Live at the MAC was recorded on 21 May 1997 at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and released by Rounder in 1998. Country Standard Time described it that May as IIIrd Tyme Out’s third album for Rounder and sixth overall since the band formed in 1991, by which time the group had won the IBMA Vocal Group of the Year award four times.
The lineup was Russell Moore on guitar and lead vocals, Wayne Benson on mandolin, Steve Dilling on banjo, Mike Hartgrove on fiddle and Ray Deaton on bass, with the dobroist Rob Ickes of Blue Highway on seven tracks. Moore, Hartgrove and Deaton had formed the band in 1991 with banjo player Terry Baucom, after working with Doyle Lawson’s Quicksilver.
The repertoire runs from Bill Monroe’s “White House Blues,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Lord Protect My Soul” and the Flatt and Scruggs song “Someone Took My Place with You” to later writing: Carl Jackson’s “Erase the Miles,” Cathy Gosdin’s “Till the End,” a 1977 country hit for Vern Gosdin, and, as the closer, Ronnie Bowman and Timmy Massey’s “I’m Better Off Without You.” The gospel numbers “He Said If I Be Lifted Up” and “It’s a Lonesome Road” are in the set too; on the latter, Deaton sings the verses as a bass lead before Benson takes over at the chorus.
Tracklist
- 1 Introduction 0:52
- 2 White House Blues alt version 1:51
- 3 Blue Moon of Kentucky alt version 2:07
- 4 Little Rabbit alt version 2:19
- 5 What Was I Supposed to Do? 3:24
- 6 He Said If I Be Lifted Up alt version 3:44
- 7 It's a Lonesome Road 3:20
- 8 Till the End 3:46
- 9 Someone Took My Place With You alt version 3:26
- 10 Lord Protect My Soul 3:19
- 11 I Ain’t Broke (But I’m Badly Bent) alt version 2:55
- 12 Erase the Miles 5:39
- 13 Till the End of the World 2:56
- 14 Tennessee Waltz Source Recording 3:41
- 15 I'm Better Off Without You 3:01
