Country Gentlemen Show

bluegrass

The Country Gentlemen Show is a bluegrass band that performs the repertoire of, and carries on the legacy of, the classic Washington-area group The Country Gentlemen. It began in 2005 as Bill Yates and Friends, assembled by Yates, the bassist and singer who had spent some twenty years in the original band, to keep the catalogue in circulation after the death of the Gentlemen's longtime lead singer and guitarist Charlie Waller. The first lineup paired Yates with Mike Phipps on guitar, Darren Beachley, David Propst on mandolin, Scott Walker on banjo, Mark Clifton on Dobro and Dave MacGlashan on bass, and the group soon took the name The Country Gentlemen Tribute Band, issuing tribute albums in 2006 and 2009. Yates died in January 2015 at 78, and Phipps and Propst chose to continue. As the band began writing and performing new material in the original group's style rather than only reproducing its recordings, it changed its name again, to The Country Gentlemen Show. The current lineup features Mike Phipps on guitar and lead vocals, whose voice closely resembles Waller's, Lynwood Lunsford on banjo, Darren Beachley on resophonic guitar, Wayne Lanham on mandolin and fiddle, and Eric Marshall on bass, with all five singing. Its album Yesterday and Tomorrow, released in 2023, is made up of new songs written to sit inside the Country Gentlemen idiom, and the band has since signed to Huckleberry Records. It works a traditional-bluegrass circuit of fairs, fire halls, VFW posts and opry houses concentrated in the mid-Atlantic and upper South, including the Calvert County Fair in Maryland, the Clarksville VFW in Virginia and the Mountaineer Opry House in Barboursville, West Virginia.

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Upcoming shows in Virginia

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Upcoming shows in West Virginia

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