here with a few new friends today at Big Bone Lick State Historic Site.

First discovered in 1739, Lewis and Clark were later tasked by Thomas Jefferson to excavate and collect specimens from this site, making it the first organized excavation in the nation's history and birthplace of American vertebrae paleontology.

I'm going to follow their footsteps and explore this site for myself, so lace up your boots for another episode of Kentucky Life.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> The Everly Brothers, Merle Travis, and John Prine, just a few of the musicians associated with Muhlenberg County.

Well, in our first story, we look at a new musician who hails from Western Kentucky, Grayson Jenkins.

From playing gigs in familiar spots around Lexington to touring cities across the nation, Grayson visited our studios to perform and share his stories from the >> stage.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> never thought I would become a full-time musician, slowly but surely, the music bug just kept getting a hold of me and I went and pursued it full-time starting in 2017.

So I'm from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, more specifically Greenville, Kentucky, grew up on a small goat and Quarter Horse farm, was really fortunate to grow up exploring in the woods, doing work on the farm.

Honestly, at a young age, I never thought I would leave my hometown.

I thought I might go to community college and then stick around and work on the farm and maybe have a farm of my own.

My hometown reflects quite a bit in my music for a few different reasons.

One, the musical history there is so rich, as a kid, unfortunately I wasn't super aware of or involved in.

But also I think just growing up in that county, there are so many stories and turns of phrases that have been around for hundreds of years that my family's passed down or that you just hear people saying.

And so I think the way people talk and their storytelling have influenced my writing and my style of music.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> I met >> Sturgill Simpson in a bar and sat there and talked to him for two hours.

He asked, "Do you have songs?"

And I was like, "Yes," and "Do you have a band?

", "Yes."

"Do you have a van?"

"Yes."

And he just told me, "Hit the road, get out there and play your music, just go do your own thing," so that was just kind of a fateful meeting that couldn't have come at a more crucial time.

You're going through this transitional period wondering if it's the right decision, and then you get to meet one of your heroes, a top five musical hero of mine.

The big thing for me was just never wanting to look back and regret that I didn't try it and put everything I have into it.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Typically, >> categorize my music as Country-Americana.

Ideally, that involves telling a story through the verses and then having a chorus that is relatable to anybody's circumstance.

And just musically it's changed some over the years, but I definitely like to use my Kentucky influences, fiddles, steel guitars, acoustic guitars, that country sound with a little bit of Appalachian bluegrass music in there as well.

Songwriting for me started out as just therapy, honestly.

It started out as a way for me to process things that were going on in my own life.

Oftentimes, if I were to just evaluate my own songwriting from a bird's eye view, I would say it's taking a tough situation and finding the grain of hope in that.

I hope that people, when they listen to my music, feel some type of emotion, whether that's thinking back on a good memory, thinking about somebody that they love, I'm guilty of writing a lot of love songs, maybe it makes them think of a family member that's passed away.

I lost my mother in 2015.

Songwriting has been my way to process those things.

I know it's a good song if I tear up a little bit when I'm writing it, or if I get chills when I think of a line.

I distinctly remember the first time that a crowd was singing my own song back to me.

And the first time I ever felt that, I was like, "This is what I want to do," and I want to connect with people in that way.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Big Bone Lick gets its name from the fossils drawn to the salt Springs like, well, me, and this guy here, the giant ground sloth, but also included mammoth, bison, and even equestrian ancestors, proving that horses and Kentucky have always gone hand-in-hand, which takes us to our next story.

Frankie's Corner Little Thoroughbred Crusade is a non-profit equine education program that gives young people, who do not have the means or the opportunity, the chance to learn about horsemanship and careers in the equestrian industry.

>> The reason I say that my grandfather has the biggest influence is because, at a young age, I loved the look of horses, but I had no idea where to go, where to get into the industry, where to even begin, where to learn.

My grandfather, Francis Wilson, worked at Jonabell, I think, about 40-something years.

