The Mashville Brigade

The mandolinist Ashby Frank announced the group in December 2006 as a “second band” drawn from several Nashville acts. It played its first show at the Station Inn on 5 December 2006 with Frank on mandolin, Darrell Webb on guitar, Jim VanCleve on fiddle, Greg Martin on bass and Aaron McDaris, newly hired by the Grascals, on banjo. Frank explained the name from bluegrass slang for really getting into a piece of music, “mashing it.” The band soon settled into the Tuesday-night slot once held by the Sidemen, playing bluegrass classics and material from the members’ own projects, and the weekly shows built up a following among Nashville’s musicians and their friends and families.

The album was recorded in a single day in January 2008, in less than eight hours, with the five players gathered in a circle around the microphones on the Station Inn stage, in daylight, with no audience and no overdubs. VanCleve produced it. By then Webb was playing with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, Frank with Special Consensus, VanCleve with Mountain Heart and McDaris with the Grascals, and Randy Barnes of NewFound Road was on bass, with Webb and Frank singing lead. Rural Rhythm released Bluegrass Smash Hits, Volume 1 on 22 April 2008 as the first in a planned series. Its sixteen tracks include “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains,” “White House Blues,” “Little Maggie,” “Sitting on Top of the World” and “I’ll Remember You Love in My Prayers,” and four instrumentals: “John Henry,” “Going Across the Sea,” “Salt Creek” and “Sally Goodin’.” No second volume was issued under the band’s name.