Rob Ickes

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Rob Ickes (rhymes with “bikes”) comes from a musical family. His grandparents played old-time fiddle music, and Rob trained his young musical ear at their weekly jam sessions. Although his family wanted Rob to play fiddle, the instrument didn’t interest him. Then, at the age of thirteen, Rob was exposed to the Dobro playing of Mike Auldridge, and the sound immediately caught his attention. Soon after, Rob got his first Dobro, and he has been playing music ever since.

Rob moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined Blue Highway, the highly esteemed bluegrass band, as a founding member in 1994. He is recognized as one of the most innovative Dobro players on the scene today, contributing signature technique and greatly expanding the boundaries of the instrument’s sonic and stylistic territory. He won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Dobro Player of the Year award for a record-setting fifteenth time in 2013; IBMA notes that he is the most awarded instrumentalist in the history of the IBMA awards.

As an active session player and touring musician, he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Charlie Haden, Merle Haggard, Earl Scruggs, Tony Rice, David Grisman, Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, David Lee Roth, Dolly Parton, Patty Loveless, Peter Rowan, Claire Lynch, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The youngest dobro player on The Great Dobro Sessions (Jerry Douglas & Tut Taylor, producers), which won the 1994 Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, he was also on the Alison Krauss & The Cox Family album, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, which won the 1994 Grammy for Best Southern Gospel. His most recent release is a dobro-piano jazz album, Road Song (ResoRevolution 2009); he has also released four acclaimed solo albums on Rounder, eight albums with Blue Highway (Rounder, Ceili, Rebel) and a self-titled CD with Three Ring Circle, comprising Rob, Andy Leftwich and Dave Pomeroy (Earwave).

In 2015 Rob left Blue Highway to pursue other musical projects. Rob’s latest project is with singer/guitarist Trey Hensley. Starting full time in 2016, the duo has performed throughout the US, Europe and also Australia. Their first recording, “Before the Sun Goes Down,” was nominated for a Grammy in 2016.

Rob is also a gifted resonator guitar teacher; in 2007, he founded ResoSummit, a three-day annual instructional event in Nashville, featuring leading Dobro players and luthiers as faculty.

Sierra Hull

In her first 25 years alone, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Sierra Hull hit more milestones than many musicians accomplish in a lifetime. After making her Grand Ole Opry debut at the age of 10, the Tennessee-bred virtuoso mandolinist played Carnegie Hall at age 12, then landed a deal with Rounder Records just a year later. Now 28-years-old, Hull is set to deliver her fourth full- length for Rounder: an elegantly inventive and endlessly captivating album called 25 Trips.

Revealing her profound warmth as a storyteller, 25 Trips finds Hull shedding light on the beauty and chaos and sometimes sorrow of growing up and getting older. To that end, the album’s title nods to a particularly momentous year of her life, including her marriage to fellow bluegrass musician Justin Moses and the release of her widely acclaimed album Weighted Mind—a Béla Fleck- produced effort nominated for Best Folk Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards.

“There’s a lot of push-and-pull on this record, where in some moments I feel like everything’s happening so fast and I wish I could slow it all down so I can really enjoy it,” Hull points out. “But then there are also times where I’m looking forward to the day when the craziness has died down a bit, and life’s a little calmer.”

Made with producer/engineer Shani Gandhi (Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, Sarah Jarosz, Alison Krauss), 25 Trips continues the musical journey begun on Weighted Mind, a body of work that built off Hull’s bluegrass roots and ventured into entirely new terrain. But while its predecessor assumed a sparse and stripped-back palette, 25 Trips embodies a far more intricately arranged sound—an effect achieved with the help of peers like guitarist Mike Seal, bassist Ethan Jodziewicz, violinist Alex Hargreaves, and fiddler Christian Sedelmyer, as well as several musicians that Hull has long admired (including bassist Viktor Krauss, guitarist Bryan Sutton, and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan). Along with integrating electric instrumentation and percussion into her material for the first time, Hull dreamed up the album’s eclectic textures by embracing a free-flowing process that often gave way to lightning-in-a-bottle improvisation.

