By Tina Eshleman
“I got knocked down, but I’mma get up,” Justin Golden sings in “Ain’t Just Luck” from his 2022 album “Hard Times and a Woman.” When he wrote those lyrics, the 2025 Richmond Folk Festival performer was experiencing job loss and heartbreak. But the songs are just as relevant today as he battles a rare form of cancer.
After listening to the album again recently, he says, “It feels like I wrote it about this situation.”
At the outset, 2025 looked like it would be the best year yet for Golden as a professional musician. Among numerous other gigs, the 34-year-old Richmond-based Piedmont blues singer and songwriter was about to embark on a college tour in North and South Dakota that had come to fruition after years of effort.
More people have been tuning in to his modern interpretation of Americana music. As NPR’s Joe Kendrick described the track “Can’t Get Right” from the 2022 album, “Golden takes an acoustic fingerpicking style and places it in a roots rock setting — including electric guitar and banjo — to arrive at an intersection of genres and eras that came by roads less traveled.”
But Golden’s busy schedule halted abruptly in late January after he visited an urgent care clinic to find out why he was experiencing shortness of breath. His symptoms at first did not appear to be severe, but he thought he should get them checked out. “I'm a singer and I need to be able to sing,” he says.
After subsequent testing, he learned that the shortness of breath was caused by tumors in his abdominal cavity pushing into his lungs, resulting in fluid buildup. He received a Stage 4 diagnosis of desmoplastic small round cell tumors (DSRCT), an exceptionally rare type of sarcoma that forms in the body’s connective tissue. According to the National Library of Medicine, only about 450 cases of DSRCT — mostly involving young men — have been recorded since the cancer was first described in 1989. He began chemotherapy treatment in February.
Since then, Richmond’s music community has rallied around Golden, a beloved collaborator who has played at the Richmond Folk Festival twice before: in 2021 with his band The Come Up and in 2024 with the bluegrass-tinged Devil’s Coattails (and at a Virginia Folklife Workshop). Supporters organized a series of benefit concerts and donated to a Go Fund Me campaign organized to help cover his ongoing medical expenses and lost income.
As of mid-August, Golden was halfway through the first round of scheduled treatments, and he reported feeling good during breaks between treatments.
Next month, he’s scheduled to perform at the Richmond Folk Festival on Oct. 12 at 1:30 p.m. on the Center for Cultural Vibrancy stage at the new Allianz Amphitheater as part of RVA Jams for Justin Golden. In addition to Golden himself (health permitting), the program will feature his former band The Come Up, current band Devil’s Coattails and other groups and musicians he has played with, including The Crooked Creek Misfits, The Hot Seats, Andrew Alli and Josh Small, and Eliza Mose and Ryan Stephens. Organizers suggest that audience members arrive early to make sure they don’t miss this memorable set.
“[Justin is] scheduled to perform at the Richmond Folk Festival on Oct. 12 at 1:30 p.m. on the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage at the new Allianz Amphitheater, as part of RVA Jams for Justin Golden. [...] Organizers suggest that audience members arrive early to ensure they don’t miss this memorable set.”
“I felt like this would be a wonderful opportunity at the festival to bring Richmond musicians who know and love Justin and have played with Justin,” says Jon Lohman, director of the Center for Cultural Vibrancy, who plans the lineup for the organization’s stage. “He’s not somebody you can typecast as a blues musician or folk musician. He draws from all those things and is a wonderful songwriter and a very giving person.”
Golden, in turn, has a deep appreciation for Richmond’s music scene. It’s what drew the Suffolk, Virginia, native to the city after graduating from Longwood University, where he studied archaeology.
“It’s better than I ever could have imagined. There’s so much creativity,” he says. ‘People really appreciate original music, but they also really appreciate traditional music. Especially the first few years I was playing here, musicians were supporting musicians and fans were coming to all different types of shows.”
Golden describes himself as a mostly self-taught musician. After watching his freshman-year roommate play guitar, he was inspired to start playing himself, and eventually began appearing at open mic nights.
“My dad is from Mississippi and I spent some time down there as a kid,” he says. “I always had a strong interest in the blues, but it wasn’t until I started writing songs that people said this is like Piedmont blues, which is Virginia blues.”
Through fellow Richmond musician Andrew Alli, Golden connected with the late Phil Wiggins, a renowned blues harmonica player who invited him to teach at the Augusta Heritage Center’s Blues Week in 2017.
“We got to do some really incredible things together, especially in the last couple years of his life,” Golden says of Wiggins. “I got to bring him to a world music residency that I was a leader in and we taught songs to a group of 30 people from over 20 different countries and performed a big show at the North Carolina Folk Festival. “
While Golden no longer works as an archaeologist, his training showed him how historic burial grounds, for example, could be lost if the land is not marked and maintained. He realized that musical traditions can also be lost if they are not passed down from one generation to the next. Because of this, he has regularly participated in events such as the Junior Appalachian Musicians’ Traditional Music Education Summit at Emory & Henry University in Southwest Virginia, as well as the Augusta Heritage Center’s Blues Week at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, and the John Jackson Piedmont Blues Festival in Virginia’s Rappahannock County.
In addition to his involvement with those organizations, Golden is founder of the Richmond chapter of The Rhapsody Project, a nonprofit that celebrates music and heritage through an anti-racist lens. His work with the organization has included an all-ages blues jam and an after-school music program for youth.
“It’s a huge passion for me to try and get people reacquainted with this music, especially younger people, because it is a tradition as well as an art form and it’s a tradition that has influenced all of American music,” Golden says. “I’m trying to renew interest as much as I can and teach as many people as I can.”
Among other genres, Golden delves into traditional country music, as evidenced by a series titled “Golden Country,” supported by the Center for Cultural Vibrancy. Recorded at Richmond’s Rabid Ears Recording, the albums were released by the local label Vocal Rest Records in 2024.
The second volume, Golden noted, was recorded in just 16 hours over three days. “Everything about Golden Country: Volume 2 showcases my growth and journey as a musician since I started writing my debut album in 2019,” he posted on social media.
Trey Burnart Hall, a member of Golden’s backing band Devil’s Coattails and founder of Vocal Rest Records, first heard Golden play about 10 years ago at a house concert in Richmond’s Oregon Hill neighborhood and felt an immediate connection as someone who shares a love of roots music.
“For me, working with Justin is tethered to both history and the future,” Hall says. “His goal is not just to replicate the past. Justin is making something new — kind of like putting more branches on the tree.’”
Hall says the idea for the “Golden Country” albums arose from Golden’s yearning to revitalize traditions of the past. One example is the song “Sitting on Top of the World,” which blends the bluegrass traditions Hall grew up with and Golden’s blues influences.
“As we did the production, we leaned into the funky origins of country music that you can hear in the ’60s and ’70s,” Hall says. “That song and that recording represents a lot of what we both care about — shared traditions, moving beyond genre and making music that people can dance to, but that also matters.”
At this year’s folk festival, Golden says, “I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage with so many of my favorite musicians in Richmond and in my community, and especially looking forward to reuniting with my original band, Justin Golden & The Come Up. I’m looking forward to the energy. It’s one of my favorite festivals as both a performer and an attendee.”
Beyond that, he wants to put out “Golden Country” volumes three and four — “and just keep doing what I’ve been doing. I’m on the level now where I can play on a national or international level and I just want to keep doing that.”
