In 2007, Denise Petrey and her husband, Keith Flynn, purchased the White Rock Presbyterian Church. Built in 1909, the church needed to be moved from the flood plain where it had sat for almost a century. Two years later, a “large truck” and two bulldozers moved the church down the road, the church was re-christened White Rock Hall, and the restoration process began.
There are incredible pictures of the church here, and a more detailed history here.
In October, Flynn launched “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” a YouTube series offering music, poetry, stories, and interviews that seeks to “create collaborations between world-class authors and award-winning musicians, and to capture the performances as they happen.”
View Episode 1 here.
Denise Petrey lives, creates, teaches, and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is a massage therapist in Asheville and blogs at Sacred Fox Transitions.
Serving as lyricist and lead singer from 1986 to 1998, Keith Flynn’s poems were blasted to full effect by the double-barreled sonic accompaniment of The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and Nervous Splendor (2003), an innovative compilation of music and spoken word. Flynn is currently on hiatus with his most recent group, three-man combo, The Holy Men, whose first album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011.
Flynn is also the author of five collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), The Golden Ratio (2007), and Colony Collapse Disorder (2013). His first collection of essays, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing, was published by Writer’s Digest Books in 2007. He is the founder and managing editor of the Asheville Poetry Review.
Future guests on “LIVE at White Rock Hall” will include performances by Patricia Smith, Ron Rash, Robert Morgan, Ten Cent Orchestra, R. B. Morris, and many, many more.