Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 9, 1992 TAG: 9201090304
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
2 BANDS IN 1 AS THE LONESOME RIVER BAND, GROUP NEARS THE TOP OF BLUEGRASS; A
FERRUM - Inside a modest wood-framed, windowless building on a dirt road near this small, Franklin County college town the four members of The Lonesome River Band are playing "Lovers Quarrel" over and over and over.Actually, only two of the four are playing. The other two are patiently listening and sipping on cans of Mountain Dew.
"OK, let's try it again," says band leader and guitarist Tim Austin, 30, his manner strictly business. Austin is hoping to come away by afternoon's end with a guitar track worth keeping. He sits alone in a soundproof recording booth picking an acoustic guitar into a microphone.
In an adjacent booth, Dan Tyminski is singing along, plugged into Austin's guitar licks next door through a set of headphones.
Tie up love's broken cords.
And let us be sweethearts again.
Tyminski has been singing the same lines for a couple of hours. His voice, however, doesn't seem to be suffering.
Across the glass, banjo player Sammy Shelor is standing above the sound board studying a series of recording monitors as their needles bounce around to the rhythms of Austin's guitar and Tyminski's voice.
Shelor rolls his eyes, sips on his drink and rolls the tape.
It gets tiresome hearing the same song so many times, he admits, but it's worthwhile. When they finally capture that 3-minute magic moment, it will all be worth it.
Behind him, bassist and second vocalist Ronnie Bowman is sitting on a sofa, leafing through a copy of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. He doesn't mind Austin's persistence, either.
Bowman and his band mates hope "Lovers Quarrel" will be another breakthrough song like their "Hobo Blues." That single helped take the group's current album, "Carrying The Tradition," to the top of the bluegrass charts and grabbed the attention of Warner Brothers Records in Nashville.
Darling, you know I love you.
But to part would cause me pain.
Tyminski keeps singing, knowing that none of his vocals for this session are going to be kept. Those will come later, after Austin is happy with his guitar part.
Maybe much later.
Tyminski may not lay down his final vocals for weeks, or whenever the group can find time between concert dates, traveling and working on a demo tape for Warner Brothers to return to Austin's studio.
Tonight, the group will perform at Caesars II off Franklin Road in Roanoke, giving music fans the rare opportunity to see and hear a band with the No. 1 album in a relatively intimate nightclub setting.
Only, there is a catch.
The band won't be playing the music that has made it the best in bluegrass. Rather, it will play country music. Mostly covers, in fact.
Alan Jackson's "Don't Rock The Jukebox," Travis Tritt's "Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)" and George Jones, of course. They will even add some rock 'n' roll.
And the group won't be going by its bluegrass name, The Lonesome River Band. As a country outfit, Austin and company add a drummer and call themselves Santa Rosa.
Confused?
Probably so. But it's not difficult to understand.
Michael Jackson probably sells more records in the time it takes him to put on his socks in the morning than "Carrying the Tradition" will sell in its lifetime.
"It's hard to make a living being a banjo player," says Shelor, 29, who lives in Meadows of Dan.
So in March, The Lonesome River Band, along with drummer Smith Kenneth Smith, went country, hoping to cash-in on country music's wave of popularity.
The group was picked up soon afterward by Cellar Door Country booking agency in Roanoke and has been traveling the honky-tonk circuit since, playing as many as five nights a week.
In addition, the group has continued to perform and record bluegrass. "We're a lot closer to the top of our field in bluegrass," explains Tyminski, 24, of Ferrum.
Guest fiddlers on "Carrying the Tradition" included Bobby Hicks, Steve Thomas and 1991 Grammy winner Alison Krauss, a longtime friend of the band, who also wrote the album's liner notes.
Ironically, Warner Brothers became interested in Santa Rosa, the country group, over The Lonesome River Band, after Krauss suggested the company give "Carrying the Tradition" a listen.
Richard Helm, an executive with the record label, says he was impressed with the emotion in the group's vocals and thinks the group could work well in a country format as well.
He also was pleased that the band has been recording on its own and hasn't been begging Nashville for a record contract. "The artists I like are the ones who are going to make music with or without Warner Brothers."
The group is working on a country demo tape.
Helm says he is anxious to hear how it sounds.
In bluegrass, the band mixes traditional arrangements with more contemporary and commercial vocals. "It's real deep-rooted, but it's still very '90s," Tyminski says.
Call it Garth Brooks meets Flatt & Scruggs.
Sitting on the sofa at Austin's Ferrum studio, Bowman, 30, says you can label it what you want. He and his band mates, he says, just want to make music together, whether in Nashville or in Virginia.
"Even when we do the country, I feel like the bluegrass is still there," says Bowman, who lives in Bassett and does most of the country vocals. "The soul of the music still comes out."
Darling, you know I love you.
But to part would cause me pain.
He listens intently to Tyminski's voice and Austin's sweet and simple guitar lines as the pair gives "Lovers Quarrel" another shot. "Either way, it's music that comes from the soul," he says.