ROCKY MOUNT -- Two years after its inclusion on the Virginia Heritage Music Trail, better known as the Crooked Road, Franklin County is still working on ways to properly market itself as a destination for music lovers.

The Crooked Road marketing machine produces brochures, guidebooks and advertisements in publications such as Smithsonian Magazine, Bluegrass Unlimited and even The New Yorker. But the responsibility for coming up with events lies with localities.

"Come up with an idea. Give us a way to work with you," said H.W. "Bill" Smith, executive director of the Crooked Road, as he presented an annual report to the Franklin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

As the eastern gateway to the Crooked Road, Franklin County is home to several music festivals, a number of regular jam sessions and the Blue Ridge Institute, which boasts perhaps the largest collection of traditional music archives on the trail.

In April, the Community Partnership for the Revitalization launched the Rocky Mount Music Festival, focused largely on younger musicians. And there are plans to build an informational kiosk at the corner of Virginia 40 and Virginia 122 in eastern Rocky Mount.

But unlike other stops on the Crooked Road, such as the Floyd Country Store and the Carter Family Fold in Scott County, Franklin County doesn't have a "signature" performance venue where music is played on a regular basis.

"Those places didn't happen because the Crooked Road was initiated -- the Crooked Road happened because those places were already there," said Wayne Angell, chairman of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors. "To add a new one, you've got your work cut out for you. ... It's just a hard, hard task to make yourself different enough and significant enough that you'll attract a lot of people."

Rocky Mount Town Manager Keith Holland would like to try. He's tossed around the idea of finding a regular performance venue, and he's even named the vacant Rakes building, located on South Main Street near the county courthouse, as a possibility.

"When you walk in, it's laid out better than even the country store in Floyd," Holland said. "It's been vacant for a number of years. It's got a lot of local history to it, and it would be a very easy building to do, without much to get it in condition for music performances."

Though the town is looking at the building, there's no rush, Holland said. Before anything is done, the town will hire a contractor to conduct a study as to whether the Rakes building could work for such a purpose. Holland said he's also looking for community involvement and advice on whether the idea could work.

Others in the county are taking a different approach to the Crooked Road.

Each year, the county puts about $30,000 in revenue from its lodging tax into tourist events, in the form of grants intended to help the sponsoring groups pay for publicity and marketing. Last year, it began asking those sponsoring groups to do a little more to receive those dollars.

For Rocky Mount's Warren Street Festival, which celebrates black heritage, the county asked festival organizers to develop a relationship with the Crooked Road.

Scott Martin, the county's director of commerce and leisure services, said Franklin County has deep roots in blues and gospel music, and the festival would be a great place to exhibit it.

"As I understand it, Franklin County is one of the few localities along the Crooked Road with African-American music heritage," Martin said. "We bring diversity to the Crooked Road, so we really want to play that up."

One of the keys, he said, is to emphasize the aspects that make Franklin County stand out from the rest of the communities on the Crooked Road.

"We've got to find our niche -- not to duplicate but be unique," Martin said.

That was echoed by Crooked Road director Smith, who said communities are responding in a variety of ways to the opportunities posed by the trail's marketing power.

"People are turning this a whole bunch of different ways, hopefully to their advantage," Smith said. "That's the strength of the Crooked Road, and that's its appeal. The music played in Franklin County is subtly different from the music played in Galax which is subtly different from the music played in Bristol which is subtly different from the music played in the coalfields.

"With the Crooked Road, there's a new show every night," Smith said.

One of Franklin County's unique features is the Blue Ridge Institute. Classified as one of the Crooked Road's major "venues," the institute doesn't actually host music shows, but instead hosts a large set of archives and other artifacts of traditional Appalachian culture.

"We're the only center, the only museum you can go through to learn about other aspects of the cultural history," said Roddy Moore, director of the Blue Ridge Institute.

As part of that role, Moore said, museum officials encourage visitors to investigate other aspects of Appalachian mountain culture.

"We're trying to tell people when they come through on the Crooked Road, besides the music venue, stop and look at the stores, look at the landscape," Moore said. "Music is only one little aspect of this culture. Stop, look at things, talk to people, just enjoy the cultural landscape of the region."

And on the way out, if they happen to stop and catch a bluegrass jam session at the Seventy-Seven Restaurant in Ferrum, the Dairy Queen in western Rocky Mount, the Depot Welcome Center, the Farmer's Market in Rocky Mount or even Bernard's Carpet and Tile, that's all the better.