Ron Stewart

He was born on 11 December 1968 in Paoli and grew up in rural southern Indiana, about an hour and a half from the Bean Blossom festival, in a family that played bluegrass and old-time country music. He started on the fiddle at three, and by the age of nine he had made several guest appearances with Lester Flatt and turned up on one of Flatt’s live albums. From 1977 until 1990 he played with his parents in the Stewart Family Band, billed as “Little Ronnie Stewart,” and he won the Indiana State Fiddle Championship twice. As “Fiddlin’ Ronnie Stewart” he made Talkin’ Fiddle Blues (Programme Audio, 1979) in Greenfield, Indiana, with his family backing him, and with the Stewart Family he followed it with Walking in the Moonlight (Old Homestead, 1982) and Blue Love (Viola, 1988). In 1983 he fiddled on a Kentucky Ramblers single, “Rosine, Ky.,” with Gary Brewer on guitar. He began working with Curly Seckler in 1989 and made two albums with him, Tribute to Lester Flatt, a Rebel release with Willis Spears, and Bluegrass Gospel, and from 1991 to 1994 he was a member of Gary Brewer and the Kentucky Ramblers.

In 1997 he joined the Lynn Morris Band, where for six years he was the banjo player, also playing lead guitar and fiddle on stage, alongside Marshall Wilborn on bass and, on mandolin, first David McLaughlin and then Jesse Brock; he played all three on the band’s Shape of a Tear (Rounder, 2003). The IBMA named him Fiddle Player of the Year in 2000, and in 2001 he was among the players on Knee-Deep in Bluegrass: The AcuTab Sessions, its Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year. Morris produced his album Time Stands Still (Rounder, August 2001), his first solo record in 22 years, with Dudley Connell, Sammy Shelor, Rob Ickes and Wilborn as guests. He sang and played banjo, fiddle and guitar on it, adding mandolin and bass on his own “Riding the Saranac,” and wrote about half of the material.

He moved on in 2003 to J.D. Crowe and the New South, whose lineup then included Rickey Wasson, Dwight McCall and Harold Nixon, and spent six years as its fiddler; he played fiddle on its Grammy-nominated Lefty’s Old Guitar (Rounder, 2006). In 2007, while Union Station was on hiatus, he joined the Dan Tyminski Band with Adam Steffey, Barry Bales and Justin Moses; its album Wheels (Rounder, 2008), on which he played fiddle and banjo, reached number one on the bluegrass albums chart, was nominated for a Grammy and won the IBMA’s Album of the Year award. In 2008 he also played fiddle on Deep in the Mountains with Longview, a band of Wilborn, Don Rigsby, James King, Lou Reid and Crowe. Over the same years he produced, and usually also engineered or mixed, albums by Jesse Brock (Kickin’ Grass, Pinecastle, 2002), Jeff Parker (Two Roads to Travel, Lonesome Day, 2004), Darrell Webb (Behind the Scenes, Lonesome Day, 2005), Tommy Webb (Eastern Kentucky, 2007, and Heartland, 2009) and Rickey Wasson (From the Heart and Soul, Rural Rhythm, 2008), playing several instruments on most of them.

The Boxcars, which Stewart formed in 2009, brought together Steffey on mandolin, John Bowman on guitar, fiddle and banjo, Keith Garrett on guitar and vocals, and Nixon on bass. Stewart played banjo on all four of their albums for Mountain Home, The Boxcars (2010), All In (2012), which includes his song “Alone and Wondering Why,” It’s Just a Road (2013) and Familiar with the Ground (2016), and mixed them as well. It’s Just a Road was nominated for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. In 2011 the Boxcars were the IBMA’s New Artist of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year, an award they won again in 2012 and 2013, and Stewart tied for Banjo Player of the Year. He was among the artists on “Life Goes On,” the IBMA’s Collaborative Recording of the Year in 2012, and on “Foggy Mountain Rock,” with Tom Adams, Dan Tyminski, Dennis Crouch, Clay Hess and Randy Kohrs, its Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year in 2013. Bowman left the Boxcars in 2014, and the group disbanded in 2017.

Stewart had filled in for Rickie Simpkins at a few Seldom Scene shows in August 2017, and shortly after the Boxcars broke up he replaced Simpkins for good, joining Dudley Connell, Lou Reid, Fred Travers and Ronnie Simpkins in November 2017 on banjo and fiddle. He played banjo and fiddle on the band’s Changes (Rounder, 2019) and banjo on Remains to Be Seen (Smithsonian Folkways, 2025). As a freelancer he has filled in with the Tony Rice Unit, the Lonesome River Band, Rhonda Vincent and the Grascals, among others, and he produced Alan Bibey and Grasstowne’s Hitchhiking to California (Billy Blue, 2021). Warren Yates makes the Ron Stewart Signature Series Banjo, designed to look and sound like a 1933 banjo, and Stewart and his father, Frank, restore and repair acoustic stringed instruments and build violins under the name F&R Stewart Violins.