Chris Brashear & Peter McLaughlin

Location: R.A. Fountain

from our promo for this concert

[Fountain, NC] Two of the most renowned bluegrass pickers in the United States perform together this Saturday night at Fountain General Store, one of two dates they’ll play in the Carolinas.

Peter McLaughlin is a National Flatpicking Guitar Champion. His picking partner, Chris Brashear, is a widely sought sideman who’s known as a musicians’ musician: he plays fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo and bass. 

Founding members of the bluegrass band Perfect Strangers, they’ve been playing together for over twenty years. They have released two critically acclaimed CDs on which they’re accompanied by some of the best acoustic musicians in the business.<p>

“It’s rare that you’ll find performers of this calibre playing at venues like ours,” said Alex Albright, Fountain General Store proprietor. “They had a show booked for the Carrboro Arts Center  and wanted to do one more date together while they were in North Carolina, and we’re the lucky ones.”

Chris Brashear often tours and performs with Robin and Linda Williams at venues throughout the U.S. He grew up in Ozark, Missouri and studied veterinary medicine at the University of Missouri–he’s been a practicing vet ever since. He’s currently living in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he also performs with the jazz cooperative Jazz Sketches.

Peter McLaughlin was born to a musical family in the back of a 1953 Ford panel wagon in the hills of Washington, D.C. He started playing guitar when he was 8. He attended high school in Denmark and after returning to the U.S. as a young adult started winning guitar picking competitions, culminating with the National Flatpicking Championship in Winfield, Kansas, in 1988. 

Since the mid-’70s, Mclaughlin has lived in Arizona, where he has played with Flying South, the Titan Valley Warheads, and Laurie Lewis and Grant Street. He has also won the Arizona State Guitar Championship; the National Country Music Awards Guitar Championship; the 4-Corner States Bluegrass Guitar Championship; and the Bosque Bluegrass Fest Guitar Contest. He’s also a two-time winner of the Bluegrass Guitar Championship at the Telluride, Colorado Bluegrass Festival.

As soloists and as this fantastic duet, Brashear and McLaughlin have also gotten high praise from a variety of music critics, not just for their picking but also for their vocals. One reviewer says, “Chris Brashear sings in the honest tradition of Carter Stanley ad Maybelle Carter.” 

After Saturday night’s show, R.A. Fountain is closed until the Fountain Peanut festival in August. “We couldn’t ask for a better show to close our spring season,” said Albright.

 

Tags: acoustic Americana, bluegrass, Concert, guitar, old-time, original, tradtional bluegrass