Article Contributed by Gratefulweb
Published on 2026-09-11
Asheville, NC — Singer-songwriter Miriam Allen will release “Queen of Buncombe County,” a new single born out of years spent tracking Appalachia’s disappearing wilderness and watching the toll of deforestation on the land she loves. The song will be available on streaming platforms beginning September 25.
Allen wrote the track after the Hemlock Restoration Initiative, an organization she volunteers with treating hemlock trees across Western North Carolina, asked her to contribute something about trees and their relationship to storm damage for a feature on the group’s backwoods volunteers. What began as a request for an article turned into a song about deforestation, flooding and loss.
“If early settlers hadn’t deforested the valleys and hills, we would have actually lost LESS trees during Hurricane Helene, the flooding would have been infinitely less destructive, and that is just simple math & basic biology,” Allen said. “One old growth oak can drink up to 300 gallons of water a day. Old growth tree stands break the wind. Cut them down, and millions of gallons of water run downhill and flood the valleys, and the wind picks up speed in the cleared-out valleys in the form of ‘wind funnels.’ I sail & sleep in remote coves on Appalachian lakes, and these wind funnels are powerful and scary.”
The song arrives as Allen and other advocates raise objections to a National Park Service hazardous-fuel removal project along portions of the Blue Ridge Parkway and a federal proposal to rescind the U.S. Forest Service’s 2001 Roadless Rule.
The National Park Service says its project is intended to remove concentrated dead and downed vegetation left by Hurricane Helene in areas identified as presenting elevated wildfire and public-safety risks. The proposed Roadless Rule change would remove nationwide restrictions on road construction and timber harvesting in designated areas, though it would not itself authorize individual logging or construction projects. The Forest Service says the change would give local managers greater flexibility, while opponents have raised concerns about potential effects on wildlife habitat, waterways and undeveloped forests.
“About 83% of Appalachian forests have been cleared or logged already,” Allen said. “We cannot afford to lose ANY MORE Appalachian trees. One old growth oak tree can store tons of CO2. It takes two mature oaks to provide one day’s oxygen for one person. The life that one tree holds is immeasurable. I recently backpacked over the rim of the Black Mountains just to track the last of the hermit thrush who nest in the higher elevations. They may not survive the NPS’s tree removal up there. I’m glad I heard them while I could. Just writing this, I’m ready to head back out into the woods and hide for a while and enjoy it while I can. I feel powerless to stop it. My tears feel pointless. I hope someone listens to this song.”
Miriam is known for her diversity in musical styles; a solo set can travel from avant-garde to honky-tonk to Latin in the span of an evening, and her stages have ranged from MerleFest to Salmonfest to the Festival Río Cuale in Puerto Vallarta. But on “Queen of Buncombe County,” she narrows her focus, staying in the all-acoustic singer-songwriter tradition that first earned her recognition as a finalist in the John Hartford Songwriting Contest and the Asheville Brown Bag Competition.
The result is a true Appalachian roots sound: stripped-down, story-driven and unmistakably tied to the mountain music of Asheville and Western North Carolina, the same region whose forests and rivers inspired the song.
The track was written and arranged by Allen, who also plays guitar and sings lead vocals. She is joined by Lindsay Pruett on violin, Trevor Stoia on upright bass, Evan Martin on drums and percussion, and Jenny Bradley on backing vocals.
Listen to “Queen of Buncombe County”
Miriam Allen is a songwriter whose work refuses to stay in one lane. A notable performer in her own right, she has opened for icons including Tim O’Brien, Doc Watson, Del McCoury and Las Estrellas de América—both solo and fronting a range of bands. Her music has carried her across the Western Hemisphere, from MerleFest in North Carolina to Salmonfest in Alaska and the Festival Río Cuale in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
A Miriam Allen solo show is its own small ecosystem: vocals, guitar, fiddle and foot stomp, with a setlist that can travel from avant-garde to honky-tonk to Latin in the span of an evening. That range has earned recognition as well as applause—she has been a finalist in both the John Hartford Songwriting Contest and the Asheville Brown Bag Competition.
But Miriam’s songs have always reached beyond the stage. A passionate advocate for minority communities, she organized The Resilience Festival in 2023 to fund therapeutic services for survivors of sexual assault and expand mental health resources across her community. In September 2025, she followed it with the Pathway to Citizenship show in Asheville, North Carolina, raising money for immigrant legal protections and distributing educational materials. That same spirit shows up in her daily work as a music therapist, where she brings empathy and joy to residents of group homes for people with physical and mental disabilities.
Offstage, Miriam is a dedicated naturalist. She has backpacked more than 1,000 miles through the Andes, the Rockies and the Appalachians, and has spent hundreds of days and nights alone in remote Appalachian coves, observing wildlife from her anchored sailboat. She has volunteered with the Hemlock Restoration Initiative to treat hundreds of hemlock trees across Western North Carolina and has translated biological and educational materials into Spanish for the region’s Hispanic community.
Her two callings, music and care, meet again and again. She wrote a song for the award-winning film Coyote, about the hardships immigrants endure in leaving their homelands for safer, more secure lives. In the final weeks of President Jimmy Carter’s life, she wrote a song that was played for him: a thank-you to a great humanitarian and environmentalist.
An obsessive, lifelong songwriter, Miriam Allen is devoted to giving a voice and a stage to those who too often have neither. Whether it’s the victim of a crime, an injured raccoon, a non-native speaker or an aphid-infested hemlock, Miriam shows up the same way: with a song and an open heart.
