Blue Highway

Name: Blue Highway
Start: 2025-04-18T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 311 West 2nd Street, Owensboro, KY, United States, Kentucky 42301

Schedule

Fri, 18 Apr, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

311 West 2nd Street, Owensboro, KY, United States, Kentucky 42301 | Owensboro, KY

Join us April 18th, 2025 for Blue Highway at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum!
In 2024, the highly-esteemed bluegrass band Blue Highway celebrates 30 years of touring, with four of the original members still intact. The band has earned a collective 32 IBMA Awards, 6 SPBGMA Awards, one Dove Award, plus three Grammy nominations. Most recently, the band was nominated for IBMA's 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020 Vocal Group of the Year and Song of the Year Awards.
The group came together in 1994 as Alison Krauss & Union Station alumnus Tim Stafford decided to inquire about forming a "weekend band" with Wayne Taylor, a Southwest Virginia coal truck driver and musician. The two got together with a few other musicians to play and have fun. Sometime that summer mandolinist/fiddler/vocalist Shawn Lane, who had most recently performed with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, called Tim to see what he was doing. Tim called Rob Ickes, who had tagged along on a few tours with AKUS while Tim was in the group and was then finishing up a run with Lynn Morris. Stafford, Taylor, Lane and Ickes picked informally with different banjoists, including Jason Burleson, who had sat in with a group Tim previously played in, Dusty Miller. Burleson joined the group, which signed with Rebel Records and played its first show Dec. 31, 1994 in Kingsport, TN at the First Night Celebration.
The band's first record, "It's a Long, Long Road" on Rebel was named IBMA's Album of the Year in 1996, and the group was named Emerging Artist of the Year. By that time, the group had recorded another record, "Wind to the West," and was touring steadily as a full-time outfit! The band went on to record with Ceili Records and signed with Rounder in 2001, eventually recording 9 albums and one compilation over 20 years with the Massachusetts label. In the same period, Blue Highway signed with Keith Case and Associates in Nashville and remain affiliated with former Case agent Lee Olsen's CMC Artists. Along the way, producers Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, Alan O'Bryant and Scott Rouse helped guide the band, but the group has self-produced its last five all-original Rounder albums.
In 2024, the band signed with the new label Down the Road, created by legendary “Rounder founders” Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin and Marian Leighton and released Lonesome State of Mind.
The hallmark of the band over its span has been and remains consistency and originality. Four of the original members remain from 1994 (Burleson left the band briefly in 1999 but returned in 2001), while dobroist Rob Ickes departed in 2015 and was replaced by Gaven Largent (2015-18), Justin Moses (2018) and finally Gary Hultman (2019-present). The band is fiercely dedicated to original material, having recorded nearly 125 original songs since its inception.
Tickets are on sale now. Preferred seating is $28, and reserved seating is $23. Doors open at 6:00 pm, and the concert begins at 7:00 pm. Bar and concessions available.