Join us for an afternoon of music and reading from J.D. Wilkes of the Legendary Shack Shakers! He'll play a few tunes and talk about his debut fiction novel, The Vine That Ate The South. Wilkes is an American musician, visual artist, author, filmmaker and self-proclaimed "southern surrealist." Throughout his prolific career in Southern Gothic and Americana music he has recorded with Merle Haggard, John Carter Cash, Mike Patton, Hank Williams III, and Charlie Stamper, and earned the “best frontman” title from Rolling Stone at the Americana Music Association Festival. His extensive fieldwork in Kentucky social music and dance history resulted in the books Barn Dances and Jamborees Across Kentucky and the documentary Seven Signs. He follows those projects up with his first novel The Vine That Ate the South, featuring a protagonist on a Homeric voyage through a haunted corner of western Kentucky, where vampire cults and kudzu roam wild and time is immaterial.