Alice Zincone

Reinventing Her Musical Self

Alice Zincone Is Reinventing Her Musical Self

One constant in Alice Zincone’s life has been the joy of playing and singing with friends. Her formative years were spent in Greenville and eastern North Carolina, honing her musical skills. She went on to perform with beloved North Carolina educator and bluegrass musician Tommy Edwards, and to cowrite a song recorded by Rhonda Vincent, among other accomplishments.

“Greenville memories that stand out for me,” she said, “are Sunday in the Park, which is one of the places I first heard live music. There was a restaurant called the Pipeline where Billy Stinson played. I remember my father [Buddy Zincone] taking us to dinner when he was playing there–and I remember he and Sandra Stinson playing around town and a lot at Sunday in the Park.” 

Buddy Zincone, an ECU professor, was a renowned banjo picker who also hosted jams at their home and fronted his own local bands, including Greenville Grass.

Alice Zincone continued: “I remember the Green Grass Cloggers, and my mom and dad playing for them a couple of times in tobacco warehouses. My dad taught himself how to play banjo after graduate school, and shortly after moving to Greenville found a jam session over in Tarboro put on by Dr. Peter Temple. So for 40 or more years Daddy was always going to Peter’s house on Wednesday nights, and I went with him on occasion. Through my college years I would go over there a lot. It was really the house party style playing and singing together. I’d rather do that really than perform out. It’s so comfortable for me.” 

While Zincone’s choice of instrument depends on who she is playing with, one of her favorites is
upright bass. She was surprised how quickly she took to it: “I was living in Rocky Mount at the time and I was going to a weekly jam near Wilson at the Bluegrass Barn. I guess I was at one of the pickers’ houses and there was a bass in the corner. There were 3 or 4 guitars–I was playing guitar–so I was like, ‘Will somebody teach me something on the bass?’ The song they were playing was in the key of G, and one of the ways to play the bass in G is open strings without fretting with your left hand. So I started keeping time in that G chord. And when it went to a C chord, I just automatically went up that string and found the C position. And after I found some general chords on it, it really came very naturally to me. I have a really good ear for singing, and singing harmony, so I pretty much eased into it.”

Her upright basses are named Blondie, Ruby, Critter and Phil Roy. Several are antique, including one that belonged to a family friend who passed, and she was asked to be the bass’s “long-term custodian.” She was never deterred by the size of the instrument, noting she has almost always gravitated to driving trucks instead of cars.

“They’re just big,” she said. “They’re not heavy. I can pick it up with one hand. They’re a little bit unwieldy, especially on stairs, so I sometimes get people to help me go up stairs.”

But Zincone has been singing longer than she has been playing bass. She grew up singing three
part harmony with her mom and sister. “We sang together as a family,” she said, “except for my dad. We didn’t let him sing. He’d tell you himself he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. We would play at peoples’ parties and things like that. It was just the Zincone Family Band.”

Zincone earned degrees from ECU in art and metal design and then education, through the years working as an art educator while performing with Carolina Lightnin’, the Bluegrass Experience, the Stationeers, Blind Hog, and various solo, duo and trio configurations.

L to R: Tommy Edwards, Alice Zincone, Rick Lafleur performing as Carolina Lightnin’

Songwriter and musician Tommy Edwards was both a friend and bandmate who died in 2021. Zincone played some of his original songs at his memorial service and continues to include them in her shows.

Zincone & Lafleur pose for the cover of “Moma’s Voice”

In the early 2000s, Zincone and her musical partner, Rick Lafleur, cowrote a song with Rhonda
Vincent that went to #7 on the bluegrass charts. The first time she heard Vincent sing “Last Time Loving You,” it was on the phone. “She called me on the phone and played the recording over her message,” Zincone said. “And she didn’t say a thing. She just let the beginning of the verse play. At first I was just completely baffled as to what this was, and after about 10 seconds it sunk in and I about jumped out of my skin, I was so excited.”

As far as “reinventing her musical self,” as Zincone phrases it, one aspect is joining a clogging group as a dancer.

“I grew up watching the Green Grass Cloggers. I fell in with the Apple Chill Cloggers as a musician and then I moved from Durham to Mebane and the cloggers rehearse in Hillsborough,
so it’s about a 15 or 20 minute drive. It was like a built-in community and social circle to join–not to mention awesome exercise and fun. We wear traditional calico farm dresses. We’re a traditional southern Appalachian percussive dance group.”

Zincone’s other plans include more songwriting and performing in singer/songwriter settings.
She is also stretching beyond genre boundaries.

“I grew up playing and singing bluegrass music,” she said, “but also listening to Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which was more country rock, and Emmylou Harris. My sister liked John Denver,
Olivia Newton-John and Linda Ronstadt. I find Americana music really interesting, and
grass-rock more appealing to a wider audience. At the moment I’m exploring different avenues,
and doing some solo and duo shows to feel out that space and how I feel in that space. The thing
that sticks with me is playing music with friends and having a good time.”

Alice Zincone and Carolina Lightnin’ will be performing at R.A. Fountain General Store, 6754
E. Wilson St Fountain, on June 1st at 7:30pm. 

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Originally published in the Daily Reflector April 4, 2024.