By Larry Nager

The Travelin’ McCourys have a couple things they’d like you to know. First, despite rumors, Del is alive and well and not planning to retire for a long, long time. Second, they’re getting tired of those “Del-less” McCoury Band jokes.

It all started a little more than a year ago, when the eighty percent of the Del McCoury Band (DMB) that’s not Del—mandolinist Ronnie McCoury, banjo player Rob McCoury, fiddler Jason Carter, and bassist Alan Bartram—started performing as the Travelin’ McCourys (a play on the name of rock supergroup the Traveling Wilburys). Enlisting a rotating pool of guitarists, including Jeff White, Kentucky Thunder’s Cody Kilby, Josh Williams, Jim Nunally, and Josh Shilling, and they played regional venues like Nashville’s Station Inn and Columbia Caverns’ Bluegrass Underground, as well as bluegrass and jam band festivals, the latter often with the Lee Boys, an electric sacred steel group. They’re planning a busy 2010, including a package tour of performing arts centers with the Lee Boys, as well as more festivals and shows on their own. An album with the Lee Boys is in final stages of production for the family-owned label, McCoury Music.

Their biggest project this year teams them with bluegrass-loving mainstream country star Dierks Bentley. They’re part of Up On The Ridge (Capitol), the long-awaited acoustic project by Bentley, who won a Grammy for his duet with Harley Allen on the 2003 Louvin Brothers tribute, Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’. Bentley includes a bluegrass track on each of his country albums. Plans include a 25-show tour in April and May, leading to a June release.

“I’m the Travelin’ McCourys’ biggest fan,” says Bentley. “They’re able to go with anybody. They can go to bluegrass festivals. They can do stuff with me. They can do stuff with Phish. I’ve learned so much playing with those guys. They’re just operating on a different plane all the way around, not only in their music, but also in their conduct.”

While it’s common around Nashville for bandmembers to form part-time groups when not backing their marquee-name bosses, from the start the Travelin’ McCourys had a more serious game plan. “It’s kind of an inevitable thing,” explains Rob McCoury, noting that his dad turned 71 in February. “Eventually, he’ll get to where—and I hope it’s a long time from now—but eventually there’ll come a time that if we’re gonna play music, we’re gonna have to do it without him. I don’t know a really good way to say that. My wife, she asked me, ‘Well when do you think your dad’ll hang it up, as far as getting tired of doing it or just wants to retire or whatever?’ And I said, ‘He never will, as long as he feels he’s doing it justice. He’s not gonna get up there and sound bad. He’s that kind of guy.’”

Fueling retirement rumors was last year’s ambitious boxed set, Celebrating 50 Years Of Del McCoury. The collection of fifty of Del’s best songs goes all the way back to his start as a young North Carolina banjo picker who, by 1963, was good enough to audition for Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. (He was beat out by innovative melodic picker Bill Keith, but Monroe liked Del’s singing so much that he had him switch to guitar, completing a beloved Blue Grass Boys lineup.) More than a look back, the boxed set provided further proof of Del’s continued vocal power, with 35 of those McCoury classics newly recorded. “My dad, he sung so good on that stuff,” says Ronnie McCoury. “When he went into the studio, you could really tell that he knew there was a purpose here.”

Family Business

Del’s dedication to bluegrass has never been in question. He’s always been ready to sing, whether leading his own group, guesting with others, or just harmonizing backstage for fun. I remember going with Red and Harley Allen to see Del at the tiny Village Tavern in Cincinnati in the early ’80s. They ended the evening singing trios, trading parts, trying to outdo one another, reaching higher and higher into the vocal stratosphere. As capos crept up guitar necks, Del grinned and laughed the entire time. For Del McCoury, bluegrass was a way of life, not just a gig. And that’s never changed. In more than forty years as a bluegrass fan, musician, and writer, I’ve never known anyone who loves the music better than Del McCoury. The only thing he loves more is his family. And, Del’s purpose behind the “50/50” box set involved both. Along with his golden bluegrass anniversary celebration, it was a business move, allowing McCoury Music to own new masters of Del’s best-known recordings made for Rounder, Rebel, and Arhoolie.

“It just made sense that the family had this stuff,” says Ronnie. That’s part of a long-term plan of the McCourys and manager Stan Strickland, he adds. “We just got a lot of our business straightened out the last ten years.” The biggest part of that was starting their own label. They were part of the “Down From The Mountain” tour when producer T-Bone Burnett tried to sign them to his Sony-distributed DMZ label. He wasn’t alone. “We had been at Skaggs (Family Records) and we were done there, and there was about eight major record labels that we sat down with and they all were interested,” says Ronnie. “That really made us think. There was something in the air with the whole acoustic bluegrass thing. And we knew that most records that are made on a major label have a very short shelf life. We decided, ‘Look, if we make our own records, get a good distributor, the family will own the masters forever.’ And it took money and time, but we did it.”

It was that same strategy of building the McCoury brand that led the family to start their eclectic DelFest in Cumberland, Md., in 2008. And most recently, that business plan turned the bandmembers’ hobby into something more. The guys had been doing projects of their own for years. The brothers released Ronnie & Rob McCoury in 1995, and Ronnie cut a solo album, Heartbreak Town in 2000, followed by his children’s bluegrass album, Little Mo’ McCoury, in 2007. He also conceived and co-produced the all-star Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza in 1999, which brought together a who’s who of the instrument. Fiddler Jason Carter released his On The Move in 1996. But, from the start, their main goal was making Del the major headliner he deserved to be. “We always knew Dad was a star in our eyes,” says Ronnie. From the late ’60s into the ’80s, as Del and his wife Jean raised their three kids (Ronnie and Rob have a sister, Rhonda) back in York County, Pennsylvania, music remained a weekend sideline. Del worked in timber, cutting trees, driving log trucks and otherwise risking those million-dollar fingers.

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