By Chris Stuart

As a result of the success of the Lonesome River Band’s breakout album, “Carrying The Tradition,” of 1991 and that of the personnel who recorded it, it’s worth pointing out that LRB has had an even longer, as well as current, successful history. The band formed in 1982 and has had a resurgence on the charts, garnering fourteen #1 positions from their recent album “No Turning Back,” landing a #1 on both the album and single charts for this magazine, and earning three IBMA nominations, as well as leading off the IBMA awards show with a cannonade performance of the song “Them Blues.” Few bands carry the weight of their own past as well as the Lonesome River Band.

Lonesome River Band

Bluegrassers love to create a fanciful narrative about a band. But, from inside the band, the story is generally more mundane. Bandmembers come and go, albums come and go, but the bandleader always has the same goals: create good music, make money, and keep the band going. That’s why the title of LRB’s latest album is so apt. There’s really not much time to look back, and it’s impossible to turn back.

LRB, however, is going ahead not with a vengeance, but with a quiet confidence. There is no chip on their shoulder. They acknowledge the accomplishments of the past, but they are focused on the present in an easy and even light-hearted manner. And that attitude comes from the bandleader himself, banjoist Sammy Shelor, who took over band leadership of LRB when guitarist and bandleader Tim Austin left in 2001.

A four-time recipient of IBMA Banjo Player Of The Year, Shelor was recently inducted into the Virginia Country Music Hall Of Fame. He was born to be a banjo player. Both his grandfathers were in on Sammy’s choice of instrument. At two years old, he got a homemade banjo—made out of a pressure cooker with a wood rim and clothes hanger wire for brackets—from his maternal grandfather, Cruise Howell. And his paternal grandfather bought him his first real banjo, a Bacon & Day Ne Plus Ultra.

Sammy’s grandfather Howell learned to play banjo from the legendary Charlie Poole, who would sometimes stay at the Howell house for weeks at a time, as Sammy says, “where the pickin’ and drinkin’ was.” Shelor’s background comes from a history of old-time music, and he still attributes a lot of his rhythm to those old-time players. He recalls, “He called it the ‘Boston roll.’ It was more chord oriented. I don’t know where that name came from. He played Scruggs stuff, too. I was around a lot of clawhammer players and, early on, I learned to play in weird tunings, double-C, and so on. As far as drive and timing, you won’t experience anything better than those old-time players.”

In the mid-’70s, a festival was started in Stuart, Va. Cecil Hall (promoter) of the Dominion Bluegrass Boys brought in bands like J.D. Crowe, the Seldom Scene, and the Osborne Brothers, and Sammy soaked it up. “I remember Missy Raines would come to that festival. She and I would sit there watching the bands, and we decided then that this was what we wanted to do when we grew up.”

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