Patrick County, where the Piedmont Plateau meets the Blue Ridge Mountains, was settled in Revolutionary times and has long been a deeply musical place. The county is named for Patrick Henry, a fiddler, and its county seat, Stuart, is named for General J.E.B. Stuart, a string band leader, singer, and Confederate cavalry officer who was killed in battle at age 31; famed minstrel banjoist Sam Sweeney played in Stuart’s band and also died during the war. Nine local families of German, English, Ulster Irish, and African-American origins have produced a great number of musicians over two centuries and continue to sustain a remarkably durable string band tradition in Patrick County, where jam sessions and concerts are frequent. Nearby are the Pinnacles of Dan, Lover’s Leap, Mabry Mill, two of Virginia’s few remaining covered bridges over the Smith River near Woolwine, and J.E.B. Stuart’s home at Ararat near the North Carolina border. This area is part of the Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, a route through southwest Virginia where historically isolated communities preserved old time mountain music, bluegrass, and gospel by passing traditions through musical families to appreciative communities, and where festivals, concerts, radio shows, jam sessions, museums, musicians, venues, and fretted instrument makers continue to keep that heritage alive.