Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
The Gladson family lives, farms, and plays traditional Appalachian music in Hancock County, Tennessee. Juliet Gladson met her husband Todd, a country boy from Georgia, when he was playing music on a street corner in San Francisco. He encouraged her to pick up the guitar, and in turn the couple have given their children a musical education on all the strings it takes to form a traditional family band. Their oldest son Harlen picks banjo and guitar, while middle daughter Lindy, and youngest son Lemuel flip between mandolin, guitar, and fiddle.
I caught up with the Gladsons at the 2026 edition of Knoxville’s annual Big Ears Music Festival, where the family offered up an assortment of traditional stringband tunes, as well as some songs they wrote themselves. I’d seen them perform at the festival the year prior, and had been waiting for my chance to hear their story. In addition to their music-making, we discussed Juliet’s side hustle as “a crazy molasses lady”, and the family’s involvement in their local chapter of Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM).
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Gladson Family Band (from left to right – Lemuel, Todd, Juliet, Lindy, and Harlen) perform at Boyd’s Jig and Reel Pub in Knoxville, TN as part of the 2026 Big Ears Festival. (Photo courtesy of Juliet Gladson)
Daily Yonder: So you talked about this during your Big Ears performance, but y’all kind of “blew up the TV” and moved to the country. Can you tell me about how your family made that decision?
Juliet Gladson: We initially settled in Knoxville and had a little farm outside the city. Maybe about 14 years ago, we just realized we weren’t going to be able to grow enough food for livestock, and we just wanted our kids to be able to have a little more open space. We found Hancock County, and just found a great piece of land, and for the last 12 years, had been trying to actually get there and start a homestead. So we’ve been there solidly for about two years, and the TV definitely got blown up when we went there, for sure. We just did as much living off the land as we could.
Todd Gladson: I was not really ever geared up for moving into a city. I’m from Woodstock, Georgia, and it had been totally rural for most of my growing up, but then the people explosion came along, and all the farmland started to get cut up into housing developments and everything. So I was always looking to [live a rural lifestyle] somewhere else.
Open space is great for the soul. So that’s really what speaks to me, is being outside. I say Hancock County really kind of chose us. It’s like the heavens opened up and said, “Hey, you can be here.” Juliet and I took an atlas, and did a compass circle of the Southeast, and then did a tighter one, and then looked at where our parents lived and how many hours away it was. And then we prayed and said, “Take us somewhere where we can do this.”
Daily Yonder: Most old time or bluegrass musicians I’ve ever spoken to have talked about how the music is connected to the land and communities that settled areas like Hancock County. Can you tell me about how the music you play is connected to your rural life?
Todd Gladson: When I first got interested in this fiddle music or banjo music, I learned it from people that were out in the country, old-timers that you could go sit over on the porch and learn something from. And it also was very much true that, prior to the television, or even prior to the radio, people entertained themselves, and they were more self-reliant. When I was a teenager, I read Self Reliance by Emerson. So for me the music absolutely comes from that place of wanting to be self-reliant and in connection with nature. We’ve sat in circles where we’ll be working on harmonies or singing or something, and we’ll just pause, and I’ll be like, “Listen to the creek over there. It’s in a key.” And so that, to me, is where the bridge is. You want to be able to rely on yourself, and then you’ve got nature that can give you what you need, and then you’ve got this music that bridges the two.
Lindy Gladson: We live in Sneedville, and that’s where Jimmy Martin is from. I play a song called America by him, and I like the thought of me carrying that song and playing it for other people, as the music that comes from our region.
Harlen Gladson: One of my favorite parts of music is how it bonds a community. Lots of places, it’s hard to find community. But if you find a community of music players, you’ll find people that are carrying their tradition together and having a good time. Like it’s not just focused on performing, it’s focused on sitting around in the living room, on the front porch, and just enjoying the evening together, playing the music that [our] ancestors played. So that’s one of my favorite parts of playing this type of music, is just how it not only carries tradition, but it’s part of our ancestors way of just having a good time and relaxing and just enjoying life at the simplest.
Juliet Gladson: We’ve found music in the community, like Harlen said, in a very natural way, not through performing. We met some of our dearest friends in our county or the surrounding counties by making molasses. We grow sorghum, which is an important cultural aspect of the region where we live. And Todd always wanted to grow sorghum, and we finally had a wide open space, and we grew a bunch of sorghum and found an old mill. I kept telling Todd, “We need to find somebody with a mule to help us.” You know, to go around and work the mill to press the juice out of the cane. And last minute, it was probably like a week before it was time to cut the cane, we met a fellow in Claiborne County, and he said, “Sure, I’ll come over.” And all of a sudden they realized that we play music. Because at the molasses making event we all jammed together.
