Del McCoury

Even among the pantheon of music’s finest artists, Del McCoury stands alone. From the nascent sound of bluegrass that charmed hardscrabble hillbilly honkytonks, rural schoolhouse stages, and the crowning glory of the Grand Ole Opry to the present-day culture-buzz of viral videos and digital streams, Del is the living link. On primetime and late-night television talk shows, there is Del. From headlining sold-out concerts to music festivals of all genres, including one carrying his namesake, there is Del. Where audiences number in the tens of thousands, and admirers as diverse as country-rock icon Steve Earle and jamband royalty Phish count as a few among hundreds, there is Del.

Emerging from humble beginnings in York County, PA nearly eighty years ago, Del was not the likeliest of candidates for legendary status. As a teen, he was captivated by the banjo playing of one of its masters, Earl Scruggs, and decided he’d be a banjo picker, too. The Baltimore/Washington, D.C. bar scene of the early 1960s was lively and rough. Del caught a break. More than a break, really. It was an opportunity of a lifetime; joining Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in early 1963. Considered the Father of Bluegrass, Monroe transformed McCoury, moving him from the banjo to guitar, anointing him lead singer, and providing him with a priceless trove of bluegrass tutelage direct from the source.

Countless hours of recording sessions and miles of tireless touring dotted the decades. Del carried on, and carried with him the hallowed traditions of the form and its dedicated following. The passing years became certificates of authenticity. So, in the sea of grunge and R&B that dominated the music scene of the mid-1990s, it was special, perhaps even startling, to see: There was Del.

Now helming the Del McCoury Band, with sons Ronnie and Rob, the ensemble did and continues to represent in a larger, growing musical community a peerless torchbearer for the entire sweep and scope of bluegrass history. Those many years, not to mention a good-natured willingness to stay alert to the latest sounds and opportunities around him, earned McCoury a whole new generation of fans, including some in unlikely places.

“I’m just doing what’s natural,” says Del. “When young musicians ask me what they should do I always tell them, ‘You do whatever’s inside of you. Do what you do best.’”

No surprise that contemporary, bluegrass-bred stars sang his praises; marquee names like Vince Gill and Alison Krauss (who first met Del at a bluegrass festival when she subbed for his missing fiddler). Yet, here too was rocker Earle recording and touring with the group. Here was Phish jamming onstage with the boys. Here was the band on TV, or headlining rock clubs and college campuses; the can’t-miss appearances at country and jazz festivals. There was Del.

“We don’t have a setlist,” says Del. “We try and work in the new songs, but a lot of times it’s just requests from the audience. It’s more interesting for the band, for me, and for the audience because nobody knows what’s coming next.”

Almost unimaginable, McCoury’s sixth decade in a half-century of bluegrass bliss brings new triumphs, new collaborations, and new music. With but a single change in membership in twenty-seven years The Del McCoury Band shows unprecedented stability as well as garnering the respect and admiration of the industry for its unmistakable work: ten IBMA Entertainer of the Year trophies (most recently in 2024); in 2003, Del’s awarded membership in the cast of the legendary Grand Ole Opry; the band’s first Best Bluegrass Album Grammy award, in ’05, followed by a second Grammy win in 2014, (not to mention double-digit nominations).

“I know (having the same band) helped with my success. It keeps your sound constant,” says Del. “We really enjoy what we’re doing.”

The group traveled with the groundbreaking post-O Brother “Down From The Mountain” tour, and performed with Gill, recording on his Grammy-winning These Days, as well as country sensation Dierks Bentley. In addition to becoming something of a regular at the wildly popular Bonnaroo Music Festival, they’ve also curated and expanded Del’s annual namesake festival.

One of the premier string-band events in the country, the multi-day, multi-stage DelFest showcases the new lions of the genre such as Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Greensky Bluegrass, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Old Crow Medicine Show, and legends like Ricky Skaggs, Sam Bush, and Bobby Osborne, plus a diversity of artists like Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and blues-rock veterans Gov’t Mule to Americana darlings The Wood Brothers and Rhiannon Giddens.

“DelFest is a great accomplishment,” says Del. “I never thought it would be as successful as it is.”

And, when Sony Music came calling, post-Hurricane Katrina, proposing a collaboration with New Orleans’ revered Preservation Hall Jazz Band, there was Del. If there was ever a collection of recordings confirming McCoury’s wide-ranging impact and spirit of musical comradery, it would be American Legacies. A wonderfully fulfilling cross-section of traditional bluegrass and the Dixieland pomp of New Orleans, the album typified the Del McCoury Band’s evolution from bluegrass vanguard to an American treasure.

“All music is related. Bill Monroe went to New Orleans and listened to jazz players. Earl Scruggs—some of the tunes he recorded were from New Orleans,” says Del. “It all fits together if you’re willing to be open-minded.”

And like any genuine treasure, the gifts keep coming. On their latest release, Songs of Love and Life, a glorious 15-song collection, the album follows 2021’s celebrated, Grammy-nominated release, Almost Proud, and once again features Del touching down on a diverse set of tracks—vintage and contemporary—as he and his crackerjack band nod to icons Kenny Rogers, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley, as well as welcome next-generation talent, Molly Tuttle, to the party. Across his six decades of making classic albums, Del knows what he’s looking for in a song.

