The Fifth String (2004)

Behold! Nineteenth Century mountain music and the long forgotten tunes of the Appalachian trail have been rediscovered in the hills of West Virginia! "The Fifth String" is the story of legendary roots musician Dwight Diller as Dr. Daniel Greenfield, an Ivy League music professor who journeys back to the hills of Appalachia to attend the funeral of the man who raised him. Having fled the mountain hollows and the hillbilly stereotypes that haunted him as a child, Greenfield returns to his birthplace in the Yew Pine Mountains to pay his respects to the man who taught him how to play. To his fellow academics at the University, his hillbilly background has remained a personal secret -- but with the news of his trip revealed in a board meeting -- he must deflect the snickers and the jokes of "heading home to the sticks". But his plan of making a brief appearance at the gravesite is only wishful thinking, and shortly after his brother picks him up from the airport, he realizes that the mountain world he once inhabited moves to a rhythm all its own. The shame he has long held for the mountain culture and the "old-timey music" of his youth will be severely tested. He embarks on a musical odyssey that brings him face to face with a past he has desperately tried to outrun. But as the old-timers used to say, "The things you run from, you're bound to take with you." "The Fifth String" is a celebration of hope, salvation and the ultimate power of the human bond rekindled through music.