The Scioto Society, producers of Tecumseh!, announce the Boomin Bluegrass Festival is coming to Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre, August 4th. The festival is a one day celebration of American Music featuring some of Bluegrass and Country Music’s most well known and celebrated artists.
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Music will begin at 5:30pm with multiple IBMA Award winner Dale Ann Bradley, Jerry Salley will entertain you with stories of his songs and more beginning at 6:30pm, Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers will heat it up at 7:30pm and then The Steeldrivers will close the evening out at 8:30pm. Several crafters from around Southern Ohio will be on hand through the evening and snacks and drinks will be available all night. Doors open at 5pm.
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The SteelDrivers’ brand of bluegrass - intense, dark, poetic, and inescapably human - is a refreshing reminder of the timeless power of stringband music, and is captured perfectly on The SteelDrivers. Produced by Nashville ace Luke Wooten, The SteelDrivers was recorded mostly live on the studio floor, vocals and all. Its songs grapple with classic themes of regret, love, and redemption, from the escalating prison lament of “Midnight Train to Memphis” to the chilling murderer’s plea encapsulated in “If It Hadn’t Been for Love.” “East Kentucky Home” is a timeless traditional bluegrass lament, with its strains of homesickness, loss, and abandonment, but ingeniously reinvented with off-kilter rhythmic accents and a decidedly contemporary chord progression. The willingness to set aside the unspoken rules that ruthlessly govern bluegrass set the SteelDrivers apart from the innumerable faceless acts vying for the bluegrass spotlight.
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Dale Ann Bradley was born and raised in the coal fields of Kentucky. She fell in love with bluegrass music as an early teen and was determined to pursue her dreams. She first played with a regional band called Backporch Grass. After being contracted to perform at the Renfro Valley Barndance in Renfro Valley, Kentucky, she became part of the leading Bluegrass band The New Coon Creek Girls, and began recording and traveling extensively. In 1997, she began leading the “Dale Ann Bradley Band,” with whom she has recorded seven albums. Dale Ann writes songs about her upbringing, combining many genres of music, including country and gospel. She has received the International Bluegrass Music Award for female vocalist five times, the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America award for female vocalist twice, and many other awards for collaborations. Her most recent album, which she produced, is entitled Pocket Full of Keys. It was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2016 for Best Bluegrass Album.
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Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers deliver first class entertainment, whether on stage or in the studio. For over a decade, JMRR have consistently delivered chart-topping and crowd-pleasing music, as evidenced by multiple International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards and Grand Ole Opry appearances on their resume. Joe Mullins is a southwestern Ohio native who has been a recognizable banjo player, vocalist, and radio broadcaster for over 30 years. Mullins toured and recorded as a founding member of the band The Traditional Grass until 1995, when he purchased WBZI Radio in Xenia, Ohio. He recorded and performed with the band Longview, earning Song of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year awards from the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) in the late 1990’s. He was honored by winning an Instrumental Recording of the Year award in 2001 from the IBMA for his banjo work on Rebel Records’ Knee Deep In Bluegrass. Mullins was also one of many artists in 2006 sharing Album of the Year honors for Celebration of Life, on Skaggs Family Records. Mullins now owns an Ohio network of radio stations - Real Roots Radio - and can be found on the air most weekdays from 1pm until 3PM featuring Bluegrass and Bluegrass Gospel music and webcasting at www.realrootsradio.com. He is SPBGMA’s 2011 SPBGMA Broadcaster of the Year and also hosts Front Porch Fellowship, a weekly syndicated radio show which airs on over 200 radio stations. Joe was awarded IBMA’s Broadcaster of the Year in 2016.
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Jerry Salley has had an incredibly successful, multi-award winning songwriting career. The 2003 SESAC Country Music Songwriter of the Year, Salley has had over 500 different songs recorded and his songs have sold in excess of 17 million records worldwide. Writing and singing in Nashville since 1982, he has written multiple hits in country, bluegrass, and gospel music and may well be the most successful songwriter to have earned equal recognition from all three genres of music. A Chillicothe native, he signed with Performing Rights Organization SESAC at eighteen years old. After earning a degree from Ohio University in 1982, Salley moved to Nashville and landed a job in the Country Music USA cast at Opryland theme park, a job that would become a springboard for what was to come. In the bluegrass genre, Jerry is a two-time IBMA Songwriter Of The Year nominee and has had hundreds of songs, including numerous chart-toppers, recorded. He was thrilled to have co-written three songs on The SteelDrivers Grammy award winning album, The Muscle Shoals Recordings (“A Long Way Down”, “The River Runs Red”, “6 Feet Away”), and a song on the Del McCoury Band Grammy winning album The Streets Of Baltimore (“The Butler Brothers”). Other bluegrass groups who have recorded Jerry’s songs include The Osborne Brothers, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Rhonda Vincent, Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Dale Ann Bradley, Seldom Scene, Flatt Lonesome, IIIrd Tyme Out, Larry Stevenson, Donna Ulisse, Irene Kelley and many others. Salley is a multiple IBMA Song Of The Year nominee, and his song “All Dressed Up”, recorded by Joe Mullins and The Radio Ramblers, won the IBMA Gospel Recorded Song Of The Year award in 2016. Jerry will be performing solo and telling the stories of some of your favorite Bluegrass songs that he wrote.
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Prior to the show beginning at 4pm, the Bluegrass Chicken Buffet will be offered, featuring live music from Bill Lykins & Intentional Grass.
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The event is a fundraiser for The Scioto Society, who has been been presenting the best names in Bluegrass since 2015.
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Real Roots Radio is sponsoring the event and Daniel Mullins will emcee the evening.
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Tickets range in price from $15-$40 and can be purchased on the Tecumseh! website at www.tecumsehdrama.com, or by calling (740) 775-0700.