Larry Atamanuik

The Nash Ramblers were Sam Bush on mandolin and fiddle, Al Perkins on Dobro, banjo and guitar, Jon Randall Stewart on guitar and mandolin, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass and Atamanuik on drums and percussion, with everyone singing harmony. A concert the band played with Harris at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville on 28 September 1990 was issued by Nonesuch in 2021 as Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert. Over three nights at the Ryman Auditorium, from 30 April to 2 May 1991, they recorded At the Ryman, released by Warner Bros. in January 1992; it won the Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The 2017 reissue added “The Nash Ramble,” credited to Harris and all five Ramblers, and in May 2017 the surviving members, with Byron House in Huskey’s place, rejoined Harris at the Ryman to play the album for its twenty-fifth anniversary.

He played drums on Tim O’Brien’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” on Red on Blonde (Sugar Hill, 1996) and on nine tracks of Sam Bush’s Howlin’ at the Moon (Sugar Hill, 1998), alongside John Cowan, Darrell Scott and Jon Randall Stewart, with J. D. Crowe, Béla Fleck and Jerry Douglas among the guests. On A Very Special Acoustic Christmas (Lost Highway, 2003) he played percussion with Dan Tyminski, Ron Block and Barry Bales on Tyminski’s “Frosty the Snowman.”