If you tuned into this year’s Country Music Awards ceremony, you might have seen Darrell Scott: There he was on guitar, backing up a duet between Chris Stapleton and Patty Loveless on his song, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” The song has been recorded by Patty Loveless and Brad Paisley, and it has achieved some status as one of the classics of country music over the last 30 years.

At a recent performance in The Barns at Wolf Trap, Scott chose to open his set with “Harlan,” originally recorded for his first album, Aloha From Nashville. It’s a gritty tale of survival, coal mines, and family in “the deep, dark hills of Eastern Kentucky,” where “the sun comes up about 10 in the morning, and goes down about 3 o’clock every day.”

While there aren’t supernatural elements to the song (at least not overt ones), it’s not hard to see how it fits into the long, proud tradition of the Southern Gothic.