Keeping bluegrass fresh but also keeping an eye on tradition.
Bluegrass’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, but whatever has driven any of the particular peaks such as the ‘60s folk revival, the rise of newgrass, the cultural phenomenon that was “O Brother, Where Art Thou” or the current popularity of young artists like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, its strength is that it knows its own deep roots. The Lonesome River Band are part of that bluegrass history and have been something of a bluegrass academy over the forty-plus years they’ve been in existence. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with banjo player Sammy Shelor, who has been with the band for over thirty years, to discuss their latest album “The Winning Hand” which is also the first full album by the latest incarnation of the band. It is soon very clear that the band have their own roots in the Eastern part of the Blue Ridge Mountains and that has helped define their signature sound. Sammy Sheldon also shares his family links to old-time music which includes Charlie Poole staying at his great-grandfather’s house and playing music and swopping songs with his great-grandfather and grandfather, and the fact that the brother of his great-great-grandmother was Dad Blackard who was recorded at the legendary Bristol Sessions which were ground zero for country music in 1927. Finally, Sammy Shelor confirms that there is also a touch of rock and roll in the Lonesome River Band’s sound.
How are you?
Doing well, doing well, just getting over having a weekend on the road. You’ve got to get out and try and make a living.
The Lonesome River Band has been going for over 40 years, why does bluegrass remain popular and just seems to keep going?
Bluegrass music is real, and there are very few genres of music out there where you can say we’ll go into the studio record a song, and then walk on stage and make it sound exactly the same. The songs are about real people, and it’s a music that just touches the heart. It’s hard to find that any more.
The Lonesome River Band has been a bit of a Bluegrass Academy over the years. How would you describe the band’s signature sound?
I’ve always said that the Lonesome River Band is a traditional bluegrass band with a rock and roll downbeat. It is a high-energy music, and it just has a different flavour to it than most traditional bluegrass. It has a little bit more fire to it in a lot of ways, I think, and we try to get the people moving in their seats and get them up dancing, and do things that catch their attention. It all started with Tim Austin back when he started the band, his rhythm guitar playing was very aggressive and we’ve continued to keep that kind of sound throughout the years. I joined the band when it was 8 years old, so I’ve been in the band for 34 years and the band has been around for 42 years, and I changed my banjo playing to fit his rhythm guitar style. I’ve kept that banjo style, and I’ve tried to get guitar players who have that aggression as well.
Your label Mountain Home Records is based in North Carolina and you recorded “Winning Hand” there. How important is North Carolina to the ethos of the band?
We’re based out of Virginia, only about 30 miles north of the North Carolina border. We’re on the Eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and East Kentucky, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Western Virginia are kind of the hotbed of our style of bluegrass. Bill Monroe started bluegrass out in Western Kentucky, and the music has evolved a lot since he started it, and there are a lot of banjo players from this part of the country and the feel of the banjo developed a little different style. I grew up around a lot of these players, Terry Baucom who was with Boone Creek and Doyle Lawson’s Quicksilver, he had a certain style, I always call it the space between the notes, that created a certain feel and that was the banjo style that grabbed my attention. I’ve always tried to emulate what he did, what J. D. Crowe did, and the style of bluegrass we play developed in this part of the country and caught on in other regions of the country. Young players now try to emulate what we do, and they’re carrying that tradition on.
Your new album “Winning Hand” is the debut recording of the current line-up. What was it like in the studio with the new guys?
It was a lot of fun and it went really quick. We had recorded four songs with the new configuration for the “Hayday” album which we started in 2020, and then we kind of got shut down for a while, and we delayed releasing that album until things started to pick back up and we started playing on the road again. In the meantime we had the personnel changes, we went in the studio and cut four songs to add to that record to kind of debut the new sound. When we went into the studio to cut a completely new record we’d played together enough to all see the music in the same way, and hear what the band is all about, and it made it real easy to cut this album. I think we finished the whole album in four days in eight-hour sessions, so there wasn’t a lot of time involved and I think it turned out great. It really portrays what we are doing today.
How important are other songwriters to the band and how do you select the songs to record?
The songwriters are the most important. If you listen to commercial music these days songs have to be about mud on the tyres and drinking beer and doing those sorts of things, but the songs we look for are the songs that have meaning and Nashville writers are still writing those kinds of songs but they can’t get them cut in country music. So, we’ve had access to some really good songs through these writers. We have a writer who lives near us, he’s actually a guy I grew up with called Barry Hutchens and he wrote the song ‘Hayday’ and he wrote ‘Gabriel’s Already Standing’, a gospel song we recorded on the same album. We’ve been working with him doing some co-writes, and some members of the band have been writing with him.
Jesses Smathers and Adam Miller from the band wrote ‘Queen Of Hearts’ which is kind of the title cut of the new album. So, we have access to great writers who write great songs and the most important thing to us is to find songs that have meaning. Either that or like the song ‘Hard Work’ on the new album which was written by a gentleman called Alan Wright, who I actually got connected to through Alan Jackson because he’s Alan Jackson’s nephew. I had the good fortune to play on Alan Jackson’s bluegrass album, and Adam was one of the producers on that album. So, I got to know him through that, and I then found out he was a songwriter and he’s been a great resource as we’ve probably cut 10 of his songs in the past 10 years. So, having those resources is invaluable.
What’s been the reaction to the new album?
