Cumberland County Line

Location: R.A. Fountain

from our promo for this concert

Cumberland County Line picks traditional and original bluegrass and bluegrass gospel at Fountain General Store this coming Saturday night.

A six-piece band out of the Fayetteville area, CCL won the 2017 Neuse River Music Festival Best Band competition. They are playing Fountain for the first time.

Mandolin player Bob Phillips, a Georgia native, retired after 20 years with the Army as part of the 82nd Airborne, the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, and the 2nd Infantry Division. He previously performed with the Bluegrass Fever Band and the D.R. Wells Medicine Show.

His wife, Sheila Phillips, has been playing fiddle since she was 13. She won her first fiddling competition while growing up in southern California. She and Bob Phillips met while they were performing with the Bluegrass Fever Band.

Bassist Rick Walton, a Louisiana native, is the son of a Methodist preacher and has been playing string bass for 50 years. He’s a Navy veteran whose first duty tour was in San Diego, where he immersed himself in the vibrant folk music scene centered around Mission Beach. He continued playing bass while at duty stations at Pearl Harbor and Portland, Oregon. His post-military career in technical writing brought him to North Carolina, where he became active in several bluegrass jam sessions that eventually led him to Cumberland County Line. 

Buck Thrailkill, who plays banjo, is from Meridian, Mississippi. He started playing banjo at 12, studying first with his brother. His service in the Army brought him to Fort Bragg for “a lifetime of jumping out of airplanes.” Since retiring from the Army, he has been a popular studio musician, having recorded over 20 LPs and CDs with Shooter Jennings, Billy Don Burns, Justine Wells, Leroy Virgil, and others. 

Guitarist John Harrell is from Bertie County and currently lives in Kinston. He and his family band, the Harrell Family, began performing at the Eastern NC Bluegrass Association in 1988. He and his son, John, Jr., formed the Little Creek Bluegrass Band, which opened for Porter Wagoner for two seasons and also performed with the legendary bluegrassers Jim and Jesse, the Lewis Family, and the Lost and Found Bluegrass Band.

Also on guitar is Garland Johnston, Jr., an East Carolina native who has performed with Bluegrass Hall of Famer Dewey Murphey. He lives in Fuquay-Varina.

[CCL was a 5-piece for this show, performing without their fiddler.]

Tags: bluegrass, Concert, original, tradtional bluegrass