He was a groom, he was a trainer, he was a exercise rider, he broke horse, he night watched.

Also, he worked at Keeneland during all of the sales from 1974 to about 2004.

He worked those jobs simultaneously.

Had it not been for him and me going to work with him, I wouldn't have got into this.

I was sitting in the room where my grandfather passed at, and what is now on our logo is actually a picture that one of my uncles drew of my grandfather.

And I kept looking at that picture, I looked at that picture like three times and I was just like, "Grandaddy, what are you trying to say?"

And literally, right after I asked the question, the whole organization came, the nonprofit came.

So all the skills that I've learned, picked up from the years, I just feel like it's my duty, my purpose, my life to pass it on to these young people.

Because, again, you never know.

If you don't give kids an opportunity, how do they know if something's for them or not?

>> I've been involved with Frankie's Corner Little Thoroughbred Crusade for two years.

When I started at Locust Trace is when I learned about the program and decided that it was wonderful and I had to volunteer.

We found 16 students that really had little to no riding experience, and they did say that through an issue, whether it's finances or travel, "We're not able to take commercial riding lessons."

There you go.

>> My equine teacher was telling people about it and I was like, "Hey, that's a really good opportunity that I can't really afford to do otherwise."

For me, I've never grown up on a farm where I've had livestock, horses, stuff like that.

When I was younger, I never thought about doing anything with horses.

I really didn't like horses.

>> That's what I love about this program.

Because you have kids that come from so many different demographics, but at the same time you get to teach all of them life skills with a horse as your assistant.

>> Our students, really, they learn how to care for the horse, and then they learn how to >> ride.

We teach them the groundwork and to understand that everything that you do on the ground translates to the saddle.

We teach all that stuff from cleaning stalls, barn maintenance, grooming.

>> You can learn stuff that, if you want to use in a career with horses, then you could use that later on in life.

>> With these older kids, they want to get into the industry, whether it be having their own vet clinic ,or whether they go work and work at one of the farms.

You could make a really good living, but a lot of these kids, they just don't understand everything that's out there within the equine industry.

But >> I've always wanted to be in the industry.

I've always wanted to be a vet and to work with animals like that.

So learning here, that's a good personal experience for me that I really am going to take with me the rest of my life because I will use it when I get older.

And even if they don't go into the equine industry once they graduate, they still have a lot of skills that make it to where they're going to be successful no matter where they go.

I think I have changed.

I think I've become more confident into what I'm doing, because the more I know, the more confident I feel in myself.

>> That's why I feel like it's so important that I give back and give the knowledge back to the kids.

And I feel like that everything just worked perfectly.

So I mean, in all honesty, it has to be my grandfather making things work for me.

Oscar [MUSIC] >> winning actress Patricia Neal was born in Packard, Kentucky, in 1926, a small coal mining community located in Whitley County near the Tennessee border.

But when the coal company disappeared, so did the town.

But what hasn't disappeared, however, is the legacy of one of Hollywood's and Kentucky's most distinct and remarkable talents.

Now hold [MUSIC] >> still.

Patricia Neal was born in 1926 in Packard, Kentucky.

This was a largely coal mining town and it doesn't exist anymore.

It hasn't been there for decades.

She really comes from working class, blue collar roots.

>> That rural, perhaps, upbringing, that hardscrabble life that may have been given to her or forced upon her by her family does show up often in her films.

>> What really sticks out to me about Patricia Neal is her voice.

She has this beautiful, husky, not quite Lauren Bacall type voice that she can use to her benefit.

You really hear this in that voiceover for The Hasty Heart.

>> There's a story in this picture that's very rich and very real, and, in memory, takes me back to days of adventure in a distant land.

>> Even something like The Fountainhead, which is maybe her most conventional romance, is not a movie you would describe as a conventional romance in that sense.

What if he is.

[MUSIC] Patricia Neal steals The Fountainhead for me as a Dominique >> Francon.

Dominique Francon, the kind of woman who could enslave any man >> except one.

