Boone and Foster

Both came through East Tennessee State University. Foster, a native of Wells Bridge, New York, grew up going to bluegrass festivals in New England with his grandparents, who with their friend Eric Gibson of the Gibson Brothers got him his first guitar when he was ten. At ETSU he switched his studies toward the bluegrass program, spent two years in its Bluegrass Pride Band and graduated in 2017. Boone, who grew up in a musical family, took up the mandolin in high school and played it at ETSU; in 2016 he joined the touring band Sideline, and with it won an IBMA award in 2019 for his playing and lead vocal on “Thunder Dan.” At Ole Smoky the two performed as Dreamcatcher. Foster later took the guitar job in Amanda Cook’s band, and Boone, married to Cook’s banjo player Carolyn VanLierop, joined it as well.

Mountain Fever announced the duo’s signing on 3 June 2020, with Daniel Greeson on fiddle and tenor vocals, Brady Wallen on banjo and Aaron Ramsey on bass. The plan was a record of the songs audiences most often asked for at the distillery, the traditional bluegrass Foster had loved all his life, and they cut it at Boone’s home, then in Morganton, North Carolina. The first single, Patrick McDougal’s “County Fool,” which Alan Bibey had recorded on In the Blue Room, came out in June 2020 and reached No. 6 on a weekly national bluegrass radio airplay chart in early 2021.

Foster died at his home in Elizabethton, Tennessee, on 10 February 2021, aged 28, before the album was finished, and Boone completed the mixing and mastering. Foster had chosen “I’ve Never Been So Lonesome,” by Fred Hannah and Sam Humphrey, as the second single, and Mountain Fever issued it in his memory in November 2022 with Boone singing lead. “Long Journey Home,” with Foster singing lead, followed in March 2023, and Smoky Mountain Favorites was released on 21 April 2023. Alongside the singles it includes Flatt & Scruggs’s “Head Over Heels in Love with You,” “Tiny Broken Heart,” “Fox on the Run,” “Gotta Travel On” and “Rocky Top,” with guests on two tracks: Rickey Wasson, Ron Stewart and Avery Welter on “Uncle Pen,” and C. J. Lewandowski and Jereme Brown of the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys on the Stanley Brothers’ “Think of What You’ve Done.”