Big Country Bluegrass

The band takes its name from “Big Country,” an instrumental that Jimmy Martin recorded with J. D. Crowe on banjo on 22 November 1966, and it was the first piece the band itself recorded, in 1989. Alongside the Sellses the first lineup included Larry Pennington on banjo, who stayed fifteen years and died in 2003, Charles Delp on guitar and lead vocals, Wade Petty on fiddle and Alan Mastin on bass, with Freel Taylor also an original member. The first show was at the Troutdale Fire Department, where the band went on to hold winter shows for seventeen years, and the first festival date came in July 1988 at the Mountain Man Bluegrass Festival in Cana, Virginia, on a bill with Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, the Johnson Mountain Boys and New Grass Revival. The members lived near the Virginia–North Carolina line, close to Galax, and in the early years they played many fiddlers’ conventions, winning individual and band prizes. Tommy Sells names Larry Sparks, the Johnson Mountain Boys and Jimmy Martin among the band’s influences, and he went coon hunting with Martin more than once.

The first four albums, 1st Time Around (1989), 2nd Time Around (1991) and 3rd Time Around (1992) on Heritage and 4th Time Around (1995) on Heartland, were followed in January 1997 by a long-term contract with Hay Holler Records of Blacksburg, Virginia. Hay Holler issued ten albums, from Big Country Bluegrass (1997) and Up in the High Country (1998) through My Old Virginia Home (2001), Gospel Time (2003), Waiting at the Homeplace (2004) and Twenty Years of Grass (2007). On 17 July 1999 the band played the Grand Ole Opry, the prize for winning, against some 75 other bands, a contest to re-create the Martha White jingle that Flatt & Scruggs had made famous, held for the company’s hundredth anniversary. Open for Business (Mountain Roads, 2008) and its single “High Alleghenies” both reached No. 2 on the bluegrass charts.

Rebel Records released The Boys in Hats and Ties in October 2010. Its title song, written by Tom T. Hall about Flatt & Scruggs, reached No. 1 on the Bluegrass Unlimited chart and stayed on it for a year, “Black Mountain Special” reached No. 10, and the Roots Music Report named it one of the ten best bluegrass albums of 2011. The band has recorded many songs by Tom T. and Dixie Hall. Early in 2012 the fiddler Jeff Michael and the singer Johnny Williams left; Eddie Gill, from Travers Chandler & Avery County, came in on guitar and lead vocals, with Don Rigsby and Billy Hawks covering the fiddle until Tim Laughlin joined on fiddle and mandolin in January 2013. That lineup, with Lynwood Lunsford on banjo and Tony King on bass, made Memories of the Past (2013), led by the Halls’ “I’m Putting On My Leaving Shoes” and including Monroe’s “Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake” and Don Reno’s “Choking the Strings,” and Country Livin’ (2015), whose lead single, the Halls’ “Bluefield West Virginia Blues,” topped the chart.

Lunsford announced in November 2015 that he was leaving after nine years to start his own band, and in March 2016 John Treadway of Taylorsville, North Carolina, took over the banjo. The thirtieth-anniversary album, Let Them Know I’m From Virginia (Rebel, March 2017), opened with Tracy O’Connell’s “Burn the Barn,” and Mountains, Mamas & Memories (2019) included “Country Boy, Banjo and Flat Top Guitar,” found on a late-1960s LP by the Highland Ramblers, and Greg Preece’s “The Whiskey or the Coal.” Daniel Martin of Belmont, North Carolina, who had spent four years with Tony Holt and the Wildwood Valley Boys, joined on banjo in August 2023. After a six-year gap, Carry Me Back to the Bluegrass (Rebel, 2025), the band’s twenty-first album and sixth for Rebel, took its title song from Dave Evans, who had recorded it with River Bend in 1979, and included Preece’s moonshine song “Remember Who You Are” and “Hack’s Breakdown,” written by Larry Pennington for his father.

Among the band’s former members are the singers James King and Johnny Williams. In 2012 it was holding an annual festival in Galax in memory of Pennington and Mastin, both of whom died while members. As of January 2026 Big Country Bluegrass was Tommy Sells on mandolin, Teresa Sells on guitar, Eddie Gill on guitar, Daniel Martin on banjo and Tony King on bass, with Billy Hawks playing fiddle on the latest album, and it was booking dates for 2026 and 2027.