Tim Massey

He and Sisk grew up playing together, with Sisk’s father and Massey’s brother Larry, at festivals and fiddlers’ conventions across Virginia and the Carolinas, and toward the end of the family band Dreamin’ Creek he joined it as a singer and mandolin player, at first writing mostly in a folk and pop vein. “Cold Virginia Night,” the title song of Ronnie Bowman’s Rebel album of 1994, recorded at Doobie Shea Studios in Ferrum, Virginia, was the first song he set out to write as a bluegrass song; the same album included “I’m Nowhere Bound,” which he wrote with Sisk and Bowman.

In late 1994 he and Sisk met the guitarist Wyatt Rice and started Wyatt Rice & Santa Cruz, with Elmer Burchett on banjo; Massey took up the upright bass for the band. On its Rounder album Picture in a Tear (1996) he played bass and sang lead on five songs, among them “Molly,” “Separate Ways” and “Someone’s Telling Lies.” In August 1997 he, Sisk and Burchett left Rice, wanting to keep to a traditional sound, and formed their own band with Alan Perdue on mandolin and Jim Van Cleve on fiddle; after a few shows as Straight Ahead it became Rambler’s Choice. On its one album, Sounds of the Mountains (Rounder, October 1998), Massey and Bowman wrote most of the songs, among them “Enough on My Mind,” “Mama’s Flowers” and “Sweet Country Lovin’,” and Massey sang lead on several, with Dan Tyminski adding harmony on “Mama’s Flowers.”

After that band broke up he worked with a number of groups in Virginia and North Carolina, while his songs were recorded by Dan Tyminski, the Lonesome River Band, IIIrd Tyme Out, Ernie Thacker and BlueRidge. When he and Sisk re-formed Ramblers Choice, he played string bass and sang on its first three Rebel albums: Blue Side of the Blue Ridge (2008), which included his “The Man in Red Camels,” written with Rick Pardue, and “Poor Mountain,” written with Bowman, both sung by Massey; Heartaches and Dreams (2010), with his and Pardue’s “Guns, Coins and Jewelry”; and The Heart of a Song (2011), which opened with “A Far Cry From Lester & Earl,” written by Massey, Pardue and Sisk, with Massey singing tenor. The Heart of a Song was the IBMA’s Album of the Year in 2012 and “A Far Cry From Lester & Earl” its Song of the Year. By the band’s next album, in 2013, Jason Tomlin had moved to bass.