Presley Barker

Presley Barker is a guitarist from Wilkes County in the North Carolina foothills, an area with deep roots in old-time and bluegrass string band music. He began playing as a young child and drew early attention on the bluegrass contest circuit for his flatpicking, a right-hand-driven style in which fiddle tunes and dance melodies are played as single-note lines on the guitar.

His playing stays close to that traditional repertoire — breakdowns, reels and older country songs — and he has since worked as a bandleader and singer as well as an instrumentalist, performing alongside other players from the same regional tradition.