It's About Time,'' which was being released that day in April. Many students sang along, having apparently learned the words from the video already being shown on Country Music Television. When the song was over, the students' shouting and applause resounded in the rafters, and though they were just teen-agers thrilled by a brush with fame, they may well have been jubilant that the harvest was in or that the king's line had been perpetuated. Country singers are bred in this tri-state area of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, where the Ohio and Big Sandy Rivers converge. An occasional record contact and music video for one of the locals is seen as a birthright.
Denizens try to explain the wealth of talent with a shrug.
Everyone grows up singing in church, they say, and there's not much to do around here except make your own entertainment. Achy Breaky Heart'' at the Paramount Theater on U.S. 23 in downtown Ashland. It's enough to make people forget the Hatfields and the McCoys, who also lived in the neighborhood. This is Hicksville, man. Those are the very things that may account for the new local music and the obscurity of its origins.