Jim Stack

The Stack brothers had earlier played in a family band, Frog and the Greenhorns. In the Rarely Herd’s first lineup Jim played guitar and sang lead, Alan played mandolin and fiddle and sang baritone, Weaver played bass and sang tenor, Dan Brooks played Dobro and Calvin Leport banjo. The band won the Bluegrass America competition in Milton, West Virginia, in 1991 and made its Pinecastle debut with Midnight Loneliness (1992), on which Jim sang lead on songs by Don Sowards, on Steve Gillette’s “Darcy Farrow” and on Weaver’s “Arizona.” Heartbreak City (1994), Pure Homemade Love (1995) and the gospel album What About Him (1997) followed.

By Coming of Age (1998), produced by Ronnie Reno, the band was down to the Stacks and Weaver, with Don Wayne Reno and Rob Ickes as guests; Jim sang most of the leads, including Bob Dylan’s “One More Night,” and wrote “Hang Your Coat.” After Part of Growing Up (2000) the band issued its own albums, Return Journey (2004) and Fields of the Harvest and the compilation Roundup later in the decade. The band won the SPBGMA’s Entertaining Band of the Year award every year from 1992 and received the association’s Gold Masters award in 2003 for ten straight wins. In October 2016 Jim, Alan, Weaver, Leport and Brooks played together for the first time in twenty years, at the Bob Evans Farm Festival in Rio Grande, Ohio.