Friday, July 25th at 9:30 pm on the Biltmore Avenue Stage
He may be a legend, but while Doyle Lawson takes pride in a career that’s stood at the center of bluegrass and bluegrass gospel for the past 40 years, he’s hardly resting on his laurels. Look at his schedule and the point is unmistakable—at the same time he’s garnering new acclaim for his historic contributions, he’s plowing new ground alongside artists half his age. In September, 2006, for instance, Lawson and his band, Quicksilver, took their first-ever trip to Ireland to headline before a record-breaking crowd at Omagh’s gigantic Appalachian and Bluegrass Music Festival, after which they headed for Washington, DC, where Lawson received the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship, the Endowment’s highest honor granted to traditional and folk artists for career accomplishments. At the end of the month, the group appeared at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual awards show, where they picked up two trophies, including their sixth consecutive Vocal Group of the Year and record-setting fifth Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year titles, as well as a share in the Album of the Year award for the multi-artist Celebration Of Life. Then, just weeks later, as he resumed his hectic tour schedule, a lengthy overview and appreciation of his career appeared in the Country Music Foundation’s prestigious Journal of Country Music, followed in turn by yet another of his many appearances on the popular A Prairie Home Companion, this one on its widely-broadcast New Year’s Eve edition. At once one of the busiest marquee acts in bluegrass and an iconic figure in its history—that’s Doyle Lawson. And with the March 27th release of his second album for Rounder Records, More Behind the Picture Than the Wall, both aspects of his career are sure to be enhanced still further.
Indeed, the dual aspects of his stature are closely intertwined, for while his own experience stretches back to bluegrass’s Golden Era of the 1950s, Doyle Lawson has been an artistic leader and innovator almost as long—and a mentor, too, to generations of musicians who have gone through his 28 year old Quicksilver “school of bluegrass” to emerge as some of the music’s biggest names. Today’s Quicksilver shares that duality as well, incorporating two influential musicians from earlier eras who’ve returned to the group (banjo player Terry Baucom and fiddler Mike Hartgrove), a more recent veteran approaching his 10th anniversary with the group (guitarist Jamie Dailey) and a newcomer (bassist Darren Beachley) who, like most of his peers, grew up on the distinctive Quicksilver sound. And though he presides over a historic ensemble, Lawson continues to make new strides, writing the new album’s lone instrumental and co-writing three of its songs with Dailey even as the pair head back to the future with an album-ending performance that revives the sound of classic pre-bluegrass brother duets.
Yet while More Behind the Picture Than the Wall reconfirms his role as one of the music’s most vital and dynamic artists, it also takes its place as one of a long line of powerful and influential works that have earned Lawson acclaim and audiences well beyond the bluegrass community. Three Grammy nominations and four Dove (gospel) nominations in the last eight years, and a growing list of appearances at venues ranging from New York City’s Joe’s Pub and B. B. King’s Blues Club to A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage and the Grand Ole Opry testify to the continuing growth of Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s impact—and popularity—beyond traditional bluegrass audiences.
For Lawson, that progress both extends and ratifies a resume that makes him a shoe-in for the IBMA’s Hall of Honor. Born near Kingsport, Tennessee in 1944, he began his career as a bluegrass musician in 1963 with Hall of Honor member and bluegrass pioneer Jimmy Martin. Over the next 15 years, he became increasingly prominent as a powerful, expressive singer and distinctive mandolin stylist while working as a sideman with the Kentucky Mountain Boys and the Country Gentlemen.
Lawson established his own group, Quicksilver, in 1979, and quickly moved to the forefront of the bluegrass scene, releasing a series of acclaimed albums—including the pioneering all-gospel Rock My Soul in 1981—and influencing generations of younger musicians with a sound that blended traditional bluegrass and gospel elements with progressive material and superb execution. Drawing on the bottomless well of material contained within his father’s shape-note hymnbook collection and on the sounds of African-American gospel quartets and southern gospel groups he heard as a youngster, he made a particularly powerful impression with more than 15 all-gospel bluegrass albums that featured a wide range of styles, including influential a cappella quartets. At the same time, as a member of the Bluegrass Album Band, he helped to bring the repertoire and musical approaches of the music’s early giants to new generations of musicians and fans in a series of acclaimed albums made between 1980 and 1996.
Having established himself as a towering figure in bluegrass, Lawson turned his attention more closely to the world of gospel in the 1990s, issuing a series of sacred albums that earned him regular appearances at the National Quartet Convention, his first Dove nominations and the admiration and enthusiasm of a new generation of gospel artists. Yet at the beginning of the new decade he re-asserted himself in the bluegrass realm, reverting to his earlier practice of alternating sacred with bluegrass albums and earning the renewed admiration of the IBMA’s voters with 2002’s The Hard Game Of Love, which won the organization’s Song of the Year title for “Blue Train (Of The Heartbreak Line)”. Lawson signed with Rounder in 2004, releasing his debut for the label, You Gotta Dig A Little Deeper, the following year.
Admired, respected and beloved by gospel enthusiasts, long-time bluegrass followers and a growing number of newly-acquired fans from across the musical spectrum, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver have truly become a bluegrass band for the ages.