Dan Tyminski Band wows Summer Sessions in Kingston

Summer Sessions deftly raised the bar so high on July 2 by presenting the Dan Tyminski Band at the perfectly designed amphitheater in Kingston’s expansive Fort Southwest Point, that it is now hard to imagine a more ideal way to enjoy a balmy mid-summer night’s dream.

Dan Tyminski is a free born man. A self-made man. It’s ironic that he hit pay dirt more than two decades ago by declaring he’s a man of constant sorrow. His constant sorrow, and his role in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” made him a very happy, contented, wealthy man, I’m sure. More than a dozen Grammy Awards pretty much set it in concrete.

The word that kept coming to mind throughout his band’s two-hour crash course on all things bluegrass was “infectious.”

The good kind.

Tyminski has woven his illustrious career as a member of Alison Krauss’s all-star Union Station band, and his seamless collaborations with everybody who’s anybody in country and bluegrass music, into an advanced phase renaissance, teaming up with a new generation of players who are pushing the envelopes of achievement for any instrument they touch. As Tyminski told the crowd in Kingston as he made his introductions, his band members weren't born yet when his recording career was getting started.

But as soon as he quit talking, they and he lit up the lakeside stage like they’ve been “playin’ since they’s babies.” Oh, these Nashville cats. What a goldmine we’ve got in Middle Tennessee.

But here’s the thing...  When you look beyond the intro’s, these young musicians are anything but rookies. Far from it.

Grace Davis (stand-up bass) is a case in point. Her diminutive physical presence, especially compared to her instrument, gives her an almost adolescent air, but as Tyminski said, any band can be gauged by the prowess of its bass player, and Grace Davis keeps the Tyminski Band flying. An East Tennessee State University grad, she has been a mainstay in the Loose Strings Band from Galax, Va., and she’s been married to Jason Davis for six years. Jason has toured for years with Junior Sisk and Ramblers Choice, BlueRidge, and Grass Town. His song “Modern Day Jezebel” became a No. 1 hit on the bluegrass charts as soon as it was released a year ago on Mountain Fever Records, handily sung by Dan Tyminski.

Maddie Denton (fiddle) holds championship fiddle titles in more than a dozen states. Until recently a high school biology teacher, this Murfreesboro native was also a first-rank Division 1 golfer at Middle Tennessee State University. One of her favorite songwriters is Harry Clark, who happened to be standing right next to her on stage in Kingston.

Clark (mando), a member of the Lexington/Nashville band The Wooks, is one of the most nimble mandolin drivers you will ever see, despite having industrial-size hands. On a recent edition of the podcast “Beers & Mandolins,” Clark admitted, “If you cut off one of my hands and put it on a meat scale, it’d probably weigh about eight pounds.” On stage Saturday evening, they were weightless and resembled hummingbirds.

Then there’s Gaven Largent (reso guitar), formerly with Blue Highway and Michael Cleveland’s Flamekeepers, and he’s still slinging fire. His resonator guitar style just feels illegal somehow, like the dang guitar has an outlawed ammo magazine hanging off the backside out of sight. A gifted singer and multi-instrumentalist, Largent is “as bluegrass as they come,” according to Tyminski. Snazzy dresser, too. Standing fearlessly between one of the country’s greatest guitar players and one of its greatest banjo virtuosos, little Gaven never blinked, never missed a note, and never came up short with his perfect boundary-pushing fills.

With all these young bloods surrounding old TD, the question of old dogs and new tricks was in the air, but Tyminski answered it right off the bat. He opened their show with “Constant Sorrow.” That’s right. Get it out of the way. And from that point on, the audience had no idea what was coming next. Young bloods don’t know stuff like that. It was brilliant.

Mixing original tunes and history lessons like the songs of Jimmy Martin, The Dillards, and Bill Monroe, the Dan Tyminski Band made a grassy hillside in Kingston reverberate like the windowpanes at the Ryman. And this Summer Sessions experiment was a complete success.

Next up: on July 16, it’s the Alex Leach Band opening for the one and only Jim Lauderdale, back at Bissell Park in Oak Ridge. Summer just started, but I’m already wondering where it’s gone.

John Job is a longtime Oak Ridge resident and frequent contributor to The Oak Ridger.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Dan Tyminski Band wows Summer Sessions