“I like a challenge. I’ve always liked a challenge,” says Del. “I like to learn different things. Doing the same things is boring to me.”

One listen and it’s clear as crystal. There is Del.

The Travelin’ McCourys

From a source deep, abundant, and pure the river flows. It’s there on the map, marking place and time. Yet, the river changes as it remains a constant, carving away at the edges, making new pathways, gaining strength as it progresses forward. The Travelin’ McCourys are that river.

The McCoury brothers—Ronnie (mandolin) and Rob (banjo)—were born into the bluegrass tradition. Talk about a source abundant and pure: their father, Del, is among the most influential and successful musicians in the history of the genre. Years on the road with Dad in the Del McCoury Band honed their knife-edge chops, and encouraged the duo to imagine how traditional bluegrass could cut innovative pathways into 21st century music.

“If you put your mind, your skills, and your ability to it, I think you can make just about anything work on bluegrass instruments,” says Ronnie. “That’s a really fun part of this—figuring the new stuff out and surprising the audience.”

With fiddler Jason Carter, bassist Alan Bartram, and latest recruit Cody Kilby on guitar, they assembled a group that could take what they had in their DNA, take what traditions they learned and heard, and push the music forward. In fact, the band became the only group to have each of its members recognized with an International Bluegrass Music Association Award for their instrument at least once. There were peers, too, that could see bluegrass as both historic and progressive. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees The Allman Brothers Band, improv-rock kings Phish, and jamband contemporary Keller Williams were just a few that formed a mutual admiration society with the ensemble.

The band played the Allman’s Wanee Festival, and guitarist Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam—an annual holiday homecoming of Southern music. An early-years jam with the Lee Boys was hailed by many as the highlight of the evening, and with the video catching fire online, earned a legion of new, young fans of their supercharged combination of sacred steel, R&B, and bluegrass. There were unforgettable collaborations with country smash Dierks Bentley, and onstage magic, jamming with titans String Cheese Incident and Phish, cutting an album with Keller (Pick), and creating the Grateful Ball—a tribute concert-turned-tour bridging bluegrass with the iconic music of the Grateful Dead.

“That’s something that’s part of us being who we are,” says Ronnie. “It comes, too, with us plugging in. It gets louder, for sure. We can’t be another version of our dad’s band. It wouldn’t make any sense for us to do that.”

Their concerts became can’t-miss events, whether headlining historic venues or as festival favorites, drawing the love and respect of a growing fanbase craving their eclectic repertoire. At the 2016 edition of DelFest, an annual gathering of the genre’s best aptly named for the McCoury patriarch, the band delivered the take-away highlight. Rolling Stone called it “a sublime combination of rock and bluegrass, contemporary and classic, old and young. The best set of the festival…” The river was going new places, getting stronger. It was time to re-draw the map.

“We’ve tried to pick songs we think people are going to enjoy,” says Ronnie. “Something we learned from our dad is that a good song is a good song. It can be done in any way.”

So arrives the long-awaited, self-titled debut album from the quintet. A brilliantly executed set overflowing with inventive style, stellar musicianship, and, of course, plenty of burnin’ grass, the 14-song collection is a true culmination of their decades-long journey. From the headwaters of Bill Monroe and the waves of Jerry Garcia to a sound both rooted and revolutionary, soulful and transcending that belongs only to the Travelin’ McCourys.

“The album definitely shows what we’ve evolved into as a band. And, it’s a pretty good representation of what’s happening with the whole genre,” says Rob. “The old bluegrass material is something I love but it’s been done many times. We’re forging ahead with our own sound. That’s what you have to do to make it all work.”

