By Nancy Cardwell

Larry Stephenson’s appropriately titled album, 20th Anniversary, hit the streets this past February as the popular bluegrass band celebrated two decades of success.

Larry Stephenson

The recording is the first release on the artist’s new label, Whysper Dream Music, named for Larry and Dreama Stephenson’s daughter, Falon Whysper. [The CD was originally released by Pinecastle Records, the North Carolina-based bluegrass label headed up by Colonel Tom Riggs. Due to diabetes-related complications, Riggs is unable to remain at the helm of the label and made the decision to close the business in February. The label’s retail arm, Music Shed, will continue to sell music by Pinecastle artists, as well as a number of other bluegrass titles.]

The cover of the new album, designed by Larry’s wife, Dreama, pictures a marquis announcing the Larry Stephenson Band with a list of guests including Dudley Connell, Sonny Osborne, David Parmley, Ronnie Reno, Aubrey Haynie, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Connie Smith, Del McCoury, Dailey & Vincent, and Dale Ann Bradley. A music festival on compact disc, the new album contains a set of 13 songs written by Randall Hylton, Bill Monroe, Merle Haggard, Sonny Osborne, Mac Wiseman, Charlie & Ira Louvin, Bobby Osborne & Pete Goble, Eddy Raven, and Jimmie Rodgers, among others.

Co-produced with Ben Surratt, the instrumental core of the group is the Larry Stephenson Band, featuring Kevin Richardson on guitar, Kristin Scott Benson (now with the Grascals) and Kenny Ingram on banjo, Jason Barie and Aubrey Haynie on fiddles (Adam Haynes is the current fiddler), Kyle Perkins on bass (who has since been replaced by Danny Stewart from the East Tennessee State University bluegrass program), and Stephenson on mandolin. The project took 16 months to complete, but the attention to detail shows in the final mix.

“We cut the songs first and then we thought, ‘Who would be good for this?’ It just sort of took on a life of its own. We picked some songs and threw out some songs, and just went from there. I don’t think anybody told us no. We cut ‘Talk To Me, Lonesome Heart’ and we could have called any number of female singers, but I really wanted Connie Smith.” Connie and Larry split lead vocals on the track; Connie on tenor and Marty Stuart on baritone, and they decided to cut the song a second time as a country shuffle. They brought Kyle Perkins in to play walking bass, Robby Turner played steel guitar, Jerry Kimbrough added the “tick tack” Danelectro bass, and Jason Barie contributed twin fiddles. WSM’s Eddie Stubbs is “playing the heck out of the single,” Larry says. “He’s wearing it out.”

Several of the guests on his new CD are folks who Larry has performed with or known for years in the music business. For four and a half years (1983-’88), Larry shared the stage with David and Don Parmley in one of the classic lineups of the Bluegrass Cardinals. “I love singing with David,” Larry says. “He’s a great harmony singer, and I picked out a couple of things that would fit him well.” David sings low tenor in the trio with Larry and Kevin Richardson on the Randall Hylton song, “Teardrop Town.” Parmley also joins Dale Ann Bradley and Larry in an unforgettable trio (complete with a signature Osborne Brothers-style vocal ending) for “This Heart Of Mine (Can Never Say Goodbye),” penned by Bobby Osborne and Pete Goble. Bluegrass Hall of Famer Sonny Osborne came out of retirement to record with Larry a song he wrote, “Me And My Old Banjo.” Sonny sings lead on the chorus and Ronnie Reno, a former member of the Osborne Brothers, handles the baritone part. Kristin Scott Benson, a banjo protégé of Sonny, captures her mentor’s classic five-string style.

Ronnie Reno, co-founder of BlueHighways TV, sang on a Merle Haggard chestnut, “Shelly’s Winter Love” (an appropriate call since Ronnie toured with Haggard for years, singing and playing guitar). Larry ran into Ricky Skaggs, one night, shopping at Kroger in Hendersonville, Tenn., and asked him if he would sing a duet on the project. “We went to his studio in Hendersonville and cut the Bill Monroe song ‘My Old Kentucky And You.’”

Larry sings lead most of the time in his own band, but for this project, he settled on the high harmony part for several cuts. “I like singing tenor with a good, strong lead singer where I can just rare back and sing tenor.” Dudley Connell takes the lead on a song from Mac Wiseman’s repertoire, “The Bluebirds Singing For Me,” a song Larry grew up singing with his father, the late Edwin Stephenson. “I met Dudley about the time the Johnson Mountain Boys started,” Larry recalls. “I was working with Bill Harrell in 1979 and met Eddie Stubbs and Dudley and the whole crew. Then when I went to work with the Bluegrass Cardinals, Lance LeRoy was booking us and the Johnson Mountain Boys, so we worked a lot a lot of dates together. When I left the Bluegrass Cardinals in ’88, the Johnson Mountain Boys were splitting up about that time. Dudley wasn’t doing anything and I wasn’t doing anything, so we went out and did dates together.”

Larry and Dudley performed 10 or 12 dates in 1988-’89 in the D.C., Virginia and Maryland area. The two old friends also recorded together on the Hay Holler classic bluegrass album set entitled Shine, Hallelujah, Shine, in a group called simply The Bluegrass Band. Produced by banjo player Butch Robins and joined by David McLaughlin, the group recorded two gospel volumes and a third set of bluegrass standards.

Two-time IBMA Entertainers Of The Year Dailey & Vincent join Stephenson for “Give This Message To Your Heart,” written by Charlie & Ira Louvin. “I always loved the Osborne Brothers version of this song,” Larry says. “It had Bobby and Sonny with Ira Louvin on the top. I recorded the song several years ago with Don and David Parmley, and I thought maybe we could re-create it with Jamie Dailey on that high part.”

Larry and Del McCoury switch off on lead and tenor on “Have You Come To Say Goodbye,” another Louvin Brothers composition. “I knew Del and Jean and all the family when they were living in Glen Rock, Pa., and I was working with Bill Harrell in the early ’80s,” Larry says. “We worked many, many dates with those guys. Rob and Ronnie weren’t playing yet. That makes me feel really old,” he laughs. “I’m sure glad he said yes to me on that song.”

Larry says he’s been trying to get Aubrey Haynie on his records for ten years. When Jason Barie left the band before the project was completed, it was the perfect time to give him a call. “I met Aubrey when he was around 11 years old in Florida, and his family would bring him and his brothers out to see us play with Bill Harrell and the Cardinals. I remember him very well when he was about 15 or 16, playing with different groups and in contests. He’s one of the best in the world and a good guy. He really knows how to play these kinds of songs. He’s studied the music.”

The twelfth cut on the album is the evergreen “Mule Skinner Blues,” an often requested song, and one that he recorded previously on the Once More from the Top album with the Bluegrass Band. “I’ve been singing it for about ten years onstage, so we cut it live in the studio,” Larry says. “There are hardly any overdubs on it, if at all. We didn’t cut it more than three times, and we had it. We were trying to get that ‘stage’ feel.”

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