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Blue Highway

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Bluegrass mainstay running since the mid-nineties on a famously stable lineup — original songwriting and tight vocal harmony ahead of showpiece picking.

The band was formed in Tennessee in 1994 by guitarist Tim Stafford, a Kingsport, Tennessee native who had already co-founded the group Dusty Miller and spent two years in Alison Krauss & Union Station, together with singer and bassist Wayne Taylor, who came up from Southwest Virginia.

The original lineup also included banjo player Jason Burleson, a multi-instrumentalist from Newland, North Carolina, and dobro player Rob Ickes, who had moved from Northern California to Nashville in 1992. Fiddler and mandolin player Shawn Lane rounded out the group after time spent in the bands of Ricky Skaggs and Doyle Lawson; several of his songs have since been recorded by other bluegrass acts.

The debut album, It's a Long, Long Road, spent six months atop the Bluegrass Unlimited chart and won the IBMA's Album of the Year in 1996. Later releases, including Wondrous Love (2003), Marbletown (2005) and Original Traditional (2016), each drew Grammy nominations in bluegrass or gospel categories.

Ickes remained on dobro for 21 years before leaving in 2015, succeeded by Virginia player Gaven Largent. Along the way the band collected further honors, among them the IBMA's Vocal Group of the Year in 2012, Song of the Year in 2008 for "Through the Window of a Train", and a long run of Dobro Player of the Year awards for Ickes.

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