Richard was born and raised on the North Carolina/Virginia border in Ararat, Virginia, and now lives in Mount Airy, North Carolina, where he is at the heart of the region’s old-time music and dance community.
“I’ve been playing the fiddle 50 years, this year,” said Richard on stage of the 2023 North Carolina Heritage Awards Show produced by the NC Arts Council and PineCone. “The people that I learned from… …they were all free with the music. You could go and set down and play. I think I’ve done that in my 50 years of playing. When we go to fiddlers conventions I take out chairs and set there and play the whole weekend…. and anybody is welcome.”
Bowman learned to play the autoharp from his mother, and later learned from some of the most influential musicians in the area to play the fiddle. “My dad and my wife’s dad were both tobacco farmers,” says Richard. He says he first heard old time fiddle music in the truck on his way home from a day of work on the farm. He and his cousin were listening to WPAQ radio out of Mount Airy. “I thought that’s the prettiest music I ever listened to… I told my cousin, I believe I could play the fiddle like that if I had one.”
He has been a member of several significant local groups: the Pine River Boys with Maybelle Lewis; the Slate Mountain Ramblers; and the Round Peak Band, which was instrumental in popularizing and spreading the “round peak” string-band sound specific to Surry County and its surrounding communities in North Carolina and Virginia.
Surry County has produced many iconic musicians, and the old-time music they play is especially important in the community as dance music. Bowman has played for dancers all his musical life, honing a plain long-bow style that is especially enjoyable to dance to. He has won awards at fiddler’s conventions throughout the region.
Richard continues to play for square dances and community events with the Slate Mountain Ramblers, now a family band that includes his wife Barbara Bowman and daughter Marsha Todd, who are also talented dancers. Bowman is a resource to other musicians, who value him as a luthier, instrument repairer, and teacher in the traditional manner: by ear and demonstration.
This piece was originally published at ncarts.org.
Photos are by Tom Beck and Zoe van Buren, folklife director at the North Carolina Arts Council.