“There were some songs that we created from the ground up, where I’d go in and play by myself, and from there we’d bring in other musicians to add more and more layers,” Hull says. “It was really wonderful to work that way, where we started from a place of mystery and then just let the song show us what it wanted or needed to become.”

Immediately proving the power of that approach, 25 Trips lures the listener into its unpredictable sonic world on the beguiling opening track “Beautifully Out of Place.” With its shifting tempos and gently tempestuous mood, the song was sparked from words of encouragement spoken by Hull’s husband at a time of self-doubt and confusion. “I remember Justin saying to me, ‘I believe in you, so you’re just going to have to learn to believe in yourself,’” she recalls. “That inspired the first line for me, and the song just wrote itself from there.”

Although much of the album bears a rich complexity, 25 Trips also includes moments of stark simplicity that perfectly showcase Hull’s stunning vocal range. On “Everybody’s Talking,” for instance, her luminous vocals quietly capture the frustration of finding clarity in the midst of constant chatter from the outside world. And on “Ceiling to the Floor”—co-written with Kai Welch, a songwriter/musician known for his work with Glen Campbell and Abigail Washburn—Hull spins a tender metaphor from her longtime fear of heights. “I was telling Kai about how when I was little my dad used to try to get me over that fear by holding me up to the ceiling and saying, ‘Just touch it—I’m not gonna let you fall,’” she explains. Featuring a performance from legendary steel-guitar player Paul Franklin, “Ceiling to the Floor” drifts from memory to real-time reflection, slowly unfolding as a nuanced meditation on courage and love.

One of the most unexpected turns on 25 Trips, “Escape” emerges as a delicate collage of hypnotic percussion, otherworldly electric-mandolin tones, and poetic yet plainspoken lyrics (e.g., “I want to escape to a world that’s not closing in”). “I didn’t even have that song on my list for the album, but I played Shani a voice memo and right away she said, ‘I wanna record that,’” remembers Hull, who penned “Escape” with singer/songwriter Angel Snow. “I was a little hesitant since it’s so unlike anything else I’ve done, but in the end it was really exciting to play electric and come up with something in a completely different vein.”

In closing out 25 Trips, Hull shares an especially poignant track titled “Father Time.” “I wrote that song with Mindy Smith after spending a week with my husband and his grandma, after his grandpa had a stroke on Christmas morning,” she says. “His grandma had suffered with Alzheimer’s for years and couldn’t really stay by herself, and through that experience I decided to write about watching my husband take such good care of her, and how that made me love him even more.” With its heavy-hearted melody and choir-like harmonies, “Father Time” shows Hull’s effortless finesse in embedding her music with so many subtle details (including an instrumental reference to “Jingle Bells” tucked into the second verse). “We had our instruments with us at Christmas, so at some point we played ‘Jingle Bells’ for my husband’s grandma,” says Hull. “She can’t remember my name or Justin’s name now, but for some reason ‘Jingle Bells’ stuck, and she still asks for it year- round—it’s the most amazing thing.”

Even as its songs continually shift in genre, encompassing everything from bluegrass to folk-pop to ethereal alt-rock, 25 Trips remains rooted in the sophisticated musicianship that Hull has cultivated almost her entire life. Hailing from the tiny Tennessee hamlet of Byrdstown, she learned to sing from her mother as toddler, took up mandolin just a few years later, and began joining in local bluegrass jams by the young age of eight. With her childhood triumphs including joining her hero and mentor Alison Krauss onstage at the Grand Ole Opry at age 11, she made her Rounder debut with the 2008 album Secrets and promptly garnered the first of many nominations for Mandolin Player of the Year at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. In 2016, after a near- decade of consecutive nominations, Hull became the first-ever woman to win the award—then claimed that prize again at the 2017 and 2018 IBMAs. Over the years, Hull has also maintained a rigorous touring schedule, and has made occasional guest appearances with such icons as the Indigo Girls, Garth Brooks, and Gillian Welch.

