The U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum is celebrating its 20th year with one eye on the past and the other on the future.
The museum was built with federal money secured by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers along with coal severance funds and had its grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 5, 2005. Country music legends Crystal Gayle and Tom T. Hall, both of whom have exhibits at the museum honoring their accomplishments, were among those who attended the event.
Twenty years later, the museum attracts between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors a year, according to Paintsville Tourism Executive Director Jeremiah Parsons.
"It's really a place to celebrate the folks that come from the Country Music Highway, U.S. 23," Parsons said. "U.S. 23 begins in Mackinaw City, Michigan, and goes all the way south to Jacksonville, Florida. Our portion in Kentucky begins in Greenup and goes to Jenkins, where the Kentucky/Virginia border is."
The museum is home to 14 exhibits that celebrate the lives and careers of country music singers who are from counties along U.S. 23.
"The memorabilia that is in there is all authentic," Parsons said. "It's donated by the artist or their family. We don't purchase anything. We have everything from Chris Stapleton's boots and jacket and guitar to Loretta Lynn's hand-painted shoes to her Kentucky Music Hall of Fame inductee trophy. We've got Hylo Brown's jacket in there. We've got Tom T. Hall's upright bass that's third generation, passed down through the family."
The museum also houses two "very nice dresses" that Lynn wore, an outfit that Kenny Rogers gifted to Rebecca Lynn Howard, the blue dress that Naomi Judd wore every night on The Judds' farewell tour, the shirt Billy Ray Cyrus wore during the filming of his "Achy Breaky Heart" music video and a script from his "Doc" television series.
The museum also has a wall that features country music singers George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker and Josh Turner, all of whom had hit songs written by Stapleton.
But the U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum is more than just a place to honor locals who became famous, Parsons said. The venue also has a Great Room, where "we can continue to celebrate the heritage and continue to train musical artists that are coming up," he said.
Every Thursday night, the museum hosts Front Porch Pickin', a live bluegrass, gospel and country music show that welcomes local singers of all ages.
"It's really a good place to continue to grow music in the area and to showcase music in the area," Parsons said. "Plus, the Great Room is also a really good venue to have weddings, meetings, different events."
A feasibility study is underway to expand the museum as well as the Great Room, which has a capacity of 225 but exceeds that number during the summer with Front Porch Pickin', Parsons said.
"In the summertime, we reach that capacity and have to go out to the foyer and to the side porches," he said.
Parsons said the Great Room would be doubled in size under the expansion proposal to accommodate events with 400 to 500 people in attendance.
"We do that because there's an opportunity for Paintsville to be able to go after some of the smaller statewide meetings," he said. "We'd like to be able to do that, but we don't have a space that could hold all those people right now."
Exhibit space would also be expanded under the proposal.
"What we would like to see is the museum space itself expanded so that we could add more exhibits. We would like to have about 23 exhibits right now. That would include space for us to have traveling exhibits as well. We want to partner with other museums across the country bringing exhibits in."
The expansion would also include classrooms for music lessons, he said.
An event to celebrate the museum's 20th birthday is being planned for later in the year, Parsons said.
