Songs From The Road Band to play final Summer Sessions concert

Got any idea what SFTRB stands for? How about LSMFT? (This is not a gender identity quiz, I promise.)

Every kid who grew up in the '60s (boys, anyway) knew LSMFT meant “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.” And if you were truly cool, you could roll up a pack in a sleeve of your T-shirt with one hand.

SFTRB is simply a more convenient handle for an Asheville-based bluegrass unit called the Songs From The Road Band. Their name is an enigma. Their music isn’t.

SFTRB were scheduled to play in Oak Ridge last summer but got rained out, so they’ve graciously agreed to visit again. They will perform at Summer Sessions at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17, at A.K. Bissell Park with an opening band from Chicago called the Henhouse Prowlers. It’s an intriguing finale to the 2022 Summer Sessions, a season that has deemed this concert series an unmistakably vital element of Summertime in the Secret City.

Humphrey, Wharton, Epstein, Schimick and Schlender. No, it’s not a hedge fund management company. No, not an intellectual property law firm. These are the members of SFTRB.

Bassist Charles Humphrey III, formerly with the Steep Canyon Rangers, started the SFTRB in 2004 as a side project to Steep Canyon. A musician of fabled stamina, he could easily qualify to run the Barkley Marathons in Frozen Head. Charles has written or co-written nearly all of the 100 or so songs the Road Band has recorded. He has a Grammy, several IBMA awards, a plaque in the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, and he’s a Kentucky Colonel. Top that. Oh yeah, he has a writing credit, along with Rodney Crowell, Chris Stapleton, Buddy Cannon, Shawn Camp, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, on Willie Nelson’s most recent album, "A Beautiful Time." It’s the Red-Headed Stranger’s 72nd studio album, released five months ago on his 89th birthday. Heady company, no?

Sam Wharton’s guitar skills were honed out in Telluride. Good thing for us he traded the Rockies for the Smokies. He’s the lead singer for the group.

Gabe Epstein is a graduate of East Tennessee State University (ETSU) with a degree in, you guessed it, Bluegrass banjo. How cool is that.

Mark Schimick on mandolin is as North Carolina as they come. He’s in it for the long haul, and has been since he was knee-high to a woolly adelgid. He knows every two-lane road between the Outer Banks and the banks of the Mississippi.

James Schlender picked up the fiddle when he was nine, and he won two National Fiddle Championships before he learned how to shave. James has been on stage with George Benson, Bobby McFerrin, and Chick Corea, so he’s way cooler than these other guys.

SFTRB are unique somehow, and it’s a challenge to define exactly how. The best way I can describe it is that they’re sort of a bluegrass chamber orchestra. They’re a quintet of first chairs. Know what I mean? They’re each better than anyone else on their instruments, so they don’t turn in and compete with each other. They’re incredibly collaborative, seamlessly so, and it comes across. They don’t waste energy trying to out-do each other, the way most bands do.

Imagine you’re at McGhee Tyson Airport, at a crowded gate with 150 other impatient travelers waiting for a plane that has been inexplicably delayed. Five average-looking guys with no apparent connection to each other quietly open their carry-on bags, pull out their instruments, move to the center of the room, and rip into a pitch-perfect send-up of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds.” Magic out of thin air. That’s the Songs From The Road Band ... the best bluegrass band you’ve never heard of.

Henhouse Prowlers

The Henhouse Prowlers have their own brand of uniqueness. A bluegrass band from Chicago? Who ever thought that’d be possible? But for almost a decade now, the Prowlers have been touring the world as cultural ambassadors for the U.S. State Department. They’ve brought Appalachia-tinged music from the Miracle Mile to more than 25 countries, from the Middle East to Central Africa, from Siberia to Afghanistan.

Jon Goldfine (bass), Chris Dollar (guitar), Jake Howard (mandoline), and Ben Wright (banjo) are here to show you how touring the world gives your artistic life something it would never reflect otherwise. There’s a quality to the Prowlers you can’t achieve by dreaming about it. You have to put in the tens of thousands of miles, “on the road again” out where there ain’t no interstates or tour buses, out where nobody knows you or what you do. Every time you pull out your instruments, you have about 10 seconds to win over a very skeptical audience.

And these guys have been doing it in the name of American exceptionalism for longer than most people have the stamina for.

Don’t miss this show Saturday evening. There’s nothing more satisfying than telling someone about a great band, and better yet two great bands, they know nothing about.

Ellen Reid, Big Ears

Two more quick thoughts before I go ...

Ellen Reid’s “SOUNDWALK” environmental soundtrack experience has been extended at the Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville. SOUNDWALK opened at Ijams a year ago, and Reid performed a breathtaking live version of the piece at the Big Ears Festival almost six  months ago, a performance I personally thought was the most exhilarating of the entire four-day sonic orgy.

The Pulitzer Prize winner and native Oak Ridger has agreed with Big Ears producer Ashley Capps that the Ijams installation should be available to Nature Center strollers through the rest of the year at least. Maybe longer. For all you need to know to enjoy it yourself, go to ellenreidsoundwalk.com and follow the very helpful instructions.

And speaking of Big Ears, the March 2023 line-up has just been announced. One major surprise is the inclusion of Bela Fleck’s “My Bluegrass Heart” tour. This show has been making headlines around the country all summer, with a revolving cast of the greatest names in bluegrass and Americana music. We know Sierra Hull and Justin Moses, Michael Cleveland, Mark Schatz and Bryan Sutton will be with Fleck in Knoxville. And there may be other surprises that will blow the roof off at this coming Festival, marking 10 remarkable years of Big Ears.

I’ll say it again. We live at an amazing cultural crossroads.

Come out for the last Summer Sessions show Saturday evening. Make this the best year in live music Oak Ridge has ever seen.

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

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Songs From The Road Band to play final Summer Sessions concert