Foolin’ Around: Silas Albright & Lightnin’ Wells collaborate on music podcast
When a legendary musician who has earned the nickname of “Lightnin’” joins forces with a young Happy Appy grad who cut his teeth at the peak of Pitt County, surrounded by music and memorabilia, the summer sky is bound to light up while the ground shakes with rumbling. Silas Albright, the progeny of R.A. Fountain General Store owners Alex and Elizabeth Albright, and Mike “Lightnin’” Wells started a music podcast they call “Foolin’ Around with Lightnin’ Wells.” With two apostrophes in the title, it jumps off the page with subtextual hints that (a) they are proud of their Southern heritage and aren’t ashamed to drop a consonant to prove it, and (b) while they explore meaningful music content, they aren’t going to take themselves too seriously. They clearly want their listeners to enjoy a frolic through the lesser known backstories of the under-appreciated red-headed stepchild of an instrument, the ukulele, in episode one, and the newgrass pioneer Frank Greathouse of the New Deal String Band who, among his many claims to fame, we learn has eleven toes, in episode two.
“Having more free time after leaving my full-time journalism job and moving back home, I thought it would be an interesting thing to do,” Albright said. “I’m very interested in the artistic community here. My parents have kind of exposed me to that all my life, but I had to come back here as a more mature person to be interested in it in the way that I am now, I think.”
Albright has known Wells his whole life, he said, and has loved listening to him tell stories and talk about whatever he likes. So he brought up the podcast idea and Wells loved it.
Graduating in 2021 with a major in communication, journalism focus, this isn’t Albright’s first foray into the podcast arena.
“I had a podcasting class that I really enjoyed,” Albright said. “It’s very different from written journalism because you hear the person’s voice, which is so unique. I just really like the way you could connect with it and working with the technology was kind of nice. It’s very different than writing. Easier in a way, not having to create your own sentences, but more difficult too, because you don’t really have that freedom. You’re just working with what you’ve already got.”
One of his projects at Appalachian was an audio diary where students were challenged to talk about something they enjoyed. Albright chose to go out to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the mountains and record ambient noise of a stream trickling. He talked about how much nature helped him get through the pandemic because everything else had closed. He got outside a lot, hiking and looking at the scenery. His love of nature would find its way back in his life again and again.
When asked how he felt growing up surrounded by the music in his parents’ venue and how it influenced him, Albright said, “It’s hard to put into words. The older I get, the more it means to me for sure. I’m able to understand how unique and special a place it is.”
Photo by Tom Whelan
He remembers being in the back of the store, playing checkers with his mom, not really paying attention to the music. It was just a part of his life as a kid. None of the kids his age listened to bluegrass music, he said, so it took him a while to fully appreciate it.
“I feel like I kind of had to get away from it to come back to it and look at it in the way that I do now,” he said. “I really do love this place and I have been enjoying becoming more involved and meeting the people. I feel strongly that I would like the place to continue existing.”
Now that he’s older, Albright said he loves bluegrass and has a greater appreciation for stringed instruments.
“All the popular music today, a lot of it really is not instruments,” Albright said.“It’s just somebody made a beat and somebody’s singing or talking over it. And I like that music–I have a pretty wide range. But banjo, fiddle, mandolin–that’s stuck in my head forever, like part of my soul, for sure, because of the store.”
Albright recognized in fellow Fountaineer Lightnin’ Wells a treasure trove of musical talent, knowledge and connections with other professional musicians. Wells’ latest CD, released October 2024, has a familiar sounding title. It’s Foolin’ Around. It includes the old time Piedmont bluesman performing vintage tunes on his ukulele from the “golden age of ukulele popularity.” In the first podcast Wells plays some of the songs from this compilation, providing fascinating contextual backstory in his banter with Albright.
In the second episode, Albright and Wells visit Wells’ longtime friend, veteran musician Frank Greathouse, in his home. Albright describes him as the mandolin player and band leader of the New Deal String Band, one of the first hippie bands playing bluegrass–and pioneer of “newgrass”–in the late ‘60s at NC State University. The band members met in the School of Design program and ended up playing at the famous Fillmore East in 1969.
“They played like two weeks before Jimmy Hendrix and a couple weeks after Jethro Tull,” Albright said. ”I mean, they played in December so after the Summer of Love, but like right in the counterculture era.”
Greathouse talks about sharing the stage with Bill Monroe, who was known not to be very open-minded about anything straying from traditional bluegrass, and earning his respect on a fast mandolin number.
At the time of this interview, Albright had just learned he’d be leaving Fountain temporarily for a short-term job opportunity in an internship for emerging conservation professionals called ACE (American Conservation Experience) Epic, a nonprofit partner organization of the National Park Service. He’ll be doing landscaping at two different national parks in the Baltimore area: Fort McHenry, where the Star -Spangled Banner was written, and Hampton National Historic site, a 60 acre former plantation. Albright was excited about the opportunity, but was sad about interrupting the momentum of the podcast, although he has plans to continue it either during visits home or when he returns after the internship.
“I think preserving and documenting anything that Lightnin’ wants to say and share with the public is absolutely worthwhile,” Albright said. “It means a lot to me just to spend time with him and to work on a project is the cherry on top.”
The “Foolin’ Around with Lightnin’ Wells” podcasts can be found on Youtube and most popular podcast platforms.
originally published in the Daily Reflector May 24, 2025
