Time and history have seen Del McCoury become the elder statesman of bluegrass, a music he has preserved and developed through his long career. He is such a pivotal figure in bluegrass because he has effortlessly straddled the traditional and progressive aspects of the genre. Born in 1939, he was closer in age to those urban and predominantly middle-class musicians who came to bluegrass through the 1960s Folk Revival, but he was born in North Carolina to a blue-collar family, and therefore had a similar upbringing to the earlier generation of bluegrass musicians He had close professional and personal links to “The Father Of Bluegrass Music”, Bill Monroe, joining his band in 1963, the creator of “Dawg Music”, David “Dawg” Grisman, whom he met on the bluegrass festival circuit in the ‘60s and through “The Dawg” Jerry “Captain Trips” Garcia, amongst many others. This meant that Del McCoury had a firm grounding in traditional bluegrass while also being open to the new music emerging in the ‘60s, and he included contemporary songs on his recordings and at gigs.
Del McCoury’s sons, Ronnie and Rob, joined his band as teenagers and subsequently became leading players of their respective instruments, mandolin and banjo, and the Del McCoury Band became an influence on the emerging jambands like Phish. They backed Steve Earle on his homage to bluegrass and Bill Monroe, “The Mountain”. In 2009, The Del McCoury Band, sans Del himself, began touring as The Travelin’ McCourys with fellow band members Alan Bartram on bass, Jason Carter on fiddle, and Rolling Thunder’s Cody Kilby on guitar, joining Ronnie and Rob. In Ronnie McCoury’s words, “If you put your mind, your skills, and your ability to it, I think you can make just about anything work on bluegrass instruments. That’s a really fun part of this- figuring the new stuff out and surprising the audience.”.
In 2016, the Travelin’ McCourys instigated their Grateful Ball, where they play the songs of the Grateful Dead with various guest artists, which followed their first Ball with the Jeff Austin Band. Ronnie McCoury has said that he didn’t listen to the Grateful Dead until he was in his late teens, but came to them through David Grisman, who had played mandolin on “American Beauty” and with Jerry Garcia as the banjo player in Old & In The Way. The band, with their Grateful Ball, have been instrumental in keeping the music of the Grateful Dead fresh for younger and future generations.
While the Travelin’ McCourys recorded with jamband one-man band Keller Williams in 2012 when they backed him on “Pick”, they have only released two albums, 2018’s “The Travelin’ McCourys” and 2025’s “One Chord That Rings True”. Their debut album included covers of Passenger’s ‘Let Her Go’, Doc Watson’s ‘Southbound’ and the UK’s own Nick Lowe’s ‘I Live On A Battlefield’, which showed that they could make any tune their own and bring their own unique take to such well-established songs. Steve Young’s ‘Lonesome, On’ry and Mean’ became a signature song for Waylon Jennings in 1972, and here the Travelin’ McCourys bring a sense of jubilation rather than the melancholy of Waylon’s version. As might be expected, a Grateful Dead and a Jerry Garcia cover are included, ‘Cumberland Blues’ and ‘Loser’, and while the Travelin’ McCourys’ versions clearly reference the original versions, the instrumentation is what makes these Travelin’ McCoury tunes. The album includes a few Travelin’ McCourys’ originals, largely written by Alan Bartram. The band show their collective musical chops on the sole instrumental, ‘Crowhop’.
There was a lot of anticipation around the band’s debut album, and it didn’t disappoint, even winning the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Band. The Travelin’ McCourys took seven years to release their second album, 2025’s “One Chord That Rings True”, which develops the sounds on their debut album. The album opens with the storming ‘Runaway Train’ that features the fiddle of Jason Carter, who is at the top of his game. The band maintain their eclecticism with a cover of The Waterboys’ ‘Whole of the Moon’ with everyone adding to this version of the song. Bruce Hornsby has never hidden his love of bluegrass, and the band’s cover of his ‘White Wheeled Limousine’ manages to bring out Hornsby’s bluegrass and jazz tendencies. If you are looking to cover great songs, then looking at Tom T. Hall’s catalogue will not disappoint, and here the Travelin’ McCourys cover his ‘I Like Beer’, which certainly makes the listener thirsty. Band members contribute to the writing of the remaining songs, with ‘Lonely Night’ invoking the high-lonesome sound first popularised by Bill Monroe, and the rambling song ‘Why Do I Feel like Running’, which features a great Ronnie McCoury mandolin break.
The Travelin’ McCourys, with their ability to take a traditional bluegrass or a jamband approach to their performances, mean that they can cover most bases in the bluegrass world. If you’ve ever enjoyed a bluegrass performance from anywhere on the bluegrass spectrum and you haven’t given the Travelin’ McCourys a listen, do so; you won’t be disappointed.
I was lucky enough to see them play at Robert’s Western World Fan Fair in Nashville in August. Fabulous live band with a real varied repertoire.
You are absolutely right, Alan. A great pity the economics of the music biz makes it difficult for them to come to the UK.