Josh Shilling, lead vocalist with Mountain Heart, sent along these photos of the band at the CMA Music Festival last week.

        

        

    

We’ve written a good bit this past few months about Josh Shilling, the newest member of Mountain Heart who had the unenviable job of taking the spot held by founding member, Steve Gulley, on guitar and vocals. Josh and the rest of the band will release their newest CD, Road That Never Ends - The Live Album, on Tuesday, October 23 on Rural Rhythm Records.

Our local Roanoke, VA newspaper, The Roanoke Times, has published a feature on Josh, written by staffer Tad Dickens, which follows the “local boy makes good” format. Josh grew up not far from Roanoke in Martinsville, VA, and got his professional music career started playing with Roanoke-area bands.

For 24-year-old Shilling, the road that never ends started around Roanoke.

Shilling was already a veteran of the region’s music, nightspot and recording scene by the time he graduated from Bassett High School. Every male in his family plays guitar. His maternal grandfather, Leon Woodward, and uncle, Kim Woodward, were well-known nightclub pickers.

Read the full article on The Roanoke Times web site.

Don’t forget that tomorrow (10/22) between noon and 10:00 p.m. (ET), any registered user of The Bluegrass Blog can download a free track from Road That Never Ends. Be sure to log in during that time and get a free first look at Josh Shilling and Mountain Heart live.

We’ve written a good bit recently about Mountain Heart’s new vocalist, Josh Shilling, and the reaction to the band’s new sound. Today’s edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel has an interview with Mountain Heart mandolinist Adam Stefey about this very topic.

Adam talks about the recent departure of founding member Steve Gulley, and how they came to bring Josh into the band. He also touches on the reaction of bluegrass fans to the change, with an allusion to the way some hardcore grassers look at them.

“Like any band change, it may take a year for people to get used to it. People who are real traditional bluegrass fans won’t like it, but they didn’t like our band before. It’s different to hear a different voice, but he’s doing a great job. I guess everything worked out the way it’s supposed to.”

Read the whole article online.

Mountain Heart is also performing live on the radio today (3/2) in Knoxville. You can hear them via live streaming at the WDVX web site at 12:00 noon (EST) when they visit WDVX’s Blue Plate Special.

There’s been so much bluegrass on The Grand Ole Opry this past few months that I feel like I’m repeating myself each Friday when I point out who’s on. This week is no exception, with Mountain Heart performing on both the Friday and Saturday night shows from The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

If you have yet to catch their recently revised lineup - with new vocalist Josh Shilling front and center - and will be near a radio receiver or an Internet connection, you’ll have the chance tonight (2/16) between 9:00-9:30, and again on Saturday evening (2/17) between 8:00-8:30 and 11:00-11:30 (EST).

Also appearing on Saturday’s Opry broadcast will be Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys (8:30-9:00), Cherryholmes (9:30-10:00 and midnight to 12:30) and The Whites (9:00-9:30 and 10:30-11:00). All times are Eastern.

The Opry broadcasts can be heard online via streaming audio from the WSM web site, and their radio can be heard over a wide portion of the southern and central US at 650 AM. Friday’s show runs from 9:00-11:00 p.m., and Saturday’s from 7:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m.

If you miss the live broadcasts (or audio streams) you can find selected performances posted on the WSM audio archives page by early next week.

There has been much discussion this past few weeks about Josh Shilling, the newest member of Mountain Heart who joined the band when founding member Steve Gulley departed in late 2006. Whenever a major band makes such a prominent change in their lineup, loyal fans feel a knot in their stomachs. After all, they loved the band with Steve - how will it be with the new guy?

Early reports have been enthusiastic, and Josh has been described as an amazingly talented vocalist with real “star power.”

They made their Station Inn debut in Nashville last week with Josh, and we have a report on the show from Jennie Frank, sister of bluegrass picker Ashby Frank. Jennie works for the Tennessee Performing Arts Center and operates a teaching studio, Inspire Reflect Studio, in Nashville.

Here’s Jennie’s review, which she titled Who’s The Fool Now?

