Biography

For their latest Mountain Home Music Company single, veteran bluegrass hitmakers Lonesome River Band have dug once again into the country music vaults — a habit that’s paid off for the group for more than 30 years, most recently with this spring’s chart-topping hit, “Near Mrs.” This time, though, the quintet reaches back not to the 1990s, but to the early 1960s, breathing new life into an obscure single from the era when honky tonk music was in danger of being swept away by the pop-flavored “Nashville Sound.” Given LRB’s signature treatment, “Blues of the Night” emerges not as a plaintive two-step, but as a muscular expression of pain that sounds like it was born, not made, into bluegrass.

Newest band member Adam Miller, who made his debut with last year’s radio and streaming hit, “Mary Ann is a Pistol,” takes center stage from the outset, as his lithe mandolin work gives way to his lead vocal, offering up the first of the song’s three verses:

When darkness of night falls around me
That old sun, it falls out of sight
And the daylight fades into darkness
I always get the blues of the night

With guitarist Jesse Smathers adding a fiery harmony line to the second half of each verse,
“Blues of the Night” punctuates its tale of romantic misery with driving solos by bandleader (and award-winning banjoist) Sammy Shelor and long-time fiddler Mike Hartgrove, ratcheting up the emotion with a broken rhythm in its third verse before mandolin, banjo and fiddle trade phrases in a race to the finish.

“‘Blues of the Night’ is an old country song that Jesse Smathers brought to the band for this session,” notes Shelor. “Lyrically, it fit our sound to a tee. It features Adam Miller on lead with Jesse adding some haunting tenor lines that make it a driving Bluegrass song. So much fun to play!”

“Blues of the Night” is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, TIDAL and Amazon Music. Dolby Atmos is a sound experience you can feel all around you. Familiar from its “surround sound” application in thousands of movie theaters” Dolby Atmos reveals “depth, clarity and details like never before.”

About Lonesome River Band
Since its formation decades ago, Lonesome River Band continues its reputation as one of the most respected names in Bluegrass music. Five-time International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Banjo Player of the Year, and winner of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, Sammy Shelor leads the group that is constantly breaking new ground in acoustic music. With stellar lead vocalists and impressive instrumental talents, the band seamlessly comes together, performing the trademark sound that fans continue to embrace.