Bluegrass Train

Location: R.A. Fountain

Marshall Stephenson’s Bluegrass Train Band makes its first stop at Fountain General Store this Friday night. 

Stephenson, the bluegrass impresario who has been playing bluegrass since the 1950s and actively promoting it in eastern North Carolina since the 1960s, has assembled a new band that mixes some of the best of the region’s veteran pickers–Clyde Mattocks, Kelly Tew, and Jason Berry–with two of its best up-and-comers, John Mark Batchelor and Brad Hudson. 

“This is an outstanding band,” said Stephenson, a favorite of bluegrass fans in Fountain. “Folks are really going to love Jason’s fiddling.” Berry, a Florida transplant now living in Zebulon, has played with Bob Osborne and has also won the Florida State Fiddling Championship six times.

Joining Mattocks on Dobro and Tew on mandolin and tenor vocals are Batchelor, the 19-year-old banjo whiz, and Hudson on bass and guitar; both are from Richlands.

Stephenson, who has performed with a who’s who of bluegrass legends and recorded with most of them, is host to the syndicated radio and television programs that use the same name, “The Bluegrass Train.” Locally, the radio show is broadcast on 98.5 FM in Rocky Mount on Sunday evenings. The t.v. show is broadcast at various times on local cable channels throughout eastern North Carolina.

Tags: bluegrass, bluegrass gospel, Concert, tradtional bluegrass