Most bluegrass bands never progress beyond playing gigs in retirement centers, local orchards, and their best friends’ weddings, where they often work for free. Some become a bit better known, working for modest appearance fees at local and regional festivals, where they help fill out the lineup to allow almost continuous music most of the day and bring in friends and relatives whose ticket purchases help swell the audience.
A rare few bands emerge from those circuits and start to go professional, gaining wider recognition and a broader audience. Modern technology has made it easier for them to make recordings of high quality and begin to get airplay, especially on the myriad local FM and streaming radio stations that broadcast music worldwide over the internet. Getting signed by a major label often provides entree onto Sirius/XM radio’s Bluegrass Junction, which continues to be a huge booster of traditional music and up-and-coming bands, particularly on the conservative, traditional side. An appearance on Kyle Cantrell’s Track-by-Track program can jump-start a new career or resurrect a moribund one.
And then once in a blue moon, a band rises to the level of bluegrass award winners after years of honing and refining their product. It’s rare indeed for a band to have the kind of impact Balsam Range has had in a genre where persistence and longevity often pay off. Let’s take a look at who they are and listen to some of their music.
Balsam Range, a group of five men who share origins in rural Haywood County, North Carolina, nestled in the Balsam mountain range, where the Smoky Mountains meet the Blue Ridge, have exploded in the bluegrass world within a relatively brief period of 10 years. We first saw them in Nashville at a showcase during the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass. But they didn’t really attract our attention until the next year at a small street festival in Shelby, NC, near Earl Scruggs’ home place in nearby Flint Hill. This is what I wrote then:
With their appearance at Art of Sound they broke through for us and the the rest of the audience in the Art Center. Their power, speed, tightness, combined with their instrumental and vocal versatility make for a lively and highly entertaining performance. At first they sound quite traditional, but as their set continues a realization sets in that this band is cloaking a quite contemporary sound and sensibility within a mantle of traditional form and instrumentation.
What I wrote then still holds true today, in spades.
Five men with varied musical backgrounds and taste came together to form a band that plays music ranging from traditional bluegrass to gospel, rock, folk, and pop. Tim Surrett played music around the world with two famed gospel groups, the Kingsmen and the Isaacs. He’s a founding member of Mountain Home Records, located near Asheville, NC, as well as an experienced studio player who has worked with many of today’s music greats. Marc Pruett, on banjo, earned a Grammy award when he was a member of Ricky Skaggs’ band and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Western Carolina University for his contributions to music. Darren Nicholson has played music from the Grand Ole Opry to the Ryman Auditorium as well as touring with country, rock, and bluegrass bands. Caleb Smith played and toured with a regional gospel band and makes fine guitars that are played by the likes of Zac Brown, Bryan Sutton, and others. Buddy Melton, whose emotion-filled tenor voice is featured on many Balsam Range records, has played fiddle and sung for several gospel bands. Their common bond: living in Haywood County, keeping grounded, and making music.
The band has been recognized by the IBMA with a number of key awards: Song of the Year (twice), Male Vocalist of the Year, and Bass Player of the Year, and they were twice named Entertainer of the Year. Their impact lies in the quality of their singing and musicianship, the wall of highly emotive sound they create – which captures audiences and pulls them to their feet – as well as the content of their songs.
Balsam Range stands out from many other bands in its ability to find meaning in life, to explore important existential questions without becoming sectarian, preachy, or mawkish. Rather, much of their music examines essential elements of life, asks penetrating questions, and suggests answers while trusting the audience to arrive at their own conclusions. These are men of conviction and faith who bring wisdom to the fore while using humor and melody to keep an audience’s attention and inspire them. Though not widely known outside bluegrass, their appeal crosses genres and speaks to the broadest range of people, perhaps the defining characteristic of what has become known as Americana.
Watching the largest audience ever to attend the Sertoma Bluegrass Festival in Brooksville, FL, last Saturday night proved instructive, as the audience demanded two encores from Balsam Range, with standing ovations. Many there were not bluegrass fans at all; others had never heard Balsam Range, as they have not toured widely in Florida. No one went home, back to their trailer, or to the late-evening jams without knowing they had experienced a band at the top of its form, which challenged them as well as provided transcendent music that never stopped entertaining. Watch for them!
