Dale Ann Bradley and Steve Gulley of Grasstowne
Friday Bluegrass Concert
Sounds Like Home: A Night of Music From the Cumberlands
September 30
Sponsored by Friends of the Cumberland Trail & Campbell Culture Coalition
Featuring:
Grasstowne
Dale Ann Bradley
with guests Steve and Don Gulley
and a special reunion of the legendary Pinnacle Mountain Boys
With Charlie Collins and Larry McNeely
| Program Schedule | |
|---|---|
| 5:00 | Doors open |
| 5:15 | Pre-Concert Workshop |
| 6:00 | The Pinnacle Mountain Boys |
| 7:00 | Dale Ann Bradley with Steve and Don Gulley |
| 7:55 | Grasstowne |
| 8:45 p.m. | Finale |
On Friday night Sept 30, 2011, at Cove Lake State Park in Caryville, Tennessee, the Campbell Cultural Coalition partners with the Friends of the Cumberland Trail to proudly celebrate a rich legacy of music making with a special concert showcase. Against the backdrop of the Cumberland Mountains, we present the second annual Sounds Like Home: A Night of Music from the Cumberlands, an extraordinary evening of regional music, fun, and festivity.
The concert brings together, once again, Grasstowne and the legendary Pinnacle Mountain Boys, two bluegrass supergroups, from two eras, connected by a tight family bond. Award winning bluegrass singer/songwriter Steve Gulley, founding member of Grasstowne, has long acknowledged the strong influence of his father Don Gulley’s innovative 1960s-era partnership with veteran East Tennessee musicians Buster Turner, Charlie Collins, Larry McNeely, of the Pinnacle Mountain Boys. Steve, in fact, dedicated his terrific 2007 solo album, Sounds Like Home, to Don, Buster, and the group. At the Sounds Like Home 2010 concert, Grasstowne and the reunited Pinnacle Mountain Boys, lead by son and father, shared the stage for the very first time.
The 2010 concert was also a homecoming for original Pinnacle Mountains Boys Charlie Collins, longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry and Caryville, TN native, and Larry McNeely, veteran of Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and adopted son of Campbell County.
Grasstowne and the Pinnacle Mountain Boys will join on stage once again, this time with special guest, acclaimed bluegrass artist Dale Ann Bradley, the 2007, 2008, and 2009 International Bluegrass Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, and a lifelong friend of Steve and Don Gulley.
This year’s concert will also be a special tribute to Buster Turner, founder of the Pinnacle Mountain Boys, who passed away in March.
Join us for Sounds Like Home: A Night of Music from the Cumberlands, a concert certain to be the East Tennessee bluegrass event of the year.
Bring your appetite! Rickard Ridge Restaurant will be selling barbeque and dessert.
Get your tickets now.
Buy your tickets at any of the following locations:
- Campbell County Chamber of Commerce, Jacksboro
- Peoples Bank of the South (all Campbell County locations)
- Hampton Inn, Caryville
- Rickard Ridge Restaurant in Cove Lake State Park
- Powell-Clinch Utilities, LaFollette/Lake City
- First Volunteer Bank (all Campbell County locations)
Or you can purchase your tickets online Your tickets will be waiting for you that evening at the gate's will call.
Buy Tickets to the Pre-Festival Bluegrass Show.
$10 advance, $12 at the door
Pick up your tickets at the gate.
Come early for a pre-concert event
Enjoy a conversation on the roots of Bluegrass with Dale Ann Bradley and Steve Gulley. This session starts at 5:15 pm and will begin with a lecture and demonstration led by Dale Ann Bradley and Steve Gulley. The session will feature some of their students from the Cumberland River Academy. Taught by some of the top names in bluegrass today, including Bradley and Gulley, the students will attest both to bluegrass music's firm traditions and exciting new directions. This next generation of young mountain musicians will display and explain the core musical, aesthetic, and performance principals that have sustained bluegrass music as a distinct and thriving genre for over six decades. Attendees of this demonstration will come away with a new understanding of bluegrass music as a living art form, one rich with history and firmly in the hands of a new bearers ready to build from a revered foundation.
Sponsored by Friends of The Cumberland Trail and the Campbell Culture Coalition. Funded in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission and the Campbell County Commission.
Dale Ann Bradley
Three time winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, Dale Ann Bradley and has been hailed by Alison Krauss and Ricky Skaggs as one of the greatest vocalists in country and bluegrass music. A former Coon Creek Girl and mainstay at Kentucky's Renfro Valley Barn Dance, Bradley commands a list of awards as long as Highway 40, yet a few minutes with her tells you she is something even more than extraordinarily gifted – she's extraordinarily human. A Primitive Baptist preacher's daughter out of the hills of Kentucky where no musical instruments were allowed, Bradley grew up in a self-described "backwoods holler" down a rural road where electricity and running water weren't available until she was in high school – something she has more in common with the first generation of bluegrass than her contemporaries in today's scene. Bradley's mountain soprano has been called "shimmering" (The Washington Post), "angelic" (Billboard), and "exceptional" (Bluegrass Unlimited). An acclaimed musician now living just over the mountain in Kentucky, Bradley fills every stage and studio with humor, grace, and integrity.
