- Might want to get out the way.

[car engine revving] - [Elizabeth] Coming up on "Best of our State".

♪ About 100 miles off the interstate ♪ ♪ Down a gravel road through a crash gate ♪ ♪ Stands a house where I grew up ♪ - [Elizabeth] We pay a visit to the musical ponderings of Jim Avett.

- [Jim] I speak a lot through music.

It's just part of my life.

[upbeat music] - And wild horses can't drag us away from the roaming ponies of Corolla.

That's next on "Best of our State".

We dip into treasured stories for a look at all the beauty and character of North Carolina.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Elizabeth Hudson, editor in chief of Our State magazine.

♪ I'd do anything to make you happy ♪ ♪ Come on baby, don't give up on me ♪ ♪ Take me back and love me one more time ♪ - From his farm in Concord, troubadour Jim Avett shares his musical influences, wisdom from a life well lived, and that it's not about playing the biggest venues, but playing with heart.

- This will be part of the Avett farm from gardening to animals to raising kids.

We do all that here.

- [Narrator] And do it with a joy born of long trust in the idea that if you raise them right, and give God as due, they're gonna turn out fine.

- And now that life includes retirement, Jim Avett gets to spend more time on what might be called the family birthright, making music.

♪ Right over there where the old barn stood ♪ ♪ Working and giving it all he could ♪ ♪ and my daddy made sure we learned it right ♪ ♪ That old piana has long been gone but I can still see us ♪ ♪ Singing them songs ♪ ♪ Long time ago when the family was still here ♪ ♪ But the memories are strong in my mind ♪ ♪ The house takes me back to another time ♪ ♪ When it was just easier to get along ♪ - [Jim] Dad was a Methodist preacher, a traveling preacher.

♪ It's me it's me it's me oh Lord ♪ ♪ Standing in the needle.

♪ - My mother was a really good musician.

She was a concert pianist until she met my dad when she became the church organist, which is an unpaid position for the rest of her life.

Every church we went to, she got to play the organ.

Music was always every day in our life.

I was little and I was taking violin, which was a great embarrassment for a young fella at that time.

But I got to practice 30 to 40 minutes a day whether I liked it or not, and I didn't like it.

And you don't realize when you're young, all of this is education, every bit of it.

When I was a kid, we would go around to each other's houses and play music.

If I could get a ride down to a little place called Dudley Shoals, there were some people making music on the front porch and I learned some stuff right there that I didn't realize was gonna be important later on.

I come back to that over and over and over.

- [Narrator] Every Tuesday and Thursday evening for over a decade, Jim has driven his old pickup to Don's Garage to make music, swap tunes, and have a good time.

- Players are looking for places that they can share.

The best way you can get better is get with others that are doing the same art you're doing.

I'm not a great guitar picker.

I'm a singer and I know 1,000 songs.

♪ Say hello, hello ♪ So if I can pass on a set of lyrics to the next man, he'll be here after I'm not.

And maybe he can pass them on to the next man and the next girl.

Woo.

Jesus would be proud.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Jim and Susie have made a home here in Concord after time in Wyoming and Alaska, and their family fairly brims with the rhythms, the music of life.

- I had been playing a tune called "Grandfather's Clock".

Seth was 11 or 12.

He said "can you teach me that?"

And I said "yes I can right now".

And he went to his bedroom for 30 minutes.

All of a sudden the bedroom door came wide open.

He said "mama, mama, mama, come here".

Susie went in there and I followed and I knew what was going to happen.

He played a pretty good rendition of "Grandfather's Clock", which makes your parents proud.

♪ If we keep on the sunny side of life ♪ - For Bonnie, Scott, and Seth, music was as much a part of their life as churchgoing.

- Music is part of a well-rounded life.

Life is flat without art.

And you play an instrument the way that you play this instrument, not the way somebody else plays it.

If it's not entertaining, we'll sit on the front porch and we'll entertain ourselves.

You have to prepare yourself.

You have to put the hours in to make yourself as good as you can be.

Then you present it.

[upbeat music] - [Narrator] As the Avett Brothers, Jim's boys have created a style all their own, a rich stew of folk, rock, country, bluegrass, honky-tonk, and ragtime, with a pinch of punk, and of course a whole lot of dad.

- This is where I've come to have a good time.

This is where I retreat to.

