JUST KEEP PLAYING: RON SOWELL’S LIFE IN SONGS, STAGES, AND STAYING ENGAGED

by Michael Goldmill

He can still picture it:

He’s a kid in the hallway of the family’s home, listening to the harmonies floating out of the kitchen. His dad’s barbershop quartet is rehearsing. He’s not in the room, not yet, but he’s hooked.

Ron Sowell, a Texas native who grew up in New Mexico, now calls West Virginia home. Over the decades, he’s been a college-circuit troubadour, a founding member of two beloved regional bands, and a musical mainstay of the NPR radio show Mountain Stage for nearly 1,100 shows. This year he released Dance Till the Music Stops, his fourth solo album and eighth overall. At every turn, his guiding principle has been simple: stay engaged.

“A journalist once asked me if I had plans to retire,” he says. “Well, for artists, our avocation and our vocation are the same thing. So, if I retire, what…I’ll have more time to play music? That’s what I do now!”

Ron recalls a moment from his childhood – a neighbor’s brother, from out of town, stopped by one day and played guitar.

“I was transfixed.”

His mother rented him a guitar for three months and found him a teacher. When the rental period ended, she made it clear this wasn’t optional.

“She said, ‘I paid for the guitar. I paid for the lessons. You’re doing it,’” Ron says with a laugh. “So I started practicing about five hours a day.”

He devoured the harmonies of the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary. He learned the Travis-picking style, and the first song he truly mastered was Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind.” He formed high-school folk and rock groups, studied political science in college, but found himself pulled toward the road.

After graduation, Sowell toured the college coffee-house circuit. A booking in Wheeling, West Virginia, led to visiting friends near Huntington. He decided to stay.

There, Ron formed the Putnam County Pickers, a group that played festivals, toured, and became part of the state’s folk fabric. Later came Stark Raven: nine years, two albums, and even more road miles logged.

Eventually, in Charleston, West Virginia (in Ron’s back yard, incidentally), a once-a-month live radio show called Mountain Stage launched with a simple premise: five acts in front of an audience, backed (when needed) by a house band.

For Ron, it became a musical home base.

“I’ve gotten to play with all the best musicians on the planet.”

The numbers are staggering—41 years and almost 1,100 shows—but the moments that stick are smaller and stranger.

There was the day folk legend Mike Seeger came by for a show. Sowell was in a dressing room, “messing around on the ukulele,” when Arlo Guthrie knocked on the door and asked, “‘Can I play too?’” They ended up in “dueling ukuleles” until showtime.

His new album, Dance Till the Music Stops, is, in his own words, “the best work I’ve ever done.” It features Kathy Mattea, members of the Mountain Stage band, and harmonies by his daughter, Mira Stanley. The title came from a conversation with a high school friend, who had Alzheimer’s.

“He said, ‘I guess I’ll just dance till the music stops,’” Ron recalls. The phrase landed hard. “It just grabbed me. I thought—there’s a song.”

The album also holds deeply personal pieces. “Out There in the Hall” goes back to those childhood barbershop rehearsals, the doorway between listening and belonging. His songwriting process, he says, often begins with overheard lines or passing thoughts that spark melodies.

Sowell’s through-line is not nostalgia, though, but presence.

“I wake up every morning, grateful for my health, grateful for my marriage, grateful for my music,” he says. “I’m thankful to be able to play and write.”

That gratitude fuels his resistance to the idea that art has an expiration date. He points to Australian dancer and author Eileen Kramer, who wrote her final book at 108 years old, who said, “I’m not old. I’ve just been around for a long time.”

For Ron, it’s not just a clever line—it’s a way to live.

“Aging is inevitable,” he says with a smirk in his voice. “Getting old is optional.”

As long as the music’s still playing, he plans to be part of it. And maybe, years from now, someone will remember hearing it the way he did—standing just outside the kitchen, harmony spilling into the hall.