Even with a new academic job and a flourishing solo career, Rigsby is still a member of four other acts, signed to three different labels: Longview, the Stanley Tradition, Rock County, and a duo with Dudley Connell. Longview got its start at the 1994 Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver Family Style Bluegrass Festival in Denton, North Carolina, when Rounder Records’ Ken Irwin suggested that Rigsby and Connell sing Stanleys-style high-baritone harmonies behind James King.
“The high baritone was a style the Stanley Brothers explored when they were with Columbia Records in the late ’40s and early ’50s,” Connell told me in 1999. “Pee Wee Lambert sang the high baritone above Ralph, who was above Carter who was singing lead. The way they did it had a very spooky sound. Many of their most famous songs were done in that style. In Longview, Don sings Pee Wee’s part, I sing Ralph’s part, and James sings Carter’s part. A lot of folks haven’t heard that kind of soulful, mountain wailing kind of singing, and when they do it touches them in some way.”
Rigsby remembers their initial performance. “When we sang ‘The Angels Are Singing In Heaven Tonight’ that way with James, the place went wild. I said, ‘Ken, we need to make a record of that.’ He gave me the OK, and I pretty much handpicked everyone after that. I wanted Joe Mullins to play banjo, and Joe recommended Glen Duncan on fiddle. I had to have Marshall Wilborn on bass, because he sounded so great with Dudley in the Johnson Mountain Boys. Ken wanted to record the first album at the Longview Farms Studio, a big Massachusetts farmhouse converted to a studio. So we named the group after that.”
Longview has released three impressive albums: 1997’s Longview, 1999’s High Lonesome and 2002’s Lessons In Stone. They rarely play onstage, because assembling all six at once is a scheduling nightmare. When I saw them in Maryland in 2000, they lived up to the legend. Rigsby, smiling broadly behind a red goatee, kicked off the show with a bluesy reading of “Hemlocks And Primroses”. He turned over the lead to Connell for the trad-grass numbers and to King for the honky-tonk-flavored songs. But it was when the three of them stacked their trio harmonies on songs such as “The Touch Of God’s Hand” or “Lonesome Old Hand” that the effect was dizzying.
Connell and Mullins recently left the group, but Longview continues with Lou Reid in Connell’s slot while they search for a permanent banjoist. The new lineup plans to go into the studio this winter for a fourth album, to be released next spring.
During their downtime on the original Longview sessions, Rigsby and Connell would sit around the old farmhouse singing Appalachian brother duets. They enjoyed it so much that they have released two duo albums in that vein — 1999’s Meet Me By The Moonlight and 2001’s Another Saturday Night. They have done some limited touring and plan to record a third duo album in 2004.
“That was pretty scary for me, because I’ve never been onstage with so few pieces,” Connell confessed in 1999. “I’m used to a full band where there are a lot of places to hide, and with just two pieces behind you, there’s no place to hide. But what scared me at first was what I got to like the most. If you do something wrong, there’s no place to hide, but if you do something right, it’s right there and it comes through real clear.”
The duo with Connell wasn’t the only new partnership Rigsby formed through Longview. “Rock County grew out of my need to make more music together with Glen Duncan,” Rigsby explains. “He’s been with Jim & Jesse, Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe and Larry Sparks, and if you asked people to name their top five fiddlers, he’d come up on everybody’s list. I wanted a group that was more traditional than the Lonesome River Band, one with an upright bass. Plus I was only a sideman in the LRB; I wanted a band where I had more say-so.”
Joining Rigsby and Duncan in Rock County was bassist Robin Smith. Dale Vanderpool, who played banjo on the band’s self-titled debut last year, is replaced by Scott Vestal on this year’s Rock Solid. Ray Craft, who sang and played guitar on both albums, has recently been replaced by Keith Tew, a guitarist who has performed with Vassar Clements and Rhonda Vincent. The new disc mixes older material recorded by Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley with newer songs by such alt-country writers as Kieran Kane, Harley Allen and Stacey Earle.
“I always want to be part of a traditional bluegrass band that can go out and play,” Rigsby says. “Rock County may not be quite as traditional as Longview, but it’s close. We’re not going to use a dobro or percussion on a Rock County record, because if we can’t cover it onstage, it’s not going to get done. By contrast, if I want to use a piano or a cello on a solo record, I will. If I hear a song that I might like to record, I ask myself, ‘Is this a song that would sound good with a traditional bluegrass band or does it need something else? Should the emphasis be on the ensemble or the lead vocal?’ That’s how I decide if it’s a Rock County song or a Don Rigsby song.”
In addition to his teaching and all these projects, Rigsby is also producing Larry Sparks’ 40th anniversary album and a new record for Josh Williams. Rigsby’s finest work, however, is on his solo albums. The first was 1998’s all-gospel effort, A Vision, but it was his second solo disc, 2000’s Empty Old Mailbox, that let listeners know Rigsby was much more than just another Stanley revivalist.
Here was an album where the emphasis was not on flashy picking or mountain harmonies, but on a featured singer interpreting strong contemporary songs by such Nashville writers as Tom T. Hall, Carl Jackson, John Hartford, Monty Powell and Paul Craft, all of whom had ties to both bluegrass and mainstream country. Though Rigsby has a very different voice, the approach is not unlike that of Alison Krauss on her solo albums. And that methodology pays off on this year’s The Midnight Call, which features even better singing on even better material by Hall, Jackson, Larry Shell, Larry Cordle and others.
“The one thing that holds all these projects together,” Rigsby asserts, “is I’m a mountain singer. Everything I sing is going to sound like the mountains. Right now, I’m sitting here at my house in Isonville, and when I look out my window I see a mountain.
“In 35 years, I’ve seen a lot of rough things in a lot of rough places. When I was 16, my dad and I went to Pikeville, Kentucky, to see Ralph Stanley and Dave Evans, and I saw a bootlegger get shot to death in the nightclub. This man was foolish enough to bring a knife to a gunfight. This is rough country, people carry guns and aren’t afraid to use them. You don’t have to be afraid of being shot in the back, though, because most people will face you. That’s how I am with my music. I’m not going to sneak around the world’s troubles; I’m going to face them.”
Contributing editor Geoffrey Himes wrote a cover story on the Lonesome River Band for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine last year.