They call me crazy molasses lady in the house now. After that experience, I saw molasses as being such an important part of what we’re doing with music in our community. I’m the Program Director for our county’s chapter of Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM). It’s a nonprofit, so all the money is raised by our family, however we can figure it out. So last year, we had a bunch of molasses, and our community of friends said, “Oh, we have extra cane. Do you want to cut our cane?” So we ended up making about 25 gallons of molasses this year. And I really like that part of the tradition of molasses is that you don’t sell it, you give it away. And so the fellow that gave us his cane, he said, “Well, what are you gonna do with the molasses?” I said, “I’ll put on biscuits, I’ll eat it with everything. I love it.” And he said, “I know, but what are you gonna do with all of it?”
The next time we saw him, when we made molasses again, I said, “I came up with an idea. Tell me what you think.” Because he didn’t want me to sell it, I said, “How about we use it as a fundraiser for JAM, and we donate the molasses for the fundraiser. And he loved it. So we named it Molasses for Music. We asked for donations of the molasses, then Lindy and I make taffy and brittle and whatever we can think of and package it up for the fundraiser. Last fall, we made about $1,000, and were able to partner with Gold Tone and buy two banjos for our program.
Sorghum cane harvest on the Gladson farm in Hancock County, Tennessee. (Photo courtesy of Juliet Gladson)
Daily Yonder: Can you tell me some more about how the Hancock JAM program got started, and what you each enjoy about it?
Juliet Gladson: So our family is built on faith. In about July of 2024 I started praying and telling my family, I said, I’m praying that my children can teach the children of the community in Hancock County their music. And I told a preacher over at Elm Springs Church, and the music director, and the Chamber of Commerce – I told them my prayer. And they said, “Well, you can use this church if you want to do it. You can teach here.” And I said, “Well, I just need to find the instruments.” And so I prayed about it, I talked about it, and then went down to the Galax Fiddlers Convention and was picking with friends, and the bass player leaned over – Brett Morris, I’d never even met her before – and she said, “I heard you’re from Hancock County.” I said, “Yeah, we just moved there.” And she said, “Do you want to run a JAM program?” I said, “What is it?” She said, “You teach music. Your kids can do it. We’ll get you the instruments.”
So I had met her on a Saturday, and on Monday, when she was still trying to get out of Galax, I was blowing her phone up. “When can we start? How can I get the instruments?” And it was August of that year that we started the Hancock JAM program. Started off with 15 kids, moved up to about 40, and it’s just been an incredible blessing. We just found a huge amount of families that were looking for the same thing, to learn the traditional music, to teach their children the traditional music.
Harlen Gladson: So at JAM, I primarily teach the guitar, and I have, I believe, over 10 guitar students. And we kind of organize them in a manner of levels. But one of the coolest things about JAM is the way that it teaches in a group setting. It’s not the same as going out and getting a private guitar lesson. We’re not looking to teach the same way, because, as it’s called, Junior Appalachian Musicians, “JAM,” it’s focused on the group setting. And it’s focused on the fun part of music. Because you’re not going to have every little kid out here that just wants to be sat down in a private lesson and taught this and this and this. But this way, you have this group of kids, they’re learning the same thing together, and they’re having fun. And then the kids are like, “When is it time to jam? When are we going to jam? What tunes are we playing?”
Lemuel Gladson: I really love JAM because I’ve met so many people, like my best friends, I’ve met in JAM. I teach mandolin and sometimes guitar, and it’s just so fun teaching them and seeing the light in their eyes whenever I show them something, and they’re like, “I want to play this. That’s what I want to do.” And then they’re just so amazed that they can do it, and it’s just so fun just to watch them do it.
Lindy Gladson: What I like about JAM is that I get to teach kids my age, and I feel like they’re more comfortable with a person their age.They’re like, “She’s so close to my age and she can do this. That means I can do this.” And then I also had a little three-year-old fiddle player once, and I put rosin on his bow, and he was over there sawing on that thing the whole time. So I can teach a three-year-old and I can teach a 17-year-old in one day, in different classes, but we’re learning the same stuff. That’s what I like about it.
Todd Gladson steps in on fiddle at the Gladson’s March 2026 Big Ears set in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo courtesy of Juliet Gladson)
Todd Gladson: We did a petting zoo at the Sneedville Fall Festival one time – with the musical instruments. And some of the most amazing moments were when these youngins would come through and they look at the instruments, and naturally they want to come put their hands on ‘em. And most of the time they don’t get to, because people think about how musical instruments cost a lot of money, and you don’t want to break them, and all this. But our kids here have broken so many instruments. I mean, my theory is that if you don’t ever get a chance to touch the thing and try, how are you ever going to know? And so we have always had a lot of instruments around, just in case anyone gets the remote notion that you might want to play this or that. Well then they can go in there and get it and try it. Spend 10 or 15 minutes with it and see if that’s what you want to do today, tomorrow, in a week. So JAM is great. I love it. It’s kind of just amazing that you can just take youngins and teach them like that, and then all of a sudden, in a month, be able to get them to play a tune together and see what it looks like on their face.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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