Linda Jean Stokley

She grew up on her family’s land in central Kentucky, near the orchard her grandfather and great-uncle owned. She started on drums at eight and moved to guitar and bass, and she went to Morehead State to play jazz. In 2009, while she was in the university’s jazz band, she met Jesse Wells, the archivist and instructor at its Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, and within a week he was teaching her the fiddle. She went on to work at the center, and with her key to its archive she and Hobbs spent their evenings there searching out old Kentucky songs. After six years of study she graduated with Hobbs in 2015.

The Local Honeys’ first album, Little Girls Actin’ Like Men, was recorded after the two returned from a trip to Ireland and was out by August 2016; at the time she was also teaching private lessons and at the Central Music Academy. The Gospel followed in 2019, and in February 2021 La Honda Records released their double single of “Dying to Make a Living” and “Octavia Triangle,” songs about coal mining recorded in Huntington, West Virginia. Their third album, The Local Honeys (La Honda, 15 July 2022), was produced by Wells and was their first with drums and electric instruments; Stokley wrote and sings its closing song, “Throw Me in the Thicket (When I Die),” which draws on her family’s farm. By then the duo had opened for Tyler Childers and Colter Wall.