Fiddler and mandolinist Garnett B. Warren, born in Mt. Airy, is a shadowy figure from the early days of what is sometimes called pre-bluegrass Southern string band music. Radio broadcasts with the Briarhoppers place this talented player in Charlotte, NC, in the mid-'30s onward. This group was a concoction of radio producer Charles H. Crutchfield, but while the Briarhoppers band was a radio gimmick, later to become something of a franchise operation for old-time players as well as a source of civic pride for Charlotte, the musicians in the group were living and breathing old-time talents; some of them bringing in cowboy music influences, and some such as Warren bringing in an interesting new slant on the old-time string band approach. Fred Kirby and the duo of Whitey Hogan represented talents within the band membership that also absorbed the improvising talents of Warren in their own groupings and recordings.

The singing partners Arval Hogan and Roy Whitey Grant had drifted into Charlotte from nearby Gastonia, musical refugees from a factory where vinyl cord for tires was fabricated. Kirby was a singing cowboy type who cut a series of records on his own. Among other accomplishments, he had the sense to cut a song called Atomic Power, perhaps even sensing it would become a cult hit years later upon the release of the film #Atomic Café. Warren's mandolin trills, heard at the Cannes Film Festival? A long way from the Appalachians, where groups such as the Briarhoppers appeared on popular live radio programs, then television, until sometime in the mid-'50s. From this point on, many groups gave it up for the rock roll generation to come; as if a high tide had come to clean flotsam such as Warren off the beach.

The name of the Briarhoppers began showing up again in the '80s around Charlotte, and although Whitey Hogan were not lured back into the fold until the following decade, and only temporarily at that, Warren became one of the elder Appalachian players coming in and out of what some old-time music listeners feel to be a wildly uneven group. The modern lineup of the Briarhoppers has been accused of being more about grinning than picking, though it continues to be a gig opportunity for interesting players such as fiddler, mandolinist, and guitarist Dwight Moody, banjoist David Deece, and the amusing Don White (who at 91 makes a convincing case of being the only original member of the band left, and can be granted some lapses in his timekeeping on bass due to the odd senior moment). Warren was out of the band by the '90s, and hasn't been heard from since. He did get in on the '80s recordings the new grouping did for the Lamon label; two vinyl slabs of Hit's Briarhoppers Time that were later reissued on a single CD. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi