 as a consultant of cultural arts programming. Her love for Appalachia and old time banjo playing has brought her to Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in 2016 and makes her life work to advocate accessibility of arts for all, especially in the regions of rural Kentucky. She is a visual artist, writer and an old time banjo enthusiast. You can find more information about Yoko at www.nogamiyoko.com
Advisory Board
Cowan Creek Mountain Music School Advisory Board
The CCMMS Advisory Board was established in 2015 to gather your ideas on how the school can improve and be sustained for generations to come.
Advisory Board 2025:
Randy Wilson, Board Chair
Advisory Committee:
Carrie Carter, Levi Caudill, Dan Cowan, Isaac Fields, Nell Fields, John Harrod, Alyssa Helton, Beverly May.
Photo of the Original Advisory Board of 2015: (from left to right) Rich Kirby, Valerie Horn, Nell Fields, Carol Ison, Dan Cowan, Randy Wilson, Beverly May, Kevin Howard, Isaac Fields.
Carrie Wells Carter
Advisory Board Member
Carrie Wells Carter grew up in Red Bush, Kentucky and has been playing fiddle since age seven, learning from her father, Jamie Wells. Jamie helped with the early planning and taught fiddle for Cowan Creek Mountain Music School for many years. She also grew up playing with and learning from her uncle Robbie Wells, brother Jesse Wells, and many others in her family. She's played in a fiddle duo, the SkipDippers, with friend Sylvia Ryerson, and enjoys playing whenever possible with friends and family. Carrie has served on the Advisory Committee for CCMMS since 2019. She currently lives in Mayking, KY and works as Programs Associate with Appalachian Citizens' Law Center.
John Harrod
Advisory Board Member
John Harrod has been documenting, playing, and teaching Kentucky music for 50 years. Although he started out playing bluegrass in high school, he credits Mark Wilson and the late Gus Meade with introducing him to the world of pre-bluegrass traditional music. With them he produced a series of field recordings that are available from Rounder Records and the Field Recorders' Collective. He has taught fiddle at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes, the Augusta Heritage Center, Swannanoa Old Time Week, and Centre College. He performs with Kentucky Wild Horse, a band that brings together many strands of Kentucky music including old time songs and fiddle tunes, bluegrass, original songs, and hillbilly swing. His recordings include “Living in the Promised Land,” "Spirits of the Lonesome Hills" and “Wild and Free” with Kentucky Wild Horse and a fiddle CD "Johnny Come Along." (johnharrodmusic.com)
Alyssa Helton
Advisory Board Member
Alyssa is a long-time resident of Cowan and friend to the music school. She attended the school in her early years as part of Kids on the Creek and went on to participate in the Pick ‘n’ Bow program through her elementary school where she learned to play fiddle. Receiving scholarships to the music school, she continued to learn mountain music before taking on the role of advisory board member.
Beverly May
Advisory Board Member
Beverly May, from Floyd County took up old time fiddling in the early 1990's with inspiration from her friends JP Fraley, Wilson Douglas and Jamie Wells. In 2000 she attended the Joe Mooney Summer School in Ireland and brought home the idea for a similar camp for old time music . While working at Appalshop, Bev partnered with Carol Ison representing the Letcher Board of Education and Nell Fields of the Cowan Community Center to start the first Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in 2002. Bev teaches afterschool fiddle and dulcimer in Cowan's Pick & Bow program.
Randy Wilson
Advisory Board Chair
Randy Wilson is a fifth generation eastern Kentuckian who worked for the Hindman Settlement School for 30 years doing songs, stories, and dances in the elementary schools. He plays traditional and original tunes on banjo, guitar, autoharp, and mountain dulcimer. He has played in many festivals across the country- Appalshop’s Seedtime on the Cumberland, Hindman Settlement School’s Family Folk Week, The Great American Dulcimer Festival at Pine Mountain State Park, The Smithsonian Festival of Folk Music on the national mall, cultural exchange festivals with native peoples of Alaska and Puerto Rican folks in the Bronx, NYC. Included are concerts and cultural exchanges at the University of Rome, Rome, Italy and a recent tour of music in Japan. Wilson is steeped in dance calls from eastern Kentucky and beyond- the Kentucky running set, squares, circles, reels, and play party games.
For twenty years, he produced Kid’s Radio for WMMT at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky, airing children’s voices and oral histories from across the region. He made numerous recordings with students in addition to his own recordings- albums from children’s music to blues to Christmas songs.