I sound like a West Virginia hillbilly who has lived in the mid-south for 26 years, whether I am speaking or singing. I haven't lost the hillbilly at all, but it seems I have picked up a bit of mid-south to go along with it. Mind you, the only two places I have ever lived are West Virginia, until I was in my mid-thirties, and the northeast Piedmont of North Carolina.

One thing that really strikes me is the significant differences in accents between and among localized regions in North Carolina and south central Virginia. I work near the North Carolina/Virginia line, about 25 minutes south of South Boston, Va. I notice, particularly among my elderly clients but also with younger people, that those raised in rural communities around Halifax Co., VA, have much more of what I think of as a southern drawl than do the people in Person County, NC, just south of Halifax Co. There is still a bit of "Old English" in their vowel sounds, not dissimilar to the drawl once common among people raised on the Outer Banks. The rural communities in that part of Virginia are still pretty insular, but were quite insular until the mid 1970's. No interstate traverses that area.   The Outer Banks of NC ain't insular at all anymore. There is also wide variation among accents in the the large geographic and diverse area called "The South," just as there are equally wide variations in accent in the large geographic region called "The North."