Mike Cross

Mike Cross ranks among folk music’s most dynamic live acts. From the first number through the final selection, he unleashes a high-octane blend of comic numbers, tender ballads, Will Rogers-style yarns, Delta blues, and fiddle pieces drawn from Appalachian and Celtic sources. Onstage he moves without pause between fiddle and both six-string and twelve-string acoustic guitars.

Until his junior year at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Cross showed scant interest in music. Raised in rural Tennessee, a region celebrated for its storytellers and songwriters, he had devoted himself since age ten to golf. A sudden snowstorm left him stranded overnight in a friend’s dormitory, where the roommate’s guitar instruction enabled him to learn chords and several early songs within two days. Though he later spent two years in law school, music steadily claimed more of his attention. One of his first originals, “Yo Down Fiddler,” received its initial exposure on CBS’s The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

His opening three albums—Child Prodigy, The Bounty Hunter, and Born in the Country—secured his place on the Southern folk circuit. Steve Burgh, named Rolling Stone’s producer of the year in 1980, oversaw the fourth release, Rock ’n’ Rye. The concert set Live & Kickin’ appeared the following year.

Most of the attention Cross has received stems from his humorous material, which lampoons Southern hillbilly life in songs such as “Mountain Mean,” “Liquor in the Well,” “Rocky Top Bar-B-Que,” and “Elma Turl.” “The Scotsman,” recounting what a Scotsman wears beneath his kilt, was recorded by Bryan Bowers and regularly featured on the Doctor Demento radio program. Fourteen of his most comedic pieces were gathered on the 1994 compilation Creme de la Cross: Best of the Funny Stuff.

Not every composition aims for laughter, however. The Dirt Band performed “Leon McDuff” as the theme for Farm Aid; “Twelve Disciples” has served Sunday schools as a mnemonic for the Apostles; and “Not for the Love I Can Take” stands as a romantic masterpiece.