Herb Pedersen

He was born in Berkeley, California, on 27 April 1944. As a young banjo player he was one of a group of Bay Area pickers, among them Jerry Garcia, David Nelson, Butch Waller, Rick Shubb, Sandy Rothman and Neil Rosenberg, for whom hearing Vern Williams and Ray Park, two Arkansas-born musicians working around Berkeley, was a revelation. He went on to play banjo and sing with Vern & Ray for several years, including a move to Nashville to find work, where around 1967 the band were semi-regulars on the early-morning Smilin’ Eddie Hill Show on WLAC television, before he returned to California. A live set the trio played at the San Francisco State College folk festival in 1968, with Merle Travis lending Ray Park a guitar, was issued by Arhoolie in 2006 as San Francisco 1968, produced by Pedersen; he is also on Vern & Ray’s Sounds from the Ozarks (Old Homestead, 1974).

When Doug Dillard left the Dillards in 1968, Pedersen took his place on banjo, and he also played guitar and shared the lead singing with Rodney Dillard. With him the band made Wheatstraw Suite (Elektra, 1968), which included his song “Listen to the Sound,” written with Mitch Jayne, and Copperfields (Elektra, 1970). He later rejoined them for Mountain Rock, recorded in Berkeley in January 1979, and for the 1981 reunion album Homecoming and Family Reunion.

In the 1970s he worked mostly in the Los Angeles studios. He played banjo and sang on Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel (1974), played acoustic guitar on Gram Parsons’s Grievous Angel (1974), and on Emmylou Harris’s Pieces of the Sky and Elite Hotel (both 1975) played guitar and banjo and sang harmony; his duet with Harris on the Louvin Brothers’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love” from Pieces of the Sky was nominated for a Grammy. He sang and played guitar as a guest on Country Gazette’s A Traitor in Our Midst (United Artists, 1972) and sang harmony on Doc & Merle Watson’s Red Rocking Chair (Flying Fish, 1981). Epic released two solo albums, Southwest (1976), made in Hollywood with Al Perkins and David Lindley, and Sandman (1977).

In January 1982 he recorded with Here Today, the bluegrass band of David Grisman, Vince Gill, Jim Buchanan and Emory Gordy Jr., for Rounder. Sugar Hill issued his bluegrass album Lonesome Feeling in 1984, the year he played rhythm guitar on Chris Hillman’s Desert Rose for the same label. In 1985, after both had toured and recorded with Dan Fogelberg on High Country Snows, Hillman formed the Desert Rose Band with Pedersen, who arranged the vocals, and the guitarist John Jorgenson. Their MCA/Curb albums ran from The Desert Rose Band (1987) through Running (1988), Pages of Life (1990) and True Love (1991), and in 1988 “He’s Back and I’m Blue” and “I Still Believe in You” reached number one on the Billboard country singles chart. Pages of Life included a new version of “Our Baby’s Gone,” a song of his from Southwest. The Academy of Country Music named the Desert Rose Band its touring band of the year in 1988, 1989 and 1990, and the band broke up in February 1994.

Alongside the Desert Rose Band he played banjo for Ronstadt, Parton and Harris on “Hobo’s Meditation” on Trio (1987) and for Grisman’s Home Is Where the Heart Is (1988), and in May 1991 he joined Grisman, Red Allen, Jim Buchanan and Jim Kerwin to record Bluegrass Reunion for Acoustic Disc, nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album at the 1993 awards. In the mid-1990s he led the Laurel Canyon Ramblers, with Billy Ray Lathum, Kenny Blackwell, Gabe Witcher and Bill Bryson, on three Sugar Hill albums, among them Blue Rambler 2 (1996). He sang tenor with Peter Rowan, Grisman and Vassar Clements on “Travelin’ This Lonesome Road” for the Bill Monroe tribute True Life Blues (Sugar Hill, 1996), and in 2002 took Jerry Garcia’s place with Rowan, Grisman and Clements on Old & In the Gray.

With Hillman he recorded the duo albums Bakersfield Bound (Sugar Hill, 1996), Way Out West (Back Porch, 2002) and At Edwards Barn (Rounder, 2010), and with Hillman and Tony and Larry Rice the Rounder albums Out of the Woodwork (1997), Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen (1999) and Running Wild (2001). In 2016 he played banjo and sang harmony on Tom Petty’s Mudcrutch 2.