Bobby Lundy

His father and Bob Paisley, both from the mountain country around Galax, Virginia, and Mount Airy, North Carolina, formed the Southern Mountain Boys in Delaware in the 1960s, playing for the many Appalachian families who had moved to the Mid-Atlantic for work. After Ted Lundy’s death in 1980 the band carried on as Bob Paisley and the Southern Grass, and Ted’s sons Bobby and T.J., a fiddler, played with Paisley and his son Danny.

In the late 1980s he joined Bill Harrell and the Virginians, one of two new members who replaced Ed Ferris and Darrell Sanders. On the band’s Rebel album After the Sunrise (1990) he is credited on mandolin and banjo and sings with Bill and Mitch Harrell, and on The Cat Came Back (Rebel, 1998), recorded at Doobie Shea Studios in Boones Mill, Virginia, he played banjo alongside Harrell, Hershel Sizemore on mandolin and Carl Nelson on fiddle.

With the Southern Grass he played banjo and sang on sessions recorded in Harpel, in the Netherlands, in May 1994, later issued by the Dutch label Strictly Country as Forty Years of Trouble (2001) and Color of the Blues (2003), with Bob and Danny Paisley on guitars and John Glik on fiddle. After Bob Paisley died in 2004 the band became Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass, and on its Rounder album The Room Over Mine (2008) Bobby played banjo and sang baritone, with Danny Paisley, T.J. Lundy, Donnie Eldreth Jr. and Michael Paisley. That album’s “Don’t Throw Mama’s Flowers Away,” written by Chris Stuart and Ivan Rosenberg, was named the IBMA’s Song of the Year in 2009.

After years on banjo, he moved to the bass, and he now plays bass and sings lead and tenor in the Southern Grass, alongside his brother T.J., Danny Paisley, Ryan Paisley on mandolin and Mark Delaney on banjo. Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass made their Grand Ole Opry debut on 5 April 2025.