Jerry Douglas

As an elite musician and a mentor, Jerry Douglas continually redefines his role in a career of
recording and live performance spanning more than fifty years. A 2024 inductee into the Bluegrass
Music Hall of Fame, Douglas is widely admired as a resophonic guitarist, solo artist, bandleader,
producer, composer, arranger, collaborator, and curator. Few artists have made as deep an impact on
modern music as Jerry Douglas.
Growing up in Warren, Ohio, and recording with bluegrass group The Country Gentlemen while still
a teenager, Douglas took early inspiration from his guitarist father, John, and his bluegrass band, The
West Virginia Travelers. Early in his career, Douglas toured and recorded with J.D. Crowe & The
New South, Boone Creek, The Whites, The Dreadful Snakes, The Bluegrass Album Band, and
Strength in Numbers. He is a founding member of The Telluride House Band, which got its start at
the famed Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1987. A member of Alison Krauss & Union Station since
1998, Douglas has also toured with James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Elvis Costello, and Paul Simon, and
with his own bands, The Jerry Douglas Band and The Earls of Leicester.
Douglas presented and performed at the first International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)
awards show in 1990. He composed the show’s theme, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” with Mark Schatz. In
addition, Douglas received 1994’s GRAMMY Award for Best Bluegrass Album for The Great Dobro
Sessions, a multi-artist collection he recorded and produced. By 1998, he had released eight solo
albums for Rounder Records, MCA Master Series, and Sugar Hill Records.
Throughout his wide-ranging career, Douglas has accrued dozens of IBMA trophies, as well as
multiple awards from the Country Music Association (a three-time Musician of the Year), the
Academy of Country Music (a ten-time recipient in the Specialty Instrument category), and the
Americana Music Association (Lifetime Achievement Award). He has also received a multitude of
industry awards as a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station, and for his contributions to the O
Brother, Where Art Thou? film and soundtrack (2000).
Douglas serves as co-musical director of The Transatlantic Sessions, an international troupe of
musicians who perform roots music from North America, England, Ireland, and Scotland on the
namesake BBC series and on tour. In 2014 Douglas formed the band The Earls of Leicester to honor
pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt & Scruggs, reintroducing their historic catalog to a modern audience.
As a studio musician, he has played on more than two thousand albums and tracks. He has served on
the Boards of the National Council for Traditional Arts, NARAS, and IBMA. In 2020, contributions
to the IBMA Trust Fund were generated via donations during his Flux Friday livestream program. He
also raised funds for and awareness of the Earl Scruggs Center (Shelby, North Carolina) with an all-
star concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in 2024.
Douglas has won a career sixteen Grammy Awards, most recently as a producer of two albums for
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. He has also produced albums for Alison Krauss, The Del McCoury
Band, The Gibson Brothers, John Hiatt, Steep Canyon Rangers, The Whites, Jesse Winchester, and
Maura O’Connell. He gives longtime listeners and new fans alike an overview of his remarkable
career on his newest album, The Set.
As a bluegrass ambassador, Douglas has twice traveled the world on U.S. State Department tours. In
2004, he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is
without hyperbole The New York Times deemed Douglas “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master.”

The Earls of Leicester

When the Earls of Leicester formed in 2013, their mission was ambitious but exact: to preserve and promote the legacy of bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, in hopes of reviving the duo’s music for longtime admirers and introducing a new generation to their genre-defining sound. Within a year of releasing their self-titled debut, the Nashville-based six-piece far surpassed their own expectations, winning a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and earning six awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association. Now, with their first live album, Earls of Leicester offer up a selection of songs that fully capture the pure joy and supreme musicianship that propel their every performance.

Recorded over two nights at Nashville’s CMA Theater, The Earls of Leicester Live at The CMA Theater in The Country Music Hall of Fame bears a boundless vitality that makes songs from over a half-century ago feel irresistibly fresh. Despite the band’s painstaking precision in recreating the catalog of Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys, the album unfolds with an easy warmth that honors the essence of traditional bluegrass, which Douglas describes as “music that was meant to be played on back porches.” Earls of Leicester Live is also accompanied by a DVD that shows the complete splendor of their live set: the throwback attire, the off-the-cuff but illuminating between-song banter, the relentless hotfooting required of their stage setup. “Our goal is to go out and reacquaint everybody with the music of Flatt and Scruggs just the way they did it, which means fewer microphones and a good amount of choreography,” says Douglas. “We’re trying to put as much as we can into the music before it even reaches the speakers.”

Made up entirely of songs from 1954 to 1965, Earls of Leicester Live combines classic tunes with more obscure numbers unearthed thanks to the band’s encyclopedic familiarity with Flatt and Scruggs’s body of work. To that end, the setlist includes notorious crowd-pleasers like “Martha White Theme Song” (originally penned as a jingle for Martha White Self-Rising Flour) and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” (a breakneck-paced, banjo-driven instrumental popularized thanks to its use in Bonnie and Clyde), as well as the harmony-laced “You Can Feel It in Your Soul” and the sweetly crooning “All I Want Is You.” Earls of Leicester Live also serves up several tracks integral to Flatt and Scruggs legend—including “I’m Gonna Sleep with One Eye Open,” a song famously banned from the Grand Ole Opry—along with more oddball offerings like the gracefully sprawling two-part instrumental “Steel Guitar Blues/Spanish Two Step.” And in one of the album’s most poignant moments, the Earls of Leicester deliver the wistfully lilting “Reunion in Heaven”—a song the band performed at Foggy Mountain Boys mandolin player/vocalist Curly Seckler’s gravesite earlier this year, as per Seckler’s personal request.

Throughout Earls of Leicester Live, the band wholeheartedly channels the spirit of Flatt and Scruggs while allowing each member’s distinct charm and singular musicality to shine through. And though their unbridled passion instantly stirs up a freewheeling energy, a closer listen reveals the profound mastery of skill infused into each performance. “This is the result of years and years of trying out different instruments, different string gauges, different techniques to try to create these sounds,” Douglas notes. In that process, he adds, the Earls of Leicester eventually dug up decades-old instruments in order to achieve the ideal texture and tone they were seeking. “Everybody in the band plays something old,” says Douglas. “This music just sounds so much more true to form when it’s played on old instruments.”

