What happens when you throw a group of Nashville and Galax, Virginia, musicians who have never played together in a barn behind a farmhouse nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains? Musical magic.

That’s exactly what happened a year ago this month when the Wild Ponies – otherwise known as Doug and Telisha Williams – decided to get back to their musical and geographic roots.

“I had spent a lot time playing on my grandfather’s farm and it’s just a beautiful place to spend some time,” Doug said in a recent phone interview. “We wanted to play with people who played with my grandfather and then get some people from Nashville to play as well. It just felt like something we needed to do.”

Nashville-based musicians Fats Kaplin, Will Kimbrough, Neilson Hubbard, Audrey Spillman and local musical legends Snake Smith, Kyle Dean Smith, Kilby Spencer along with close family members joined Doug and Telisha in the barn – the same barn just steps from where the couple was wed – to record. No cell service. No Internet. No distractions. Just raw, genuine music.

It had been a longtime dream to bring these two separate worlds with a lot of musical backgrounds together, Doug explained.

“It was so much fun to watch them work things out,” he added. “They were so respectful of each other. Even though we were a part of it, it was so fun to watch everyone collaborate on a lot of stuff, amazing things, that didn’t even make it on the record.”

That record is “Galax,” a tribute to the Williams’ hometown in Southwest Virginia and the nearby Blue Ridge Music Center, which is set for release Aug. 25.

But don’t take our word for it. You can take a listen for yourself right here:

Telisha said one of their favorite things about touring and playing music is the sense of community – a community that springs up through the shared love of the music.

“Galax” epitomizes that sense of community. It played out through Kaplin getting the opportunity to play with Snake Smith in that barn and later in Snake Smith’s home at an impromptu mash-up.

“Fats had wanted to go to Galax his whole life,” Telisha explained. “He went to the New York Library when he was a kid to hear the music. There is no way he would have ever met Snake Smith, who lives and he plays in Galax.”

Doug added, “It was interesting to see them meet the first day. Fats is stick thin and a rock ‘n roller but as soon as he started playing, Snake was like you’re all right, you’re speaking the same language. From there it was all good and they got to be buddies.”

The album is also grassroots in that Wild Ponies used Kickstarter to fund the project. “The whole record is about community, it’s another spoke in the wheel of this community,” Doug said. “The money is the reason Kickstarter happens because people want to connect and be part of the project. We couldn’t do it without them. Having people we love be part of the album is the most important part.”

Despite earlier attempts to pull away from their musical roots, Doug and Telisha say they have always been there, just below the surface.

“We realized we didn’t want to pull away,” Telisha said. “I love that place, those people and everything about the whole area. I have so much appreciation for Papa, Doug’s grandfather, and so much appreciation for him encouraging us to play.”

The first song on the record, “Sally Ann,” plays tribute to the traditional mountain songs Doug and Telisha grew up listening to. Although there are countless versions of “Sally Ann,” just ask anyone who attended last week’s Galax Fiddler’s Convention, the couple has set out to put their own style on the song while maintaining its authenticity.

“These songs have traveled from here there and everywhere, been passed down from grandmother to grandson and through some cousins. We picked the version that felt closest to what we remembered playing with Papa,” Telisha said.

It was Papa Williams who introduced the couple to MerleFest, the annual festival founded by the late, great Doc Watson.

“We discovered we were writing old-time music and didn’t realize it,” Doug said.

Telisha added, “It’s in you, just like your DNA.”

On “Galax,” Doug said they had two goals: get back to their roots but bounce into where they are now musically.

“We wanted to put a spotlight on those roots that still exist in our music. Each record has a little bit of different songs and our sound qualities have shifted. This was a chance to highlight that original sound we had. Doug has been playing banjo at the farm since he was a kid and I bought my first bass in Galax and played my first notes by the barn we recorded in.”

Doug added, “We do a lot of songwriting at the Country Music Hall of Fame. We realized our choruses don’t always go the same and we don’t write bridges.”

Wild Ponies will have a CD release show at the historic Rives Theatre in uptown Martinsville on Friday, Oct. 13, that will also feature Snake and Kyle Dean Smith. The Smiths will also join Wild Ponies that same weekend at the Richmond Folk Festival. “I love those guys, they are my musical heroes,” Doug said.

Although based for years in Nashville, Wild Ponies have always looked to southwestern Virginia for inspiration. There, in mountain towns like Galax, old-time American music continues to thrive, supported by a community of fiddlers, flat-pickers and fans.

“Galax” is a stripped-back album that pays tribute to the sights and sounds of that landscape and to the band’s history while still pushing forward.

Decades earlier, Doug watched in awe as his grandfather sat by the fire and played mountain music alongside local musical legends like the Smiths and Spencer. All three of those Galax-based musicians make appearances on the new album joined by a small handful of Wild Ponies’ favorite musicians from Nashville. The result is a broad, bold approach to Appalachian music, created by a multi-cultural band whose members span several generations.

Don’t mistake Galax for a traditionally-minded folk album. Wild Ponies proudly dive into their old-school influences with songs like “Pretty Bird” — an a cappella rendition of the Hazel Dickens original but they offer up plenty of contemporary material, too, building a bridge between past and present. The lyrics reflect a similar mix of old and new, with Doug and Telisha writing songs inspired by family heirlooms (including a wooden-bound, 70 year-old book of poems written by Doug’s grandfather, whose lines form the basis of “Here With Me”), new relationships, old regrets, the Catawba trees on the family farm and the cyclical natures of live and love. Although named after the town in which it was recorded, Galax looks far beyond the southwestern tip of Virginia for its source material.

We didn’t want to go home to Virginia and simply make an old-time record,” Doug explained. “We wanted to make a record that still sounded like Wild Ponies. An album that can exist in today’s world. We asked everybody to stretch themselves and reach towards something new, something different. We wanted to not only reconnect with our roots, but learn how those roots play a role in our current world.”

The “Galax” track list is filled with upright bass, acoustic guitar, twin fiddles, banjo, pedal steel, mandolin, harmonies, gang vocals and stripped-down percussion. They recorded the songs live, never once pausing the process to listen to the performance they’d just captured. It wasn’t until Wild Ponies returned home to Nashville that they finally heard the wild magic documented during those mountaintop sessions.

“Galax” is a salute to Wild Ponies’ traditional roots that at the same time explores new, progressive territory. It’s an album about the pieces of our past that stick with us, informing our present while pushing us toward a future. An album about a town, a country and a world that’s forever spinning toward something new. An album that redefines Wild Ponies’ sound, while highlighting influences that have always rested just beneath the surface.

“We’ll always be the pinball that bounces between folk, rock & roll and country,” Telisha explained, “and this old-time style will always weave its way through everything we do. It’s been there from the start, even on the loudest songs we’ve made. It’s the album we’ve always been making. We just needed the right people and the right songs to finish it.”