The word on the street is that it’s the best album people have heard from us in a long time. The reviews have been good, and we’ve had two number-one songs of it, maybe three, and we started releasing singles off it last year and then didn’t release the album until June this year. We’ve had good chart success, good airplay, and really good reactions to it. I’m glad people like it because I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had playing music with this configuration, they are good people, great musicians and great singers, and people seem to be liking it very well.
Your family has a connection to Charlie Poole I believe?
Not family as such, but my great-grandfather owned a gristmill in the early 1900s, and Charlie Poole grew up about 25 miles East of where I grew up, and he used to pass through that area a lot. He knew who the musicians were and who made liquor, and my great-grandfather was a fiddle player and since he owned a gristmill he also made liquor. That was kind of the life back in those days, and when my grandfather was a young man in his teens, Charlie Poole used to stay at their house for several days at a time and they would drink and play music. So, my grandfather got to watch Charlie Poole and learn banjo watching Charlie Poole, he also learnt to play guitar so he could play along with them when they played music. It was old-time life, and back in those days, songs were passed along just by meeting people and getting together and playing music and learning those songs. There were no albums, nothing to document the music so it was just passed in person. So, my grandfather was able to learn a lot of songs from Charlie Poole.
I also have family connections to the Bristol Sessions, which was kind of the boom of country music that was recorded in 1927. There’s a group featured there who were originally known as Dad Blackard’s Moonshiners, but then the name evolved into the Shelor Family, and they had four or five cuts on those original country recordings. They left Meadows of Dan, Virginia, and made their way to Bristol, Tennessee, when they heard about the recording, and they were featured on those recordings. Dad Blackard’s sister was my great-great-grandmother, so I’ve got family ties there as well.
How much has that history influenced your own playing?
I love old-time music, and what they did then is now considered old-time music, which is like clawhammer banjo and fiddle music. That particular group also had a piano player in it, Clarice Shelor, and she played fiddle tunes on the piano. They lived half a mile from me when I was a young child, and I used to go out there and listen to them play and play along with them, and try and learn those songs. I listened to her playing piano and learning those melodies, and I applied them to the banjo.
You’ve already mentioned a few players, but who would you say are your main musical influences?
I have so many. As far as banjo players go, Bil Emerson, J.D. Crowe, Terry Baucom, and a gentleman who comes from this area called Gene Parker who played with a group called the Lost and Found for many, many years. He’s one of the most creative banjo players I’ve ever known and he’s probably my biggest influence. I learnt from an early age that I couldn’t play like Earl Scruggs, and most people can’t play like Earl Scruggs because he had his hands and his heart. So, I figured out I needed to listen to everybody, learn what I could from each one, and try and develop my own style, but my list of influences is a mile long.
What are your views on the future of bluegrass?
It’s going in a lot of different directions right now. There are a lot of young bands coming out who are not really following the traditional side of things, and they are developing their own style and that makes the music grow. There are bands following the really early traditional stuff with Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and The Stanley Brothers, and they’re thriving as well. But I think the bands who take the traditional aspect of things and apply their own ideas to it, and keep it in the realms of bluegrass, those are the bands with longevity. Like I said, this band has been around for 42 years, I’m 61 years old so I’m trying to get to the 50-year mark and keep playing through that, you know. I will keep playing as long as my hands and my health hold up to afford me the opportunity to keep doing it. I definitely want to make it to the 50th anniversary.
Are there any plans for the band to come to the UK?
International travel has become difficult, it is just so expensive to make it happen. It makes it tough on the promoters, it makes it tough on the bands because if we come over for a three-day festival we have to travel for two days on each side of that to make it work. It is very time-consuming, it is very difficult logistically. We would love to, it is twenty-plus years since I’ve been to the UK, and I’d love to get back there again, we had such a great time over there and I’ve always enjoyed all the shows we did in Europe. I also love going to Japan, that’s one of the most fun places to go because the people are fanatical about the music, and they treat you very well, but we’ve always been treated very well everywhere we’ve been. I don’t see it happening in the near future, but maybe in the next five or ten years if things get back to where we can make it work again. We’d love to come over.
At AUK, we like to share music with our readers. What are three of your favourite tracks, albums or artists on your playlists?
Well, I just don’t listen to a lot of music anymore, I work a lot and when I listen to music I like to sit down and enjoy it. I have two young kids, I didn’t have my first child until I was 54 years old, and I have a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old and that keeps me busy all the time when I’m home. I’m like a lot of people in that I still listen to a lot of music that I grew up on, the things I heard through my 20s, 30s and 40s that really caught my attention. If I’m driving late at night I will pull up an old album. I love classic country music, the Merle Haggard stuff, the George Jones stuff, so if I need something to keep me awake at night it is usually a Haggard record.
Finally, do you want to say anything to our UK readers?
Just the fact that we appreciate the support all through these years. Without our fans, we can’t do what we do. I tell people on stage every night, that the fact that people still come out and support live music and the bluegrass industry speaks volumes. We have our music on all the streaming services because that’s where everybody listens to their music now, and I invite you to go and check out the Lonesome River Band catalogue. The stuff I listen to in the acoustic genre is mostly the Tony Rice catalogue, there’s nothing better than that and if you’ve never listened to acoustic music that’s probably the best place to start. Listen to Tony Rice, listen to his whole catalogue, and then branch out and listen to Flatt and Scruggs, listen to Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, listen to the Lonesome River Band, find all these things and you’ll find so much great music that never received commercial recognition, but it’s such great music to listen to. If you ever get out to the States our website has our tour dates and come and see us.
Very good interview, thank you. One of a handful of truly inspiring and soulful banjo pickers post Scruggs with a right hand to die for!