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Last updated: November 06. 2006 4:56PM
 Photo essay
Barbers and bluegrass
By Matt Born
matt.born@starnewsonline.com
Stop at The Barber Shop in Drexel, where the music is a cut above the rest
MULTIMEDIA
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  • Whoa Mule
  • Lonesome Road Blues
  • Old Spinning Wheel
    • When Lawrence Anthony returned home from World War II, he decided he wanted to open a barbershop. He had cut hair during the war (“without a license, of course”) and, in 1949, opened The Barber Shop in Drexel, a small town east of Asheville. Over the next decade, he established himself as the town barber.

    Then, in 1964, the music began. On occasion, when business was slow, Drexel Chief of Police Bill Lippard would drop by with his mandolin, and Anthony would pull out his guitar for some bluegrass. The two would play until Anthony had a customer or the chief got a call. Gradually, others stopped, and the tradition began.

    Nowadays, folks gather at The Barber Shop on Thursdays for country and western music and on Saturdays for bluegrass. David Shirley, who has worked with Anthony for some 40 years, compares it to the old-time service stations and country stores that were gathering places for locals. “The days of the service station and the country stores and the hangouts and the down-home atmosphere seem to be disappearing, and we’ve hung on to that and it wasn’t broke, so we didn’t fix it,” Shirley says. “We have a lot of folks come in and I think to a certain extent, we’re all craving that.”
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