“Is It Too Late Now” appears on the Bluegrass Album Band’s The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 2, released by Rounder in 1982. The Bluegrass Album Band project — Tony Rice, J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Bobby Hicks, Todd Phillips, with Jerry Douglas appearing across the series — pulled together what was essentially a supergroup of contemporary traditional players to record bluegrass standards in clean, highly arranged readings.
The song’s authorship is not consistently documented in the publicly available discographic sources. The Bluegrass Album Band catalogue draws heavily from the older Flatt & Scruggs and Stanley Brothers songbooks, and this piece appears to belong to that older traditional lineage; the Rounder CD liner notes are the firmest reference for the actual writer attribution.
The lyric is a regret-and-question piece: the narrator finally admitting his mistakes, asking whether reconciliation is still possible, but resigned to whatever answer comes. Tony Rice’s lead vocal carries the lyric’s quiet uncertainty; the band’s tight traditional arrangement gives the recording its burnished surface. It works as a moderate-tempo singer’s piece in the harder-traditional register and remains a reference reading for younger pickers studying the Bluegrass Album Band’s mid-period work.