The Fountainhead, King Vidor directed that film and, as always, he focuses on the power of the male character.

There is Gary Cooper playing that role, and here's Patricia Neal, much younger than the actor and much younger than the character, but uses her power to try to control him.

I have >> no pride left to stop me.

I love you without dignity, without regret.

Would it please you to hear that I've lived in torture all these months, hoping never to find you and wishing to give my life just to see you once more?

>> A Face in the Crowd is terrific all the way around, and it's often remembered as this star making vehicle for Andy Griffith.

And it certainly is, but it's Patricia Neal that makes that movie.

>> The bigger I get, the smaller you make me feel.

You take Betty Lou.

Hank, don't try to explain.

Betty Lou is your public all wrapped up with yellow ribbons into one cute little package.

She's the logical culmination of the great 20th century love affair between Lonesome Rhodes and his mass audience.

>> Breakfast at Tiffany's is probably the film that she is most famous for, simply because it's the most famous film in her entire repertoire.

What are you doing?

>> Writing a check.

Don't look so bewildered, surely you've noticed me writing checks before.

Pay to the order of Paul Varjak $1,000.

Take her away somewhere for a week.

You're entitled to a vacation with pay.

>> In Breakfast at Tiffany's, we can recognize that Patricia Neal doesn't need to be the star.

Patricia Neal can play the back character, the secondary role, with as much vigor and power as she might in a lead role.

Tiffany's!

[MUSIC] >> I do believe love has found Andy Hardy.

In Patricia Neal's Oscar winning performance in Hud, she plays Alma, the cook/housekeeper for a ranching family in Texas, and class is so important to her performance here.

But Alma is interesting because she's not just a part of this family, she is the help, and so her class is even lower than this sort of middle class family that's sinking as the story goes on.

[MUSIC] >> Don't you ever ask?

Well, the only question >> I ever ask any woman is "What time is your husband coming home?"

I'd say >> I've been asked with a little more finesse in my time.

I ll bring you a two-pound box of candy and maybe a bottle of perfume from the drugstore.

No thanks.

>> Kentucky has several artists, actors, and writers, and I don't know if there's something in the bluegrass, that air, that entices the brain cells to adapt towards some sort of creativity or not, but certainly it's there with her.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Libraries are a vital part of our communities, making sure that everyone has the ability to obtain information, access books, and participate in free or low cost community activities.

But libraries haven't always been accessible to everyone, that's why the Western Branch of Louisville's Free Public Library system opened in 1905.

Located in downtown Louisville, Western was a first library in the nation staffed by and built to serve African Americans.

[MUSIC] >> Western is Louisville's history, Western is Kentucky's history, is the Ohio River Valley's history, but it is not a, oh, poor, pitiful me story.

Though it's important to know the constraints that these people faced in building this library and the people who came to it, but it is always, first and foremost, a story of excellence.

Well, the Western Library was the first Carnegie branch that was designed to serve an African American community.

It was founded at about the time that the Free Library system of Louisville was created, in which the black community really staunchly advocated for some portion of Carnegie Library funds be devoted to a library that would serve the black community.

The origins of the branch begin in the 1890s, and they begin with Albert Meyzeek.

Albert Meyzeek was probably one of the most prominent civil rights leaders in Louisville in the late 19th through the middle of the 20th century.

He was briefly principal of Central High School for three years in the 1890s.

And when he was principal at Central High School, which is the one black high school for Louisville, he found that the library resources were wholly inadequate.

So what he began doing was taking his students to Polytechnic Library.

And after a couple of visits, suddenly they were barred from the entrance to the library because of segregation.

They said, "You cannot come here anymore.

No race mixing," so on and so forth, and Meyzeek was outraged.

So that when the Louisville Free Public Library system was developed in the early 20th century, and there was clearly access to Carnegie Library funds to build different branches, he immediately began petitioning for there to be a library that would serve African Americans.

The first librarian was Thomas Blue.

Thomas Blue came to Louisville in the 1890s, and he first came here to direct the colored branch of the YMCA.