There are probably between 65 and 70 guitars in this room.

This is the oldest guitar that I own.

This is a 1923 L2 Gibson.

[gentle music] This is an OM42.

Martin people made one of these for each store.

There were 50 stores.

This is number 26.

It's narrow bodied, but it sounds like it's 10 feet deep.

But my favorite is the big-bodied J200.

I don't play golf and I never fooled away my money.

I put my money in musical instruments and records.

In this room, there are probably 2,000 albums that had some influence on me and some influence by way of me on the boys.

Tom T. Hall was the real deal because he was such a excellent lyrics writer.

And if you are not familiar with Tom T. Hall, you need to get familiar with it.

Merle Haggard grew up in Oklahoma, and greatly influenced by the Dust Bowl, the Depression, he wrote such a great story song.

♪ Got up for sun up, get to we're gonna ♪ ♪ Worked in the fields till the sun has gone down ♪ ♪ We stood and we cried as we helplessly watched ♪ ♪ Hailstones feeding our crops to the ground ♪ ♪ Anything we got was much more than we had ♪ ♪ In the good old days when times were bad ♪ - [Jim] That song's one of my favorites because it says exactly what it needs to say, in as simple a terms as it can be done.

- Singer songwriters want to do this.

One of the reasons that the boys are as popular as they are, they absolutely insist holding the song up until it says exactly what needs to be said.

♪ Park the old car that I love the best ♪ ♪ Inspections do and it won't pass the test.

♪ ♪ It's funny how I have to put it to rest ♪ ♪ And how one day I will join it ♪ [car engine sputtering] - [Narrator] Old cars are like old guitars.

They take you back to when you were just getting started, cause you to reflect on the sacrifice and rewards along the way.

- [Jim] I wanted to find that girl that I loved and children that turned out to be an addition to humanity.

Got those things.

There's some things that I'd like to do and I'm gonna do them.

I'm gonna write a little bit more music.

I'm gonna play a little bit more.

As far as aspirations, I think I heard Scott say that maybe I gave up a musical career so that they could have one.

If I'd have had a musical career, it wouldn't have been much.

So I don't omit the fact that we did things the way we did them.

Susie and I supported our children in whatever they wanted to do.

♪ Tear fell from my father's eyes.

♪ ♪ I wondered what my dad would say ♪ - That they can fly on their own.

That's the important part.

♪ He said I love you and I'm proud ♪ ♪ of you both in so many different ways ♪ - You work all your life to get them out of the nest.

And then you enjoy watching them fly.

- Inspiration goes two ways in the Avett family, and thus inspired, Jim is recording new music If there's any secret to success to be discovered here, it probably can be found in the notes of lives well-lived and a strong commitment to playing with heart.

♪ There's no room in your heart for me ♪ - Success in music has nothing to do with how much money you make.

♪ Now I must go and you must stay ♪ - If you can affect people's lives with your songs or your art, you are a success.

I don't care if you starve dead, you are an absolute success ♪ And leave part of my home ♪ You don't sit down and say "I'm gonna write this song cause it might be a big seller and we'll be able to live on the Riviera".

I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna sit down, and I'm gonna say there's a song in that, there's a story in that and I'd like for others to hear it.

♪ No you can't change who you are ♪ ♪ Just to love me ♪ [gentle music] - The coast of our state is known for many things.

Sun, sand, and horses?

That's right.

The wild horses of Corolla have roamed the beaches and backwoods of the northern outer banks for centuries.

Here's the story of the wild Spanish mustangs and the efforts to protect them.

- [Narrator] Some things never change on North Carolina's outer banks.

Day after day, breakers kiss the shore, ceaseless tides irrigate the marshland and then creep back out to sea.

And here and there along the 175 mile or so stretch of Barrier Islands from Ocracoke North to the Virginia border, wild horses may be glimpsed grazing contentedly among the dunes.

They're not as widely dispersed over the banks as they once were.

Descendants of equine passengers on Spanish sailing ships that ran aground in the 17th century.

- There are 2,000 shipwrecks on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean all up and down the outer banks.

So although there's no record, it stands to reason that some horses were probably able to survive shipwrecks and swim ashore and some horses were simply left behind when colonies failed.

A nonprofit has a mission, and it benefits the greater good of the community.

