The Crooked Road will present a one-night-only concert on Saturday, February 26 at the Cameo Theater in Bristol, Virginia as part of the Mountains of Music concert series. The Tribute to Gene Boyd: Bristol’s Fiddling Barber, will feature Becky Buller, ETSU Bluegrass Pride Band with Dan Boner, Duty Free, and Hunter Berry with pre-show entertainment by Fiddling Leona.
The evening of bluegrass’s finest fiddles and bands pays tribute to the late Gene Boyd, proprietor of Star Barber Shop and long-time host of local bluegrass and fiddle jams. Celebrate Boyd’s legacy through a rousing night of bluegrass from nationally known talents.
Artists include Becky Buller, 10-time International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) award winner and the first female to win Fiddle Player Of The Year; Hunter Berry, currently playing with Rhonda Vincent; Duty Free, a local favorite powerhouse band; ETSU Bluegrass Pride Band and Dan Boner, band representing the best from the highly recognized program. Pre-show tunes will be provided by Fiddling Leona, a Japanese-native fiddler currently featured on Netflix’s Swap Shop.
Doors will open at 6 p.m. with Fiddling Leona playing during pre-show starting at 6:30. The show will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at www.thecameotheater.com/events.
Buller is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter from St. James, Minn., who has traversed the globe performing bluegrass music to underwrite her insatiable songwriting habit. Her compositions can be heard on records by Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, to name just a few.
She has written songs for Grammy award-winning albums: she co-wrote “Freedom,” the lead-off track of The Infamous Stringdusters 2018 Grammy-winning album Laws of Gravity as well as “The Shaker” on The Travelin’ McCoury’s self-titled release that brought home the 2019 Best Bluegrass Grammy.
Becky is the recipient of 10 IBMA awards, including the 2016 Fiddler and Female Vocalist of the Year as well as the 2020 Collaborative Recording of the Year for “The Barber’s Fiddle” and the 2020 Song of the Year for co-writing and fiddling on Special Consensus’ “Chicago Barn Dance.” She was a 2020 nominee for SPBGMA’s Fiddle Player of the Year as well as being involved as a musician and songwriter on three albums nominated for 2020 Grammys. She was a nominee for the 2021 IBMA Songwriter of the Year.
She tours extensively with the Becky Buller Band and just released “Distance And Time,” her third album for the Dark Shadow Recording label, which was a nominee for the 2021 IBMA Album Of The Year award.
The East Tennessee State University Bluegrass Pride Band is comprised of talented and award-winning student performers with many years of musical experience accounted to each member. As one of the Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Program’s nearly 40 bands, the group has performed in seven foreign countries and at noteworthy venues including the Smithsonian National Folklife Festival, NATO Headquarters in Brussels, and the Kennedy Center. The band performs by invitation at bluegrass festivals and performing arts centers across the country.
Duty Free is a Bristol Tennessee/Virginia favorite bluegrass band comprised of Hal Boyd, Charlie Powers, Bobby Love, Chad Love and Tim Laughlin. Boyd is on bass, Bobby Love on mandolin, Charlie Powers on guitar, Chad Love on banjo, and Tim Laughlin on fiddle. This local band has a dedicated following and is an amazing example of bluegrass masters playing their best music together.
Hunter Berry is from Elizabethton, Tennessee and learned fiddle at age 4, being taught by Benny Sims and David Yates. In 2001, Berry joined Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver at age 17, where he played with the band for 9 months before joining Rhonda Vincent and the Rage in 2002. He has been a final nominee for the IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year award, and has been a multiple winner of the SPBGMA Fiddle Player of the Year award.
Fiddling Leona is an International TV personality (NETFLIX), performer, vocalist, classical violinist, food truck owner, and fiddler from Tokyo, Japan. Currently living in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, she is a performer as well as a fiddle and violin instructor.
During 2009 and 2010, Leona was invited to perform as a part of the American Bluegrass Master’s Tour. The artists featured in this tour were Grand Ole Opry star Bobby Osborne, the Lonesome River Band, J.D. Crowe, and many others. She has released three featured solo albums, received national airplay and toured her native Japan and has now found a new home in the entertainment industry at NETFLIX as a featured cast member on the new International Netflix original series “Swap Shop.” The show follows Leona as she searches for antique Americana items in the mountains of East Tennessee that she can flip for profit the next time she goes back to Tokyo.
This performance is part of The Crooked Road’s Mountains of Music concert series and is supported, in part, by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency and Blue Ridge Beverage.