Blue was such a skilled administrator that when the opportunity came to create a Western branch, they instantly turned to Blue.

Blue tried to make sure that it's collections were not only comparable to all of the other branches that you would find, but he tried to make sure that there were a lot of reading material written by black authors and black publishers.

Nowhere else in the city would you have such a variety of books by, say, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B.

Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson.

They could go to the shelves of the library and pick up books in which they could see themselves.

They could see their history accurately depicted.

They could find literary voices in which they could imagine themselves becoming literary voices and telling their own stories and telling their own histories.

In a city where segregation still dominated, and in a state where segregation still dominated, this was an area where people could push back and define themselves, define images of who they were.

That's why Western's really, really important.

It was planting the seeds of thought and creativity and selfhood for generation of generation of black Louisvillians.

>> This library was the hub of the community.

You didn't have anything else because it was so unique.

>> So they came from far and wide to come here to check out books, learn that knowledge, to take part in the programs and the things that they had.

It was just a significant part, because this is where you came to remove all those barriers to the access of everything.

Today, I try to relate back to Reverend Blue as much as I possibly can and keep the mission that he had all the way back then in the forefront of when I do programming.

So we do things that are very unique in the system that speaks specifically to the community that we're serving.

We have some on parenting black youth, we've had a Young Black Storytellers Mini Film Festival, different things like that.

To me, that's the most important thing is to making sure that we're protecting the original legacy and then help it to grow by fostering the things that we do today to honor what they started doing all the way back then, and that's serving the community to the best of our ability.

[MUSIC] >> The Virginia Cinema in Somerset first opened its doors to the public in 1922.

For decades, it operated as one of the city's downtown theaters until it was forced to close in 1994.

Now, 100 years later, the city of Somerset has taken a tremendous step forward in fulfilling the community's impassioned wish to see the Virginia open once again.

Well, [MUSIC] >> the history of the Virginia Theatre goes back to the early 1920s.

The theater was built, really, as Somerset's first and, for many years, only movie theater.

Built in 1922 by a local businessman by the name of T. E. Jasper, and it operated from 1922, very successfully, until around 1994.

The entire block that the theater is in is very historic to us.

With the theater being right in the center of it, the viability of downtown and the architectural appearance, the architectural fabric of East Mount Vernon Street rest almost entirely on the continuation of the Virginia Theater.

When Downtown Somerset Development acquired the property in the early 2000s, it was really considered a total loss as far as the usability of it.

The air conditioning units that had been installed on top of the building had crashed through to the stage and the seating in the auditorium.

From a practical standpoint, all you had was four walls.

It had a lower auditorium and it had an upper balcony.

There's a lot of people who have really bad memories of the upper balcony, and that's particularly our black community, because it was a segregated theater.

There was an actual, what they call, parting rail that went from the top of the chairs to the bottom of the chairs in the balcony, and that was the only place that the black community could come see the movies.

[MUSIC] >> Sometimes you have to break down some walls, you have to renovate and recreate and build back a venue in a place that everybody's welcome, and that's exactly what's going to happen here.

We've seen a renaissance in our downtown and, really, the only empty hole, if you will, was the Virginia.

Well, I thought, "What a beautiful piece this energy is.

We're having this rebirth and this renaissance, let that be the icing on the cake," this 100-year project that the community's wanted for decades.

It's going to largely be a live music venue.

Now, we think this is going to be a perfect spot sort of in between Nashville and some other larger cities for great artists to come.

We want to make the Virginia a world class destination for world class artists, but also a place for our locals to showcase their skills.

We're going to have live theater, performance theater.

We hope it'll also be an event space, so a versatile multi-use and I think something for everybody across the community and across the region.

[MUSIC] >> Thank you for joining us for another season of Kentucky Life.

We have so enjoyed sharing stories from across the Commonwealth and we can't wait to show you more, but, for now, I'll leave you with this moment.

And as always, I'm Doug Flynn enjoying life, Kentucky >> life.

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