Though the new CD, No Turning Back, won’t be released until September 9, 2008, a new single from the album is expected in mid-July. The band will celebrate their 26th year by releasing their updated version of Them Blues, a song originally recorded by LRB back in 1984 on their very first album for Rebel Records.
LRB bandleader Sammy Shelor tells us how that song came to be chosen as the single…
“For years I’ve heard Them Blues played in jam sessions and at festival campgrounds based on the original LRB arrangement. It hadn’t been in our show for years, but we put it back in and the audience reaction was so strong that it seemed like an obvious way for us to connect the storied history of the band with our new, re-invented lineup for the next CD.”
Look for Them Blues as the first track on the second edition of Rural Rhythm’s Fresh Cuts & Key Tracks, a radio sampler due to be sent to show hosts and PDs in the next two weeks.
No Turning Back is the first recorded effort by the current edition of this hard-hitting band, featuring Sammy Shelor on banjo, Brandon Rickman on guitar and vocals, Andy Ball on mandolin and vocals, Mike Anglin on bass and Mike Hartgrove on fiddle.
Sammy is happy to see a new direction and a new business partnership in place for this new project.
“I feel like we have re-invented the LRB sound with this band, and I’m really excited about working with these guys - on stage and in the studio.
With a reinvented sound, it seemed like the right time to go a different direction with distribution and marketing, and we couldn’t have made a better choice than Rural Rhythm. All the Passamano family has shown the same seriousness and dedication about their end of the business as we do about ours, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together.
It’s amazing that the band has gone on for 25 years, but you can’t simply rest on your laurels in the music business. We are always looking to the future with Lonesome River Band and can’t wait for all our fans and friends to hear these great new songs on No Turning Back.”
With gas prices making festival attendance more doubtful, for many, bluegrass on television perhaps becomes more attractive than hitherto.
Recently, I was alerted to the appearance on Kentucky Educational Television’s Jubilee stage of California’s High Country, one of the West Coast’s premier traditional bluegrass bands. Being partial to their music, I thought I would investigate. I found a series of airings with sufficient interest to enthral fans of a variety of bluegrass persuasions for weeks to come.
Starting on Wednesday (6/25) with Lonesome River Band there’s a different band featured for each week through to the end of August, with each showing being available through to the weekend, Friday excepted in all cases.
A quick scan of the schedule reveals appearances on the programm by the aforesaid Butch Waller and High Country (commencing July 2), Foghorn Stringband (July 9), Berline-Crary-Hickman (July 16), Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper with Audie Blaylock (July 23), The Rascals (July 30), Adrienne Young & Little Sadie and Cadillac Sky (August 6), Danny Paisley & Southern Grass (August 13), The Fairwell Drifters and Blue Moon Rising (August 20) and Timberline Drive paired with Jake Quesenberry & The MacRae Brothers (commencing Thursday, August 28).
Each of these bands were recorded at last year’s River of Music Party in Owensboro, Kentucky.
The Jubilee series is a KET production, distributed to public television stations nationwide. The series is directed by Nick Helton and produced by Duncan Hart. Nancy Carpenter is executive producer.
More information about Jubilee is available online.
More information about KET programming and education services, as well as how to support KET, can be found at www.ket.org.
The Dan Tyminski Band performed in Roanoke this past Friday night, and we had a chance to sit down with Dan before the show to talk a bit about this latest chapter in his storied musical career. We also talked about Dan’s early days in bluegrass, and how it first caught his attention.
Before we could get to any of that, Dan held forth as a proud papa, sharing stories about his three children and their exploits in the realm of sports. After a bit of discussion about the looming baseball season and a bit of golf, he was ready to talk music.
Dan recalled that the Roanoke area was where he first starting playing bluegrass professionally when he joined The Lonesome River Band in the late 1980s.
“Tim Austin [Lonesome River Band founder and current Tyminski Band road manager/audio engineer] told me that I couldn’t live in Vermont and play with the band, and that I would have to get another job in order to pull it off. I really wanted to play with a southern bluegrass band, and moved to Virginia from Vermont with only 4 gigs and no solid prospects of more than $1800/year.”
He joined LRB as a banjo player, but Austin brought him on primarily for his strong tenor voice. When their then current mandolinist Adam Steffey left the group, Tim prevailed upon Dan to switch to mandolin. His first recording with the band was their 1989 release, Looking For Yourself.
“Mandolin was my first instrument, but I fell in love with banjo when my older brother came back home one day with a JD Crowe album. Once I heard Crowe, I had to learn banjo.
