SAM BUSH

Join us for another FREE Friday night concert on the river with Sam Bush!

There is only one consensus pick of peers and predecessors, of the traditionalists, the rebels, and the next gen devotees. Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.

On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.

As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.

Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan. It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved Bill Monroe- even saw him perform at the Ryman- but he’d discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.

ANDREW ADKINS

After seven years of fronting the popular Appalachian Stompgrass band The Wild Rumpus at countless festivals, concerts and clubs including Merlefest, Bristol Rhythm and Roots, and the AMA (American Music Association) as well as writing nearly all of the songs for their 3 studio albums, Andrew has now firmly established his own voice with the release of his 4th solo album. “Who I Am” on Mountain Soul Records.

Produced by Mountain Stage musical director Ron Sowell, recorded by virtuoso guitarist and engineer Bud Carroll and featuring an all star line up on West Virginia musicians, the album showcases Andrew’s wry insightful songwriting and his soulful authentic voice.