Shannon Wurst makes a mean gravy.
"I'm kind of known amongst my friends as the gravy maker," she says laughing. "It seems to be a trait that men really like if you know how to make gravy."
Outside of the kitchen, Wurst is perfecting another kind of concoction: music.
A guitarist, singer and songwriter, Wurst has spent the last three years pursuing a full-time career in music.
Last summer, she released her first solo album "Sunday Pie," a charming collection of original and traditional Appalachian songs. The album was partially funded through the Regional Artist Project of Northwest North Carolina Grants Program. To further promote the album, Wurst will be touring extensively throughout the South, making a stop Wednesday at The Garage in Winston-Salem.
Wurst grew up in Alma, Ark., the self-proclaimed spinach capital of the world, where the water tower is painted like a can of spinach and residents gather every year for the annual spinach festival. Despite the city's spinach pride, Wurst's family wasn't a huge fan of the leafy, green vegetable.
"We didn't eat a lot of spinach; we preferred broccoli," she says laughing.
What they were a fan of was bluegrass.
Music constantly surrounded Wurst growing up. Her father, Ronnie, played in bands all of Wurst's life, and her stepfather, Ed Carr, is a "tremendous flat picker."
"It's pretty funny because my sweet mother can't really hold a tune, but she has a flavor for musical men, which turned out great for me," Wurst said with a laugh.
Although she says she recalls hating bluegrass music when she was four years old, she developed a love for it through the picking parties her stepdad held at their house.
"The kind of music I play and the way I feel about music is very family oriented," she said. "It comes from porches and picking circles."
That feeling is apparent on "Sunday Pie." Sharing other peoples' stories is at the heart of Wurst's songwriting and the traditionals she covers. Bluegrass provides the perfect vehicle for her to tell those stories.
"It's something that it does to me emotionally," she says. "I just want to listen to it and I want to understand it and the stories about it. So many of the songs are very story-oriented and if you listen to it you can learn a lot of life lessons from it. It's also recording a history … otherwise it gets lost."
Before Wurst settled into a music career, she dabbled in a few different professions, including a dog musher in Vermont. When that didn't work out, she decided on a whim to move to North Carolina in 2005 to immerse herself in bluegrass.
"I just packed up my car and headed down and figured I'd figure the rest out later," she said. "I moved there with the intention … I was going to learn how to become an artist."
The weekend she arrived, she attended MerleFest in Wilkesboro, where she befriended a couple of musicians from Boone, who convinced her to move in with them. Being surrounded by her talented roommates and performing at a weekly gig in Boone helped Wurst develop her musical talent and stage presence, while the arts council grant gave her the extra push she needed to record an album.
It was important to her to return to her roots in Arkansas and record the album with a few family members and longtime family friends, including Ernie Hill, who contributes one of the most endearing tunes on the album: "Labor Pains."
"Ernie Hill is one of those folks who was always in our living room growing up," Wurst said. "He plays a multitude of instruments and he's sort of a word genius. He has influenced me musically."
These days, Wurst continues to be "musically busy" between her solo act and performing with her other band, 3 Penny Acre.
She also jokes that she may give Dolly Parton, whom critics often compare her to, some competition.
"I'm thinking of opening my own amusement park in Arkansas called: Shannon Wood."
Contact Carla Kucinski Seward at 373-7319 or carla@gotriad.com