For Douglas—a 16-time Grammy Award-winner who founded the Earls of Leicester and produces all their material—that approach builds on a lifelong dedication to studying the music of Flatt and Scruggs. Soon after hearing the Foggy Mountain Boys at age seven, he devoted himself to deconstructing their recordings, paying particular attention to the captivating Dobro work of Josh Graves. “I remember sitting by the record player and trying to figure out what Josh Graves was doing,” he says. “There was no one to teach me, so I just had to listen.”

Douglas attended a number of Flatt and Scruggs concerts as a kid, and later played with each musician on separate occasions. Although his own prolific career as a musician and producer has kept him more than occupied over the years—including appearing on more than 1,600 albums, recording with the likes of Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, and Elvis Costello—Douglas was unable to shake his vision of one day revisiting the music of Flatt and Scruggs. “I probably could have stayed focused on everything else I’ve got going on, but this just haunted me,” he says.

As Douglas points out, the most crucial factor in forming the Earls of Leicester was replicating the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that long fueled Flatt and Scruggs. “I looked for years to find the group I needed for the alchemy to work,” he says. In the end, Douglas landed on the lineup of Shawn Camp (Garth Brooks, Blake Shelton), Jeff White (Vince Gill, Loretta Lynn), Charlie Cushman (Jimmy Martin, Mel Tillis), Johnny Warren (son of Foggy Mountain Boys’ Paul Warren), and Barry Bales (Alison Krauss & Union Station)—and found himself beyond floored by their immediate synergy. “I had to stop the band in the middle of the first song, because I was scared to keep going—it felt like Flatt and Scruggs were going to jump right out of the wall,” he says in reflecting on their first meeting. “I’d hoped it was going to be even half that good, and it ended up just taking my breath away.”

With The Earls of Leicester arriving on New Year’s Day in 2014—and later amassing its many accolades, including Album of the Year at the 2015 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards—the band released their acclaimed sophomore album Rattle & Roar in July 2016 and, at the 2017 IBMA Awards, took home the Entertainer of the Year prize for the third year in a row. But for Douglas, the most rewarding aspect of Earls of Leicester lies in playing for a live audience and witnessing their reaction firsthand. “One of the biggest payoffs for me is playing this music for younger people, and watching them fall in love with it,” he says. “And even better than that is having the older folks come up to me and tell me, ‘I never thought I’d get to hear that music again.’ That’s when I know when we’ve really done our job.”

On Earls of Leicester Live, that generation-spanning appeal is undeniable, with the band’s sheer delight and wonder as infectious as each indelible melody. And as the Earls of Leicester transport the audience into a much simpler era, the album ultimately fosters a tender connection with the past, a sense of promise for the future, and a newfound solace in the present moment. “This music conjures up my childhood—it drops me off into a kinder, gentler place, and I think it should do that for everybody,” says Douglas. “When people come to see us, we want them to forget about the outside world and all the stress or strife that goes along with it, and hopefully hold onto that feeling for a while even after the show’s over.”

Dierks Bentley

A multi-platinum country hitmaker with deep bluegrass roots, Dierks Bentley has never strayed far from the acoustic music that shaped him — from his Station Inn days in Nashville to bluegrass-leaning records and side projects. A Grand Ole Opry member, he brings genuine reverence for the genre alongside mainstream star power.

Béla Fleck

Béla Fleck is an American banjo virtuoso known for his genre-defying approach to the instrument. Born in 1958, he has pushed the boundaries of bluegrass, jazz, classical, and world music, earning multiple Grammy Awards across diverse categories. As the leader of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, he pioneered a fusion of jazz and progressive bluegrass, while his solo and collaborative projects have explored everything from classical concertos to African musical traditions. Renowned for his technical mastery and innovation, Fleck continues to expand the possibilities of the banjo in modern music.

Sam Bush

There was only one prize-winning teenager carrying stones big enough to say thanks, but no thanks to Roy Acuff. Only one son of Kentucky finding a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Only one progressive hippie allying with like-minded conspirators, rolling out the New Grass revolution, and then leaving the genre’s torch-bearing band behind as it reached its commercial peak.

There is only one consensus pick of peers and predecessors, of the traditionalists, the rebels, and the next gen devotees. Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.

On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.

As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.

Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan. It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved Bill Monroe- even saw him perform at the Ryman- but he’d discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.

See the photo of a fresh-faced Sam Bush in his shiny blue high school graduation gown, circa 1970. Tufts of blonde hair breaking free of the borders of his squared cap, Bush is smiling, flanked by his proud parents. The next day he was gone, bound for Los Angeles. He got as far as his nerve would take him- Las Vegas- then doubled back to Bowling Green.

“I started working at the Holiday Inn as a busboy,” Bush recalls. “Ebo Walker and Lonnie Peerce came in one night asking if I wanted to come to Louisville and play five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a big, ol’ ‘Hell yes, let’s go.’”

Bush played guitar in the group, then began playing mandolin after recruiting guitarist Tony Rice to the fold. Following a fallout with Peerce in 1971, Bush and his Alliance mates- Walker, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch- formed the New Grass Revival, issuing the band’s debut, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon after, replaced temporarily by Butch Robins, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan.