- [Narrator] Karen McAlpin is a colonist of sorts, a transplant to the outer banks from Pennsylvania lured here by the prospect of her dream job, managing the northernmost population of wild horses as director of the nonprofit Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

- They've been here almost five centuries and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service defines them as non-native, feral, invasive, pest animals.

I'm not native, and I don't know how long you have to live here to be native, but it seems like five centuries ought to be plenty of time.

They're just amazing horses.

- [Narrator] Amazing also is a good word to apply to early preservation efforts.

- The organization was actually formed in 1989 as a completely all volunteer grassroots organization by a group of residents who had become concerned as more and more horses began to get hit on 12 as development increased between Duck and Corolla.

And in 1989, a stallion by the name of Star with whom everyone was familiar was killed.

And that was the last straw, so to speak.

- [Narrator] The herd count in the area threatened by development, here counted by helicopter, had diminished to about 20 by the early 90s.

By the time Karen arrived on the scene in 2006, the horse population was on the rise, with 7,500 plus protected acres to roam, including portions of the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge and some low impact residential developments.

- The horses really have five main habitat areas, they eat the coarse grasses that grow on the dunes and the sea oats.

Behind the dunes, there's dry meadow, wet meadow.

There's a maritime forest that runs up the middle of the island that's basically its highest point.

You'll find them there in the winter eating acorns like the deer.

And then of course along the sound, there's the marshes.

We have the area for our purposes divided into four zones.

And we know which harems, and a harem is a a dominant stallion and generally one to four mares.

Some have more, some have less.

We know which harems we're gonna find in which zones.

And so they move freely within that zone.

They rarely move out of that area because if they do, they risk losing their mares to the dominant stallion in the next zone.

- [Narrator] It may seem unusual to see wild horses grazing around houses, but that's the nature of things here where civilization and history meet in a uniquely accommodating way.

- One of the things that we spend a tremendous amount of time and effort doing is educating, both on the beach and behind the dunes, because the wild horses here are tolerant of humans.

That's why you can drive by one of them grazing and they probably won't even look up at you, but they can be standing along the shoreline and looking very peaceful and people start to gather around and take pictures and suddenly a rival stallion appears on the dune line and comes down thundering down the dune.

And now you're in the middle of a very brutal and very vicious fight.

And they will not care whether you're standing there or not, your vehicle's there, your child's there, your chair's there.

- [Narrator] The most enduring threat to the Corolla horses, however, is neither commercial encroachment nor the wild horse tourism that has blossomed in the area.

It's genetic.

The gene pool is collapsing due to inbreeding.

Dr. Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University is the leading expert on wild horse genetics.

- [Karen] In 2007, we pulled DNA samples with remotely delivered darts.

And in 2008, the results came back that we had one of the lowest levels of genetic diversity of any wild herd anywhere.

- So that means that they have lost genetic diversity relative to other horse populations.

And that's likely due or almost certainly due to the very small population size that existed at one time.

Small population size means inbreeding, and inbreeding means loss of genetic variability.

- [Narrator] Mitochondrial DNA research in Dr. Cothran's lab provided clues to the Corolla horses' ancestry.

- All of the Barrier Island horse populations, which are now isolating from each other, show closer relationship to each other than they do to anything else, suggesting some common ancestry.

But by looking at particular variants that we know where they are most common and where they most likely come from, we have clear evidence that the banker horses have some old Spanish blood in them and that could only have come from something probably three to 400 years ago.

- [Narrator] There are three zones of wild horses along North Carolina's outer banks, Corolla, Shackleford Banks, and Ocracoke.

- [Gus] They're all related to each other, but they're all different from each other as well.

And so a small number of exchanges from Shackleford for example, will boost the Corolla variability very quickly.

The new genes will circulate throughout the population over a few generations.

- [Narrator] The idea here is to keep the population at an optimal level, both to maintain diversity and to develop and manage a population similar to that established in legislation that protects the Shackleford ponies.

But that proposal is mired in congressional limbo.

- And that is why we've been working so hard on the Corolla Wild Horses Protection Act.

That language mirrors the Shackleford Banks Act, asks for a minimum herd size of 120 to 130 with never less than 110 with the added caveat that we be able to bring a limited amount of mares from Shackleford, and that is the critical step that will add new genes to our dying gene pool.

And it is dying and they will be gone in a few generations if we don't act quickly.

