Sparky and Rhonda Rucker

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker deliver an uplifting presentation of toe-tapping songs spiced with humor, history, and tall tales. They play old-time blues, Appalachian music, slave songs, spirituals and originals, and they accompany themselves with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, old-time banjo, blues harmonica, piano, spoons, and bones. Rhonda is also an author, and her recent novel, Welcome to Bombingham, is set against the backdrop of the Birmingham Children’s March during the civil rights movement.

Over decades of performing, Sparky and Rhonda have performed at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as NPR’s On Point, Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and Morning Edition. Their CD, Treasures & Tears, was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their music is on the Grammy-nominated anthology, Singing Through the Hard Times. The duo’s most recent recording is Down by the Riverside. Check out their website at sparkyandrhonda.com.