[piano intro] - Next on "North Carolina Weekend", we celebrate art and soul across our state, from the Mitford Museum in Hudson.

We'll visit the Brooklyn Collective in Charlotte, the Blue Note Grill in Durham, and a rural art gallery in Sunbury.

Coming up next.

- [Announcer] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches, you're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[upbeat bluegrass music] ♪ [upbeat bluegrass music continues] ♪ - Hi, everyone.

Welcome to "North Carolina Weekend".

I'm Deborah Holt Noel, and this week, we are celebrating art and soul across our state.

Right now, I'm in the Foothills at the Mitford Museum in Hudson, a museum created by bestselling author Jan Karon based on her popular novels about the fictional town of Mitford.

But it's also an arts incubator, a theater, and we'll learn more about it later in the show.

But first, let's head to Garner, where a local musician is serving up coffee and bluegrass.

[gentle music] - [Reporter] On the corner of one of Garner's busier intersections, in a building that used to be a pharmacy, there's a coffee house that makes fancy drinks.

- It has two pumps of pomegranate in it.

- [Reporter] But delivers a down-to-earth vibe.

This is Lorraine's Coffee House on a weekday, and this is the proprietor, Lorraine Jordan.

- I just love the town.

I love the fact that we're part of Raleigh, but we're not in Raleigh, and just the people are so kind, and it's just a small town with a big city atmosphere.

- I just love to come here.

I feel like they're friends.

- [Reporter] Lorraine hobnobs and mixes with friends on this afternoon when I met her for this interview.

That's Lorraine at her best, enjoying time with her friends.

The same can be said at nighttime, especially on weekends at the coffee house.

When Lorraine shows her best, along with friends, in the Lorraine Jordan and Carolina Road Band.

♪ Tearing down tradition ♪ ♪ Lord it feels just like the same ♪ - Well I'm originally from a little town down east, Vanceboro, North Carolina.

And it's pretty close to the beach, so I'm kind of a beach person.

But I got into bluegrass at a young age, and I moved to Garner in 1984.

Came up here to teach school, actually, and play in a bluegrass band.

[gentle bluegrass music] ♪ Call it like it is ♪ ♪ Say what you want to say ♪ ♪ I don't live in the past ♪ ♪ I'm living day to day ♪ - [Reporter] Lorraine's music took her from Vanceboro to Garner more than 30 years ago, but these days, she's on the road about 100 nights a year playing in some 40 states and 13 countries.

When she's not on the road, she runs a driving school business as well as the coffee house.

- Well, I have a big outgoing personality, and I like to be around people.

I'm not one to sit home and lay on the couch and watch television very often, so I'm usually down here most of the time, and it's amazing the people that you meet down here.

Just today, I met a lady.

Her mother and I actually used to play some music together.

Yeah, we all know her.

She played with Russel Johnson for years.

- Yes she did.

Yes she did.

- She knew she wanted somewhere that people could come and there wouldn't be any drinking, there wouldn't be any cursing.

It would be a family oriented place, and it would be no out of the way stuff going on.

- Thank you so much, folks.

[audience cheering] [audience applauding] - Lorraine Jordan and Carolina Road!

- When I was growing up, I always wanted to go hear live music.

And there really wasn't anything outside of church or the bars.

Music was my main focus, but I thought, well, you know, everybody's gotta have a little refreshments.

But I really didn't wanna get in the restaurant business.

So I decided to open the coffee house.

- [Reporter] Families and friends, Ava's crochet group- - I just came in one day and I said I'll teach a free class.

- [Reporter] And many other folks from around Garner have discovered Lorraine's Coffee House.

So has filmmaker, Mickey Stroud of Cary.

His new documentary, "Living Like I'm Dying", is about Lorraine Jordan's life, from Vanceboro to Nashville, and from birth to bluegrass, she has a story he wanted to tell.

- It's compelling, it's entertaining, it's exciting, it's toe-tapping good, and there's so many lessons in there to be learned.

♪ What you know ♪ - It's about bullying, it's about desegregation, it's about entrepreneurship.

It's about making it in a man's world as a woman.

♪ Living like I'm dying ♪ - [Reporter] It's about this remarkable woman who happens to run a coffee house by day and plays bluegrass music by night.

♪ Why can't bluegrass ♪ ♪ Just be true ♪ - Lorraine's Coffee House and Music is at 101 Timber Point Lane in Garner, and they're open daily.

For more information, give them a call at 919-714-7990.

And to find out when they're playing bluegrass, go to lorrainescoffeehouse.com.

The Mitford Museum sits in what was once an elementary school in Hudson, and it's here where author Jan Karon attended the first grade.

