Bob Minner

He was born in 1966 and grew up in DeSoto, a small town near St. Louis, surrounded by old-time string band music and bluegrass. He started on banjo, played his first job at ten on KHAD AM radio in DeSoto, and was soon playing banjo with a local group, Fiddlin’ Willie & the Ozark Gospel Singers. Seeing Doc Watson in concert with his father turned him toward the guitar, and Norman Blake, whom he discovered at about twelve, became his strongest model, followed by Dan Crary and Tony Rice. He spent his teens at festivals in Missouri and Arkansas, playing in bands and entering fiddle, banjo and guitar contests, went through an electric guitar phase, and twice finished third in the National Flatpicking Championship.

In the early 1990s he was on the road with his own band, Awesome Possum, playing rodeos, hotels and country clubs, and retreading tires at home in Missouri. When the band’s former drummer, Randy Davis, called him to Nashville to audition for a club job in Printer’s Alley, Davis’s new roommate, Tim McGraw, sang a few songs at the audition. Minner did not get the club job, but the two kept in touch, and once McGraw’s career started he hired Minner as his acoustic guitarist; Minner has dated his move to Nashville to 1994, when Not a Moment Too Soon took off. As a member of McGraw’s band, the Dancehall Doctors, he plays on McGraw’s records as well as on tour, including the multi-platinum albums Dancehall Doctors, Live Like You Were Dying, Southern Voice and Let It Go, and as of 2024 he had held the job for 31 years.

His first solo album, There & Back & Back Again (2011), grew out of writing sessions in hotel rooms on the road and featured Rob Ickes, Andy Leftwich, Mark Fain, Shawn Lane and Don Rigsby. Six String Sanctuary followed in 2019 and SOLO in 2021. From Sulphur Springs to Rising Fawn: The Songs of Norman Blake began in February 2021 at George Gruhn’s guitar shop in Nashville, when Gruhn picked up the phone and called Blake while Minner was visiting. Released on 10 March 2022, Blake’s 84th birthday, it pairs Minner with Tim Stafford, Ron Block, Kenny Smith, Vince Gill, Mike Compton, Shawn Camp, Trey Hensley, Jeremy Stephens and Corrina Rose Logston, among others, and has three tracks he plays alone. That fall, at Blake’s request, Minner inducted him into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at the IBMA awards in Raleigh and accepted the award on his behalf.

He came to songwriting late, learning from McGraw’s song choices, and has written with Tim Stafford of Blue Highway, Ronnie Bowman and members of Special Consensus. His songs have been recorded by Authentic Unlimited, Blue Highway, Volume Five, Dailey & Vincent, Sideline, Ronnie Bowman, Jim Lauderdale & the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, Shannon Slaughter and Blue Moon Rising. He was nominated for the IBMA’s Collaboration of the Year in 2012 and SPBGMA’s Song of the Year in 2024, the year “Fall in Tennessee” won the IBMA award. He plays banjo, mandolin, fiddle and resonator guitar as well as guitar, and he later signed with Billy Blue Records.