“There were already people that had deviated from Bill Monroe’s style of bluegrass,” Bush explains. “If anything, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been started. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and rock-&-roll songs.”

Shunned by some traditionalists, New Grass Revival played bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.” Quickly becoming a favorite of rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era’s most popular artists. Russell hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour in 1973 that put the band nightly in front of tens of thousands.

At tour’s end, it was back to headlining six nights a week at an Indiana pizza joint. But, they were resilient, grinding it out on the road. And in 1975 the Revival first played Telluride, Colorado, forming a connection with the region and its fans that has prospered for 45 years.

Bush was the newgrass commando, incorporating a variety of genres into the repertoire. He discovered a sibling similarity with the reggae rhythms of Marley and The Wailers, and, accordingly, developed an ear-turning original style of mandolin playing. The group issued five albums in their first seven years, and in 1979 became Russell’s backing band. By 1981, Johnson and Burch left the group, replaced by banjoist Bela Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn.

A three-record contract with Capitol Records and a conscious turn to the country market took the Revival to new commercial heights. Bush survived a life-threatening bout with cancer, and returned to the group that’d become more popular than ever. They released chart-climbing singles, made videos, earned Grammy nominations, and, at their zenith, called it quits.

“We were on the verge of getting bigger,” recalls Bush. “Or maybe we’d gone as far as we could. I’d spent 18 years in a four-piece partnership. I needed a break. But, I appreciated the 18 years we had.”

Bush worked the next five years with Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers, then a stint with Lyle Lovett. He took home three-straight IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards, 1990-92, (and a fourth in 2007). In 1995 he reunited with Fleck, now a burgeoning superstar, and toured with the Flecktones, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. Then, finally, after a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival and collaborating with other bands, Sam Bush went solo.

He’s released seven albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the

Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist. Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, “King of Telluride.”

“With this band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 50 years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock-&-roll, jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it’s a culmination of all of that,” says Bush. “I can unapologetically stand onstage and feel I’m representing those songs well.”

Dan Tyminski

Dan Tyminski discovered the joys of live music as a six-year-old, when his parents began taking him to fiddle contests, square dances, and bluegrass festivals across New England.

“Watching live music always spoke to me much louder than sitting in front of my record player,” he remembers. “I loved it. Wherever music was being played, I wanted to go watch. Years later, I still feel that way.” For a young musician who would later become one of the biggest names in modern-day bluegrass, those early experiences were life changing.

Throughout his 30+ year career, Tyminski has left his mark in every corner of modern music. His voice famously accompanies George Clooney’s performance of the Stanley Brothers’ classic song, “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow,” in the film, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and his vocal collaboration with Swedish DJ Avicii on the song “Hey Brother” was a global smash, having been streamed more than a billion times to date. His diverse solo projects and years of work with Alison Krauss and Union Station have yielded troves of award-winning music.

In recent years, Tyminski’s live shows with the Dan Tyminski Band have become bluegrass fan favorites and are regularly on the must-see lists among music fans of any genre.

With his newest album release – the Grammy-nominated 2024 concert album Dan Tyminski: Live From The Ryman – he captures the magic of those live shows, while also proving that he still has the same passion for live music as he did when he was growing up.

His earliest touring and recording work was as a part of the band, Green Mountain Bluegrass. He later joined the influential bluegrass group, Lonesome River Band, before embarking on his three decades of work with Alison Krauss and Union Station.

The first album that Tyminski recorded as a solo artist was the soul-stirring Carry Me Across the Mountain (2000), followed by the Grammy-nominated Wheels (2008) which was named the 2009 Album of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. His work with the EDM artist, Avicii, inspired Dan to create the genre-defying Southern Gothic album, released in 2017 to much critical acclaim. Tyminski would then showcase again his heart for bluegrass with the 2022 EP tribute to Tony Rice, One More Time Before You Go, which included guest performances by Molly Tuttle, Sam Bush, Dailey & Vincent, and Billy Strings. The following year saw the release of the full-length bluegrass album, God Fearing Heathen, which quickly hit #1 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums chart.

Over the course of his career, Tyminski has also evolved into a prolific songwriter, penning songs with Monty Criswell, Phillip Lammonds, Kristian Bush, Ashley Monroe, Chris Stapleton and many others.

Dan has been honored with 14 Grammy Awards and is a four-time Male Vocalist of the Year honoree by the International Bluegrass Music Association. He has also recorded instrumental or vocal harmony contributions for projects by Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Joan Osborne, Charlie Daniels, Kenny Chesney, LeAnn Rimes, Rob Thomas, and Charlie Haden, to name a few. Tyminski certainly represents the pinnacle of modern bluegrass music.

While Dan enjoys a good conversation and a good cigar, he can often be found participating in charitable Pro-Am golf tournaments, as well as competing regularly in the Foosball tournament circuit.

Molly Tuttle

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway—her brand new band of bluegrass virtuosos featuring mandolinist Dominick Leslie, banjoist Kyle Tuttle, fiddle player Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and bassist Shelby Means—will tour the United States in 2022 in support of Tuttle’s forthcoming Nonesuch Records debut.

