Local ballad singer Jane Birdsong will take the stage at the Randolph County Community Arts Center's Brown Bag Lunch Concert at noon Wednesday. The free monthly event is sponsored by Davis Trust Company.

Birdsong started singing folksongs and ballads by the age of 7, as her older brother brought home recordings of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and other folk music revivalists in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Birdsong recalls her first live concert being Odetta, and from that point on she was determined to sing with that type of spirit to make a song come alive. By high school, she was singing in a folk sextet and in a duo with banjo player Kent Lockman around her hometown of Shelbyville, Ind. College years found her entering the rock and jugband scenes as she tried out different bands and combos.

In the early to mid 1970s, Birdsong performed as autoharpist and vocalist with the Riverfront Ramblers around Louisville, Ky., and southern Indiana. Moving to West Virginia in 1982, she was eventually lured to Elkins by the Augusta Heritage Festival, enjoying the many types of music offered there. In 1989, she and several other Elkins women started singing together at "cabin fever" gatherings and this group eventually became the Elktones.

The Elktones performed regionally from 1990 to 2004, releasing one CD in 2001, "Got What it Takes," which is still available at Main Line Books.

The Randolph County Community Arts Center is located at the corner of Randolph Avenue and Park Street in Elkins.

For information, call 637-2355 or log on to www.randolpharts.org.