Marking a bold new era in Hull’s artistic evolution, 25 Trips wholly channels the pure and palpable joy she discovered in the album’s creation—and ultimately illuminates certain truths about the indelible connection between risk-taking and reward. “One of the things I most enjoyed about making this record was getting to show the wide variety of music I love,” says Hull. “I don’t really know what category the album falls in, but I also think that matters less and less. What really matters to me is trusting myself to be who I am, and just putting my voice and my heart out there in the most sincere way that I possibly can.”

Trey Hensley

Keeping true to the roots of country music is not only a lovely sentiment of nostalgia, but a necessity for the growth of an artist…and staying true to the roots just comes naturally for Trey Hensley. After picking up a guitar at the age of 10, he quickly took the bluegrass world by storm —even performing on the Grand Ole Opry when he was 11. Through the years, Trey has had the opportunity to perform with the likes of Marty Stuart, Earl Scruggs, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Charlie Daniels, Steve Wariner, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ricky Skaggs, Blue Highway, J.D. Crowe and many others and Trey has opened shows for Marty Stuart, President George W. Bush, Former First Lady Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, Charlie Daniels, Peter Frampton, Alabama front-man Randy Owen, Sara Evans and others.

In the Fall of 2012, Trey had the opportunity to sing a “scratch vocal” on a song in the studio for legendary Bluegrass super group Blue Highway. The group ended up liking the vocal so much that they left Trey’s vocal on the finished product. The album, titled “The Game”, was released January, 2014 with Trey Hensley as a special guest on the song ‘My Last Day in the Mine’. In reference to Trey’s vocal on the song, Tim Stafford of Blue Highway said,

“It’s one take, live from the control room. That tells you how good this guy is!”

In the Summer of 2013, Trey relocated to Nashville, TN and started playing on a regular basis with IBMA’s 15-time “Dobro Player of the Year”, Rob Ickes. In the Fall of 2013, Trey and Rob decided to go work on an a duo album together. The outcomes of those recording sessions have turned into a new album, titled “Before the Sun Goes Down” due for release in January 2015. The duo has recently been signed to Compass Records in Nashville, TN and will start working on the second album sometime in 2015. “Before the Sun Goes Down” features new material from Trey, Bobby Starnes and Barry Ricks as well as a few standard covers and several more obscure covers from artists as diverse as Jimmy Martin, Merle Haggard and Bob Wills to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Marty Stuart recently said this about Trey:

“I first met Trey Hensley at a concert in East Tennessee when his guitar was almost bigger than he was. He played me his version of “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy” by the Carter Family that night and I instantly became his fan. As a musician, singer and songwriter, I’ve watched him evolve since that first meeting, but the one thing that has never changed is Trey’s authenticity. It’s one of his God-given virtues. In the ever changing world of country music, it’s comforting to know that the real deal still exists. I’m counting on Trey to keep the voice of the mountains alive because mountain boys always have something to say that’s worthy of a listen.”

Cindy Cashdollar

Dobro, lap steel and steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, five-time Grammy recipient, has a beautiful new self-produced release, Waltz for Abilene on her own Silver Shot Records label. She’s gathered together an all-star line up of musical guests on a collection of thirteen stellar instrumentals and vocals, from traditional songs to her own poignant Waltz for Abilene, inviting friends to play and sing on selected tracks, an approach that held up from her first release, Slide Show. From Americana and the blues to bayou and swing, the sublime beauty of Waltz for Abilene embodies the spirit of an artist whose musical touch transcends any genre.

