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Off With a Bang: Kingston Trio performs its classic song about Tom Dooley
By Monte Mitchell
JOURNAL REPORTER

WILKESBORO - The Wilkes Playmakers opened up the Forest's Edge Amphitheater at Fort Hamby Park yesterday with a big bang.

When the Playmakers do their Tom Dooley play indoors, it opens with Dooley and a woman talking about the Civil War. In the new amphitheater on W. Kerr Scott Reservoir, it opens with a cannon being fired in a big battle scene.

"Outdoors you have to have fires and dancing and horses and explosions," said director Karen Reynolds.

A sold-out crowd of 850 came out last night for the first show in the new $750,000 amphitheater.

It rained steadily during the dedication ceremonies, but was just a little drizzly for a concert by the revamped Kingston Trio. The group is carrying on the tradition of its original members, whose classic folk song Tom Dooley went gold and helped popularize the story of the Wilkes County love triangle from 1868 that ended with Dooley being hanged for the murder of Laura Foster.

The new amphitheater will also be the home of Summer on the Lake 2006, offering concerts from July through September through the Friends of W. Kerr Scott Lake. More information is on the Internet at www.FriendsOfLake.org.

The new nonprofit group helped raise $250,000 to complete the amphitheater project. They're still raising money, to add pavement for parking and to add restrooms.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the dam and reservoir, started the project with a $350,000 seed grant that paid for the roof and arching beams. The rest was raised through other grants and individual and corporate donations.

"There's more private money in it than government money," said Terry Ramsey, the operations manager at Kerr Scott. "We think it's great. It's going to be a great facility for years."

The amphitheater has a big stage beneath a roof that peaks at about 45 feet. There are large dressing rooms and makeup rooms behind the stage. There's a sandy area in front of the stage, a place that will allow the drama to have fire and horses.

At the top of the sloped seating area is a big picnic shelter and a sound and light booth.

Zach Henderson, the chairman of the Wilkes County Board of Commissioners, sat in the audience under an umbrella as the rain came down before the show. "This is beautiful," he said. "Outstanding. It makes Wilkes County proud."

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, told the crowd that the project is "one of the best examples of a public-private partnership that I have ever witnessed in my life."

She said she will soon talk about Tom Dooley on the floor of the House, where the cable TV network CSPAN will broadcast her comments nationwide.

"I know everybody knows that song," she said. "When we can connect that song to what's going on here, I think we can spread the word nationally."

The story of Tom Dooley took place in Ferguson in southwestern Wilkes, a part of the county where Ginn Clubs & Resorts is building a 6,000-acre resort that will stretch nearly to the Blue Ridge Parkway in Watauga County.

The mostly poor people who worked, laughed, loved and even murdered in those hills were living where multimillion-dollar homes will soon be built. The resort also gives the play a new audience.

For Reynolds, the amphitheater performances are a way to come full circle. She performed in a different version of the play on the same site 28 years ago, when the Kingston Trio also performed its Tom Dooley song.

"Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, poor boy, you're bound to die," got a standing ovation last night in one of the places in the world where people feel the story in their blood.

In addition to directing last night's play, Reynolds played the part of store owner Martha Cowles, who was her great-great-great-grandmother.

Karen Reynolds' husband, David, played the part of Calvin Cowles, the husband of Martha.

He talked about how the performers don't have any microphones out in the amphitheater, so they really have to pro-ject. "But the wood makes everything such a live sound," David Reynolds said. "Even out in front of the sand, it's a vibrant sound."

Performances of the play will continue at 8:30 p.m. outdoors today and Sunday, with a break on Monday, and performances again Tuesday to Friday. The play will take a break, then return indoors to Benton Hall in North Wilkesboro on July 20.