After half a century, the Corndrinkers are still pickin’ and pluckin’ on Yellow Springs and area stages and radio waves. From left are Doug Smith (guitar), Barbara Kuhns (fiddle), Linda Scutt (fiddle), Tom Duffee (banjo) and Al Turnbull (bass). The old-time string band will mark the anniversary with a special live performance on 91.3 WYSO this Sunday evening. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
The Corndrinkers cheers to 50 years of old-time tunes
- Published: September 28, 2026
There’s no telling the number of do-si-does, promenades and swings the Corndrinkers have seen over the last half-century. To this day, the five-piece string band’s calendar is chock full of square dances and folk festivals, small-town gigs and unplugged jams.
It’s been a heck of a run, the band told the News, but even after 50 years of playing together, the Corndrinkers have no plans to stop goin’ round and round.
This year marks the golden anniversary for the homegrown, old-time country band. Since 1976, the band — composed of Barbara Kuhns and Linda Scutt on fiddle, Doug Smith on guitar, Tom Duffee on banjo and Al Turnbull on bass — has plucked and picked on countless Yellow Springs and area stages and radio waves.
Last month, on the back porch of Duffee and Scutt’s rural Springfield home, the News had to ask: “How’s it feel to play in a band for 50 years?”
“Well, it just feels good to be alive!” Turnbull laughed.
Smith added: “It’s hard to say. We reached a goal that we never really had. We’ve just been going along, doing our thing, not trying to get anywhere in particular. You know, just playing music.”
“And we’ve made a whole lot of friends along the way,” Scutt said.
Kuhns, Scutt, Smith, Duffee and Turnbull are the original Corndrinkers lineup. Occasionally, Floyd Alexander fills in on bass. Independently trained musicians of various backgrounds and pedigrees, the gang was drawn together in the mid-’70s, Dayton area music scene by a shared affinity for “old-timey” tunes — particularly those of the “Golden Age” of American country music in the 1920s and ‘30s, with the famed Carter Family Band chief among their shared influences.
“We sort of got brought together by two institutions,” Duffee explained. “One was 91.3 WYSO, which was programming a lot of rural country and bluegrass music at the time, and which was having a weekly jamboree and barn dance in Dayton that got broadcast every Wednesday night.”
That was at the Living Arts Center in Dayton — an innovative arts education and cultural enrichment program through the city’s public schools that was active through the late ‘60s into the ‘70s. At the Living Arts Center were formal and informal “jam sessions” — some of which were broadcast via WYSO and others that would happen in the parking lot.
The other institution Duffee raised that glued the group together was the Fraley Festival of Traditional Music — a Kentucky-based old-time, folk, country and western swing music festival that the Corndrinkers have gone to for the last 50 years; since 2001, Kuhns has been the director and primary organizer for the festival.
Back to the ‘70s: Between the parking lot jams and the festivals in the south, the five pickers coalesced first as friends, then as a band — the Corndrinkers formed.
The name, they said, is a general nod to old southern affinities for corn whiskey and moonshine. More specifically, it’s an homage to the Fruit Jar Drinkers, an old-time string band of the ‘20s formed by Uncle Dave Macon, an early star of the Grand Ole Opry.
Duffee said the late ‘70s was a particular cultural moment that he described as “quite nurturing” for a band that wanted to play rural music from 50 years before.
Beyond WYSO having a great deal more country programming back then for enthusiasts like them to “plug into” — as listeners and disc jockeys themselves — Duffee pointed to bigger forces at work that attracted them to the more “old-timey” genre.
He said the broader midcentury “back-to-the-land” movement spurred counterculturals like him and his bandmates to search for meaning and uncover their preferred roots in a direction away from a culture that, as they saw it, tended toward urban, suburban and consumption writ large. And the plucky and folksy sounds of Appalachia made a fine soundtrack for that “do-it-yourself” ethos, he said.
The Corndrinkers aren’t total Luddites, though. They’ve released two full-length CDs over the years: a self-titled, 19-song album in 1997 and then the 18-track “The Corndrinkers Still” in 2009. By their own admission, they’re still trying to figure out the ins and outs of more modern-day streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify.
Digital spaces have never been the Corndrinkers’ scene anyway — as Turnbull said, they prefer the kind of “immediate feedback” that live performances and dances provide, and what they feel is true to the musical tradition.
“There’s just this joy when people are dancing to what we’re playing,” he said. “I’m sure all musicians feel that way.”
Scutt added: “And, when you’re playing the same thing over and over, watching the dancers can bring you back into what you’re playing. It can get repetitive otherwise.”
Despite these trappings of playing some songs over and over, year after year, the group agreed: it’s never gone stale. Playing music together as a group is still, at its core, fun.
Each musician is still bringing new tunes to their regular rehearsals — though, “new” may be a misnomer, as they’re still uncovering country tunes from the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s that make their hearts and strings soar. As Kuhns pointed out, “99.99%” of all Corndrinker tunes played live at events, dances or otherwise aren’t originals — but they’re not exactly covers either.
“No song is ever played the same,” she said, adding that these past five decades have led to an intra-band comfort and familiarity — which in turn allows for quick improvisation and easy call-and-response soloing.
“She [Kuhns] and I just naturally take turns doing rhythm and melody on fiddle,” Scutt said.
Following this weekend’s back-to-back Corndrinker presentations in Yellow Springs, locals can look forward to more of that down-home variety next month — and for a good cause.
The Corndrinkers are playing 2–4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 25 in the Mills Lawn gymnasium as a benefit for the Yellow Springs Senior Center. Tickets are $25 for adults, $5 for youth and square dancers 12 and under are admitted for free. Tickets can be purchased at the door or ahead of time at the Senior Center.
To dancers and listeners past, present and future, the Corndrinkers offer their humble gratitude.
“Thanks,” Turnbull said. “There have been a lot of folks that we didn’t know before who we know now. It’s been fun.”
Duffee added: “And in large part, it’s been thanks to WYSO. We’re such believers in community radio. Community is what has always been important to us, and as a community, we were a part of a generation that came out of a certain era serving a particular community. We’re proud to have been a part of that — we reached out to WYSO, and as a band and programmers, were able to reach out to a wider community.”
On a final note, Smith added: “Just don’t call us a bluegrass band.”
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