Billy Cardine

Billy Cardine has a way with his listeners. His distinctive voice powers through any instrument he plays, song that he composes, and album that he produces. Cardine has been recognized as a slide guitar pioneer, taking the dobro with him into unchartered genres. You can sense that he takes great pleasure in bringing the audience along for the ride: setting you off on a gentle float down a river before throwing you into the middle of a raging storm, only to drop you off on the other side, wondering what just happened.

Cardine’s patchwork of diverse musical influences contributes to his chameleonesque ability to fit in with whatever collaboration he joins on the stage, or in the studio. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, the Ryman Auditorium and major festivals, such as Bonnaroo, Merlefest and Rockygrass. As an internationally featured artist, he has toured in India, Japan, Europe and Canada.

Billy’s distinct voice on all things slide has lead him to collaborations with Led Zeppelin’s own, John Paul Jones, world renowned, Edgar Meyer in his Porous Borders of Music, and alongside dobro king, Jerry Douglas, who said, “Billy Cardine is an amazing Dobro player…He is fluent in everything that I do, and Josh Graves, and everybody that has come before. I got to be with him for a little while at Carnegie Hall for Edgar Meyer’s “Porous Borders”… I couldn’t have picked a better example for them of where the Dobro is now or what the possibilities are with the instrument.”

As an engineer and producer, his works have won national and international awards and recognition including Indie Acoustic Music Project’s Roots Album of the Year, Chicago Tribune’s Best Bluegrass records of the year and an Apple iPod Playlist Hot Pick. His memorable compositions and emotive playing have been featured on The History Channel’s “Our Generation”, BBC World’s “Destination Music”, and PBS’ “RoadTrip Nation”.

As an educator, Cardine is known for his gentle yet thorough approach to shining light on musical mysteries, creating lots of “ahaaa” moments for his students. He has taught throughout the country, including: Resosummit, Rockygrass Academy, and the University of North Carolina Asheville, as well as internationally, in France, Canada and India.

As an innovator, he was recognized by music mogul, Moog Music, to help design their first electric slide guitar, which he debuted at Moogfest.

From a founding member of the internationally acclaimed, The Biscuit Burners, Cardine launched a prolific and sundry solo career alongside his dynamic collaborations, including: The Billy Sea, Acoustic Syndicate, North of Too Far Downs, Mary and William, Road Less Traveled Octet, The Bhattacharya Family, and RapidGrass.

Abbie Gardner

Best known as a founding member of Americana harmony trio Red Molly, Abbie Gardner is a joyful dobro player and singer/songwriter with an infectious smile. She loves teaching dobro and songwriting, whether in person or with her down-to-earth “Woodshed” YouTube lessons filmed from her home in the shadow of New York City. Abbie goes out of her way to make it fun and achievable, while seeking to forever expand her own knowledge of the instrument. She has taught at Nashville Dobro Camp, Grand Targhee, and Rockygrass Academy as well as several songwriting camps. She specializes in singing while playing, dobro as a rhythm instrument and creating lyrical solos in G tuning or D tuning.

Her bluesy song, “Down the Mountain” was included on Phil Leadbetter’s 2021 Masters of Slide CD and named a “show stealer” by Bluegrass Unlimited. That same song landed her a slot in the 2021 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Songwriter Showcase. After making seven fully produced albums with Red Molly and four solo, Abbie’s latest recording DobroSinger masterfully captures the sound of her vocals and dobro unaccompanied. It’s a raw intimate recording full of blues, heartfelt ballads and the ache of the unknown. It’s quite a contrast to her previous CD, Wishes on a Neon Sign (2018) which featured a co-write with Chris Stapleton and leaned on full band production. Though she has traveled around the world with Red Molly, Abbie stands strong as a solo act and has opened for Lori McKenna, Hot Rize, and Martina McBride.

Jimmy Hefferman

Jimmy Heffernan is a highly respected Nashville session player, sideman, and producer. He’s a versatile multi-instrumentalist, and one of the true masters of the resonator guitar.

Jimmy also happens to be an outstanding music instructor who loves to teach, and has a real gift for it.