Singing was something I had done since I was a boy. I still remember my first stage performance. It was at the You & I festival in Granville, NY. I pulled on Smokey Greene’s pants leg and asked if I could sing a song. That was as scared as I had ever been in my young life, but I sang John Denver’s Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas. Of course, any kid that sings on stage gets a big response, but I loved getting that reaction from the crowd.”
A few years after Dan’s first LRB release, the band went through some major personnel changes, bringing banjo picker Sammy Shelor and vocalist/guitarist/bass player Ronnie Bowman into the group. Their 1991 CD, Carrying The Tradition, brought Lonesome River Band to a much wider audience, and elevated Ronnie and Dan as prominent voices in bluegrass. (more…)
I caught up with Lonesome River Band banjo picker Sammy Shelor today, and he filled me in on their next CD.
Sam said that they have finished recording (14 tracks) and he will start mixing later this week. 13 tracks are vocals, with one banjo instrumental, and Sammy said that it is strong, in your face bluegrass.
This will be the first project with the current version of LRB: Sammy Shelor on banjo, Brandon Rickman on guitar/vocals, Andy Ball on mandolin/vocals, Mike Anglin on bass and Mike Hartgrove on fiddle.
As soon as the mixing is finished (end of February), Sammy will shop the completed master to a number of labels and hopes to see it released sometime this spring.
Fiddler Mike Hartgrove is rejoining Lonesome River Band starting in January ‘08. Mike had been a member of LRB for three years before leaving to work with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver in 2005, his second stint with that group. He had been a founding member of IIIrd Tyme Out with whom he toured and recorded for 11 years, and had also worked with The Bluegrass Cardinals.
Mike takes the spot vacated by resonator guitarist Matt Leadbetter, who is leaving to be closer to his young family, taking a job in Pigeon Forge, TN. See update 12/10.
LRB banjo picker and band leader Sammy Shelor tells us that the band is headed back into the studio in February to start work on a new CD project. Sammy is considering offers from record labels and expects to announce more about that by springtime.
Also on Internet radio today is Uncle Billy Dunbar’s interview with Sammy Shelor of Lonesome River Band on WorldWideBluegrass.com. Dunbar sat down with Sammy at the Nebraska Bluegrass Festival in Lincoln, NE and they discussed the band’s fall schedule and future recording plans.
Check out the Shelor interview on Country Unplugged with Uncle Billy Dunbar on WWB today (10/11) from 4:00-6:00 p.m. (eastern).
To listen to the 24/7 WWB audio stream online, just visit their streaming page, and choose a connection speed and file type.
Last year around this time, we told you about Lonesome River Band banjo picker Sammy Shelor’s side business when fall rolls around. He and his wife Sue plant a field of corn each spring, not to bring to market, but as the base for their annual Corn Acoustics corn maze.
Last year’s maze was cut in the shape of the Crooked Road logo, a southwest Virginia tourism and music project with which Sammy has been involved. This year’s maze isn’t cut into so intricate a design - though it does honor the 25th Anniversary of Lonesome River Band - but Sammy says the maze is a bit more challenging to navigate.
“We’ve got some tricky trails cut. I was mowing in there the other day and got lost myself!”
The Grand Opening of Corn Acoustics is over this coming Labor Day Weekend (9/1-3), and will include bluegrass entertainment each day at no additional charge.
Virginia Tech, here in Southwest, VA, is reaching out to elementary schools in the area with a string program.
The Virginia Tech String Project will provide affordable string music instruction for third and forth grade students of both public and private schools in the area. Classes will be held on the VT campus on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Why is this of interest to us?
Mandolinist Jeff Midkiff is the Master Teacher for the String Project. Midkiff grew up in the area, and attended VT where he studied music education. He has conducted several youth orchestras, composed and performed his own pieces with the orchestras around the country, and toured internationally as a member of both the McPeak Brothers and Lonesome River Band.
The program begins later this month when Midkiff, along with other teachers, will visit area elementary schools to recruit students for the program. Classes will begin September 4, 2007.
This series presents the award-winning music of Sugar Hill’s Americana Masters. Researched and compiled from the artist’s body of work on Sugar Hill Records, these tracks were culled from radio chart toppers, fan mail, downloads, and songs and tunes that are recurrent favorites at live performances. The series is designed to provide longstanding fans with a collection of favourites. For new fans, this series offers concise entry into the artistic output of these seminal artists—with liner notes that can help them to discover more and to delve more deeply into the artist’s catalogue.
Not surprisingly, the Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver collection features all Gospel material, 18 songs spread across the many years that the group has been associated with Sugar Hill Records. The opening track is He Put A Rainbow In The Clouds For Me from the eponymous first album released in 1979, followed by On The Sea Of Life from the classic Rock My Soul album. Other highlights include The Little Mountain Church House and Let Us Travel On. Both feature Lawson singing close harmony with the exceptional Russell Moore. Other great vocal partners appearing here include Lou Reid, Steve Gulley, Barry Abernathy, Jimmy Haley, Terry Baucom and Jamie Dailey.