An award-winning guitarist and songwriter, native Californian Molly Tuttle continues to push her songwriting in new directions and transcend musical boundaries. Since moving to Nashville in 2015, she has worked with many of her peers and heroes in the Americana, folk, and bluegrass communities, winning Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2018 Americana Music Awards. Tuttle’s 2019 debut album, When You’re Ready, received critical acclaim, with NPR Music praising its “handsomely crafted melodies that gently insinuate themselves into the memory,” and the Wall Street Journal lauding Tuttle’s “genre-boundary-crossing comfort and emotional preparedness,” calling the record an “invigorating, mature and attention-grabbing first album.”

Tuttle’s accolades also include Folk Alliance International’s honor for Song of the Year for “You Didn’t Call My Name,” from her 2017 Rise EP, and consecutive trophies for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year; she was the first woman in the history of the IBMA to win that honor.

During the pandemic, Tuttle recorded a covers album, …but i’d rather be with you, which was released in August 2020. The record, which features guest vocals from Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, includes songs by musicians ranging from FKA Twigs to Cat Stevens, Rancid to Karen Dalton, and The National to The Rolling Stones. The New Yorker’s Jay Ruttenberg, in praising her rendition of the Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow,” says: “In Tuttle’s reading, the song uses a bluegrass spirit to look to the past—and a feminist allegiance to peek at the future.”

Ketch Secor

Ketch Secor is a merry ringmaster, passionate professor, modern Beat, and unassuming virtuoso. The Story the Crow Told Me is his solo debut, tracing the journey from street busker to founding Old Crow Medicine Show, now a Grammy-winning, Opry-member band behind the double-platinum hit “Wagon Wheel.” Produced by Jody Stevens, the albumfeatures Marty Stuart, Molly Tuttle, Willie Watson, Jaren Johnston, and an ode to Nashville with help from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Ketch will be touring in 2025 in support of the album on his The Story The Crow Told Me Tour.

Bryan Sutton

“I’ve come and gone and rambled far, still finding notes on this guitar,” sings Bryan Sutton in the truth-telling title track to his new album, The More I Learn. It was the right choice, summing up Sutton’s approach to his remarkable career. “The more I learn/the more I learn/that I’ve sure got a lot more to learn.”

This is a musician who could assume from the acclaim that’s followed him for more than 20 years that he’s the one who knows it all. But that would be incompatible with his character, and it wouldn’t have enabled him become the fully rounded, always improving musician that he strives to be.

Since he arrived in Nashville in the mid ‘90s, Sutton has been a young phenom, a trusted sideman, a sought-after studio instrumentalist, and a solo recording artist. On The More I Learn, he asserts himself as a songwriter and auteur in his own right – one who has assimilated wide-ranging influences in American roots music, and distilled them into something strong and personal. It’s the sound and approach he’ll be carrying forward as leader of his own band.

“It’s a manifestation of years of wanting to write more and sing more,” says Sutton. “I put doing this off for a lot of years, choosing to be busy with other things. My journey has been playing for a lot of other people but feeling like I had more I wanted to do.”

Sutton had been writing original instrumentals on his guitar for years, and it’s extraordinary to be around him when he’s riffing and improvising on the fretboard. Lately, those spontaneous licks began inspiring lyrics and verses and choruses. And after being around the songwriting culture of Nashville for years, as well as his current run with bluegrass band Hot Rize, Sutton found himself figuring out what he wanted to say, and what kind of songwriter he wanted to be.

He says: “I’m dealing with some of the issues a lot of folks deal with early in their career, which is trying not to write somebody else’s song, and trying to be honest and learning to trust what’s inside me.”

Longtime fans will be gratified that these explorations have only drawn him closer to the mountain music and bluegrass on which he was raised. But this is, after all, an artist who once titled a solo album Not Too Far From The Tree. “I’m not trying to write modern bluegrass,” he says (with all due respect to modern bluegrass, of which he has played a lot). “I’m influenced by a lot of things, but at end of day (my music is) close to the ground. I like to listen to songs that grab me on a base emotion.”

Sutton’s name rippled through the world of bluegrass music when he started playing guitar with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder in 1995. He was in his early 20s, fresh out of his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, and he could play with finesse and speed, but with enough power and dynamics to be heard clearly over the big Skaggs band. Soon, his musicianship began showing up on studio albums by country stars, iconic projects including Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue album and key acoustic music projects such as Béla Fleck’s Acoustic Planet tour, when Sutton was called on to sub for his hero, guitarist Tony Rice.

While he juggled various studio and road commitments, Sutton made a string of guitar albums that solidified his stature as a preeminent instrumental recording artist and a leading figure in the evolution of bluegrass music. One highlight of many was winning a Grammy Award for a duet with North Carolina flatpicking icon Doc Watson. Every album had a story, and every song had a reason to be included.

The most recent major chapter of Sutton’s career has been his inclusion in Hot Rize, the legendary band that defined the bluegrass scene in Colorado in the 1980s. Now reconfigured, with Sutton replacing the late, great Charles Sawtelle, Hot Rize is writing original music again, which helped jumpstart Sutton’s interest in songwriting.

