Mountain Heart looks for a fresh peak

Jim Van Cleve is glad that the members of his band Mountain Heart don't have to do "the scramble."

"All these guys in these country bands, as soon as they go off tour they gotta scramble and do something else to make ends meet. They can be playing in front of 20,000 people on the road and then come home and they can't pay the rent!"

Granted, Mountain Heart has had some setbacks and hard times, including the defection of two prominent band members, but Van Cleve says plans in 2009 may give the band its most successful year to date.

Mountain Heart began in 1998 with fiddler Van Cleve, guitarist/lead singer Steve Gulley, mandolinist Adam Steffey, banjoist Barry Abernathy and bassist Johnny Dowdle. Early on, Dowdle was replaced with current bassist Jason Moore and Clay Jones was added on lead guitar.

Although Van Cleve was still in his teens, the band was mostly made up of bluegrass veterans - most of whom had their own audiences. Steffey, in particular, had had a high profile from his years with Alison Krauss and Union Station.

The group wowed bluegrass audiences. After two albums on Doobie Shea Records, the group signed with Ricky Skaggs' Skaggs Family Records and released three albums. The group's contract with the label was coming to an end in 2006 when Steve Gulley left the band to co-found Grasstowne.

Gulley was replaced with Josh Shilling, a veteran of R&B and rock acts, rather than bluegrass, and a piano player rather than a seasoned guitarist. The fit may not have seemed natural to audiences at first, but Shilling gave the band a different edge.

"We never doubted that when Josh went onstage, people would walk out believers," says Van Cleve.

Still, he says, 2007 was the band's roughest year. There were scheduling problems. The band's first show in Knoxville (widely regarded as the most important town for bluegrass) with the new lineup turned out to be booked on the same night as a concert by Ricky Skaggs at a larger venue. Later in the summer, the band's bus broke down causing them to miss a flight to an important gig in Wyoming. And at the end of the year, Steffey left to join his old friend Dan Tyminski in the Dan Tyminski Band.

Steffey recommended Aaron Ramsey as a replacement.

"Once we heard Aaron we thought, 'Wow, if people just come in and hear him one time, we've got 'em!' "

In 2008, the group finally found its footing again - opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd and country acts that didn't traditionally have bluegrass artists an openers.

Still, bluegrass audiences wondered what had happened to the band.

"Just because people didn't see us at every bluegrass festival where they were used to seeing us didn't mean we weren't playing," says Van Cleve. "We were stretching out in different ways."

The group is currently opening for and then playing with acoustic guitar wizard Tony Rice.

"We play for an hour and then, after a break, we come out with Tony," says Van Cleve.

Van Cleve says the group recently added Rice fan-favorite songs "Me and My Guitar" and "Manzanita" to the set list - the first time Rice has played the numbers in years.

Van Cleve says the group's future bookings look good and a recently-released live album is selling better than the group's earlier releases. While the music business is getting hit by the tough economy, he's happy to have stuck it out with Mountain Heart.

"Sure it's been tough at times, but it would be the same if I were hanging up drywall."

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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