Calvin Leport

Musician
Best known for Banjo

Calvin Leport is a banjo player, guitarist and singer who was an original member of the Rarely Herd, the band from Athens, Ohio, founded in 1989. He played banjo on its first four Pinecastle albums, from Midnight Loneliness (1992) to the gospel record What About Him (1997), and co-wrote songs with the bass player Jeff Weaver.

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The first Rarely Herd had Jim Stack on guitar and lead vocals, his brother Alan on mandolin and fiddle, Weaver on bass and tenor, Dan Brooks on Dobro and Leport on banjo. That lineup made the band’s first three Pinecastle albums, Midnight Loneliness (1992), Heartbreak City (1994), produced by Butch Baldassari, and Pure Homemade Love (1996), on which he also played guitar on two tracks, and in those years the band had a number of top-ten bluegrass radio singles, two IBMA award nominations and three SPBGMA awards for Entertaining Band of the Year.

On What About Him (Pinecastle, 1997), recorded at 1103 Studio in Nashville with Gene Wooten and Rob Ickes as guests on Dobro, he played banjo and guitar, sang baritone in the quartet on “Go Tell John” and “Nothing Can Hold Me Here,” and wrote “Every Knee Shall Bow” with Weaver. By the band’s next album, Coming of Age (1998), Don Wayne Reno was playing the banjo, but the record included “Moonville Brakeman,” which Leport wrote with Weaver and Jim Stack.

In October 2016, twenty years after they had last appeared together, Leport rejoined Jim and Alan Stack, Weaver and Brooks for four shows at the Bob Evans Farm Festival in Rio Grande, Ohio.

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