Soundwalk

About Soundwalk

Soundwalk combines roving field recordings with an original musical score. Each episode introduces you to a sound-rich environment, and embarks on an immersive listening journey. chadcrouch.substack.com (https://chadcrouch.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Chad Crouch

Category

education · music

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Apr 2022

Latest episode

30 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

131 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   30 Oct 2026

   Sugarlands Soundwalk

   This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com (https://chadcrouch.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7) The Sugarlands take their name from the sugar maple trees on these slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Writer Horace Kephart described the area this way in 1919 letter: I have just returned from a man-hunt in the Sugarlands of Sevier County, Tennessee. The Sugarland Mountain runs northwest from the Smokies between Clingman’s Dome and Mount Le Conte. On its southwestern side is the great gulf that I call “Godforsaken” in Our Southern Highlanders. On the northerly side, which is drained by the headwaters of the Little Pigeon River, is a similar descent, though into a narrower basin, or rather a gorge, exceedingly steep and rocky, gloomy with immense trees that crowd each other, and choked with laurel and other underbrush, fairly impenetrable except where the one lone trail leads down along a brawling torrent. These two basins, and the mountain dividing them, collectively go by the name of Sugarlands. Today, “Sugarlands” is most well known as the busiest gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park; home to a visitors center and the park headquarters just a few miles up the road from Gatlinburg, TN, a Mecca of the Appalachian souvenir economy. While Kephart described the Sugarlands in dark and mysterious tones as a “moonshiners’ paradise” in 1919, within a decade the people who lived there were largely bought out and cleared away for the park. Gatlinburg today sells legally distilled “moonshine” in mason jars to the park’s visitors, and the hills above town are dotted with a few preserved cabins and a mill buildings harkening back to that brief era. The parkway running through the Sugarlands Valley is routinely congested throughout the summer and on weekends. Vehicles crawl along, sounding to the stationary observer like a scanning radio dial; broadcasts of varying energy waft from car windows with a subtle doppler effect as they move along at a kiddie ride pace. About 15 miles to the northeast as the crow flies lies Locust Ridge, the childhood home to Dolly Parton, who remembers the area in a hushed soft focus: In my Tennessee mountain homeLife is as peaceful as a baby's sighIn my Tennessee mountain homeCrickets sing in the fields near by These fables of Appalachia persist today, exerting influence on broader American culture. Both the peaceful childhood and mountain moonshiner narratives may serve as precursors for some of the identity politics that have played out in the last decade. A nostalgia for a simpler time might contribute to a sincere longing to Make America Great Again for example. Behind the appeal of the moonshiner flouting the law for a cause he considers justified is a logic that leads people to accept actions they’d otherwise question. As it turns out, Dolly Parton’s peaceful haven doesn’t take much effort to rediscover. You simply need to get out of the car and start walking away from the road. Soon enough the sounds of Sugarlands reveal themselves to you. As in “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” there are crickets, songbirds, and come nightfall, the glow of fireflies. Though the song also recalls, “on a distant hilltop an eagle spreads its wings”, this turns out to almost certainly be a nostalgic invention, or symbolism. While an eagle might have passed overhead occasionally, the Sugarlands were not then or now eagle habitat. More to the point, eagle populations had plummeted in the 50’s in 60’s due to DDT use in pesticides. They were listed as an endangered species in the continental US in the 60’s, and just 417 known nesting pairs were tallied in 1963. It’s unequivocally a better world for eagles today than it was in Parton’s childhood. You might say America is great again, for eagles, thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1966. There are now over 300,000 bald eagles in the continental US. Meanwhile, the current administration has been systematically rolling back Endangered Species Act protections over the last year. A longing for the past, for a simpler time, a more affordable time, a peaceful time, a time of perceived abundance, is universal. No one political party can lay claim to it, to the exclusion of another. Any good-faith conversation will certainly uncover that when you add it all up, it’s a complicated picture, what is lost and what is gained over time, and why. To keep what we’ve still got it’s going to take cooperation and accountability. One thing I believe—and what keeps me interested in doing this soundwalk work—is that we must strive to nourish our connection to nature; to animals, to plants, to natural systems. If we veer off, disconnected in our hall of mirrors screens, we risk losing sight of our interconnectedness. Ideally this is accomplished firsthand, in the field, whatever that “field” might look like—it needn’t be a national park. But, I’m also receptive to the idea that vicarious exposure—caring about a place you’ve never been to, for example—through storytelling and media is beneficial too. My hope is that the environmental audio in my soundwalks can serve as this kind of tonic, a sort of quencher for the thirst of belonging to a functional ecosystem. Thanks again, for reading and listening. Sugarlands Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services (https://artist.link/chadcrouch) October 30th, 2026. It will be followed by a sequel, Sugarlands Soundwalk II, the following week, Nov. 6th, 2026.

2. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Appalachian Autumn

   I wasn’t sure what to expect from the soundscape of the Smoky Mountains in October. I’d been there in the fall 25 years ago, but my memories were mostly confined to images, and a generalized sense of topography. What I found on return was a soundscape of crickets in the valleys, stridulating in a glacial crescendo—from a murmur in the afternoon to a full-blown cacophony in the gloaming of dusk. This was not new to me. It was the sound early autumn from my childhood, living among fields and orchards on the fringe of suburbia. The soundscape that was truly novel to me, that I’m sharing today, has a little bit of that: the breathing hum of crickets in the early evening. But the real soundmarks come from mammals—squirrels, more plentiful and more active than I can ever recall hearing. This was the sound of peak mast season. What is mast season? Mast was a term that was new to me. It is taken to mean the food that comes from bushes and trees: fruits, nuts, and seeds. “Hard mast” is principally acorns, beech nuts and hickory nuts, here in the Sugarlands, the western foothills of the Great Smokies. A “mast year” is a particularly abundant year for acorn and nut production, and every indication suggests 2025 was a genuine mast year in southern Appalachia. A 2025 article (https://www.journalpatriot.com/opinion/2025-may-turn-out-to-be-a-mast-year/article_133b5b5a-724e-526a-8733-90bab041064d.html) described, “oak production as the heaviest since 2012, with beech crops heavy enough that ground beneath beech trees was ‘littered with hulls... after squirrels feasted.’" I was hearing a squirrel feast! Here in the Sugarlands, hardwoods and oak forest commingle, so there's a lot of mast dropping in a small area. Squirrels get frantic and vocal during the harvest push before winter arrives—chattering, barking, leaf-rustling, and branch-shaking as they work the canopy. It was this abundance, this sense of life in the trees that encouraged me to reach for woodwinds and harmonium-like sounds in my composition. I wanted it to conjure that peace that comes after a hard day’s work feeling. The music bears more than a passing resemblance to my vinyl LP release Wildwood Trail Soundwalk (https://soundofpicture.bandcamp.com/album/wildwood-trail-soundwalk) earlier this year. Both are built up very simply with sets of slowly morphing chords, stacked in equal measure, set in a slow, breathing tempo. I rarely have the conviction that any one album is a good starting place for getting to know my work, but as I listen now and write this, it strikes me that this may at least be more accessible than many others. The music is uncomplicated, warm and reassuring. The sound of humming crickets, the rustle of crisp leaves, the crystalline “kuk-quaa” of squirrels chiming out, all come together in a soothing velvet haze—like the “Smoky” blue air from the faraway mountaintops coming down to settle in the valleys, in the slow transition to nightfall. Thanks for listening and reading along. Appalachian Autumn is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (https://artist.link/listeningspot) Friday, October 16th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe (https://chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Panthertown Valley

