Audie Blaylock

He was born in El Paso, Texas, on 18 August 1962 and grew up in Lansing, Michigan, in a family where both parents played music. He learned guitar at eight and was playing guitar and mandolin in regional bands while still in school. In 1982, at nineteen, he was offered the mandolin job with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys, and he stayed nine years. He later said he learned from Martin to listen to every instrument at once while singing and to hear how the pieces of a band fit together, and he looked for that ability when he hired musicians of his own. In 1984 he also played guitar and sang on the Old Homestead album Hillbilly Fever by the former Stanley Brothers mandolinist Bill Napier and his Mountain Music Clan, and he is on Bill Emerson’s Reunion (1991).

From 1990 he worked with Red Allen, and also, for a good while, with Red’s son Harley Allen in Nashville. When Red Allen died in 1993 he joined the Lynn Morris Band, playing mandolin and guitar, and he worked briefly with Chris Jones and the Night Drivers. In 2001 he released a solo album, Trains Are the Only Way to Fly, with Tom Adams on banjo, Jesse Brock on mandolin and Ron Stewart on fiddle. From 1999 to 2003 he played guitar and sang harmony with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, appearing on its Rounder albums The Storm Still Rages (2001) and One Step Ahead (2003) and sharing in the band’s IBMA Entertainer of the Year award. Playing the Grand Ole Opry with Vincent and sharing a stage with Andy Griffith were among the highlights of his career. He also played on Michael Cleveland’s first Rounder album, Flame Keeper (2002).

After leaving Vincent he started Redline in 2004. That year he coordinated A Tribute to Jimmy Martin: The King of Bluegrass for Koch, singing Martin’s songs and playing guitar with J. D. Crowe and Kenny Ingram on banjo, Jesse Brock on mandolin, Michael Cleveland on fiddle, Ben Isaacs and Jason Moore on bass and harmony vocals from Paul Williams, Sonya Isaacs and Ben Isaacs, and with Sonny Osborne speaking an introduction. The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and for the IBMA’s Recorded Event of the Year. Redline was nominated as the IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2005 and 2006, but Blaylock set it aside in 2006 and 2007 to front Michael Cleveland’s new band, billed as Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper featuring Audie Blaylock, which made Let ’Er Go, Boys! (Rounder, 2006) and was named IBMA Instrumental Group of the Year in 2007.

He then revived Redline, signing with Rural Rhythm in August 2008. He produced the band’s first album, Audie Blaylock and Redline (January 2009), with Jason Johnson on mandolin, Evan Ward on banjo, Patrick McAvinue on fiddle and Matt Wallace on bass and liner notes by Carl Jackson. Cryin’ Heart Blues (2010) drew comparisons with Jimmy Martin’s music, and I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky: A Bill Monroe Celebration (2011) brought in Ronnie McCoury, Glen Duncan, Jason Carter, Bobby Osborne, Lou Reid, Del McCoury and Carl Jackson as guests. Scott Vestal produced Hard Country (2012), a title Blaylock chose to stress how closely bluegrass and country are related, and The Road That Winds followed on Patuxent in 2016. Originalist (2019), with Evan Ward, Mason Wright on fiddle and Reed Jones on bass, was the first release on Sammy Passamano’s 615 Hideaway label and split its songs about evenly between new material from the band and classic covers. Blaylock described the approach as playing new songs “in the same spirit as the guys who were doing it in the ’50s,” and two of his sidemen, Russ Carson and Patrick McAvinue, went on to Ricky Skaggs and to Dailey & Vincent.

He died unexpectedly at his home in Auburn, Indiana, on 10 January 2024, aged 61.