“Carolina in the Fall” is Uwe Kruger’s song, according to his brother Jens. It comes from Uwe’s first visit to the United States, to perform at MerleFest in 1997, and Jens has said Uwe hesitated to record it at first. When he wrote it he was not sure he would ever return, and he feared the trip might not live up to his expectations. The Kruger Brothers — Jens on banjo, Uwe on guitar and lead vocal, and Joel Landsberg on bass — put it first on their 2002 album Up 18 North (Double Time).
The singer has been wandering since he left home at fifteen. He has seen sunsets on the ocean, deserts in bloom and highways under the prairie moon, and he says the picture he returns to is the color of the leaves in Carolina in the fall. He says he has played “the songs that Doc has taught to me” for thirty years, and that the things Doc sang about, were things he never thought he would see. In the hills of Carolina, he sings, people have opened their door to him: “for the first time in my life I’m not a stranger anymore.” Jens says the lyric is not only metaphor. At that first MerleFest, Doc Watson invited the Krugers to his home to play music, and his wife fed them.
The Krugers moved to Wilkes County, North Carolina, from Switzerland in 2002, the year the album came out. The song is now regarded as a signature song for the group, and it gave its name to the Carolina in the Fall Music and Food Festival that they host each year in Wilkesboro. In 2015 the group and Wilkes County tourism promoters released a music video of the song with scenes of the county’s fall color.
