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Article published Jun 15, 2007 Grasstowne forms amid quest for change
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
Bluegrass fans are notoriously loyal.
Give them a band onto which they latch with feverish adulation, and the departure of one of the core members can be seen as something akin to Patrick Henry-like betrayal.
Fortunately for former Wildfire member Phil Leadbetter, the solution to staying in his fans’ good graces was simple — start another band with three times the firepower.
And so was born Grasstowne, a band that’s been billed as something of a bluegrass supergroup thanks to the involvement of Leadbetter, Steve Gulley (formerly of Mountain Heart) and Alan Bibey (the mandolin prodigy who once belonged to BlueRidge).
According to Leadbetter, his departure from Wildfire wasn’t acrimonious. He just wanted to do something different.
“Sometimes, if you have your own house and you go out on your back porch every day, you start to want a different view,” Leadbetter told The Daily Times this week. “I had a lot of different music I wanted to do, and I wasn’t getting to do that because of the direction Wildfire wanted to go in. I was thinking around the end of the year about doing something different, and when Steve Gulley called me and said he was leaving Mountain Heart, it didn’t take me long to make up my mind to suggest starting a new band.
“I had always wanted to play with Steve, who’s been one of my good friends since I was 12. It’s funny, because we thought we first met when we were 16 or 17, but one day we got to talking, and I was talking about going to the Capitol Theater there in downtown Maryville to see Josh Graves play. Well, it turned out that Steve was at that show, too, so our friendship actually goes back five more years than we originally thought.”
Brimming with excitement over their new project, the two men called up Alan Bibey, a resident of Myrtle Beach, S.C. As it turned out, Leadbetter said, Bibey was looking for a change as well. He quickly threw in his lot with Gulley and Leadbetter, and Grasstowne was born.
“We sat down and set ourselves some deadlines, and we almost laughed at ourselves a little bit, because we said we were going to have a record out by summer,” Leadbetter said. “A lot of people were waiting to see what we were going to do, but once the word was put out, most people have been so receptive. Pinecastle signed us up, and we put about 75 shows on the books this year.”
Already, being a part of a band with high-profile peers is paying off, Leadbetter said — many of the gigs pay three times the money that they did when he was playing as part of Wildfire, and Grasstowne is getting booked at shows that his old band couldn’t get into the door at before.
“Me, Alan and Steve were all the booking agents and management with our respective bands, so it’s helped us a lot with what we’re doing now,” he said. “Everything’s just as easy as boiling water, it seems like. We played in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday, and we got more response there than any band I’ve ever been with.”
The key, he believes, is that the members — including banjo player Jason Davis, who’s played with Michelle Nixon and Drive and the Kenny Amanda Smith Band; and Jamey Booher, upright bass player with The Boohers, his family’s band — are relaxed and having fun. After leaving a recent festival where he’s played several times previously in other outfits, Leadbetter recalled, he noticed the stretch of highway on which he was driving for the first time.
“It was so funny, because every time before, we would be frustrated and talking about what went wrong or where we messed up, but this time was the first time I had really noticed the road at night, and that’s because we were leaving the festival happy,” Leadbetter said. “It feels really goood. You can find good musicians to play with, but when you can find people that are friends first, as we all are, and then great musicians, you’ve really got something happening.”
As far as the whole “bluegrass supergroup” concept goes, Leadbetter is humble when such talk arises. He points out that, as quickly as Grasstowne appeared on the scene, that another band will certainly do the same in the near future. And despite the positive press (a Boston reviewer called the band’s lineup the best “since the 2004 Red Sox”), he doesn’t let it go to his head.
“I see people writing about these three ‘superstars’ of bluegrass, and I see Alan and Steve up there, but I keep looking around for the third one,” he said with a chuckle. “I still see myself as the guy going out here to the festivals enjoying this stuff. I never paid attention to the press, because I think somebody can let themselves get too caught up in that. They can write a million things about you, but I’m only playing as good as I hear.
“We just want to get out, play good music and make people happy, and it’s a big honor that people think of us like that. One of the best compliments I got recently was from (bluegrass legend) J.D. Crowe. He was one of my idols growing up, and I played with him 11 years. I saw him watching our band when we played a recent festival, and he came over to me afterwards and said, ‘You’ve really got a great group right now. You really need to stick together.’
“That meant a lot,” Leadbetter added. “I guess that’s like if you’re playing baseball and Mickey Mantle come over and says, ‘You’re hitting pretty good.’”
The group will perform Saturday as part of Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Concert Series at Wilson Chapel on the Maryville College campus. Grasstowne’s debut album, “The Road Headin’ Home,” will be released in August, but copies will be for sale at Saturday’s concert, Leadbetter said.