The Tie Hackers

Before the railroads ran through the Ozarks, somebody had to make the ties.

Tie hackers were the woodsmen who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hand‑hewed millions of railroad ties from the white oak forests of the Arkansas hills. Their songs, jokes, and string‑band music traveled down logging trails and into tie camps, eventually finding their way into the broader stream of American old‑time music. The Tie Hackers, the band, carry that lineage onto the festival stage with the muscular, unhurried, honest sound of work, of evenings around the camp stove, and of a region whose history is written in saw blades and song.