Richie Owens Releases New Book: Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines & The Long Journey Home Vol 2
Richie Owens, Nashville-based musician, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for his work fusing his East Tennessee country roots with punk and alternative rock, has released Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines & the Long Journey Home Vol. 2, the second offering in book and music series. Available to purchase online HERE and stream HERE.
Owens continues telling his journey through family stories, mountain legends, songs, hardships, and inherited memories of Southern Appalachia. While Volume One followed the bloodline home across oceans, through old ballads, and into the hollers of East Tennessee, Volume Two travels deeper into the places where family history becomes more complicated and survival often carries a price.
“Volume Two goes a little deeper into the hollers, the bloodlines, and the things families sometimes carry for generations. These aren’t just stories about where I came from, they’re stories about people who worked hard, loved hard, made mistakes, survived floods, wars, poverty, loss, and sometimes each other,” says Owens. “Appalachia has never been as simple as the picture people like to paint of it. There’s beauty here, but there are scars too. I wanted to tell both. If there’s one thing I hope people take away from this book, it’s that our bloodlines may tell us where we came from, but the stories we choose to carry forward are what tell us who we are.”
As someone deeply devoted to preserving this legacy, Owens has drawn from family photographs, old instruments, court records, newspaper clippings, half-remembered conversations, mountain folklore, inherited songs, and the voices of those who lived close enough to the truth to carry its scars. This release is a product of that work, drawing on stories that range from the iconic musical brothers Louis and Bill Owens, who carried their music from East Tennessee radio to Nashville’s publishing companies, to the extraordinary life of trailblazing evangelist Dorothy Jo Owens, and even the telling of Appalachian folk legends.
The complementary album Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines & the Long Journey Home Vol. 2 that carries the book is also available, tying the stories of the chapters into song. Produced by Owens and recorded at Fireside Studios, the album features Owens on lead vocals and acoustic guitar alongside longtime collaborators Bob Ocker and Joe Sharp, as well as Paul Hollowell, Andrea Young, and Eric Leckrone, with engineering and mastering by John Constable. All songs are written by Owens, Ocker, and Albert Styles.
See the full tracklisting:
1. Bear Hug (Hoss And Clove) Intro
2. Bear Hug (Hoss And Clove)
3. Daddy’s Martin Intro
4. Daddy’s Martin
5. The Holston Intro
6. The Holston
7. Popcorn Sutton Intro
8. Popcorn Sutton
9. She Loved Him More Intro
10. She Loved Him More
11. The Legend Of Gnatty Branch Intro
12. The Legend Of Gnatty Branch
13. Two Brothers Intro
14. Two Brothers
15. A Rebels Pride Intro
16. A Rebels Pride
17. Tom Intro
18. Tom
19. Sending Me Away Intro
20. Sending Me Away
Appalachia: Ballads, Bloodlines, And The Long Journey Home, Vol. 2 book is now available to online order HERE, and the complementary music offering is available on all major streaming platforms HERE.
ABOUT RICHIE OWENS
Richie Owens is a bandleader, record producer, studio engineer, musician, and instrument designer known for a career built on fusing deep-rooted country tradition with rock and punk innovation. Born in 1960 into a musical family with roots running from Northern Wales to East Tennessee and into Nashville, Owens is the son of Louis Owens, a singer-songwriter and producer who helped launch the career of his niece, Dolly Parton. Coming of age in the 1970s, Owens embraced the punk spirit alongside his country roots, becoming a founding figure of the Nashville punk and alternative rock scene with his bands The Resistors and The Movement, his self-built studio The Refuge, and his label Neo Records. Over the following decades, he has worked with artists including The Georgia Satellites, Social Distortion, Richard Lloyd, The Kentucky Headhunters, Michael Stipe, and Vince Gill. Owens has also produced several Dolly Parton albums, including Hungry Again (1998), Precious Memories (1999), and Smoky Mountain DNA (2024). Owens continues to tour and release music, while being an active steward of the Owens-Parton family legacy, working directly with the family label Owepar Entertainment.
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ABOUT OWEPAR ENTERTAINMENT
Owepar Music was founded in 1967 by Dolly Parton and her uncles Bill and Louis Owens to administer their songwriting business. Over the years Owepar has published songs recorded by artists including Porter Wagoner, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris and many more. In 1973, Owepar opened the state-of-the-art recording facility, Fireside Studios on Music Row and immediately began cutting hits for Merle Haggard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Emmylou Harris, Marty Robbins, Bill Monroe, and many other artists. Active as a publishing company until 1981, and relaunched in 2019, Owepar Entertainment handles a vast collection of legacy recordings and publishes songs by contemporary artists.
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