Floyd, Virginia: The Crooked Road's Living Room

Floyd County holds the longest stretch of Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, roughly forty miles of it, and somewhere along that corridor the mountain culture got concentrated down into one small town and one particular building.

The Floyd Country Store opened in nineteen ten. By the nineteen eighties, local musicians were showing up on Friday evenings for informal jam sessions. Those sessions never stopped. Today the Friday Night Jamboree draws visitors from across the country to hear old-time and bluegrass played the way it always was in these hills. The store is a flagship stop on The Crooked Road, Virginia's Heritage Music Trail, and Floyd hosts FloydFest, an annual world music festival that draws tens of thousands. Population of the town: about four hundred fifty. Number of working musicians in the county: uncountable.