This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

The Gibson Brothers – Eric on banjo, Leigh on guitar – began their musical journey at the age of 11 and 10 respectively. Eric began playing saxophone in the 5th grade, as did Leigh. A year later they started taking banjo and guitar lessons at Dick’s Country Store in Churubusco, New York.

They were raised on a dairy farm – a farm that had been in their family since 1865 – in the most north-eastern section of New York, in the foothills of the Adirondacks in the Champlain Valley two miles from the Canadian border.

Their parents listened to bluegrass on the radio on Saturdays. They also liked Irish music and the brothers heard a lot of the Chieftains, Ryan’s Fancy, the Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem, and the Irish Rovers. They listened to lots of different stuff and still do. This variety is something that shapes both their writing and performing.

Eric and Leigh listened to country radio a lot in the 1970s and early 1980s. Their favorites were Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Don Williams, Tom T. Hall, Ricky Skaggs. Their cosmopolitan tastes meant that they heard Tom Petty, Credence Clearwater Revival, the Eagles, the Everly Brothers and Willie Nelson as well as folks like Gordon Lightfoot.

Eric Gibson was really ‚Äòturned on’ to bluegrass when their teacher, Eric O’Hara, gave him a tape of Flatt and Scruggs at Carnegie Hall.

Their education was further enhanced by listening to a tape of Ricky Skaggs’ Sweet Temptation, and then the brothers became familiar with some of the great duo singers of the past; firstly great favourites Buck Owens and Don Rich, and then the sibling harmonies of the Louvin Brothers, the Delmore Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Everly Brothers and the Stanley Brothers. After the prompting of their minister, the Gibson brothers began singing themselves. With their singing of songs like Lonely Me, Lonely You, Satan’s Jewelled Crown and Gone Home, one of the many Gospel songs that they used to sing in church, the Gibson Brothers have joined that glorious pantheon.

In the early 1990s, they formed a bluegrass band with Junior Barber on resonator guitar, and Junior’s son, Mike, on bass. The quartet recorded three albums for Hay Holler Records and earned the recognition of their peers when they won the 1998 IBMA Emerging Artist of the Year award. (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

John Pennell started playing bluegrass in Arizona while he was in school at Arizona State University. He grew up surrounded by music. His father played upright bass – the instrument that John himself now plays – in square dance bands and his uncle played fiddle and guitar.

When he was about 12 years old he started playing trumpet and continued that through his high school years. He started playing guitar during his junior year in high school.

Pennell got more involved in bluegrass when he returned to Illinois for graduate school. Paul Zonn (Andrea’s father) invited him to play with them and they played a lot around the Champaign, Illinois area. Paul Zonn acquired a bass fiddle that Pennell played through the music school. While Pennell was a composition student at the University of Illinois he wrote songs for their little ensemble.

He met Alison Krauss during this period and the duo, along with Nelson Mandrell and John Gantz, started a band (Silver Rail). She was very good about wanting to do original material and Pennell was able to get a number of songs placed on her first Rounder album. This got him started as a songwriter.

He moved to Nashville in April 1996.

As a bluegrass performer Pennell has played with Chris Jones, Harley Allen and, currently, Charlie Sizemore, in addition to Alison Krauss.

When did you begin writing songs and why?

I started when I was about 20 (1970). I was doing solo gigs on guitar and wanted to include some songs that I had written. I’m a fan of the Beatles and I study their song writing all the time and it always inspires me. When I got into bluegrass, initially, I wrote songs that showed a lot of their influence as well as James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell. As I became more involved in bluegrass I started writing songs more specifically influenced by bluegrass or country. It’s an ongoing synthesis. The first songs I wrote were “acoustic” and more in the James Taylor, and Simon and Garfunkel thing, but they could be adapted to bluegrass.

Many of your songs have been recorded by Alison Krauss; who else has recorded your songs?

Alan Jackson (Meat and Potato Man, As Lovely As You), Eva Cassidy (If I Give My Heart), Jeff White, Chris Jones, The Infamous Stringdusters (Fork In The Road, I Wonder), Cadillac Sky (Blind Man Walking), Sam Bush (Riding That Bluegrass Train, The Wizard Of Oz, Bless His Heart), Gina Jeffries (Never Mine) Charlie Sizemore (Devil On A Plow). (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Connie Leigh is what might be called the songwriter’s songwriter. So many fellow writers have great things to say about her; Mark Brinkman describes her songs as “genuine, heartfelt and powerful;” Larry Cordle says this about her song writing abilities, “She has plenty to say and I love how she goes about saying it. Her songs reflect the things she has lived and observed in this life & her way of communicating them to us is absolutely wonderful to me”; and Larry Shell describes her contributions to a songwriter session that the duo had with Larry Cordle, “She had wonderful ideas and a fresh approach to some old themes in bluegrass and country music.”

