Josh Swift

In 2006 he was the resonator guitarist in Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain, with Keith McKinnon on guitar, Kevin McKinnon on mandolin, Josh Miller on banjo and Travis Anderson on bass, when Rural Rhythm Records released the band’s self-titled album that September.

He then joined Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. On Drive Time (Mountain Home, 2011) he played Dobro, bass and drums and sang the bass part, with Mike Rogers, Corey Hensley, Jessie Baker and Jason Barie, on songs such as “Precious Memories.” The band’s later albums were recorded at Cowbell Fever Studios in Sparta, Tennessee: In Session (2015), with Swift on resonator guitar and percussion and singing on songs such as “I Told Them All About You” and “Evening Prayer Blues”; Burden Bearer (2016), on which he played rhythm and lead guitar, resonator guitar and percussion, including the Carter Family’s “God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign”; and Life Is a Story (2017). In Session and Burden Bearer were both nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, and in 2017 the IBMA named Swift its Resophonic Guitar Player of the Year. He was on resonator guitar and bass vocals for Live in Prague, Czech Republic, recorded on 26 January 2019 and released by Billy Blue that August, which won IBMA Album of the Year in 2020. The band was IBMA Vocal Group of the Year in 2018.

Outside Quicksilver he played resonator guitar and percussion on Chapter 3 (Mountain Home, March 2017) by Lawson and Paul Williams, recorded at Crossroads Studio in Arden, North Carolina, where he also sang baritone, and on the second album by J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson and Paul Williams; Dobro on Jason Davis’s Second Time Around (2013) and on John Bowman’s The Hole (Mountain Home, 2019), including “I’ll Talk It All Over With Him”; and resonator guitar on Merle Monroe’s “Hello Sunshine,” cut in July 2020. Beard Guitars of Hagerstown, Maryland, makes a Josh Swift Signature resonator guitar, and the company describes him as a multi-instrumentalist, recording artist and producer who, after his years with Lawson, was playing with the Isaacs and with Lyle Lovett.