“We had some writing weekends together, which was a really good catalyst for my own process,” Sutton says. “You get on a thread and follow to its end. My writing started with the prep for (2015’s Western Skies album), and it really started taking off. Prior to that I’d never set aside whole days to write, and I started doing that.”

Sutton tracked his new collection of songs at Zac Brown’s Southern Ground studio in Nashville, which has become a refuge for roots musicians searching for a comfortable space and the in-house engineering mastery of Brandon Bell (Dierks Bentley, Sarah Jarosz). It was quickly decided that the industry standard approach of recording in isolation booths was wrong for this project. The musicians got back into the big room in a circle, just as they’d run the songs in rehearsal, and it worked much better as complete takes with no chances to fix things. “You accept some warts and some things that are slightly ragged around certain edges, but it all feels very real,” says Sutton. “I feel like I’ve tried to get to a point where I believe what’s in me, and I want to make that real for a listener.”

One such song is “Hills For The Head,” which ties the spirit of his Appalachian Mountain home to the Rocky Mountain magic of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where Sutton is a member of the famed “house band” with longtime colleagues Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Béla Fleck. He performs this one on the album as a solo with voice and guitar, but there are fine self-penned band songs as well. A Hot Rize writing session led to the brisk and tuneful “Walking Across This Land,” performed with fellow Hot Rizer Tim O’Brien singing harmony.

Several songs, including the romantic original “Play Me A Record,” and the Bob Dylan cover “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” are set with a spare instrumentation of one other guitar (Punch Brother Chris Eldridge) and bass (Samson Grisman), a configuration inspired by Doc Watson’s Southbound album, one of Sutton’s lifelong favorites. “I just think that’s a killer sounding record. It always takes me to a place I need to go,” he says. “It’s Doc doing a lot of fancy picking, but it’s not trying too hard. So if I am doing things that are a little more rhythmic or a little more brushy, that’s me trying to keep things from being too intricate – being satisfied with a good groove and a good tone on the guitar.”

Even with this new focus on vocals, the guitar remains prominent. In some cases, his intricate figures frame the songs, as with the ingratiating intro to “The More I Learn, while the pure instrumentals take us through various chapters of Sutton’s life. There’s a solo take on “Arkansas Traveler,” a traditional tune Bryan’s been flatpicking since he first learned how. The glowing, honest production takes us eight inches from Sutton’s picking hand and guitar top for a mesmerizing performance. New instrumentals worked up with full band treatment include the Irish-tinged “Virginia Creeper.” A melody inspired by the climbing, winding vine of that name is traded among Sutton, Noam Pikelny’s banjo, Casey Campbell’s mandolin, and Mike Barnett’s fiddle.

As a mountain musician from the bluegrass tradition, Sutton is esteemed in the school of American guitar that includes Doc Watson, Norman Blake, and Tony Rice. As a Nashville picker who loves finding something fresh to contribute in the studio for a variety of artists, he’s become an heir to the A-Team legacy of Chet Atkins, Hank Garland, and Ray Edenton. There’s even a strong case to be made that Sutton has injected a lot more bluegrass and traditional sensibility into the Music Row environment than would have been there without him. Sutton is certainly a lifelong learner, but we’d be naïve not to recognize how much he’s taught us.

Michael Cleveland

A bluegrass fiddle prodigy turned perennial award winner, Michael Cleveland has claimed IBMA’s Fiddle Player of the Year more times than almost anyone in the genre’s history. Leading his band Flamekeeper, he plays with a ferocity and precision that’s earned him comparisons to the genre’s founding fiddlers.

Rob Ickes

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Rob Ickes (rhymes with “bikes”) comes from a musical family. His grandparents played old-time fiddle music, and Rob trained his young musical ear at their weekly jam sessions. Although his family wanted Rob to play fiddle, the instrument didn’t interest him. Then, at the age of thirteen, Rob was exposed to the Dobro playing of Mike Auldridge, and the sound immediately caught his attention. Soon after, Rob got his first Dobro, and he has been playing music ever since.

Rob moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined Blue Highway, the highly esteemed bluegrass band, as a founding member in 1994. He is recognized as one of the most innovative Dobro players on the scene today, contributing signature technique and greatly expanding the boundaries of the instrument’s sonic and stylistic territory. He won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Dobro Player of the Year award for a record-setting fifteenth time in 2013; IBMA notes that he is the most awarded instrumentalist in the history of the IBMA awards.

As an active session player and touring musician, he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Charlie Haden, Merle Haggard, Earl Scruggs, Tony Rice, David Grisman, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, David Lee Roth, Dolly Parton, Patty Loveless, Peter Rowan, Claire Lynch, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The youngest dobro player on The Great Dobro Sessions (Jerry Douglas & Tut Taylor, producers), which won the 1994 Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, he was also on the Alison Krauss & The Cox Family album, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, which won the 1994 Grammy for Best Southern Gospel. His most recent release is a dobro-piano jazz album, Road Song (ResoRevolution 2009); he has also released four acclaimed solo albums on Rounder, eight albums with Blue Highway (Rounder, Ceili, Rebel) and a self-titled CD with Three Ring Circle, comprising Rob, Andy Leftwich and Dave Pomeroy (Earwave).

