The Major Graham Mansion, in Wythe County, Virginia, had its first glory days in the 1840s, soon after its construction; it took a strange brand of fandom for a rock band to bring about its brief and musical renaissance in the 2000s. Courtesy: Jo Tennis
The links, echoes and mysteries tying an old Virginia mountain mansion to a seminal Southern rock band are too rich to ignore.
How does an 1840s, brick-fortress mansion in Southwest Virginia get linked to a classic and tragic Southern rock band?
The Major Graham Mansion, in Wythe County, Virginia, is an imposing brick fortress built in stages, as early as 1840, and took its name from Major David Graham, a Confederate Army officer.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is a major American rock band with hits including “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Simple Man” and “What’s Your Name,” and which endured a 1977 plane crash that killed six, including 29-year-old singer Ronnie Van Zant and interrupted Lynyrd Skynyrd’s career for a decade.
The coming together of the two begins with one J.C. Weaver, a Florida businessman who in 1988 bought the first of lands that would eventually include more than 4,000 acres. Part of the property was the Graham Mansion, the centerpiece of a family fortune fueled by iron furnaces roaring all over Wythe County.
For decades after the Grahams no longer owned the land, people reported seeing shadows around the property and mysterious faces in the windows of the remote mansion. People also talked about Clara, a little-girl ghost who was believed to have been an orphan cared for by the Graham family inside the mansion.
Weaver loved the spooky house. While he did not live in it, he did entertain friends in the mansion by singing and playing guitar and piano, much like one of his musical heroes, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
In 2007, Weaver launched Grahamfest, a music festival that featured a performance by himself as well as the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.
For the 2009 festival, Weaver hired a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band called Long Island Street Survivors, which took its “Street Survivors” name from the final record released by the original Lynyrd Skynyrd—just three days before the band’s plane crashed in a Mississippi swamp in 1977.
On this September night in 2009, Weaver featured more than just a tribute band on stage. The musicians also included two members of the original Lynyrd Skynyrd that recorded the eerie “Street Survivors” album.
On a microphone was backup singer JoJo Billingsley, who, incidentally, had a foreshadowing dream in October 1977 that the Lynyrd Skynyrd band was going to face a fatal airplane crash. She was not on the plane.
On drums was Artimus Pyle—the only Lynyrd Skynyrd band member physically able to climb out of the wreckage and seek help after the plane crashed on October 20, 1977.
Both Billingsley and Pyle walked the grounds outside the Major Graham Mansion on that late summer Saturday—she, the gospel singer who tried to warn her band of imminent danger; and he, the drummer who slashed through the swamp to save his bandmates.
Still, after the final notes of “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” had faded, this pair would never perform at this place again. This was to be the final Grahamfest. And Billingsley died of cancer on June 24, 2010.
At the Major Graham Mansion, the era of Grahamfest was over. But the mansion took a turn toward tantalizing visitors with a spooky world all its own.
In the fall of 2010, the first installment of an annual haunted house premiered. For the next several years, these October events combined the history of the Graham clan with props like skulls, spiders and snakes.
Inside the mansion, kids loved to visit “Clara’s Room,” where they tried to test the alleged spirit of the orphan girl, seeing if Clara would roll a ball back to them across a mansion room floor.
Ghost hunters brought in clairvoyants. They also recorded strange messages like “get out” and “I don’t play that tune,” spoken by a ghostly voice.
Another time, an unexplained voice said, “What’s your name.” Was that a question or a song request?
Just think: “What’s Your Name” was the biggest hit single from “Street Survivors,” the last album by the original Lynyrd Skynyrd and the name of the tribute band featuring original members of that group at the final Grahamfest.
But, wait—there is still more music at the spooky Major Graham Mansion.
“The spirits that live in this house are unbelievable,” Weaver said in 2019. “I used to play the piano, and there would be spirits that would hum with me …”
The story above first appeared in our January/ February 2022 issue.
