BY KIM McKINNEY

Tonya Wood grew up with music all around her.

She is from a bluegrass family. Her father was in the bluegrass business for more than 60 years in the band Al Wood and the Smokey Ridge Boys.

While growing up, she listened and sang harmonies as her dad and four brothers played music.

Bluegrass didn’t grab her the same way it took hold of the rest of them. She was drawn to rock ‘n’ roll after her brother Jeff introduced her to the genre. Brother Bobby exposed her to the Eagles.

She also loved the big female voices of the day – Aretha, Mariah and Whitney.

Wood left home at 17, eventually moving to Charlotte. That’s when she first sat in with a band, the Megaphonics, and Steve Englar started calling her Sista T.

In the early 1990s, Wood answered an ad in “Creative Loafing” for a background singer. The ad was placed by one of the original Drifters, bass player Marcel “Tommy” Evans.

When she auditioned for him, he said, “You are my Lady T,” Wood recalls.

She had landed her first full-time job as a musician.

Wood opened up the show with the band, introduced Evans, and then joined the background singers when he took the stage. They traveled the casino circuit.

When the band went on an extended break and its members scattered to work on other projects, Wood came home.

One day the guitar player called her and said, “We’re in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Our singer just quit and we have three more weeks on this contract. Can you help us out?”

She left immediately.

When that gig was over, their agent asked her, “Would you be interested in going to Korea?”

It was a six-month USO tour. She signed on and stayed for four tours, fronting the band. She fondly remembers teaching soldiers how to line dance.

After finishing her last tour in Korea, Wood decided it was time to move closer to home. She took a break from performing after her son Logan was born, and she worked as a bookkeeper while he was small. When he was 3 or 4, she began to take him with her when she jammed with friends. They’d set him up in a bedroom with a TV and snacks.

When Logan was about 5, she went back to performing music full time and toured with her own band, Sista T and the Smoking Section.

Later, she was introduced to Billy Scott by Randy and Cindy Floyd.

Billy Scott and Marcel Evans, she said, were great mentors.

“They both taught me if you don’t know the business part, the music is irrelevant,” Wood said.

She didn’t immediately understand what they meant, but it opened her eyes so she would learn.

Wood met Jeremy Shaw and they started doing a monthly open mic at the Cedar Stump Pub in Troutman. When Statesville’s Cedar Stump opened, they began doing an open mic every other week in each place. When the Catawba location opened, they started doing weekly open mics from 8 to 11 p.m. – Tuesdays in Statesville, Wednesdays in Troutman, and Thursdays in Catawba.

Wood loves what transpires through these open mics and the stage it gives to people with all levels of experience.

She recently heard an interview with Smokey Robinson in which he said, “back in the day” when the Motown artists weren’t on the road, they were at Motown. That was their home base, a place where they all connected.

“When you go out there and do your thing, you give everything inside of you because that’s what we’re supposed to do, so you have to come back to the source of it all to refill,” Wood explained. “When your cup is full, you have to fill everyone else, but when yours is empty you have to fill it up.”

Wood met three members of her current band, Fortune Five, at these open mics and sees other collaborations happening.

“I’m trying to be the mentor that was not available to me when I started all this craziness. Even though I grew up in a musical family, it wasn’t until I left home to play music I realized how blessed we are here with the over-abundance of incredibly talented people,” she said.

Wood hopes people in Iredell County realize the talent playing around the area each week.

“The music community that is here right now is the most beautiful community that I have ever experienced — it’s taken a lot of people coming together to create this beautiful scene that we have.”