|
|
||
After 50 years of playing gospel music near and far, Bob Stone is still 'dedicated to producing the gospel' Date published: 2/13/2006
In the half-century he's been playing gospel music, Bob Stone has played on shows with the likes of Earl Scruggs and the Carter Family, Bill Monroe and Larry Sparks. He's performed at the Old Dominion Barn Dance on WRVA in Richmond, broadcast nationwide.
He's done television programs in Richmond and Charlottesville, and taken his music as far afield as Kentucky, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And the 74-year-old musician hasn't stopped picking yet. His five-man band, Bob Stone and the Virginia Gospel Singers, includes his son Jeff on guitar, Mac Dempsey on banjo, Don Shores on dobro and Vic Grice on upright bass. Bob plays 5-string mandolin. Jeff Stone is the lead singer, with Grice, Shores and Bob pitching in with three-part harmony. They play at nursing homes, church homecomings, revivals, family reunions and benefit fundraisers all over the area. The group performs at least once almost every weekend in the year, and already has bookings well into next fall, Stone said. "I reckon we turn down 25 requests a year" because of scheduling conflicts, he said. "I'm thankful God opens doors so we can go these places and sing." They don't charge a fee, relying instead on voluntary offerings to defray their expenses. The men gather weekly in Stone's basement to rehearse. Listening to their voices blend in "Just One Rose Will Do," and watching their fingers flashing on the strings, it's clear that these men know just what they're about. Shores switches from lead to harmony as Jeff Stone takes up the melody. Bob Stone does a solo on his mandolin, then it's Dempsey's turn on banjo. It slides together seamlessly. "We have at least a thousand songs in our heads," Shores said. "We could sing two hours, three hours and not sing the same song," Dempsey said. Bob Stone started playing the guitar when he was 6 years old. "I was the youngest of eight," he said. "Everybody else played. This old boy was going to learn, too. "I've still got that guitar." Stone had three brothers and four sisters, and they were all musical. "On Sunday afternoons we'd take our hymnbooks out to the back yard swings and sing everything we knew in the hymnal," Stone said. Both his father and mother played autoharp, and they had the singers to provide four-part harmony.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
|||||||||||||