The Lonesome River Band anthology comprises 16 songs, culled from just four albums, the tracks presented in chronological order. The first band here features founder and rhythm guitarist Tim Austin, Dan Tyminski (mandolin), Ronnie Bowman (bass) and Sammy Shelor (banjo). They are heard on four cuts including Old Country Town and Highway Paved With Pain. The second edition of this high-energy group is that comprising Kenny Smith (guitar), Don Rigsby (mandolin) and the aforementioned Ronnie Bowman and Sammy Shelor. Their contributions are taken from two albums, One Step Forward from 1996 and Finding The Way released in 1998. On the last four cuts Rickie Simpkins is included, playing fiddle. Overall there’s some great original material and a superb mix of excellent voices - trademark Lonesome River Band material. (more…)
Rebel Records has reissued two more classic out-of-print recordings as download-only releases.
First up is a Lonesome River Band album from 1988, one which many recent fans of the band may learn about for the first time. Saturday Night, Sunday Morning came out on LP several years before the band took the bluegrass world by storm with Carrying The Tradition, but featured the drive and agreesive style that later (and current) editions of the band perfected.
This release featured founding members Tim Austin on guitar and Jerry McMillan on bass, along with Brian Fessler on banjo and Adam Steffey on mandolin. As you might guess from the title, this project features a mix of secular and spiritual material, with Adam’s instrumental take on Daybreak In Dixie.
You can sample the tracks or purchase the music in iTunes.
Makin’ Tracks by The McPreake Brothers was first released in 1983 on County Records - the last of the three McPeake projects for Rebel/County. By this time, the three brothers (Dewey, Larry and Mike) had established themselves as one of the premiere bluegrass vocal groups of their day.
Living in Southwest Virginia as I do, there were many opportunities to see them perform live, but they never toured far from their homes near Wytheville, VA, and their fine harmony was kept a secret from many bluegrass fans around the world - other than from these fine recordings.
Sammy Shelor has just posted some live video clips on the Lonesome River Band web site, shot this past March at the Moncton High School in Moncton, NB. The video was shot by an audience member with a handheld camera, but he does a good job and the audio is quite good.
If you’ve yet to catch this latest iteration of LRB (Sammy Shelor, Brandon Rickman, Andy Ball, Matt Leadbetter and Mike Anglin), these concert clips will give you a excellent glimpse of their current stage show.
If you are not already a JamBase member, you’ll need to create a free membership in order to enter the contest. The two tickets have a value of $100, and the festival includes performances by Lonesome River Band, Blue Moon Rising, Cadillac Sky, New Found Road and many more.
Sammy Shelor let us know today that he has two new members with him in Lonesome River Band. To be precise, it’s actually one new member, and one returning.
Brandon Rickman is back with the band, playing guitar and singing lead, returning after being gone for a year and a half. He had asked out in the fall of 2005 to focus on his songwriting and spend time with his family, but decided that performing is where he wants to be.
Sammy sounded pleased to have him back.
“Brandon is a great vocalist and songwriter, and one of the best emcees I’ve ever seen. It will be good to have him on stage with us again.”
New to LRB is bass player Mike Anglin, who has recently been working with both Larry Cordle and 3 Fox Drive, and previously with Continental Divide, among other stage and studio gigs. Sammy said that Mike brings something to the band he has wanted for some time.
“Mike can wail on either the upright or electric. If we are playing a traditional bluegrass show, he can play the acoustic, and if we are at a jam grass or high volume show, he can grab the electric.”
Rounding out the band is Matt Leadbetter on dobro, Andy Ball on mandolin and Sammy on banjo.
The newly revised version of the band will be on display next weekend for the first time, performing on the radio and on stage. On Friday (2/23) they will be a featured guest on WDVX radio’s The Blue Plate program between noon and 1:00 p.m., and later that evening at The Station Inn in Nashville.
Sammy Shelor called yesterday to let us know that he has hired Andy Ball to replace recently departed mandolinist/tenor singer Jeff Parker in Lonesome River Band. Andy is a young man, just graduated from college, who grew up in Detroit, MI playing with his family as a member of The Richard Ball Family.
He had also worked with Pete Goble while still in school, as well as Paul Williams and Bill Napier, and had most recently been a member of Mark Newton’s band.
