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Indie Film with Local Ties
Written By: Deena Bouknight | Issue: March 2023
Angela Faye Martin’s recollections of Indie rocker/folk singer Mark Linkous are spotlighted in a new documentary.
Angela Faye and Mark Linkous
Angela Faye and Brent Martin, Alarka Expeditions, are familiar to many in the area as recreational guides – as well as overseers of Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy (he is the executive director). Yet, few people know that Angela is also an Indie folk song writer and performer, and she participated in a global documentary project focusing on now-deceased Mark Linkous. Angela both narrated and appeared in portions of the documentary on Linkous’s life called This is Sparklehorse.
Linkous is known internationally as an indie rocker and record producer; he died in 2010 at age 47, but many people in the music industry and who listen to indie music know that he was the founder of the late 1990s-established American indie rock band Sparklehorse. When the Virginia native lived in a remote cabin in the Tusquittees mountain range of neighboring Clay County, Angela worked with him on her album of indie folk songs, Pictures from Home, which includes songs about her life in Macon County.
Because Angela was one of the last people to work with Linkous before he took his life, she was asked to assist with the documentary on his life by two British filmmakers, Alex Crowton and Bobby Dass. The filmmakers mention Martin in music publication interviews. Plus, Martin is spotlighted in the official This is Sparklehorse film summary, which includes: “The long hours she spent with him in his remote studio in Western North Carolina found her conducting a delicate and continuous Q&A, with Mark sometimes reading parts of it back to him. Little did she know she’d soon be called on to render this content as a basis for the film’s narrative, honoring her friend. With the gentleness of therapists, the filmmakers gave her a medium through which to wield a correction to all that went so terribly wrong for Mark. She still writes and conducts nature and art tours of the southern Appalachians.”
Although a version of the film was released in 2016, it has been updated and re-released last year on Vimeo. The film has won indie film festival awards.
Said Angela about the documentary: “Mark was a fascinating person, and the film is a tribute. The film takes viewers on a tour of his journey in life, especially as it pertains to this area.”
