An Evening with the Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee

The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee play music the way it sounded before bluegrass, old-time, and country went their separate ways. Rooted in the Blue Ridge music traditions of Southwest Virginia, the band draws from the fertile gray area of the 1940s and early 1950s — a transitional period where traditional and modern styles mingled freely, musicians who had grown up on old-time music at local fiddlers conventions were eager to try new things, and bands attempted to imitate new sounds they heard on radio and records. 

The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee's sound is earthy, direct, and unadorned: five masterful musicians and singers delivering stirring harmonies and hard-driving instrumental work with no modern gloss and no apology, alongside a handful of original compositions that sit seamlessly in the tradition — an approach described by Bluegrass Unlimited as sounding like "a lost volume from Rounder's Early Days of Bluegrass series."