News from Rolling Stone Country this morning: “Emmylou Harris is set to kick off a year-long celebration of the 125th anniversary of Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium with a special show there on May 2nd. The Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame member will reunite with the members of the Nash Ramblers, the acoustic/bluegrass band she formed in the early Nineties, with whom she recorded At the Ryman, a live album recorded on the hallowed stage in 1991. Among the members of that group were guitarist Jon Randall and mandolin player Sam Bush – bass player Roy Huskey Jr., passed away in 1997.
Harris’s 1991 concert at the then-crumbling former home of the Opry, which featured an appearance from bluegrass legend Bill Monroe, was instrumental in the refurbishing of the historic venue, which opened in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle. After restoration of the building was complete, it reopened full-time in 1994.
