The year was 2000, Carol and Banks Glover were on their honeymoon at a family lake house. Saturday morning after coffee, Banks asked Carol if she would prefer learning to fish or learn to play the guitar. She chose guitar. She was skeptical – who in their right mind could learn to play at 50 years of age?
They began playing tunes together, and at the ritual family dinner every Sunday after Church at Mama Ruth Jackson’s house they showed what they had learned. Carol’s twin sister Cathy Wright wanted to jump right in and chose her instrument – the upright bass. Later their older sister, Diane Dawson, chose the 5 string banjo and we recruited Cathy’s husband, Lamar, to handle the keyboard. Because the family was so strongly influenced by the Church, we played primarily old Gospel tunes.
In the beginning, the girls could not play standing up nor could they sing and play at the same time. Practice sessions were wrought with mistakes and wrong notes. When we joked about a name for this ragtag band, Lamar suggested that since brother Alan Jackson’s band was named the Strayhorns, we should be known as the Straynotes, given our many mistakes. The name stuck!
Mama Ruth had been singing her entire life and by this time the girls had learned to play standing up and singing at the same time. We recruited Mama Ruth into the band for her vocals and assigned her the snare drum.
Many recognize that natural family vocal harmony can produce some of the sweetest melodies and such was the case with the three sisters and their mother.
The band began volunteering to play for local Churches and Retirement communities. As a joke we recorded our first CD to give to brother Alan and on a whim began selling copies wherever we performed. The title of the CD was “After Sunday Dinner”.
We discovered a lady in our Church who was raised in Appalachia and played the mandolin, so we recruited her and by default, her airline pilot husband. The husband was totally devoid of musical talent, so to keep him busy we got him an autoharp and yelled out the chords to him.
Almost a complete ensemble we needed a fiddle. Usher in David Kinrade the music director at the local Methodist Church who played the organ and was also a classically trained violinist. The violin we discovered is not the same as a fiddle.
The band was now complete and performing around twice a month. As with most bands artistic differences arose, so “exit stage right” the mandolin and autoharp couple.
The girl’s father, Daddy Gene, passed away in 2000. One Sunday after the meal, Mama Ruth suggested that we go to the Cemetery and play for Daddy Gene. So we packed up our instruments and headed to Oak Hill Cemetery. You can probably imagine what folks thought about us playing in the middle of the graveyard!
As an aside, Alan got wind of our playing in the Cemetery and sent down a crew to record us there. Several takes before they got what they wanted, and Alan actually included the video on his Gospel DVD.
Shortly afterwards Georgia Magazine did a pictorial spread on the band with a full magazine cover picture of us.
Time marches on. Sister Diane moved to Franklin and left the band. Grandchildren came along and the band became less important and kind of fell apart for several years.
In 2016 Banks decided to begin hosting a Gospel and Bluegrass BBQ at the pavilion in the backyard. Soon it became an event both in the spring and fall. This kept the spark of making music alive. These events typically were attended with around 70 people.
More time passed and the grandchildren have grown. On a whim, Carol and Cathy attended a bluegrass camp and upon returning suggested that we get together and start playing again.
At one of the BBQ events, we saw several people that might augment the band. David Philis was in our Church choir so could sing and turned out to be a talented guitar player but since we already had Banks on the rhythm guitar, we asked if he would learn the mandolin. We found another vocalist/guitar picker in Kevin Gilmore, who moved away and we added Jason Bedingfield as Lead Guitar.
As if the band wasn’t big enough bluegrass is never complete without a 5 string banjo. Well, not one but two – Steve Swope and Laurie Pope. Both were neophytes but were determined to play.
The next stage in the evolution was that Carol had grown tired of playing the guitar and had become enamored with the Irish Tenor banjo. She got her one and loved it.
So here we are today – 9 band members: rhythm guitar, upright bass, mandolin, fiddle, 4 string banjo, lead guitar and two 5 string banjos. Bluegrass bands typically are all acoustic and Lamar couldn’t lug a piano to performances, so he is the lead male vocalist.
The band relies on vocals rather than instrumentation as found in more traditional bluegrass music. We pride ourselves on being a family gospel band that also dabbles in bluegrass.