Junior Sisk

Harry Carpenter Sisk Jr. was born in Arlington, Virginia, and raised in Ferrum. His father, Harry Sisk Sr., wrote songs and played guitar, and his mother sang; he was given an upright bass at fourteen and played bass, then guitar, in local bands, including the family band Dreamin’ Creek with his father and cousins. Leaving school in the tenth grade, he moved to the Washington, D.C., area in the early 1980s, where he played for about two years in the house band at Partners II, a bluegrass restaurant in Centreville, Virginia, opening for touring bands such as the Country Gentlemen and Lost & Found. The Johnson Mountain Boys were his model of a show band, and their Requests album named him as the fan who asked for “Cry, Cry, Darling.”

Back home around 1985, he got to know the Lonesome River Band, and the band recorded two of his songs, among them “The Game (I Can’t Win),” on Old Country Town (Sugar Hill, 1994). He was one of the singers on The Stanley Gospel Tradition: Songs About Our Savior (Doobie Shea, 1998), the IBMA’s Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year, and played second guitar and sang with Wyatt Rice & Santa Cruz, alongside his cousin, the bassist and songwriter Tim Massey, on Picture in a Tear (Rounder, 1996). In August 1997 he and Massey started the band that became Ramblers Choice, with Jim Van Cleve, Alan Perdue and Elmer Burchett, and made Sounds of the Mountains for Rounder before the band broke up. After a short spell with Lost & Found he joined BlueRidge in 2002 as lead singer and guitarist with Alan Bibey and Terry Baucom, and made three albums with them, all recorded at Eastwood Studio in Cana, Virginia: Come Along With Me (Sugar Hill, 2002), Side by Side (Sugar Hill, 2004) and the gospel Gettin’ Ready (Pinecastle, 2005). The band ended at the close of 2006.

Sisk then restarted Ramblers Choice with Massey, Darrell Wilkerson on banjo, Chris Harris on mandolin and Billy Hawks on fiddle. Their first album for Rebel, Blue Side of the Blue Ridge, produced by Ronnie Bowman, came out on 24 June 2008, followed by Heartaches and Dreams (2010), The Heart of a Song (2011), The Story of the Day That I Died (2013) and Trouble Follows Me (2014). The Heart of a Song won the IBMA’s Album of the Year in 2012, and “A Far Cry From Lester & Earl,” written by Massey, Rick Pardue and Sisk, its Song of the Year. At the SPBGMA awards in February 2013 Sisk was named contemporary male vocalist, and the band took the album and song awards. In 2013 he also made Hall of Fame Bluegrass! (Rebel) with the banjo player Joe Mullins. Much of his repertoire came from other writers, his father, Ronnie Bowman and Tom T. Hall among them, and from forgotten tracks on old LPs.

Ramblers Choice moved to Mountain Fever Records for Poor Boy’s Pleasure (2016), whose “Longneck Blues,” sung with Bowman, won the IBMA’s Recorded Event of the Year, and The Mountains Are Calling Me Home (2017). In 2018 Sisk dissolved the band to work under his own name, beginning with Brand New Shade of Blue, recorded in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, with Justin Moses, Ashby Frank, Jason Carter and Mark Fain. From 2019 his band included Heather Berry Mabe on guitar and harmony, Tony Mabe on banjo and the mandolinist Johnathan Dillon, his one holdover from Ramblers Choice. Load the Wagon (Mountain Fever, 2020) drew on songs by Red Smiley, Charlie Moore, A. P. Carter and Flatt & Scruggs, and its single “Lily Dale” reached number one on a monthly national bluegrass airplay chart. If There’s a Will, There’s a Way (2024) had Dan Tyminski singing with him on Roger Miller’s “A Man Like Me” and Ricky Skaggs on “Memories of Mother.”

In September 2024 Sisk signed with Turnberry Records, which released “Sweeter Than Tupelo Honey” in March 2025 and “Brand New Whippoorwill” in March 2026. In October 2025 he announced that he would retire from full-time touring at the end of September 2027. His band of the previous years went out on its own as Red Camel Collective, and in April 2026 he introduced a new group, Carter Lester on banjo, Sam Zolla on mandolin, Mason Wright on fiddle and Gabriel Hebert on bass, for the rest of 2026 and a farewell tour in 2027.

• 1998: IBMA Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year, The Stanley Gospel Tradition: Songs About Our Savior (one of the artists)
• 2012: IBMA Album of the Year, The Heart of a Song, and Song of the Year, “A Far Cry From Lester & Earl” (with Ramblers Choice)
• 2013: IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year
• 2016: IBMA Recorded Event of the Year, “Longneck Blues” (with Ronnie Bowman)