Our Story

The Council of Americana Roots Music (COARM) was created as an extension of Jammin at Hippie Jack’s (JAHJ), a program that evolved out of a documentary produced by WCTE-PBS in 2006. The star was Jack Stoddart, aka “Hippie Jack,” a fine art photographer whose life was spent living on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. While there, he documented the vanishing culture of the Appalachian “hill people,” a community that worked the land with horse and plow, even into the early 1980s. With the help of a small start-up fund, Stoddart began producing, directing, and editing the program for national broadcast. The quick growth of this project demanded a new organization to oversee management, finance, production, development, and resources. In November 2010, COARM was established to oversee Stoddart’s vision of cultural enrichment and economic development. Today, the program is broadcast in 30 states to approximately 144 million people and continues to gain support. COARM operates from Crawford, Tenn. in unincorporated Overton County. Operations are overseen by a six-person Board of Directors comprised of business and community leaders. Our mission is to preserve, present, and archive music of original singer-songwriters, and utilize music art as a resource for community economic growth.