   Panthertown Valley is a relatively small 6311-acre wilderness area in Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but far from obscure, as the old promoter’s trick of slapping the label “Yosemite of the East” seems to have piqued interest over the decades. The Yosemite comparison owes itself to the granite features of the mountains that surround the valley. Proto-Half Domes, I guess. These smooth outcrops are a far cry from El Capitan, but they do possess a distinct character. Unlike the tectonic uplift and glacial scouring that happened in Yosemite, these dome faces were the result of magma cooling deep underground before being exposed by millions of years of weathering. If there is any superlative aspect that can be drawn in the comparison, it is that the formation here is much, much older. The granite underlying Panthertown Valley, the Whiteside granitic pluton, was intruded into the earth’s crust approximately 466 million years ago. The granite forming the cliffs and domes of Yosemite Valley was formed just 105 to 85 million years ago. The popular Panthertown Valley Trail to Mac’s Gap Loop is one of the most memorable hikes I’ve ever taken, topographically speaking. Does anybody else catalog wilderness experiences this way—as perceptions of topography? The overwhelming impression this place gives is one of a basin. When you peer down into the valley and scan the horizon, you see what looks like a rim, almost circular in definition. Of course this is not the way hydrology works. Panthertown Creek does not go down a drain in the middle, but slips out through a fold in the hills. The creek does linger though, there in the center. Indeed, Panthertown Valley features a rare high-elevation mountain bog on its valley floor, a wetland ecosystem fed by groundwater seeping from the surrounding granite. While fall paints the trees in shades of yellow umber, Venetian red, cadmium orange and the grasses in Naples Yellow, I couldn’t help but wonder what colors spring brought to the valley floor, festooned as they are with Rosebay Rhododendron and rare Pinkshell Azalea, an endemic shrub native only to a few high-elevation pockets in western North Carolina. Here in the understory Carolina Chickadees and Golden-crowned Kinglets ranged in foraging flocks while Carolina Wrens buzzed as they hopped along the downed wood. The valley was very quiet, enhancing the perception of being acoustically sheltered in a basin—or “cove” as they say in Appalachia—insulated from the sounds that roads invariably bring. This allowed me to appreciate the manifold cricket sounds: they purred, cooed, buzzed and blinked on and off. It was so nice to hear crickets this way: not in a chorus but distributed across the patchy habitat, in conversation with each other. “Halloo over there,” I imagined them saying. I looked toward fuzzier electric piano voices with this in mind, placing them alongside breathy flutes, mirroring the breeze and the cricket textures. I kept it spartan, as is my way. There are moments, if you listen closely, where you really hear the space here: the collective fir trees played by the wind, the dull sound of footsteps on granite, the constellations of cricket hum. My pictures really don’t do it justice. This is not a place that is about one vista, or one waterfall. It’s about exploring its contours, and for me, listening deeply. I found myself pondering time. The long and lonely time that it took for these rocky slopes to become the Yosemite of the East. I tried to picture the solvent action of water in time-lapse carting off the hills. I pictured the forest lifting and falling like the subtle dilation of an animal’s belly, breathing. Along the trail, Schoolhouse Falls proved to be a popular destination. Here one can walk behind the falls. That splotch of red is one such person, taking a picture through the falling water. Somewhere I am a splotch of colored pixels in his digital photo album. The name “Schoolhouse” is literal. There was once a small schoolhouse nearby likely serving the settler and logging camp populations in the early 1900s. Likewise Panthertown Valley is said to have got its name from the abundant Eastern cougar population here. An 1898 Asheville Daily Citizen article (https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068076/1898-04-06/ed-1/seq-2/#words=Panthertown) eulogizing a hunter described the valley vividly: “Bear and deer were very numerous in those days, and almost every night lying around our camp fire, we could hear the panther’s shrill scream over in Panthertown.” Old Joe Dodgins, the article’s subject, reportedly calculated his bear kills year by year, summarizing, “I can’t tell exactly, but I can count up over 300 and think I have killed nearer 400.” Panthertown Valley became the domain of the Moltz Lumber Company beginning in 1916. Moltz then built a 16-mile railroad in the valley and a sawmill in the Lake Toxaway area. Hundreds of workers were hired to peel tanbark from the hemlocks, and others were hired to carry out the logging. During the logging operations, perhaps 100 people had moved into the valley, most probably living in Moltz’s houses. (Dan Pittilo for the Sylva Herald (https://www.thesylvaherald.com/columns/commentary/article_192198fe-b0c2-11e6-adb9-ebabd5ddceae.html)) Land ownership passed from Moltz to Liberty Properties to Duke Energy, finally to The Nature Conservancy in 1989. The concept of a resort development in the valley was entertained in the 1960’s with a man-made lake, golf course and condominiums. The drive to the trailhead revealed a modified modern-day version of this concept, with high-end estate homes sprinkled in an enclave just west of the valley. One arterial bore the name “New Settlers Way”. Thanks again, for reading and listening! If you find yourself in the Blue Mountains, Panthertown Valley is a destination worth the trip. You won’t forget it. Panthertown Valley Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services (https://artist.link/chadcrouch) October 2nd, 2026. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe (https://chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 59 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

87

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

77

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