Ashby Frank, a singer and mandolinist from Lexington, North Carolina, recorded as a sideman for most of his career, and more than twenty years passed between his first album and his second. Among his earliest issued recordings is a live “Big Mon” from the 1997 Old Fiddlers’ Convention in Galax, Virginia. In 1999 he released First Crossing on Blue Road, recorded at Riverside Audio in Mount Gilead, North Carolina, with Lou Reid, Kenny Smith, Rob Ickes, Barry Bales and Stuart Duncan among the guests. After moving to Nashville early in the 2000s he played and sang with Special Consensus, the Marty Raybon Band, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, the Mashville Brigade, the Earls of Leicester, John Cowan’s HercuLeons and Mountain Heart. He also wrote songs recorded by Junior Sisk, Amanda Cook and Dale Ann Bradley.
In 2022 he signed with Mountain Home Music Company, which released his second album one digital single at a time. Peter Rowan’s “Midnight Highway” came out on 27 May 2022, followed by “Jump On It” in June and “Make Your Mama Proud” in October, and the full album, Leaving Is Believing, appeared in February 2023. The next project was issued the same way. “Knee Deep in Bluegrass,” an instrumental written by the banjo player Terry Baucom and recorded as a tribute to him, won the IBMA’s Instrumental Recording of the Year award in Raleigh in September 2024. “God Gave Me Horses” followed it onto radio.
“Blue Night,” released on 1 November 2024, is a song written and first recorded by the old-time guitarist Kirk McGee and taken up soon afterwards by Bill Monroe. Frank had been singing it on stage for about twenty years, since his time in the Mashville Brigade, before cutting it in the studio. On the single his mandolin opens the song, and he is backed by Seth Taylor on guitar, Matt Menefee on banjo, Jim VanCleve on fiddle and Travis Anderson on bass. “The Bug” followed in March 2025, and “Knee Deep in Bluegrass,” “God Gave Me Horses,” “Blue Night” and “The Bug” were all collected on Run This Town, released in July 2026.
Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.
Tracklist
- 1 Blue Night alt version
