Sammy Shelor will come face to face with a rare opportunity when he takes the stage at Saturday’s Banjothon in Stuart.
“I don’t get to play for my home town folks that often. We travel about 40 weeks a year all over the country,” said Shelor, a Meadows of Dan native and a world renowned banjo player.
Shelor will headline the Patrick County Music Association’s January show, Sammy Shelor’s Banjothon. The show will be held Saturday at Rotary Field in Stuart. It marks the first of a three-part series of spotlight sponsors, according to Denny Alley, PCMA organizer. Glad Precision Machine is sponsoring Saturday’s show. The spotlight sponsor in February is US Cellular/Stuart Communications, and Stuart Tire Center is the spotlight sponsor in March.
Shelor’s portion of the event Saturday kicks off at 7 p.m., but the doors open early to accommodate an open jam at 4:45 p.m. and Narrow Road, which takes the stage at 6 p.m. Jay Adams, Tim Bowman, Barry Collins, Darrell McCumbers, Hersie McMillian and Tommy Morse also are among the banjo players slated to perform.
A Virginia Country Music Hall of Famer, Shelor is a five-time IBMA Award Winner for Banjo Performer of the Year, 2011 Award Winner for the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass and has received numerous other awards and recognitions during his impressive career.
Current leader of the Lonesome River Band, which has been entertaining audiences more than 33 years, Shelor has devoted more than 50 years to honing his craft.
“My grandfather on my mom’s side played a banjo and my grandfather on my dad’s side loved” to hear banjo music, Shelor said. “I think the two of them decided I was going to be a banjo player before I was born.”
He was exposed to banjo music at an early age, he said, adding when he was 4 years old, his grandfather made a banjo using pieces of an old pressure cooker, wood rims, bolts and wire clothes hangers.
“It was a very playable banjo,” he chuckled.
His other grandfather promised Shelor a real banjo if he learned to play two songs. After learning them, Shelor visited his grandfather and played “Cripple Creek” and “Old Joe Clark.”
His grandfather was as good as his word, according to Shelor, who said, “I got the banjo and drug it back (home) across the field.”
Shelor was entered in contests at fiddler’s conventions and by the time he was 10 years old, was performing in local bands. He became a full time professional musician when he graduated from high school, joining The Heights Of Grass at 19, according to an online biography. That band eventually morphed into The Virginia Squires.
Since joining the Lonesome River Band, Shelor has been featured on dozens of recordings, both with the band and as a guest player. His solo project,” Leading Roll,” is still a popular title in the Sugar Hill Records catalog, and his work on “Knee Deep In Bluegrass” for Rebel Records helped that project earn the Instrumental Album Of The Year award from the IBMA in 2001, according to online information.
Shelor also recorded and performs with country superstar Alan Jackson on the “The Bluegrass Album.” They have performed at Carnegie Hall, “The Late Show with David Letterman,” The Station Inn, and more, but Patrick County is where it all began.
He learned his two favorite tunes – “Soldier’s Joy” and “Mississippi Sawyer” –from family and friends in Patrick County.
Whether he performs those tunes on Saturday remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: “You always like to play for home town folks. It’s my great pleasure,” Shelor said. And on Saturday, “I feel like there’ll be a whole lot of shaking hands and howdying” with people he hasn’t seen in a while.
