Montana Hobbs
Montana Hobbs is an old-time banjo player, singer and songwriter from Lee County, Kentucky, and one half of the Local Honeys, the duo she formed with Linda Jean Stokley. In 2015 the two became the first women to earn a Bachelor of Arts from the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music at Morehead State University, and Hobbs has since specialized in the banjo styles of southeastern Kentucky.
She grew up in Little Sinkin, in Lee County, in a community that gave her an early love of music and storytelling. At Morehead State she studied string music and songwriting, and she and Stokley graduated in traditional music in 2015. Among the Kentucky musicians the two have named as influences are Roscoe Holcomb, Art Stamper, John Morgan Salyer, Clyde Davenport, Tom T. Hall and George Gibson. In 2017 Hobbs held a Kentucky Arts Council folk apprenticeship under the Floyd County banjo player John Haywood, concentrating on southeastern Kentucky styles, and in 2024 she was named a South Arts Emerging Traditional Artist.
In the Local Honeys she plays banjo while Stokley plays guitar and fiddle. After Little Girls Actin’ Like Men and The Gospel (November 2019), their self-titled album came out on La Honda Records on 15 July 2022, produced by Jesse Wells of Tyler Childers’s band the Food Stamps. Hobbs wrote several of its songs: “Better Than I Deserve,” built on her grandfather’s answer whenever he was asked how he was; “The Ballad of Frank and Billy Buck”; and “If I Could Quit,” about the opioid epidemic in Appalachia. The duo has toured with Tyler Childers and Colter Wall, and in 2025 it released “Darlin’ Don’t You Know That’s Wrong” and “The Space Girl’s Song” on Soli Doli Records.
Hobbs also teaches. She has taught banjo at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, and the duo leads workshops on Kentucky fiddle and banjo styles, singing and songwriting.
