Appalachia’s Recovery Luthier: Doug Naselroad
Doug Naselroad: Building Instruments to Recover from Floods and Addiction in Appalachia
The way Doug Naselroad sees it, “Recovery from a substance abuse disorder is not that different than recovery from a catastrophic disaster. It's a work that you're going to be doing for the rest of your life.” That understanding energizes Doug’s work helping people recover from addiction by teaching them to build stringed instruments.
Doug lives in the small town of Hindman, Kentucky, which on July 28, 2022 was all but destroyed after severe rains caused the Troublesome Creek to rise into a thousand year flood. We heard Doug in a news interview as he stood in four feet of water trying to save 100-year-old instruments from rushing downriver, and it resonated that in the midst of utter disaster, people were working to recover instruments of song, of story, of Appalachian history, all the while holding on to hope.
Listen
Explore
- Troublesome Creek Guitars
- Appalachian School of Luthiery
- Appalachian Artisan Center and the Culture of Recovery
- Listen next to Landing a Life Changing Job Out of Prison and Addiction with Kyle Wedge, Hope Is My Middle Name, season 3 episode 4
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Thanks
Hosted and executive-produced by Kate Tucker, Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media produced in association with Reasonable Volume.
This episode was produced by Christine Fennessy with editing from Rachel Swaby. Sound design and mixing from Mark Bush. Music from Epidemic Sound, Soundstripe, and Kate Tucker. Big thanks to Conor Gaughan, publisher and CEO of Consensus Digital Media.