Another transformation took place in the city of Charlotte, where an entire black neighborhood called Brooklyn was demolished, and has now been restored into a vibrant place for art and healing.

- This block of Charlotte is really a hidden treasure.

People always ask, they say, there was a Brooklyn in Charlotte?

[laughing] [bright music] This neighborhood of Brooklyn was a very thriving part of the city.

It was all African-American, and it was what they referred to affectionately as a city within the city.

And so because the African-Americans at that time were not welcomed into the white sides of town, they built their own infrastructure.

They created this bustling community.

This community wasn't just a little square block, it wasn't just a cul-de-sac.

It was 1400 homes, and over 275 businesses.

It was extremely expansive.

They had their own banks, their own theaters, their own schools, and it was really a hub of activity in Charlotte.

- My family moved from Georgia to Charlotte to get away from the sharecropping life they had there.

They moved into Brooklyn and joined this church in about 1922, and our family has been a member ever since.

- During urban renewal in the early 1960s to early 1970s, this neighborhood was torn down.

- When Charlotte got urban renewal money, they targeted Brooklyn, and the idea was that they would clear out all of the old and bring in the new.

[soft tense music] - Our family home was destroyed, and that is when my family actually left Brooklyn.

But we got to come back, because the church was still here.

- The redevelopment commissioner at the time of the urban renewal wanted people to stop calling it Brooklyn.

He said people shouldn't call it Brooklyn anymore.

Brooklyn is gone.

And I think that what the Collective helps prove is that that's not the case, and all of the other keepers of that history, of that memory, have proven that Brooklyn is still Brooklyn.

This Collective has dedicated itself to preserving that history.

[soft music] - From the stained glass windows to the herring bone brick, you wouldn't think of being in a glass and steel city like Charlotte.

- The interesting part about these buildings is that, number one, this block that they reside on was actually a part of what was known as the Black Wall Street of Charlotte in the early 1900s.

More importantly, they are two out of the four remaining buildings of Brooklyn in Charlotte, therefore why we're called the Brooklyn Collective.

The Brooklyn Collective is actually a collective in two ways.

One, it is a collective of three physical buildings, and then it's a collective of individuals with like mind that have come together to support entrepreneurship and a celebration of the arts.

Whether you're coming because you're attending an event, whether you're coming to a concert, whether you're coming to visit the art gallery or one of our art exhibits, those are ways you can connect with us.

But if not, you can enjoy the murals that are on the outside of the building.

You can learn more about the history on our storytelling payphone.

We have created a history room in our lobby, and that is so important, because it really sets the stage for a person's visit here.

- It really excites me that my grandkids can come here and see where their parents, their ancestors, actually worshiped, and what they were able to build, and give other people the opportunity to see that what we have did not just fall out of the sky.

It was built, and it has endured.

- The Brooklyn Collective is at 229 South Brevard Street in Charlotte.

For a list of events, give them a call at 704-368-4009.

Or go online to brooklyncollectiveclt.org.

Right now, I'm here with Sarah Thomas, the director of the Mitford Museum.

Sarah, I'm so delighted to be here.

It is absolutely fascinating, because this museum is not only a recreation of the mythical town of Mitford, but it's also kind of a retrospective of the life of Jan Karon when she lived here in Hudson.

- Absolutely.

The Mitford Museum focuses on Jan when she was living here in Hudson, her history, her family background.

But it also really digs into Mitford itself, the characters, where they came from, her inspiration.

People will come here and they'll see character sketches and things that the characters used in the books.

It's really a great way to make Mitford real for Jan's fans.

You know, people think that it was maybe an overnight success, but she began writing the books as a serialization in the Blowing Rocket Newspaper, up in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

And eventually she was able to get a small publisher, and the books came out, and they did okay, mostly because she put books in the trunk of her car and went around the country hand-selling to book stores.

Then when eventually they were picked up by a major publisher, they took off.

And I think that the books really speak to people in a way that they need.

The books are so genuine and sincere, and it's the kind of town that we all secretly want to live in, maybe not so secretly.

It's where we want to be, and it's such a warm, welcoming place that I think people just can't resist them.

The building was actually an elementary school, Jan's elementary school.

The first room of the museum was her first grade classroom.

But the town of Hudson came in, and they renovated this building, and made it into an art center, and there's a great local art gallery, there's a beautiful boutique.

There's three doors down, which is a beverage station.

Artists studios upstairs.

There's an auditorium here, and we actually have some remarkable theater going on in Hudson.

- [Deborah] Tell me what you hear from visitors, and how many people are coming?

- Well, in our first six months of being open, we had visitors from all 50 states and around the world.

We've had visitors from Australia, from Scotland, from France.

This is such a destination for people who are fans of the Mitford series.

