Robert Greer
Robert Greer is a singer and guitarist from Georgia who co-founded the Asheville, North Carolina, band Town Mountain in 2005 and sang lead on its records for twenty years. In 2013 the International Bluegrass Music Association named him Vocalist of the Year at its Momentum Awards.
Greer grew up singing in the Methodist church and came to bluegrass late: he did not start playing bluegrass guitar until he was twenty-five, he has said, because he was tired of asking friends to back him on the songs he wanted to sing. His speaking and singing voices carry the same south Georgia accent.
He and the banjo player Jesse Langlais formed Town Mountain in Asheville in 2005, and the band’s first gig in town was at the Grey Eagle. On Heroes & Heretics (2008), recorded at the Rubber Room Studio in Chapel Hill, Greer played guitar and sang every lead, with Phil Barker on mandolin, Barrett Smith on bass and Annie Staninec on fiddle; the songs included “Snowin’ on Raton” and Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.” The band then made two albums for Pinecastle; the second, Leave the Bottle (2012), had Greer, Langlais, Barker, Bobby Britt on fiddle and Jake Hopping on bass, and at the 2013 Momentum Awards Town Mountain was named Band of the Year and Greer Vocalist of the Year.
For Southern Crescent (2016) the band recorded with Dirk Powell at his Cypress House studio in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, playing as if on stage around three microphones; Greer sang all his parts live. The band later moved toward a country sound with drums, and its 2022 album Lines in the Levee came out on New West Records with Greer still on guitar and lead vocals. Town Mountain stepped away from touring after a fall 2025 run that ended on 26 October 2025 at the Ardmore Music Hall in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