Grasstowne
Grasstowne is a band comprised of very well respected veterans in bluegrass and acoustic music. Alan Bibey and Steve Gulley have known and admired each other for over 25 years in their endeavors with bands such as The New Quicksilver, IIIrd Tyme Out, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, BlueRidge and Mountain Heart. Add to the band’s mix three young and very talented players: Adam Haynes on fiddle and vocals, Justin Jenkins on banjo and vocals and Kameron Keller on upright bass and you have one of the hottest and energetic bands touring today! The band’s first two projects ”The Road Headin’ Home” and ”The Other Side of Towne” went to #1 and #2 respectively on the National Bluegrass Charts. The Road Headin’ home remained at #1 for three months and also won the 2008 ”Album of the Year” award.
The Pinnacle Mountain Boys
Though they disbanded over forty years ago, the Pinnacle Mountain Boys' great vocals, strong songwriting, and instrumental prowess built a reputation that never faded in East Tennessee. Their individual talents have been appreciated regionally and nationally for over fifty years, and the band is remembered as one of the finest bluegrass ensembles connected to East Tennessee. Starting with Buster Turner's collaborations with young Frank Wakefield in the 1950s, through the bristling banjo work of Loren Rogers in the early 1960s, and the supergroup of the mid-1960s anchored by the superlative duet of Turner and Don Gulley, with instrumental powerhouses Charlie Collins, fiddle, Larry McNeely, teenage banjo phenomenon, and Allen Collins, veteran bass man - the Pinnacle Mountain Boys still claim the attention of aficionados of traditional bluegrass, newgrass, hillbilly bop, bluegrass gospel, and bluegrass-country crossover. The Members: Charlie Collins was born into a coal mining family near Caryville and was fiddling in the LaFollette music contests before he was ten years old. After a stint in the Army, Charlie moved to LaFollette, and was soon playing on stage and radio shows with the Blue Valley Boys on WLAF. He joined the Pinnacle Mountain Boys around 1960, as they rode Pet Milk's national talent competition all the way to the Grand Ole Opry. In 1966 Charlie moved to Nashville to join Roy Acuff's legendary band, The Smoky Mountain Boys. Since Roy's death in 1992, Charlie has remained a weekly performer on the Opry, and has recorded with Norman Blake, Mark O'Conner, Brother Oswald, Jim and Jesse, Sam Bush, and many others. Dobro and banjo specialist, Mike Webb, has partnered with him in recent years, and Charlie has just released a CD tribute to Howdy Forrester, the virtuoso fiddler of the Smoky Mountains Boys.
A year after banjoist Loren Roger's accidental death in 1963, the Pinnacle Mountain Boys encountered teenaged Larry McNeely at an Indiana music event. McNeely astounded the veteran musicians with his sizzling, fearless style, and they convinced him to move to LaFollette and join the band. McNeely schooled himself on the recordings of Loren Rogers, but led the way to the band's greatest instrumental work. McNeely left for Nashville in 1966 to work as Roy Acuff's banjo player. He moved on to Los Angeles, where he became the "first-call" banjoist for Hollywood films and television productions. From 1969 through 1972 he was featured on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and later worked with Burl Ives, Percy Faith, Mac Davis, and the Smothers Brothers. His banjo innovations led to three solo LPs, merging a driving Scruggs foundation with a wonderful melodic emphasis. He returned to Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys in 1985, this time as a country harmonica master, and performed there until Roy's death in 1992.
The smooth perfection of Don Gulley's vocals gave the Pinnacle Mountain Boys a crossover repertoire and appeal to country music fans. Gulley met and joined the original Pinnacle Mountain Boys in the late 1950s at a Tazewell radio broadcast called the Tobacco Hour. Don became a DJ and program director when WNTT opened in 1960, a position he managed for 34 years. Don and son, Steve, began performing on the historic Renfro Valley shows in the early 1980s, and in 1989, he became a regular member of the cast. Don currently performs four weekly shows at Renfro Valley, including their live Sunday morning show, one of the most long-lived radio program in America. Last year Renfro Valley released a CD featuring Don's music, and he has several earlier recording projects, from 45s to CDs, including another recent release Pam Perry (of Wild Rose) and Steve Gulley. Don's son, Steve, is well known to bluegrass fans as a superb vocalist with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and the award-winning groups, Mountain Heart and Grasstowne.
In the late 1950s Allen Collins found Buster Turner, Don Gully and Loren Rogers in need of a bass player at a WNOX radio broadcast. He joined the group that night, and continued until the band finally dissolved in the early 1970s. Collins, raised in Blaine, was already performing with some of Knoxville's best musicians, including fiddler Jerry Moore who later performed with the Pinnacle Mountain Boys. In the late 1970s, Alan became a charter member of the Knoxville Grass, which also became a musical institution in the region. For the past twenty years Alan has performed with Jean Horner's Fiddle Shop Band at festivals and performances throughout the region. His most enduring musical connection has been with his own family band -- The Collins Boys -- formed in the late 1970s, staffed with his three talented sons, and still picking.
Nephew of the late Buster Turner--founding member of the Pinnacle Mountain Boys--Bryan Turner joins the group tonight for the first time, continuing his family's rich musical legacy. Turner brings years of bluegrass experience, having served a stint with Cumberland Gap Connection and now as a bass player for Cody Shuler and Pine Mountain Railroad. Turner is also co-owner and operator, along with lifelong friend Steve Gulley, of The Curve Studio, a professional recording facility in Cumberland Gap, TN.