We talked about how it really feels real to people, and they just long to come here and connect with this book and these characters that have been so real to them.

You know, Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Carl Sandburg Place, they're great, but Thomas Wolfe and Carl Sandburg are long gone.

Jan is still with us, and she is actively interpreting this museum.

So when you read a placard here, she wrote it.

It's Jan speaking to her fans.

- Well, it's just so interesting.

Would you mind taking me for a tour?

- I'd love to.

Come on.

- Okay.

So what do we have here?

- So this is a character corner that really focuses on the characters from the Mitford novels.

We have Father Tim represented here with his ecumenical robes.

But then this cabinet is really fun.

- His favorite snacks.

- Yes.

Well, he had a church secretary who kept Little Debbie cakes in her desk, and Father Tim was diabetic, so it was a little bit of a challenge for him.

- Uh-oh.

- [Sarah] And we have Barnabas here.

- [Deborah] Hi, Barnabas.

- And Barnabas' leash and collar, so there's just some fun things that people come in, and they'll see them, and be inspired to remember characters from the book.

So this is probably one of the favorite fan items at the Mitford Museum.

Jan and her daughter Candace were shopping at an antique store, and they saw this nativity set, and it was in terrible condition.

She wanted to fix it up, but she didn't think she had time.

Candace suggested that she let Father Tim do it.

And that was the genesis of "Shepherds Abiding", which is her Christmas novel.

So in that novel, Father Tim finds a nativity set, and refurbishes it for his wife.

- Oh, how interesting.

- Well, and all of the decorations on the tree are sent from fans.

So they're from around the country sent to Jan to celebrate the holidays.

This is her keyboard that she wrote a lot of the Mitford novels on, and the really fun thing about this is that the M is worn off, because she hit the letter M- - Of course.

- So many times.

- Of course it is.

- For Mitford.

And one of the really fun things about this desk is that we invite visitors to open the drawers and see things like an original manuscript that Jan was editing.

So on her desk, we have copies of all the novels and the supplemental books, and then up here, above the desk, we have some of the original artwork for the covers of the novels.

- Well Sarah, thank you so much for showing me around the museum.

It's been fascinating learning about Jan Karon and her life here in Hudson, and also about Mitford, so I look forward to reading more about it in her books.

- Well, thank you so much for coming.

We love having you here, and we love having all our visitors come to the Mitford Museum.

- The Mitford Museum is at 145 Cedar Valley Road in Hudson.

That's in Caldwell County, and it's open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to four p.m. For more information, give them a call at 828-572-4898, or go online to themitfordmuseum.org.

You don't just find art in big urban areas.

In fact, we found a gallery in the tiny town of Sunbury, where it seems every community member has the creative spark.

[gentle music] Gates County sits in the northeastern part of our state.

It's a rural county.

Cotton grows here, along with peanuts and other crops.

But look deeper into Gates County and you'll find beauty.

And where there's beauty, there's art.

- And I didn't realize that there were so many artists here in this area until I came into Sunbury and came into Studio 32.

- [Deborah] Studio 32 began with an empty building and an idea.

- Maybe we could let people rent spaces here and have a little tiny gift shop, but every time we called an artist, they said, oh we have places to work.

We need a place to sell our things.

- [Deborah] Before long, word spread about the new gallery in Gates County, and it soon became apparent that there was a lot of talent in this rural community.

- People literally came to us with their things and said I made this.

Do you think anyone would buy it?

And we'd say yes, it's perfect.

And that's really how things got started.

- It was pretty amazing, the number of people who come here and have so much talent.

- I do a little bit of everything, just what hits me, but I'm more known for doing my jewelry.

It has a lot of brass and African beads.

- And I'm what you know, and what's been known, as a scrimshander, which does scrimshaw.

And what it amounts to is you etch in the bone and put ink on it, and what you rub off, what's left, is what you get, good or bad.

- I'm going through kind of a repurposing of denim, and I actually, this is handwoven.

And then I put it on a jeans leg, and a bag, and then pockets, and such.

- A lot of barn work and tractors, and wide open spaces.

- What I really love is using oil painting and cold wax mixed together to make its own medium, and then this is applied with a palette knife.

- Pyrography is a wood burning art.

I use a pen that gets to about 1000 degrees.

- I do primarily my art with palette knives only and not brushes.

- I appreciate the country, and I enjoy things, especially nostalgia, things that are going away.

- This place really has art that people do.

- [Deborah] Today is a special day at Studio 32.

The gallery is honoring three generations of Gates County artists, and especially Elizabeth Holmes Freeman Seiling.

Mrs. Seiling has quite a story.

- [Interviewer] Did you start doing artwork as a young child?

- I was 65.

And now I'm 100.

