Banjos and fiddles, barns and bluegrass. Some things just go together.
It’s been 45 years of continuous music and traveling for Tommy Edwards and The Bluegrass Experience, but coming home still tastes just as sweet as it ever did. On Sunday, November 13, the Barn in Fearrington Village will be raising the rafters to commemorate almost half a century of music with “Pickin’: A Celebration.”
Tommy Edwards and The Bluegrass Experience includes big-time bluegrass names known well to North Carolina residents. Tommy Edwards – two time winner of the World Bluegrass Guitar Championship – on lead guitar, Mike Aldridge playing mandolin, Stan Brown picking banjo, Snuffy Smith on bass, and Keith Thomas sawing fiddle. Also taking the stage in the Fearrington Barn will be former Bluegrass Experience members Jimmy Cameron, Leroy Savage, and Fiddlin’ Al McCanless. The Bluegrass Experience is more than a collection of extraordinary musicians sharing a stage, it’s a well-oiled machine of a band that has had the benefit of decades of experience playing together.
“Things got started, as they often do in this bluegrass rich region, with six friends competing together at the many fiddlers conventions in western North Carolina,” said John Lawless, for Bluegrass Today. “When they won the World’s Championship Bluegrass Band at The Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention in 1972, the Experience was off and running.”
In their 45-year span playing, The Bluegrass Experience has been composed of only 12 members. Out of the original lineup of six, three have passed on while two – Edwards and “Snuffy” Smith – are still performing with the group to this day. With four albums to their collective credit, Tommy Edwards and the Bluegrass Experience remain as consistent as the musical genre they faithfully represent. Notable members have included Fiddlin’ Al McCanless (of the Red Clay Ramblers and the New Deal String Band), Leroy Savage, Stan “Stanjo” Brown, Michael Aldridge, Keith Thomas and Jimmy Cameron, along with the Beane brothers, Paul and Donald.
As a band that hosted a regular Thursday night show at the Cat’s Cradle with more visiting artists than you could have shaken a stick at for nine years running starting in 1972, and the only American band asked to play the Finnish National Folk Festival in 1975, the Bluegrass Experience has a rich history of making live events into foot-stomping family affairs. Despite over 40 years of live gigs, festivals and traveling shows both at home and abroad, Edwards – along with other members of the band – has remained a consistent part of his local community in Chatham County.
Edwards taught middle school in Chatham County, coached school sports, and served in the North Carolina National Guard. Along with his wife, Cindy Edwards, he ran a well-regarded art and antiques store in Pittsboro for 25 years. Edwards even has a radio show, airing on Saturday nights on WLHC-FM in Sanford. “Pickin’: A Celebration” is more than a simple concert, it’s a homecoming. Playing the Fearrington Barn is a reunion for all the members of the Bluegrass Experience, including those who never left the southern part of heaven.
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