Last Train Home

Last Train Home specializes in melodic, earnest country-rock. The band’s story began when it landed an opening slot for the Waco Brothers in 1997 at Washington, D.C.’s Black Cat club. Frontman Eric Brace, born in California and raised in the D.C. area where his father worked as an urban planner, first performed live while attending Tufts College near Boston in the bluegrass group the Mystic Valley Mountaineers. His brother Alan Brace, who plays mandolin and harmonica, had previously performed with the Pinetop Rhythm Band in Fort Collins, Colorado. In the mid-’80s the siblings started B-Time, a guitar-pop and new-wave outfit that issued an EP; afterward they formed the Beggars alongside future Last Train Home pedal-steel player Dave Van Allen and additional musicians. That more roots-oriented project proved short-lived, prompting Eric to join Kevin Johnson and the Linemen on bass alongside future Last Train Home guitarist Bill Williams. Eric and Williams exited the Linemen in 1994 and reunited with Alan plus Scott McKnight on bass, Evan Pollack on drums, and mandolinist James Key. The ensemble adopted the name Last Train Home from a song Eric and Jim Greenfield had written in the ’80s. After that lineup dissolved, Martin Lynds took over drums and Jim Gray, who had played bass in Kelly Willis’s first band Kelly & the Fireballs, joined on bass. This configuration performed the Waco Brothers show that launched Last Train Home’s established run. A self-titled debut album appeared in December 1997. Scott McKnight returned a couple of years later, and the group issued True North in 1999. The band has also contributed tracks to tribute albums honoring the Blasters and Gene Clark. Eric Brace doubles as a music journalist and arts editor at The Washington Post.