Jim’s latest recording project was the 2003 release, The Resocasters, on which he collaborated with Dobro® legend Mike Auldridge (I’m going to interject right here, like I’m not the guy writing this…..this guy changed my life!!! I would not be playing this “poverty box” if not for Mike. Thank you Mike, for all you have done and meant to me.) and pedal steel guitar ace Hal Rugg (To be mentioned in the same sentence as Hal is a life well lived.)

The Resocasters has become an instant classic, a “must have” CD for any resonator guitar enthusiast’s collection.

(Back to the “other guy” talking)

Here is a brief biography, that spotlights a few of the highlights and accomplishments of Jim’s career, which has spanned nearly thirty years as an active member of the professional music industry.

Jim started playing on the road in 1974 with a Bluegrass band called “Raintree”, from western Massachusetts, touring full time up and down the east coast and playing lots of festivals and clubs. “We played the Philadelphia Folk Festival and Lincoln Center”, recalls Jimmy. “I played Dobro® and banjo, and drove the truck till I invented Rap. By the way…I have never received any monies from Suge Knight or Dr. Dre. I did however learn how to play Salt Creek, so I figure we’re even.”

For the next two years Jim played Dobro® with “Transatlantic Bluegrass”, a popular (but not well paid) French Bluegrass band that acted as Bill Kieth’s backup band whenever he did his European touring. One of the highlights of that period was Transatlantic Bluegrass’ appearance on a PBS special called Bill Monroe and Friends.

In 1980 Jim joined “Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers”, again as Dobro® player. He toured with Sparks for two years, helping record two albums for Rebel Records and two more for Old Homestead Records.

Over the next six years Jim played with Red Allen and Bill Grant and Dehlia Bell and started learning to play the pedal steel guitar( In bars, where it was meant to be played}.

1988 was a momentous year for Jimmy Heffernan. He played electric guitar for Doug Kershaw for a year, and then joined Joe Diffie’s band, where he stayed 9 years. Jim reflects fondly on this time: “We toured every major venue and appeared as a members of the Grand Ole Opry. We played lots of television, including The Grand Ole Opry Live, Regis and Kathy Lee, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Hee Haw, to name but a few. Joe sold over eight million records during this time.”

“Someone else wrote that, but it sounds good so I’ll leave it.”

Upon leaving Joe Diffie’s employment, Jim stayed in Nashville, producing albums and working with new artists before finally joining Brad Paisley’s band in 1999.

Jimmy says, ”I toured with Brad for two years as well as played Dobro® on Brad’s second ARISTA album, “Part Two”. On this platinum record I had an opportunity to play on a track called “Too Country”, which featured performances by George Jones, Buck Owens, and Bill Anderson. Another track ‘Munster Rag’, was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Country Instrumental in 2001.” Thanks Brad (oops!!! I’m not writing this)

Since leaving Brad Paisley’s band, Jim has been busy playing with Mark Cosgrove (The Jerry Douglas Band) and producing records for new artists (guys that don’t have record deals), including Michael Mason, who’s song, Cape Lonely, reached #32 on the country charts and Sony recording artist, Buddy Jewell, first winner of the popular television series, Nashville Star. I, I mean he, toured with Charlie Louvin of the Louvin Brothers fame in 2008 on the Lucinda Williams tour. He really enjoyed that, “the Louvin Brothers have always been a couple of my big heros”.

These days, Jimmy Heffernan is shifting gears (getting too old to play the road), devoting more time to one of the things he loves best, teaching up-and-coming players. If you get a chance, be sure to attend one of Jim’s highly popular Dobro® Workshops.

Jimmy’s been crossing the pond lately teaching at “Sore Fingers” in England in and in Munich.