In 2015 Rob left Blue Highway to pursue other musical projects. Rob’s latest project is with singer/guitarist Trey Hensley. Starting full time in 2016, the duo has performed throughout the US, Europe and also Australia. Their first recording, “Before the Sun Goes Down,” was nominated for a Grammy in 2016.

Rob is also a gifted resonator guitar teacher; in 2007, he founded ResoSummit, a three-day annual instructional event in Nashville, featuring leading Dobro players and luthiers as faculty.

Trey Hensley

GRAMMY® Award-winning singer/songwriter/guitarist and 2023 IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Guitar Player of the Year Trey Hensley has beencalled a “musical phenom” by NPR,“a guitar-slinging superhero” by Bluegrass Today and“Nashville’s hottest young player” by Acoustic Guitar magazine. A multiple GRAMMY® nominee widely recognized for his world class musicianship and guitar prowess (Rolling Stone observes “Trey Hensley shreds”), Hensley was invited to perform alongside many of the world’s greatest guitarists at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023 in Los Angeles. That same year, Hensley was a featured player in a Guitar World magazine piece titled “6 Blazing Bluegrass Guitarists You Need To Hear.” But with Hensley it’s not just the guitar that does the talking—he’s also well known for his rich, soulful and powerful baritone vocals with echoes of Merle Haggard and George Jones (as Holler put it: “Hensley possesses a strikingly resonate, emotional voice, one that makes him a potent singer outside of his superb finger-picking ability.”)
For the past decade, Hensley has been one half of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed powerhouse duo Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley. With a musical DNA made up of an impressive, eclectic melting pot of artists such as The Allman Brothers Band, Merle Haggard, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, and The Band, it’s no surprise that Hensley’s impressive list of collaborations includes a diverse list of extraordinary artists: Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, Taj Mahal, Tommy Emmanuel, Marty Stuart, Earl Scruggs, Dolly Parton, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Little Feat, Old Crow Medicine Show, Stone Temple Pilots, Steve Vai, Molly Tuttle, Leftover Salmon and many more. Hensley received his first GRAMMY® Award at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in L.A. on Feb. 2, 2025 as a member of The Taj Mahal Sextet, whose recording Swingin’ Live At The Church In Tulsa won in the Best Traditional Blues Album category. Hensley’s other-worldly guitar playing has resulted in earning more than a third of a million social media followers while attracting many legendary guitar players as fans, including former Deep Purple founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Tommy Emmanuel, CGP.

AJ Lee and Blue Summit

A rising voice in California’s bluegrass scene, AJ Lee leads AJ Lee & Blue Summit with mandolin chops and songwriting well beyond her years. Her sound draws on classic bluegrass while staying rooted in original material and a fresh, youthful energy.

Kristin Scott Benson

Kristin Scott Benson is the seven-time International Bluegrass Music Association’s Banjo Player of the Year, recipient of the 2018 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, and 2024 inductee into the American Banjo Hall of Fame.

Since 2008, she has been a member of Grammy-nominated and two-time IBMA Entertainers of the Year, The Grascals. Kristin is one of the nation’s top bluegrass banjo players, exhibiting impeccable taste, timing, and tone. With an attentive ear to back-up, she is known and respected as a true team player among her peers.
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Many consider her to be one of the first females to successfully be a side-musician in a top-tiered bluegrass band:

“There was one grass ceiling no woman could cut through—until Kristin Scott Benson came along, that is. Almost two years ago, she joined The Grascals. Not to front the band, not to sing, not to be eye candy, but instead to drive the group with her fivestring banjo. Until then, no woman had ever been hired to play one of the most defining of the bluegrass instruments in an Alist, festival-headlining, all-male band….It’s a high profile gig, as Kristin takes the banjo where no woman has taken it before.”

Larry Nager – “Kristin Scott Benson – Cutting the Grass Ceiling” Bluegrass Unlimited: Oct, 2010

In 2022, Kristin became the newest endorser for Deering Banjos. Benson now plays a Custom Deering Golden Wreath model with a curly maple neck and speed finish. This banjo came about after trying a number of different Deering banjos and is an amalgamation of all the different models in Deering’s Golden Series – the Golden Wreath, Golden Era, and Rustic Wreath.

Kristin’s newest release is a unique project. Under the artist name Benson, the 2023 album Pick Your Poison was released by Mountain Home Records and is a collaborative effort between two of bluegrass music’s most treasured instrumentalists: Kristin and her husband, mandolinist Wayne Benson. With decades of experience in top-tier bands, both have established themselves as stalwarts in the community. After years of paving separate musical paths, the two finally decided it was time to integrate their identities and create something new together. Benson is their first combined effort, despite having been married for over 20 years.

Kristin has been featured on The Grascals’ albums since 2008. As part of the Grascals, Kristin’s media performances include The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Fox & Friends, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and CBS’ The Talk, among others. The band has also performed for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as accumulating over 200 performances on The Grand Ole Opry.