Bluegrass staple, Mountain Heart, with new lead vocalist Josh Schilling, packed the Station Inn on 12th Avenue South in downtown Nashville this past Wednesday night. I was one of the lucky ones to catch the show.Now for most in the bluegrass world, this band’s incredible talent is no news to you, but the particular sound emerging from the stage was not one of a typical Mountain Heart performance. It echoed a new voice in bluegrass; one that is guaranteed to grow there for a really long time.Schilling made his debut with the band only a couple weeks earlier on the Grand Ole Opry stage, immediately showcasing his songwriting abilities with self-penned Who’s the Fool Now? - a “melt your heart while it’s breaking” tune that would make Vince Gill contemplate the idea he had a long lost brother. On the Station stage, he topped his Opry crooning, throwing into the mix of the traditional MH sound with soulful, unique renditions of classics such as Soulshine by Warren Hayes and Eric Clapton’s Running on Faith.

Mind you now, the highs of the evening were not carried by the newcomer vocalist alone. Mountain Heart - summing up musicians plus vocalists equals a whole lotta something good - has never been so full of energy. Loved favorites of the band, plus a couple cuts from fiddle player Jim Van Cleve’s self-debut No Apologies, spattered the song list, as one after another were executed in perfect accord. When the crowd cheered for more at the end of the second set, a band member of another well-known bluegrass group whispered to me “gosh, I love this band!” as the group re-entered for an encore.

And encore they did. Van Cleve tore up the last number, blazing half the hairs off of his bow and I do believe a couple audience members’ heads. By the time the show closed, every member glowed with the sweet sweat of a successful, bless your bluegrass heart performance.

So, if you haven’t taken a listen to this band in awhile, I urge you to “get thee to their website” for a listen to Mountain Heart and their new sound with the familiar trimmings. The appeal is quite mesmerizing and the freshness will be well-known in bluegrassland very soon.

Editor’s note: You can hear a live version of Josh and Mountain Heart performing Who’s the Fool Now? on their MySpace page. There is also a video clip on YouTube of them doing a semi-spontaneous cover of Clapton’s version of Nobody Knows You at the Georgia Theater in Cartersville, GA on February 3.

Jim VanCleve said that it was sort of a special feature moment in the show, and that the clip was captured by a member of the audience on a cell phone.

Mountain Heart unveils their new sound this weekend on The Grand Ole Opry, introducing guitarist/vocalist Josh Shilling for the first time on last night’s Friday Opry, and performing again tonight on the Opry radio broadcast.

They got a call back from the Opry audience last night after Josh sang one of his tunes, and all the guys are excited about having him in the band.

Jon Weisberger, Nashville writer, musician and member of the IBMA Executive Committee, attended the band’s rehearsal yesterday, and passed along some more information and his impressions of Josh, and how he fits into the Mountain Heart sound.

I stopped by Jim Van Cleve’s house Friday to catch a few numbers as Mountain Heart was rehearsing for their weekend’s shows at the Grand Ole Opry with new member Josh Shilling—and, like the members of the band themselves, I was blown away by his talent. Just 23 years old, Josh grew up around Martinsville, Virginia and now lives in Roanoke. But while he heard bluegrass from an early age—almost inevitable in that area—he was drawn to the piano as a youngster, and by the time he graduated from high school, he was already playing a wide variety of music with an equally wide variety of bands on a semi-professional basis. Indeed, by the time he got the call from Mountain Heart, he was working 200 dates a year.

From what I heard—a half-dozen numbers, including “I’m Just Hear To Ride The Train,” “God And Everybody,” “Heart Like A Road Sign, Head Like A Wheel,” “Deadwood” and a beautiful contemporary country-flavored original of Josh’s—this young man’s going to fit right in with Mountain Heart’s signature sound, while bringing some new dimensions to their music. He can definitely cut the vocals on their existing material. Josh doesn’t sound exactly like Steve Gulley, but there’s no apparent limit to the upper end of his range, and he’s getting inside the songs quickly, so fans will find a lot of continuity of sound in their favorite material.

I sat and talked with some of the guys—Josh, Barry Abernathy and Jason Moore, mostly—during one of their breaks, and was impressed by their mutual admiration. Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that Josh and the band had been aware of each other for some time, having connected through Mountain Heart’s sound engineer Scotty Bolen, who engineered some demos for Josh a few years back.

“They were doing a record for Clay [Jones] about two years ago,” Josh told me. “And for some reason, I just decided I wanted to go by and check it out, so I eased into the session and introduced myself to everybody. (more…)