By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The bluegrass roots of Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers run deep.
Mullins grew up with the music – his father was a radio personality who played bluegrass and country on the radio and played and recorded bluegrass as a fiddler.
Mullins followed his father’s footsteps, both as a musician and as a broadcaster.
And the other Ramblers – Jason Barie, fiddle, Randy Barnes, bass, Adam McIntosh, guitar, and Chris Davis, mandolin — have similar connections to the music. “Everyone in the band has a lifetime of this,” Mullins said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Xenia. They started early and have extensive experience playing with bluegrass greats.
Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers will bring their “Industrial Strength Bluegrass” to the stage at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Friday, March 24, at 7 p.m. (doors at 6). Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Click for tickets.
“I saw everything good about bluegrass music when I was young,” Mullins said. He witnessed the music being performed at a high level on stage and heard it on the radio. And he got to meet some of the best performers. “I grew up with a great affection for the music, the audience and the tradition.”
Mullins started out as a youngster playing guitar, and then as a teenager, he was enamored by the three-finger banjo technique and switched to banjo. By his late teens, he was performing professionally.
By then he was also working in radio. Twenty-eight years ago, he bought the Middletown, Ohio, radio station, the only one in Green County, and he created a regional network – Real Roots Radio, built on community programming and bluegrass.
The Radio Ramblers grew from that.
There was demand among his listeners and his advertisers for bluegrass, so he started the Ramblers 17 years ago. They played in car dealership showrooms, at grocery store parking lots, and furniture store tents. The reputation of the band grew rapidly and within a couple years, they were in demand for touring and recording.
As the demands of touring came changes in personnel. Two members live in Ohio, two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee. The Radio Ramblers has performed in 40 states and a half dozen Canadian provinces and toured Europe twice. They perform about 75 shows a year, in addition to recording sessions and radio and TV appearances.
Authenticity is what attracts audience to the music, Mullins said. “We’re on stage with same five instruments as Bill Monroe had when he hit the Grand Ole Opry in the late 1930s. … In an era where folks have grown weary of smoke and mirrors and things that lack genuine authenticity what you see is what you get – five musicians working together as a unit and in harmony with the instrumental and vocal work.”
Not that they play Monroe’s repertoire.
Their repertoire is heavy with original bluegrass songs. Mullins said he receives hundreds of submissions a year. While the band is stacked with instrumental virtuosos, what he looks for are the vocal qualities and the lyrics of the songs.
“Can a song speak to someone in a special way? Can it be moving and meaningful and entertaining all at the same time? Can we put this across on the stage and have it be memorable, not just tossed away? Will it still be meaningful in 25 years?”
The audience at St. Mark’s will hear the original songs that made the cut for the band’s just released album “Let Time Ride.” That includes the title track penned by Mullins’ daughter-in-law. A story of a fatherless man looking back on his life and being “thankful that life has been good for him.”
The album also includes a song about a truck driver who rides through brush fires to return to his woman, only to find she doesn’t want him back.
There are also several covers including “Scars in Heaven” by Casting Crowns. And then there’s the gospel numbers – the Radio Ramblers have three albums devoted to gospel.
The band offers plenty of vocal variety with McIntosh, Davis and Mullins sharing lead vocals, and harmonizing. Barnes adds his bass voice for four-part gospel harmony.
Give the band 20 minutes, Mullins said, and any listener will find something they like.
Mullins has also been involved with a documentary project on the Ohio bluegrass history.
The music that developed around Cincinnati and Dayton has been dubbed “Industrial Strength Bluegrass.”
Teaming with scholars and musicians “Industrial Strength Bluegrass: Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy” took form in a book and an album, that includes the Radio Ramblers and other top performers including Rhonda Vincent, The Isaacs, and Vince Gill..
The record won album of the year from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2021.
Mullins is a proud member of that lineage that started when mountain folk from Kentucky and Tennessee headed north to labor in the factories of Southwestern Ohio. “Those homesick hillbillies made great music,” Mullins said, and he and the Radio Ramblers continue that lineage.
From his years in radio, he knows the value of connecting with his audience building on “a wonderful combination of art and entertainment” that started with Bill Monroe and continues with the Radio Ramblers today.
