One of the strongest line-ups to reach the Darrington Bluegrass Festival’s stage helps celebrate the 30th year of the popular gathering this weekend.
Cherryholmes has a 2006 Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album, (“Cherryholmes”) and is the 2005 International Bluegrass Music Association Entertainer of the Year. Cherryholmes has been The Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music’s Entertaining Group of the Year three consecutive years, and Cia Cherryholmes was the banjo player of the year the last two years.
Cherryholmes – two parents and their four children – travel thousands of miles in their vintage 1960 GM 4104 bus that doubles as their home. The musicians have performed at The Grand Ole Opry, Dollywood and Ernest Tubb’s “Midnight Jamboree,” and at many festivals.
Father and bass player Jere Cherryholmes is the band’s leader who stresses preserving traditional bluegrass style. Mother Sandy Lee sings, plays mandolin and clawhammer banjo, and might break out in a yodel.
Banjo player Cia has sung with Doyle Lawson and J.D. Crowe. B.J. is a fiddler and was featured on Rhonda Vincent’s CD, “Ragin’ Live.” Guitarist Skip has been featured in a Flatpicking Guitar magazine article.
Molly Kate, who started playing fiddle in 1999 at age 6, has already earned an International Bluegrass Music Association nomination for Fiddler of the Year (2004) and a Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Association nomination for Fiddler of the Year (2005).
Three other headliners are Doyle Lawson &Quicksilver, Bluegrass Cardinals Reunion and David Parmley &Continental Divide.
This year, bluegrass and gospel icon Doyle Lawson earned a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship. It represents his decades of performing, teaching and preserving traditional music.
Lawson started Quicksilver in 1979 and quickly moved into the popular category, in part because of the pioneering all-gospel “Rock My Soul” in 1980. He was able to draw on his father’s shape-note hymnbook collection and years of listening to African-American gospel quartets and Southern gospel groups.
His group has won five consecutive Vocal Group of the Year awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association.
The Bluegrass Cardinals were a force from the mid-’70s through the early ’90s, finally breaking up in 1997. They were one of the few bands to move from the West Coast to bluegrass country and succeed, winning with a combination of stylish banjo picking and beautiful harmonies. Darrington will see the reunion version of the trio.
Guitarist David Parmley knows all about the Bluegrass Cardinals: He was a founding member. In 1994, award-winner Parmley and banjo player Scott Vestal started Continental Divide, which earned International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year award in 1995.
Ten other bands will perform this weekend: Four Chords of Wood, Country Grass, Ohop Valley Boys, The Combinations, Buckhorn Mountain Players, Prairie Flyer, Digger Davis &Tombstone, New Southfork, Deadline Ridge and IIIrd Generation.
Cherryholmes (abovet) and Doyle Lawson &Quicksilver (left) are headliners at his weekend’s Darrington Bluegrass Festival.
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