Inspired by the account of two women on her mother’s side during the Civil War in North Carolina, South Carolina singer-songwriter Angela Easterling researched and wrote over 30 songs in order to capture the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of these women and their families. Twelve of these songs made it onto her poignant new album, Songs from the Knoxville Project. In this haunting song cycle, Easterling narrates the stories of Narcissus Beck Middleton, her adult daughter Mary Middleton Orr, and their children.
When their husbands, Union sympathizers, desert their Confederate unit and flee to a Union camp, they leave the women to fend for themselves. Facing possible starvation, the women flee with their families to Knoxville in search of their husbands and a safe haven. Through this series of spare and atmospheric songs, Easterling captures these women’s raw emotions, their tenacious will to survive, and their steadfast hope. The project was funded in part by three organizations: the South Carolina Arts Commission; the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of the Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina; the Metropolitan Arts Council.
