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Name: Sammy Shelor
Group: Lonesome River Band
Date: Thursday May 8th, 2008
Time: 7:00pm EDT
Website: www.lonesomeriverband.com
Interviewer: Terry Poirier
Description:
When Sammy Shelor joined Lonesome River Band in 1990, he never envisioned
himself leading the band only ten years later. Fresh off a six year stint
with the popular Virginia Squires, Sam came on board along with Ronnie
Bowman and before long, had recorded the landmark LRB CD, Carrying The
Tradition with Dan Tyminski and Tim Austin. This recording quickly moved the
band to headliner status, where they have remained ever since. When founder
Tim Austin left in 1995 to focus on his studio, Sammy and Ronnie Bowman took
over band management, and when Ronnie left in 2000, Sam found himself in
charge, leading the band that had hired him fifteen years earlier.
Through changes in vocalists and rhythm sections, the constant in the wildly
popular LRB sound has been Shelor’s insistent, driving banjo style. His
peers in the International Bluegrass Music Association have voted him Banjo
Player Of The Year on four separate occasions, and banjo pickers all over
the world have studied Sam’s tab books and instructional DVD from AcuTab.
Sammy got an early start with the banjo, when his grandfather fashioned him
a banjo from an old pressure cooker lid when Sam was only four years old.
His other grandfather then issued a challenge, promising to buy him a real
banjo if the young Shelor would learn to play two songs. Sam met that mark
in short order, and with the help of a family devoted both to him and to
bluegrass music, he soon found himself entered in contests at fiddler’s
conventions near his home in southwestern VA.
By age ten, he was performing in local bands and became a full time
professional musician when he graduated from high school, joining The
Heights Of Grass at age 19. That band eventually morphed into The Virginia
Squires, and brought Sammy into contact with banjo legend Sonny Osborne, who
helped shape the young picker’s approach to working as a pro banjo player.
Sonny also showed Sam the importance of using a quality instrument, and
introduced him to the sound of the pre war flathead Gibson banjos that are
now so highly prized by banjo players all over the world.
Since becoming a member of Lonesome River Band, Sammy has been featured on
dozens of successful recordings, both with LRB and as a guest player. His
solo project, Leading Roll, is still a popular title in the Sugar Hill
Records catalog and his work on Knee Deep In Bluegrass for Rebel Records
helped that project earn the Instrumental Album Of The Year award from the
IBMA in 2001.
As a testament to Sam’s prominence and influence in the banjo world, he has
his own signature Sammy Shelor banjo fingerpicks, and a signature model
banjo produced by Huber Banjos. His influence on amateur and semi-pro
pickers can be demonstrated by a casual walk through the parking lots or jam
sessions at any bluegrass event, where licks and phrases which Sam has added
to the repertoire are heard alongside those contributed by Earl Scruggs and
JD Crowe.
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