- [Deborah] Her works on porcelain are exquisite and detailed, and she's happy to share her technique.

- You paint on it, and fire it, and then you wipe it off with a silk cloth.

And then you paint on it again, and then you fire it, and then you wipe it off again with a silk cloth.

It has to be silk, too.

[laughing] And you paint on it again.

- [Deborah] Mrs. Seiling was literally born in a house perched on the state line with Virginia.

And she remains devoted to art and to Gates County.

- It's a nice place to live.

I used to know everybody in it, but I don't anymore.

- [Deborah] And for the artists of Studio 32, Mrs. Seiling is an inspiration.

- Absolutely fantastic.

Her work is amazing.

- Oh.

What a role model.

What a person to be admired, and to think okay, what I can do.

Here she started at 65, for goodness sake.

It makes me feel really like I'm not working up my life potential.

- Studio 32 is at 11 North Carolina Highway 32 in Sunbury.

And they're open Friday through Sunday.

For more information, give them a call at 252-339-1619, or visit them online at studio32sunbury.com.

Here at the gift shop in the Mitford Museum you can find signed copies of all of Jan's novels.

And since this is a nonprofit, every little bit counts, right?

Well, nothing says art and soul quite like blues.

And we found a blues club in Durham that really brings it.

Let's join Rick Sullivan at the Blue Note Grill.

[blues music playing] - Good, are you coming this way tonight?

All right, I'm gonna sign you up now.

- [Reporter] It's a blues jam night at Blue Note Grill.

Kinda like a pickup basketball game.

- Pretty much.

It's like, hey who's hosting?

You know, and I tell them me or Gabe, or whatever.

And they're like all right, I'll be there in five minutes.

So I'll be there at around eight.

- [Reporter] You've been playing here for some time.

Tell me what you enjoy about coming here, what keeps you coming back.

- I don't know, it's a good community, man.

It's kinda hard to find.

I've been in a bunch of different states and checked out whatever blues jams they have, but we've got a good community.

[playing blues music] - It's an awesome atmosphere, lovely people.

The staff, you meet awesome musicians.

[playing blues music] - It's the longest running blues jam in the Triangle.

We've been doing it since 2010, 2011.

- [Reporter] And doing it well.

Bill Whittington had no idea where his investment in Blue Note Cafe might take him.

It's been a rockin' ride, sometimes literally.

- [Bill] What kinda makes us unique is that folks come here for the music, you know, the band isn't a fly on the wall.

They're not playing while everybody's going about their own business.

They're here to see the music, listen to the music, and dance to the music.

- Everybody is here just to hear good music, eat food, enjoy the atmosphere.

And that's what we're about.

[playing blues music] - [Reporter] Blue Note Cafe has a variety of music possibilities that play out on various nights of the week, but usually, you'll hear something bluesy woven into every show.

♪ Turn it around ♪ ♪ Bringing our song ♪ - [Reporter] On this night, the blues is jammin'.

- The folks who wanna play come in, they sign up on a list.

Our coordinator/MC puts a band together, so you'll have a drummer, two guitar players, a bass player, harmonica player, if we have one.

Put 'em up here, and they work together what they're gonna play.

They do three songs.

And then when they do their three songs, they sit down, and another group comes up.

- [Reporter] While the beat goes on, the dancing never stops.

And neither does the food service.

The popular barbecue and ribs keep things so busy that Bill is frequently called to action.

It's hard work, and that's fitting.

The whole operation has a blue collar every man and woman kinda feel.

And it's located down the third base line of old Durham Bulls' athletic park, for crying out loud.

When Bill was looking for a new location back in 2015, he knew he wanted an old time feel, like a Memphis, or New Orleans vibe.

- And it was an old machine shop.

It had everything I wanted.

It was greasy, it was dusty, it was dirty, it was brick.

- [Reporter] It was perfect for what Bill wanted.

And for more than a decade, the beer, barbecue, and blues here is still knocking it out of the park five nights a week.

- The Blue Note Grill is at 709 Washington Street in Durham, and they're open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. To find out who's playing the blues that night or to order food, give them a call at 919-401-1979.

Or go online to thebluenotegrill.com.

[gentle upbeat music] Here at the Mitford Museum, visitors can leave a message for Jan right here on the blackboard, and she reads every single one of them.

We've had a fantastic time here at the Mitford Museum in Hudson, and it's a beautiful place to visit if ever you're in the area.

And if you've missed anything in tonight's show, remember you can always watch us again online at pbsnc.org, and you can also find us on our YouTube channel.

Have a great "North Carolina Weekend", everyone.

[bright music] ♪ [bright music continues] [soft music] - [Announcer] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches.

You're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[piano outro]