The Nashville Bluegrass Band
Before he was old enough to drive, Alan O’Bryant bought a banjo from the Leonard Stadler’s Music Store in Reidsville, North Carolina. Leonard was a steel guitar builder, and he always had people pickin’ in his store.
Alan did a little pickin’ there, and Leonard and Bobby Adkins asked if he’d like to play with them at the Thunderbird Club, a dance hall in Virginia. “It was my first road gig,” laughs Alan. “On the way home, we stopped to eat, and Allen Mills, who played bass that night, said, ‘let me buy your first meal on the road.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
Alan said he moved to Nashville in 1974 with his two cousins, Billy and Terry Smith, the same year Station Inn opened. “Terry was a founding member of The Grascals.” Alan began engineering school the same year, and he spent a lot of his time at Station Inn. “It was my second home.”
He teamed up with guitarist Pat Enright to form the Nashville Bluegrass Band. They were soon joined by Mike Compton on mandolin and Mark Hembree on bass. “I grew up on a farm and had the mentality that I had to wear a lot of hats,” Alan explained. “I did a lot of producing and audio engineering.”
Believing that preparation and the ability to see a good opportunity are things that have helped guide the band’s career, Alan says, “When doors opened, we went through them to see what might happen. Someone told me to just keep pickin’ and let other things around you happen, so from the get-go we focused on our playing.”
Alan met a promoter named Jeff Burns who promoted shows in the Northeast. “He was putting together a package show in 1984, and he talked to me about putting together a band. It was a 9,000-mile tour with Minnie Pearl, Vernon Oxford, Steve Young, and others. A lot of people saw us for the first time ever on that tour.” Near the end of the tour, they met Stuart Duncan, who was there with Larry Sparks. Stuart, who played fiddle and other instruments, was thinking of moving to Nashville. He joined the band a year in, before their first record was released, and became a longtime member of the Nashville Bluegrass Band.
Mike Compton left the band after four or five years, and for a twelve-year period, Roland White took his place. When Roland departed, Mike returned.
The band’s first album was released in 1984 on Rounder Records. My Native Home was produced by Bela Fleck. In the liner notes for the album, Fleck wrote:
“In many ways, Nashville is the home of bluegrass music. From the earliest days of bluegrass, the top bands made Nashville their base of operations. Partly this was because of the country music industry; also the central location made sense for touring. As years went by, the bluegrass community steadily grew. A club scene sprang up where incredible combinations of musicians could be found playing bluegrass.
It was in this fertile environment that Pat Enright and Alan O'Bryant met. They discovered that they had compatible tastes in music and an uncanny vocal blend. Time passed during which they worked together and separately in various groups. Occasionally they talked of putting together a group someday. It would be a band that played traditional bluegrass but would avoid the clichés and develop its own style. They wanted to have a strong vocal quartet as well.
Between the work that Alan had done with Peter Rowan, John Starling, and The Bluegrass Band, plus Pat's work with Tasty Licks and The Dreadful Snakes (with Mark Hembree), they felt that they had a good base to build on.
In mid-1984, the time was right. Two other Nashville pickers that Alan and Pat had played with in the past were instrumentally and vocally the ideal musicians for this new band. Mandolinist Mike Compton had been playing around Nashville with several groups, including banjo great Hubert Davis. Bassist Mark Hembree had worked for five years with Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys. He left to help form the Nashville Bluegrass Band.
This album is a culmination of years of picking and singing, although the band is spanking new. The gospel singing is a special treat. The boys have developed their vocal quartet to a fine art. The picking is excellent. Alan has an unorthodox yet very musical approach to playing the banjo and Mike has taken the Monroe mandolin style and breathed new life into it. Most importantly, the ensemble sound of the group is just exactly right.”
More albums followed over the years, two more with Rounder and eight with Sugar Hill. Two albums, Waiting for Hard Times to Go (1993) and Unleashed (1995), won Grammys for Best Bluegrass Album. Other albums were nominated in the same category.
The band toured across the country and in 20 countries around the world. They also performed for visiting dignitaries in the White House.
Pat Enright sang as one of the Soggy Mountain Boys from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and the band toured the country with that show. They played as the backup group for several artists on the Down the Mountain tour and album before touring on their own throughout the 2000s.
The awards and accolades the band has amassed are impressive. They have won numerous Grammys, IBMA awards, and DOVE awards.
A year or two before COVID, the band members began to slow down. “We survived the pandemic just fine,” recalls Alan. “Mike teaches, and Stuart has always done a lot of studio work. I became involved with a music school in Pegram, Tennessee, and I didn’t miss a beat. I was used to teaching online, so when we couldn’t meet in person while folks were quarantined, I was able to move my lessons online.”
Pat Enright passed away in the summer. He was 81. Sadly, he missed the band’s induction into the IBMA Hall of Fame in October, but that honor will ensure that Enright and all the members of Nashville Bluegrass Band will be remembered for generations to come.
