“Well, hey there, family.” It’s the welcome Steve Shell gives at the top of every episode of the hit podcast Old Gods of Appalachia, and he gave it again as he began a live OGOA performance at Knoxville’s Bijou Theatre last Thursday. The air conditioning had gone out that morning, and the Bijou’s staff had tracked down some paper fans at a print shop, giving the room the feel and temperature of a tent revival. But no one was there to be forgiven their trespasses. If anything, this night was about those who had trespassed against them.
Shell and co-creator Cam Collins describe OGOA as an “eldritch horror anthology podcast.” Set in the 1800s and 1900s, it takes place in an alternate Appalachia “where these mountains were never meant to be inhabited.” In this world, the elemental forces of the Dark were bound beneath the mountains eons ago. But some have escaped and are now allied with the railroad and — worst of all — the coal companies. They’re locked in battle with the Green, the creative and generative force embodied by witches, midwives, folk healers, and a bear named Bartholomew (whose arrival on stage, in the form of Dr. Ray Christian, drew one of the loudest ovations of the evening). It’s a world where queer people (meaning strange, but often also meaning Queer) are an essential bulwark against forces that would reduce people to disposable tools for resource extraction and recreational abuse. No wonder the weirdos like it.
Shell has called the early episodes of Old Gods of Appalachia “a love letter-slash-suicide note” to his home. But on Thursday night the suicidality was gone, replaced by a battle cry. Collins, who has written some of OGOA’s scariest episodes, left behind her co-writer persona and took the stage, purple hair and goth as all get out, to lead the crowd in a litany of hexing. Literally; Collins is a self-identified witch, and it was time, she said, to rain down vengeance on the people who had it coming. The boy who called her ugly in middle school; the vice principal who accused her of knowing about a secret graveyard full of sacrificed children; the Tennessee Legislature and Governor Bill Lee; Ron DeSantis; J.K. Rowling; she called their names and 700 people shouted “Hex!”
But here’s the wonderful thing about Old Gods of Appalachia: despite the hexing, the haunting songs, and the stories of supernatural horror, the vibe in the room was one of powerful love. It was the love between people who, in one way or another, have had just about enough. Nerds with d20 shirts, middle-aged goths, lots and lots of Queer women. People who put up with too much in America, especially here in the Bible Belt, but somehow manage to get up and fly their freak flag every day. At the Bijou Theatre, they had each other, and they had Old Gods of Appalachia.
Shell was more officiant than host, standing at a lectern and striking the occasional preacher’s pose. Other voice actors came and went as needed, but Shell was the star. A longtime Moth StorySLAM host and former nationally-ranked slam poet, he delivered flowery narration at top speed, only breaking momentum to perform some of the many characters he voices on the show.
The performance lasted almost three hours, and included new OGOA stories and performances by musical guests Landon Blood, Jacob Danielsen-Moore, and Jon Charles Dwyer. One highlight was a story featuring the Underwoods, a family of powerful Black witches and healers who repeatedly outsmart the racists and dark forces trying to force them off their land. The massive ovation that greeted the Underwoods (voiced by Stephanie Hickling Beckman, Shasparay Irvin, and D.J. Rogers) was a testament to how beloved their characters are, and also to an overwhelmingly White crowd’s eagerness to celebrate the depiction of Black Appalachians. Pretty Polly Barrow also made an appearance, with Tracy Johnston-Crum proving why she’s inspired a sub-reddit devoted to that equally sexy and terrifying character. The final story, itself longer than a typical OGOA episode, centered on Indiana Boggs, a character mostly seen in the Patreon-only story Build Mama A Coffin. Brandon Sartain was fantastic as Indiana, a woodworker doing temp work for the census bureau while still mourning his parents and grandmother. Sartain’s expressions of grief — from stoic reserve to an anguished and furious recitation of his mother’s obituary — were riveting and convincing.
As the story was winding down, we saw Indiana sitting down to a modest, Depression-era dinner of leftover soup beans and cornbread, joined by his cousin, his fiancée, and gentle giant Melvin Blevins. The day’s horrors (every day has horrors in OGOA) were behind them, and Shell told us that the air was filled with the sound of family. At the Bijou Theatre, it certainly was. It was the sound of chosen family, of misfits who have rallied around a strange podcast because they know how much of it is true. They might not believe in the haints and boogers of the woods, but they damn well stand against the Dark in our actual, non-alternate Appalachia. They stay here because this is home, and there is still so much to love. They insist that they belong, and they refuse to hand over their identity to any preacher, governor, or corporation that wants tell them who they are, or what it means to be Appalachian.