Sammy suggested that Andy’s voice will be a welcome one to LRB fans, as it somewhat resembles that of a young Don Rigsby. You can catch a piece of his singing on Mark Newton’s Hillbilly Hemingway CD, where he sings the lead on Fraulein. A sample from that track can be found on Mark’s web site.
LRB plans to cut a few tracks soon and make them available online to let folks hear the new sound.
We mentioned a few days ago that IIIrd Tyme Out banjoist Steve Dilling had assembled a band of his fellow bluegrass professionals to perform on a brief tour in early December. We just got word that one of the tour dates, which will also include a show by Lonesome River Band, will be recorded by WAMU for eventual broadcast over the air, and on BluegrassCountry.org.
The show will be held this Sunday, December 3, at The Cultural Arts Center in Frederick, MD as a part of their Sunday Bluegrass concert series. Two shows will be held that day, a matinee at 3:00 p.m. and an evening performance at 7:00.
Ticket information can be found on the Sunday Bluegrass web site for folks in the area who may want to attend the show. Everyone knows how much fun it is to be present at the recording of a live show, right?
BluegrassCountry.org’s Katy Daly tells us that they don’t have a clear broadcast date in mind for this LRB/Dilling concert, but she promised to let us know as soon as it is set.
Katy also passed along that she and Jen Hitt, BluegrassCountry.org’s Production Director, are planning a series of specials intended to introduce their listeners to the art and technology involved in producing bluegrass instruments. We’ll keep you posted as those plans solidify.
With six artists now the roster I suspect Jim Roe is going to be busy acquiring bookings for next year. Hopefully he’ll keep all his artists busy as well. If you are an event producer and would like more information you can visit Roe Entertainment on line at www.roeentertainment.net or via the info below.
Contact Information:
Jim Roe
Roe Entertainment
PO Box 128186
Nashville, TN 37212
Episode #40 features an interview with banjo player and band leader Sammy Shelor. We’ve interviewed Sammy before, but felt like it was time for an update. Lonesome River Band has seen some band member changes, has a new CD out, and a new website and online store since the last time we talked to Sammy. Sam discusses all those things and more in this interview.
This GrassCast is 13 minutes in length, with a download size of 15 MB (for the MP3 file).
Below is an mp3 file which you can hear now, or download to your computer. The GrassCast is also available in the iTunes music store as an enhanced podcast containing photos and hyperlinks relative to the subject matter being discussed in the interview.
To subscribe with your own podcatching software, copy and past this url into the appropriate entry box in your software: http://www.thegrasscast.com/rss
Just last week, Lonesome River Band celebrated the release of The Road With No End, their tenth project as a band, and their first with the newly-reconstituted membership. Bandleader Sammy Shelor has brought former Lost & Found lead singer Barry Berrier aboard on bass, and perennial sideman Shannon Slaughter (Larry Stephenson, Melonie Cannon) in on guitar, to join Shelor on banjo and veteran LRB mandolinist/vocalist Jeff Parker for this new CD on Mountain Home Records.
Together with the CD’s release, they have launched their new online store. Not only can LRB fans order CDs and other merchandise online, they can purchase MP3 audio files for download. MP3 downloads are available for the last three releases, including the new one, plus the Huber Banjos Team Flathead CD on which Sammy was featured. The audio files are fully compatible with iTunes, iPod and other popular MP3 players and devices, and are priced according to the iTunes model. Track and album names, times, genre and even cover artwork will be imported when you bring the files into iTunes.
Individual tracks and full album projects can be purchased, with the files available for immediate download. They hope that Lonesome River Band fans will appreciate being able to obtain audio files for purchase in this manner, while also supporting the band directly with their purchase.
Of course, fans who prefer to purchase manufactured CDs can do so from the band’s store as well, and audio samples from all their releases are accessible in the store. Sammy Shelor’s instructional materials are also available on the site, as are his signature stainless steel banjo picks.
More cruise offerings for bluegrass folks. This one is the Bell Buckle Music Cruise sailing to Freeport and Nassau, Bahamas on Carnival Cruise Line’s Sensation. The dates for this cruise are February 4 - 8, 2007. The line up for this cruise is as follows with this one note. Their list of performers includes Ernie Thacker. Due to his condition, recovering from his accident, I doubt his attendance. I did attempt to contact Bell Buckle Music concerning this, but as of yet have received no response.
Lonesome River Band and Rural Rhythm Records are pleased to announce that the band’s next project will be released on the Arcadia, CA based label.
Email This Post
| Print | Top | Comment
With gas prices making festival attendance more doubtful, for many, bluegrass on television perhaps becomes more attractive than hitherto.
I caught up with 
Sammy Shelor called yesterday to let us know that he has hired 
Episode #40 features an interview with banjo player and band leader 
