“There’s no place like the Ryman Auditorium for bluegrass music!” says bluegrass great Rob McCoury to the storied Nashville venue’s sold-out crowd. There’s always a palpable buzz in the air before shows at the Ryman. The onetime home of the Grand Ole Opry, it’s a veritable stained-glass museum of American roots music, rightly dubbed “The High Church of Country Music.” But there’s an extra sense of history-in-the-making in the air at tonight’s performance.
Featuring 87-year-old bluegrass icon Del McCoury—a member of Bill Monroe’s seminal Bluegrass Boys in the 1960s, and namesake of the globally recognized DelFest music festival—the show is centered around his sons, mandolinist Ronnie and banjo badass Rob, performing both alongside Del as the Del McCoury Band, and with their own Grammy-winning, decade-strong acoustic five-piece The Travelin’ McCourys.
What the multi-generational bluegrass devotees on hand may not know, however, is that two generations of masterful McCourys are just the beginning. Buoyed on the night by the talents of one of Ronnie’s sons, 28-year-old lead guitarist Heaven McCoury, and led by keyboardist and composer Conner Broome, several members of a third generation of progressive jam-band ballers, aka The Broomestix, are set to add their particular blend of virtuosic electric soul to the McCoury’s fiery acoustic picking by evening’s close.
But it’s the traditional bluegrass blend of banjo, acoustic guitar, upright bass, and fierce fiddle that first sets the night alight, with Rob and Ronnie—joined by Heaven and guitarists Jacob Van Buer and Vassar McCoury, bassist Alan Bartram, and fiddle player Christian Ward—tearing through barnburners like “Crazy Heart” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” (“the first tune Dad ever taught me,” says Rob.).
When Del himself joins them on stage—still tall, lanky, dressed to the country nines, and still rocking his iconic white pompadour—the crowd is immediately on its feet as the band dives into a rollicking version of the Del McCoury Band staple, “Dry My Tears And Move On,” penned by UK guitar hero Richard Thompson. (A few songs later, Del and the boys deliver a stunning rendition of Thompson’s breathtaking “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” a true movie-for-the-mind, which, Del makes utterly his own with his soaring, soulful tenor; something of an outlier in bluegrass, where male vocals tend to sit a little lower.)
While the classic bluegrass song structure holds firm throughout the Travelin’ McCourys/Del McCoury Band sets—typically a series of vocal verses and harmony-rich choruses flanked by furious solo sections on fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo—the songs themselves mirror the genre’s own roughly 80-year arc, since Monroe, Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt first coined the idiom. Randy Scruggs’ trad ‘grass tune “Passin’ Thru” is followed by bassist Bartram’s clever “Oil & Gas”; the blindingly fast “Fiery Gizzard,” written by Travelin’ band flatpicking master Cody Kilby, gives way to the plaintive “Let Her Go,” and a stirring take on “The Whole of the Moon,” a borrow from British-Irish songsmith Mike Scott and his iconoclastic ‘80s band, The Waterboys.
Rob sings low and true on Tom T. Hall’s hysterical, “I Like Beer,” but then the troupe turns up the tempo on Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” as if they were born to it as much as “Blue Moon of Kentucky” or the ballad Del sings with characteristic depth: “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow,” made famous by ‘50s bluegrass progenitors, The Stanley Brothers. Time, transcended. While the bulk of the show has paid homage to Del’s remarkable legacy and the genre’s foundational vocabulary, the last batch of tunes, featuring members of The Broomestix alongside The Travelin’ McCourys, reflects the immense stretches this essentially American artform underwent in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when artists like Alison Krauss, Tony Rice, and Ricky Skaggs opened the language of bluegrass to embrace jazz, rock, soul, and more.
Joined by young Vassar and Jacob Van Buer for the three closing numbers, Rob and Ronnie’s crew, along with Broomestix members Andrew Wilson, Broome (and their snortin’ horn section), the youthful arm of the evening romp through their own “Messed Up Just Right” before delivering the Dead’s jammy “Loose Lucy,” featuring a pecking, burning country solo by Heaven McCoury. Finally, with patriarch Del taking the mic to impishly intone, “I learned this one from Hank Williams, many years ago,” they blast through a funky, foot-stomping rendition of the Williams classic, “Jambalaya,” evoking both New Orleans second-line, classic boogie-woogie, and good ol’ Nashville swing in equal measure. (It’s this mixed configuration, featuring members of all three bands, that’ll form the basis of an upcoming “Deltopia” tour.)
That’s three generations of musicians, tied by both blood and musical dialect: together encapsulating the journey of high lonesome story-songs, fierce instrumental virtuosity, and sheer joy that has seen bluegrass blossom from Del’s distinctive high-tenor holler to New Grass Revival’s blues/jazz blends, to Billy Strings’ arena-filling hybrid of acoustic Doc Watson-esque hard-luck songs and funk-fueled electric jams.
“This is a very special night for us,” says Ronnie in closing, “and now we’d like to bring our entire family out here.” Almost at once, the Ryman stage boasts over two-dozen members of the McCoury family, ages eight to 87, including the clan’s secret heroine, Del’s wife and family matriarch, Jean McCoury. It’s impossible not to be moved watching Del, his sons, grandsons, and his entire brood, standing arm-in-arm for a final photo on that storied stage, accepting the applause of a packed Ryman Auditorium, an applause given as much for the music as the strength and solidarity of a McCoury family that’s helped build and sustain the bluegrass community for more than half-a-century.