Mountain Heart

Mountain Heart rose to prominence among acoustic ensembles during the early years of the new millennium, having launched as a conventional bluegrass unit that handled both secular and gospel material and received recognition for its initial recordings, The Journey in 2001 and Force of Nature in 2004. Personnel shifts prompted a broader stylistic range on the concert document The Road That Never Ends from 2007, while That Just Happened in 2010 introduced strains of improvisational rock, progressive country, blues, and jazz, with drums added to selected tracks. Soul Searching, issued in 2018, brought keyboards into the arrangements and layered funk and R&B textures onto the group’s sound.

The band originated in 1998 when three alumni of Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver—fiddler Jim VanCleve, vocalist and guitarist Steve Gulley, and banjoist Barry Abernathy—joined forces with mandolinist Adam Steffey and bassist Johnny Dowdle. Their self-titled debut appeared on Doobie Shea Records in 1999, and The Journey followed in 2001; by then Jason Moore had replaced Dowdle on bass. Mountain Heart next moved to Skaggs Family Records for No Other Way in 2002, an album that earned International Bluegrass Music Association nominations for Album of the Year and Entertainer of the Year. Force of Nature, also shortlisted by the IBMA in 2004, marked the arrival of guitarist Clay Jones, who joined the lineup in 2003.

Wide Open in 2006 carried the ensemble farther from traditional bluegrass, coinciding with multiple membership changes over the ensuing years. Steve Gulley stepped away from vocals, Josh Shilling took his place, Clay Jones exited as Clay Hess assumed guitar duties, and Aaron Ramsey moved to mandolin after Adam Steffey departed. The 2007 live album The Road That Never Ends, captured at the respected folk venue the Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan, came out on Rural Rhythm Records, yet the band asserted full control with That Just Happened in 2010 by launching its own MH Music Group imprint.

Before the next studio effort, the roster had again been reconfigured around Josh Shilling on vocals, guitar, and keyboards; Aaron Ramsey on banjo, guitar, and mandolin; Seth Taylor on guitar; Jeff Partin on guitar, Dobro, and bass; and Molly Cherryholmes on violin and keyboards. This lineup delivered Blue Skies via Compass Records on May 6, 2016. The same label issued the 2018 concept album Soul Searching, which examined spiritual and philosophical themes, with Mountain Heart now operating as a quartet following Cherryholmes’s exit.