Justin Moses

Justin Moses is an award winning multi-instrumentalist celebrated as one of the most versatile musicians in all of acoustic music. A prominent Nashville session musician, he has appeared on stage or in the studio with an endless list of diverse artists such as Alison Krauss, Del McCoury, Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris, Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Bruce Hornsby, Béla Fleck, Peter Frampton, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart and Barry Gibb among many others. In 2018 and 2020 he was named Dobro Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association.

Moses began his musical journey at the age of six after becoming interested in the mandolin. He soon developed a lasting passion for making music. He started to hone his skills playing in his family’s band as a child. Since then, he’s toured with bands such as Blue Moon Rising, The Dan Tyminski Band, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Blue Highway and The Gibson Brothers.

In his two-year stint with Tyminski, he realized an early dream of playing the Grand Ole Opry for the first time and recorded the 2009 IBMA Album of the Year and Grammy nominated album, Wheels.

Justin has been no stranger to the television screen performing on prominent national shows such as The Late Show, Conan, The Today Show and Grand Ole Opry LIVE. He performed alongside Hall of Famer Ricky Skaggs on the CMA Awards in 2018 and appeared with an all-star cast of artists on the PBS special Country Music: Live at the Ryman in conjunction with Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary in 2019. That same year, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum honored Justin by featuring him as a part of the American Currents exhibit.

In 2017, Justin married acclaimed mandolin player, singer-songwriter Sierra Hull. The two now often perform together as a duo, showcasing their instrumental prowess and close vocal harmonies. He recently signed with Mountain Fever Records and is set to release his full-length album “Fall Like Rain” on January 22, 2021.

Bobby Ingano

Jay Starling

Jay Starling, son of Seldom Scene founding member John Starling, is currently a multi-instrumentalist and dobro player for Leftover Salmon. He was recently a member of the band, Love Canon and has performed with Emmylou Harris, The Seldom Scene Steep Canyon Rangers, String Cheese Incident, Larry Keel, Railroad Earth, Jerry Douglas, Del McCoury etc. He’s also a time instructor at the Delfest Academy.

Paul Beard

He first became fascinated with resonator guitars when he was 18 years old, about the same time he started repairing stringed instruments. Paul was dissatisfied with the quality of available resonator guitars at that time and focused his skills on design and construction of a next generation instrument, a guitar that would take advantage of new technologies and techniques while honoring the tradition of the Dopyera family. Paul started Beard Guitars in 1985 and today hand-crafts custom squareneck and roundneck instruments. His guitars are played by many of today’s top players including Jerry Douglas, Anders Beck, Vince Gill, Andy Hall, Mark Knopfler, and Josh Swift.

Byrl Murdock

All of my life I’ve had vision. First I saw visions of custom hot rods. I could see the design in my head along with the finished product that I wanted to create and all of the work in between. So I pursued it and put my visions to work. Before long, my custom paint designs were winning awards.
One of my hobbies was playing the guitar. I had played it since I was a kid. But I admired the dobro. The sound is what drew me to it. But again, I was envisioning a different and better sound. My vision for a piece of art mixed with a better and unique sound took over my thoughts. With a vision in my head, I gathered together pieces of wood. Some old, some even older, some from a desk and a few new pieces. It was then that I created my first do bro. I used my vision to see beauty and my ear for a unique sound. I wasn’t even sure it would work, but it did. That dobro “The Desk”, sits in my office to this day. It serves as a reminder that we can create something beautiful from only scraps. I play it still.

After that one, I created another. And then another. And with each one I finished, they seemed to get better in some way. Sometimes the art, sometimes the design, and sometimes the build. No two are ever the same. Even though some have a bit of a different sound, being custom made for each individual, each one makes extraordinary music. So as I custom design, build and play each one, it gives me great satisfaction to see one of my resonators handed over to that new owner who will make it sing.

I not only love to build these amazing instruments, I love to work one on one with each of my customers to insure that each instrument is made particularly suited for their personality and tastes. I don’t desire to be a big business. My goal is to make between 12-18 guitars a year, that way I can continue my relationship with my customers.

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