She writes from the heart and isn’t ashamed to do so and as Jerry Salley comments, “Her songs are real, the characters in them are real and they connect with ‘real’ people.” The listener can easily understand and appreciate her words.

Leigh has been intrigued by music as far back as she can remember. At the age of 10 she was writing poetry and rhyming words. When 12 she began learning to play the guitar and by 15 she was beginning to write songs.

She has always had a desire to listen to music with a mountain sound. When her family relocated from Ohio to the hills of east Kentucky, she found an album of Flatt and Scruggs at the house they moved into. Connie would play it over and over and sing along with it. It was bluegrass music that she could best relate to and it has always remained deep in her soul.

However, she devoted many years to singing and recording Gospel music and believing that to stay true to the church she should limit herself to that style of music. Two life-changing events led to Connie realizing that the church could sometimes be unpardonable and she vowed to pour her heart into new bluegrass songs.

After finding that the album of bluegrass songs wasn’t going to earn her a recording contract, Connie was persuaded to focus on song writing and pitch her songs to other artists. A handful of top bluegrass artists liked her material so much that they recorded some of her songs. That was in 2005 and since then her songs have become even more highly sought-after.

That said, Connie remains very much down to earth, literally, helping her husband on their farm at Swifton in northeast Arkansas, from where she spoke to me about her song writing ……..

Who was the first bluegrass songwriter to make an impression on you and why?

I don’t know if Hank Sr. is considered a bluegrass writer or just country, but he has a profound effect on my song writing. I haven’t really studied his life story as far as how he grew up, but there was something about his writing that lets me know he had a dark, lonesome ole soul just like me. Things happened in my life that left me with a lot of emotion, and it comes out in a lot of my songs. Other writers who I admire are Larry Cordle, Larry Shell, Jerry Salley, and Carl Jackson. When I listen to a song, if it can touch the depths of my soul with a moral that is strong enough to catch my attention and strong enough to make me stop and think, then that writer has served their purpose in writing that song. (more…)

This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

What do Money in the Bank, Union Man, Snapshots and Souvenirs and Always Never Enough have in common? All of these songs, recorded by Lonesome River Band, Blue Highway, Mountain Heart and the Kenny and Amanda Smith Band were written or co-written by Tim Stafford, one of the creative forces in Blue Highway, one of the most popular of the modern-day bluegrass bands. Stafford’s songs have also been recorded by Larry Sparks, Dan Tyminski, Ronnie Bowman, Claire Lynch and Alecia Nugent.

A native of Kingsport, Tennessee, where he currently resides, Tim Stafford began playing guitar seriously at the age of 18. As a teenager, he played with various groups in the Tri-Cities area of East Tennessee, including Mountain Memories and the Boys in the Band.

Subsequently, he helped to found the band Dusty Miller, which was named SPBGMA International Bluegrass Band champions in 1990. Later that same year Stafford joined Alison Krauss and Union Station, along with Adam Steffey and Barry Bales. The band was named IBMA Entertainer of the Year in 1991.

Although he left Union Station in May 1992, in order to spend more time with his son Daniel, who was born in January of that year, Stafford won a Grammy award in January 1993 for his work on Every Time You Say Goodbye (Rounder, 1992).

In 1994, he organized his present band Blue Highway. They have released eight albums, the latest of which includes the award-winning title-song Through The Window Of A Train, written by Tim Stafford and Steve Gulley. Like this CD, all the other Blue Highway projects feature material written by Stafford.

In 2004 he released a highly acclaimed solo album Endless Line (FGM Records 114). This CD has nine songs penned by Stafford himself.

Recently, I spoke to Tim Stafford about his song writing skills ……

When did you start writing songs and what was the impulse?

I started writing when I was very young. I can’t really say what the impulse was. My sisters were piano players, and they always had written music laying around. I would look at Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel songbooks and try to figure out the songs and pretty soon I was coming up with stuff of my own. I wrote some not long after I picked up guitar–nothing I’d be willing for anyone to hear — and all the way up until I joined Blue Highway I was writing. But when that band started, I felt a conscious need to write more — Wayne Taylor had written some good things and he kind of inspired me to start taking it more seriously. (more…)