- [Narrator] Meantime, the good work of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund continues> Meet Amadeo, a 16 year old stallion with an amazing story.

- Amadeo's name is the Spanish derivative for "blessed by God".

He was in a fight with a much younger stallion.

He was already missing his right eye, and horses are fight or flight animals.

And because he was losing the fight, his only choice was to flee.

But his good eye had been damaged in the fight and so he was disoriented.

He ran into the ocean.

It was on a day we had 10 foot waves and 30 mile an hour winds.

- [Narrator] Amadeo was pulled over a mile by the riptide.

He was finally rescued, but the trauma left him completely blind.

[gentle music] Volunteer Mike Galding is a true horse whisperer.

Amadeo needs to be moved to a new facility and Mike must earn his trust.

- It's fine, you're okay.

You're all right, you're all right.

That's a good boy, what's wrong with you?

- [Narrator] All wild horses destined for adoption must be trained to adapt to humans, and are, thanks to an affiliation with the equine technology program of Martin Community College.

- So the Corolla ponies come to us when they've been removed from the beach or off of the premises.

We basically domesticate them.

They've not been touched, they've not been haltered, they've never been in a stall before at that point.

And so they come to us basically with no education and it's pretty appropriate that they come to college because by the time they leave here, they have their associate's degree.

He's learned how to lunge.

He's learned how to line drive.

He also has been ridden for the first time and he's done very, very well.

He really likes the domesticated life.

And you can see he's quite chubby.

- [Narrator] Or something like 400 years of time and tide.

These banker horses, call them ponies if you want, they don't care, they've been nourishing themselves on sea oats and wild grasses around the dunes, in the maritime forest, and sound-side marshes.

We put them there, and now it's our collective responsibility to make sure their descendants not only survive, but thrive.

A whole lot of wonder and a little bit of wild on the thin edge of our coast.

[gentle music] - Thank you for joining us for "Best of our State".

We have enjoyed sharing North Carolina's stories with you.

See you next time.

- Four, three, two.

[cow mooing] Thank you sweetheart.

Chick chick chick chick.

If you have never eaten fresh eggs, you will be taken aback.

Fresh eggs are yellow.

It's sort of like seeing gold in a pan.

Once you see it, you'll know that this one's fresh.

Your on TV, act like something.

Friends absolutely fell in love with the eggs we took him.

He said that he had never, never eaten an egg as good as the eggs that we brought him.

He wanted to know if we fed them anything special.

I said bugs mostly.

I don't think he was too happy with that.

But we don't have any spiders, none.

Check this cow out.

Coming out to him.

Put your hand out and don't worry about it.

Just put your hand out there.

They wanna smell your hand.

I told you I had learned a song on a treadle machine, a treadle sewing machine.

And that song is "Angel Band".

She would beat out the time on while she was sewing and she'd go ♪ My latest song is sinking fast ♪ ♪ My race is nearly run ♪ ♪ My heart is strong smell has passed ♪ ♪ The victory has begun ♪ ♪ Oh come angel band ♪ ♪ Come and around me stand ♪ ♪ Won't you bury me away on your soul ♪ ♪ White wings to my immortal home ♪ ♪ Bury me away on your soul wings ♪ ♪ To my immortal home ♪ - Here's one of Arlo Guthrie.

His daddy was quite a writer.

Leo Kottke.

This guy plays the guitar like nobody I know.

He is really, really good.

Here's one Ricky Nelson.

The Dillards.

You know the Dillards.

They're on "Andy Griffith".

Growing up, I was very limited, and still am at playing the guitar.

And I played everything with three chords basically.

And a lot of these guys played their stuff with three chords, so I naturally fell in with them.

But you can make guitar playing or you can make music as simple or as difficult as you would like to.

It's sort of like chess.

You can play it almost like checkers if you want to or you can get into the world class and it can be really, really complicated.

But good music is like nothing else.

It will do things for you that nothing else does.

It's sort of like a certain taste when you sit down to dinner and there is a certain food on your plate and it's prepared a certain way and it does a certain thing.

Barbecue does that to me.

Being from North Carolina, yeah, barbecue does that to me.

But music is an extremely, extremely important part of life.

[gentle music] ♪ - [Narrator] More information about Our State Magazine is available at ourstate.com or 1 [800] 948-1409.