Mitch Harrell
Mitch Harrell is a singer and guitarist, the son of the Washington-area bandleader Bill Harrell. He sang lead and harmony in his father’s band, the Virginians, took it over when his father retired, and since late 2012 has fronted a new Reno & Harrell with Don Reno’s sons Dale and Don Wayne Reno.
On his father’s Rebel album Blue Virginia Blue he and his brother John sang with Bill Harrell on the old ballad “Mary of the Wild Moor.” On After the Sunrise (Rebel, 1990), Bill Harrell’s first all-gospel album in more than a decade, he sang lead, tenor and high baritone, with Bobby Lundy on banjo and mandolin, Carl Nelson on fiddle, Billy Budd on bass and Dave Giegerich on Dobro. He made a solo album, Influences, for Pinecastle in 1992, mixing country and bluegrass songs such as “Thanks a Lot,” “I’m Ragged but I’m Right,” “Bye, Bye, Love” and “Muleskinner Blues,” and the label’s anthology Blue Ridge Mountain Gospel (1992) carried three of his recordings, among them “Amazing Grace.” He sang again on Bill Harrell & Friends (1995) and, singing tenor and high baritone, on The Cat Came Back (1998), his father’s last album for Rebel. When Bill Harrell retired soon afterward, Mitch, already a member, took over the Virginians, keeping the name.
In November 2012 he announced that he, Dale Reno and Don Wayne Reno, friends since childhood, had formed a new Reno & Harrell, named for the band their fathers led in the 1960s and meant to play both the Reno & Smiley and the original Reno & Harrell catalogs alongside new songs. The group signed with the John Boy & Billy label in May 2013, and its first video was “A Dollar Down,” which the original Reno & Harrell had recorded in 1967. Its album Reno Bound followed that year, with Harrell singing lead and playing guitar, Don Wayne on banjo, Dale on mandolin and guitar, Robbie Wells on fiddle and Ron Spears on bass; Harrell wrote two new songs for it, “Verizon to Verizon” and the humorous “Watchin’ NASCAR.” In December 2017 the band gave away a free download of George Jones’s 1962 “Lonely Christmas Call,” sung by Harrell.
