Patrick McAvinue

He grew up in Baltimore County and was drawn to the fiddle as a small child, after hearing a friend and his father play together; he was trained as a classical violinist. As a teenager he played in the Baltimore band Smooth Kentucky, and in 2006 Patuxent Music issued his first solo album, Grave Run, with guests including Dudley Connell, Sammy Shelor and Mike Auldridge.

In early 2005, aged sixteen, he went on the road with Audie Blaylock & Redline, and he stayed eleven years, with Blaylock as both bandleader and mentor. He is on the band’s Rural Rhythm albums Audie Blaylock and Redline (2009), Cryin’ Heart Blues (2010), on which he also plays mandolin and sings, I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky: A Bill Monroe Celebration (2011) and Hard Country (2012), and on The Road That Winds (Patuxent, 2016). His second solo album, Rutland’s Reel, came out in 2008 with Blaylock, Jesse Brock and Michael Cleveland among the players. Alongside the band he studied at Towson University, where he graduated in 2011 with a Bachelor of Music in jazz performance, his teachers including the pianist Tim Murphy, the trumpeter David Ballou and the violinist Jeffrey Howard.

In 2014 he formed Charm City Junction in Baltimore with Brad Kolodner on banjo, Sean McComiskey on button accordion and Alex Lacquement on bass, a string band that draws on Irish music as well as American fiddle music. McAvinue plays fiddle and mandolin and sings on its albums Charm City Junction (Patuxent, 2015), Duckpin (2018) and Salt Box (2024). The IBMA gave him its Momentum Award for instrumentalist in 2015.

Dailey & Vincent announced in October 2016 that he would take over the fiddle from BJ Cherryholmes, and he started with them in January 2017, moving to Nashville; with them he played fiddle and mandolin. In 2017 he was an artist in residence at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, and that year the IBMA named him Fiddle Player of the Year. His third solo album, Perfect Fit, came out on his own McAvinue Music label in July 2019, and in 2020 he played fiddle and contributed two original instrumentals, “Five & Dime” and “Storm and Desire,” to Bluegrass 2020 (Pinecastle), recorded with Scott Vestal, Cody Kilby, Dominick Leslie and Curtis Vestal.

He then enlisted in the Navy, and after basic training at Great Lakes he was pinned as a Musician First Class in October 2020 and joined Country Current, based in Washington, D.C. His fourth album, Fortis, followed on McAvinue Music in June 2023. Over his career he has played with Alison Krauss, Marty Stuart, Béla Fleck, Del McCoury and Michael Cleveland, at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Grand Ole Opry, and his fiddle is on the soundtrack of the video game Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Towson gave him its Distinguished Young Alumni Award in 2018.