The Skys to appear at Friendship Baptist

With affable patriarch Bill Sky at the helm, The Skys have delighted audiences across the United States and Canada for over 35 years. Since the 1990’s, Vicki Young Sky has been an integral part of this venerable and highly-respected family musical tradition.

In the early 2000’s they relocated their base of operations from Nashville, Tennessee to Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the fabled LOUISIANA HAYRIDE broadcast. Bill and Vicki have traveled up to 90,000 miles annually to sing and play their several instruments for thousands of enthusiastic fans of traditional Americana Music.

Wherever The Skys appear - major music festivals, university folk-arts venues, packed auditoriums, church sanctuaries or network TV studios, audiences can count on genuine bedrock authenticity in every song!

Bill’s roots are in the Arkansas Ozarks, where his father had taught old-time singing schools, was a mountain fiddler and led the singing at Pine Grove Church. Some of Bill’s earliest memories are of, at the age of three, climbing onto a rustic platform around the church pulpit to “help Daddy” lead the congregation in song. Learning to play the guitar at the age of eight, he was a radio performer by the time he was twelve. At 16, he hosted his own radio program.

Vicki was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in Iowa until her industrial engineer father was transferred to Louisiana when Vicki was a teenager. Having sung in church since childhood, she sang in several groups as an adult, and performed with a popular ladies’ trio until she joined The Skys. Loyal fans everywhere thrill to her heartfelt renditions of songs that have always meant the most to her! Many agree that Vicki possesses one of the most distinctive natural voices in Americana Music today. Ethnomusicologists have attributed the Sky sound to the fact that Bill’s father and uncles, musicians all, early in life worked in delta cotton fields, a few miles down the Ozark foothills hollow from where they lived. Mountain songs and Delta Blues, as well as some Popular standards, sacred songs and hymns were freely shared by black and white field hands who brought out their guitars, fiddles, banjos, harmonicas and mandolins to “make music” together in the evenings after a hard day’s work. Vicki’s musical heritage is likewise predicated on her familial spiritual foundation. Two of her grandparents were ministers of the Gospel, and Vicki’s life-long involvement with church choirs and singing groups in both the Mid-west and the Deep South forged an abiding love for all the favorite songs that lift up human hearts, irregardless of individual ethnicity or background.

This unique cross-pollination of cultures produces a music like no other! The Skys’ inimitable style stems from this legacy, but to this rich musical tapestry, Bill and Vicki infuse a wonderfully fresh interpretation of a historically- significant musical genre that has won them national awards, recognition, accolades and rave reviews wherever they go.

The Skys will appear in concert at Friendship Baptist Church, 498 Hwy 160, Doddridge, AR. 71834 on Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 5 p.m. A love offering will be taken. For more information or directions to the church, please contact Bro. Phil Starrett or Margaret Reynolds at 903-7014093.