• Photo

Contributed photo/Audie Blaylock

Sphere IT

Save This Page

Reader Reaction

digg it

Blaylock is ready to follow his muse

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Getting easy-going Audie Blaylock on the phone is like talking with an old buddy.
A half-hour later and there’s still no sense that Blaylock’s credentials in the music business have gone to his head.
Let’s see. There are his years of service with Jimmy Martin and Rhonda Vincent & the Rage. A Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album for his session work. An International Bluegrass Music Association nomination for Recorded Event of the Year for “A Tribute to Jimmy Martin: The King of Bluegrass.” Two nominations as IBMA Emerging Artist of the Year. 
Last year he won Instrumental Group of the Year in 2007 with Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper featuring Audie Blaylock.
And from all indications, Blaylock is still among us just plain folks.
If you look closely at those recognitions, you can trace an evolution of the artist in his accomplishments. He’s gone from side man to featured artist, and now, he’s the boss, and he’s bringing his band, Redline, to headline Song of the Mountains Saturday, May 3, at the Lincoln Theatre in Marion.
“You get to a certain point, and not all people enjoy it, but you get to a point where you do what it is you do,” he said Monday, meaning a time comes for his own artistry to stand in its own spotlight, with no illumination needed from the stars he backed all those years. 
Taking a lead role means he gets to follow his muse, whose sometimes sudden mind and mood changes he is free to follow. “I tell my wife I’m ADD, because my brain changes in a second and whatever strikes my fancy, I can execute that.”
It’s good to be the leader of the band.
The 45-year-old Blaylock’s multi-faceted muse is driven by his own musical upbringing. Both parents are musicians, their brothers and sisters were musicians, and music happened wherever the gang found itself in large enough collections to bring off a few tunes.
These ranged according to who played from ‘60s folk revival to the rock and roll from that and the previous decade, to the classic country of the good old days of Loretta Lynn and Porter Wagoner.
The young Blaylock heard it all and absorbed it, joining in around age 8. “I don’t know how good I was,” he said. He asked for a guitar for his August birthday, and was hugely disappointed when he didn’t get it.
On Christmas, he got his guitar.
“Any deficiencies I have you can blame on those four months,” he said.
With that range of music floating around in Blaylock’s noggin, it’s no wonder he needed to stand at the front of the stage to let some of it out.
When it gets out, it’s always in context of the music he loves best, traditional bluegrass.
Stepping out means experiencing more of the joy performing musicians know.
“Baring your soul – I know that’s a family newspaper, but when you bare yourself, and it’s accepted it’s joyful and rewarding,” he said. “Everyone likes to be accepted. You’re laying your soul out there for everyone to see and when people dig it, it’s very rewarding.”
That phrase proves for print that he heard what his 60’s-playing aunts and uncles brought to the front porch. For those who want to hear proof that Blaylock took in those lessons from a wide scope of genres and musicianship, they just need to grab some $15 tickets and have a seat in the Lincoln Theatre Saturday night. The show starts at 7.
“They can expect a hard-driving bluegrass show and a lot of enthusiasm,” Blaylock said. “We give 110 percent every time.”