Onstage documents the Kentucky Colonels in live performance, the band that introduced Clarence White's revolutionary lead-guitar approach to bluegrass audiences in the early and mid-1960s. By the time most of the material on this posthumous release was captured, the Colonels had already proven that the guitar could function as a solo instrument equal to the fiddle, mandolin, and banjo — a reframing of bluegrass instrumentation that would reshape the music for the next half-century. The band — including Clarence and Roland White, Billy Ray Lathum, and Roger Bush — works through the traditional material that anchored their repertoire alongside the harmonic experiments that pointed forward to White's later work with the Byrds. Live recordings preserve the rhythmic looseness and ensemble interplay that studio sessions of the era often smoothed away, making this a more vivid record of how the band actually sounded in the rooms that helped invent modern flatpicking.
Tracklist
- 1 John Hardy alt version 3:29
- 2 Used to Be alt version 2:10
- 3 Shackles and Chains alt version 2:28
- 4 Durham's bull 1:10
- 5 Mountain Dew alt version 2:37
- 6 I Might Take You Back Again alt version 1:53
- 7 Bluegrass Breakdown alt version 2:54
- 8 Flop-Eared Mule alt version 1:58
- 9 I Wonder How the Old Folks are at Home alt version 3:03
- 10 Over in the Glory Land alt version 2:08
- 11 Reno ride 1:04
- 12 Ocean of Diamonds alt version 2:40
- 13 Bending the strings 1:35
