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WEEKLY NEWSPAPER Our 33rd Year • Over 25,000 Weekly Readers ISSUE NO. 37 • September 11, 2025 • RutherfordWeekly.com • 828-248-1408
Continental Divide bringing free concert to POPS ...featuring Forest City’s Chris Cole On Friday, September 26, Forest City and the POPS Pavilion Concert Series welcomes home one of its own: home grown and highly accomplished musician Christopher “Chris” Cole, who will perform with the highly acclaimed band Continental Divide. Chris and Continental Divide have long anticipated this special opportunity to perform in Chris’s hometown for friends, family, and a Rutherford County audience which has waited patiently for this opportunity to see Chris perform with Continental Divide and hear this band’s unique sound. Chris grew up in Forest City and graduated from East Rutherford High School where for many years he was a pillar member of East’s outstanding marching bands, playing trumpet and other brass instruments. He attended Western Carolina University where he earned a B.S. and Masters in music. For the next 42 years he taught high school band at Kings Mountain High School and Piedmont Charter School. His marching bands, and various other music groups he taught, performed to local, national and international audiences earning many prestigious awards. In 2011 Chris was inducted into the North Carolina Band Masters Hall of Fame joining his grandfather, Dee C. Cole, who was inducted into the
Band Masters Hall of Fame ahead of him in 2003. The Cole family is well known in Forest City and Rutherford County for their musical talent and musical contributions to the community over many previous decades. Chris’s grandfather, Dee C. Cole, who began his music contributions to the county in the 1910s, is honored, and his legacy remembered, with a special memorial gazebo on the grounds of the former Cool Springs school on Main Street, Forest City (now Rutherford County Schools Adminstrative Offices). The plaque refers to Mr. Cole as Rutherford County’s “Music Man” and the “Father of School Bands.” Over the course of five decades, Dee C. Cole was responsible for establishing school bands in seven Rutherford County communities. He also directed several bands and orchestras in surrounding areas and taught thousands of students the art of music. His efforts to garner support for Rutherford County school band programs is unprecedented. In addition to the North Carolina Hall of Fame, Dee C. Cole was inducted into the Rutherford County Schools Hall of Fame in 2013. Chris remembers his grandfather well and credits his grandfather with his own musical passion and success. His grandfather
was a great teacher, inspiration and the finest example for Chris and thousands of others who were touched by Dee C. Cole’s influence. It’s obvious that Mr. Cole’s musical talent and upstanding character DNA were passed on to his grandson, Chris Cole. Chris has played with Continental Divide since its inception in the early 70s. And Continental Divide has performed for crowds around the Southeast equally long. The band has maintained a reputation of quality, professionalism, and above all, top-notch music and entertainment. They continue to deliver a fun and energetic show full of the enduring music of Motown, classic oldies, and beach music. Frontman singer Gene Pharr, a 2016 Carolina Beach Music Hall of Fame inductee, leads with his silky-smooth voice supported with the tightness of the rhythm section and flowing melodies of the horn line. Continental Divide will provide a performance people will long remember and demand to hear again. Continental Divide will play from 7 to 10pm on Friday evening, September 26. Admission is free and mobile food trucks will be available. The concert promises to be a special event to help welcome in the long-awaited cooler weather and fall colors.
Article submitted by Jean Gordon & Michael Howard. Photos contributed.
Cole, playing at a Morgangton festival, spent 42 years as a high school band director in Kings Mountain.
Chris Cole, who grew up in Forest City and the grandson of Dee C. Cole, will perform with Continental Divide on Sept. 26 at POPS in Forest City. Dee C. Cole was fondly known as “Music Man” of Rutherford County.
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