DEL MCCOURY BAND
Even among music’s greats, Del McCoury stands apart as a living link to bluegrass history. From rural honkytonks and the Grand Ole Opry to festival main stages and national television, there is Del—carrying the tradition forward for more than six decades. Born in York County, PA, he was inspired as a teen by Earl Scruggs before catching the opportunity of a lifetime in 1963: joining Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. Under Monroe’s mentorship, McCoury became lead singer and guitarist, absorbing the music at its source. Through decades of touring and recording, and later at the helm of the Del McCoury Band alongside his sons Ronnie and Rob, he has remained a steadfast torchbearer—earning new generations of fans and collaborators ranging from Vince Gill and Alison Krauss to Steve Earle and Phish.
With remarkable stability—just one lineup change in nearly three decades—the Del McCoury Band has amassed ten IBMA Entertainer of the Year awards, two Grammy wins, and Del’s 2003 induction into the Grand Ole Opry. From the Down From The Mountain tour to collaborations like American Legacies with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, McCoury’s open-minded spirit has broadened bluegrass’ reach while honoring its roots. Through DelFest, he champions both legends and rising stars, and on recent releases like Songs of Love and Life, he continues to embrace challenge and discovery. After more than sixty years, Del McCoury remains not just a keeper of tradition, but an enduring American treasure.
LEFTOVER SALMON
Few bands stick around for thirty-five years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-a-lifetime type band. And no band has done all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon.
Since their earliest days as a forward-thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly combustible styles into their ever-evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern jamband scene, to their current status as elder statesmen of the scene who cast a huge influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound forward with their own weirdly unique style.
The band now features a lineup that has been together longer than any other in Salmon history and is one of the strongest the legendary band has ever assembled. Built around the core of founding members Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman, the band is now powered by banjo wiz Andy Thorn and driven by the steady rhythm section of bassist Greg Garrison, drummer Alwyn Robinson, and dobro player & keyboardist Jay Starling.
The current lineup is continuing the long, storied history of Salmon, which found them first emerging from the progressive bluegrass world and coming of age as one of the original jam bands, before rising to become architects of what has become known as jamgrass and helping to create a landscape where bands schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass can break free of those bonds through nontraditional instrumentation and an innate ability to push songs in new psychedelic directions live.
Salmon is a band who, for more than thirty-five years, has never stood still; they are constantly changing, evolving, and inspiring. If someone wanted to understand what Americana music is, they could do no better than to go to a Leftover Salmon show, where they effortlessly glide from a bluegrass number born on the front porch, to the down-and-dirty Cajun swamps with a stop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the hallowed halls of the Ryman in Nashville, before firing one up in the mountains of Colorado.
