An acoustic music group dedicated to keeping the classic sounds of '50s and '60s bluegrass alive, Asheville Bluegrass is fronted by two veteran instrumentalists, one well known and one returning to music after a long layoff. Fiddler Bobby Hicks is a self-taught virtuoso whose big break came in 1954, when he was recruited to play violin with Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys. It was the beginning of a long and distinguished career that saw him play with Porter Wagoner and Judy Lynn before entering into a long association with Ricky Skaggs and his group Kentucky Thunder. Mark Kuykendall, meanwhile, is a guitarist and bassist who worked with Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin before he dropped out of music to raise a family. In the 2010s, Hicks and Kuykendall began making music together, forming a group called Asheville Bluegrass with Nick Chandler (mandolin), Nick Dauphinais (bass), and Seth Rhinehart (banjo). In 2016, the group struck a deal with the long-running bluegrass label Rebel Records. Their debut album, Down Memory Lane, released by Rebel in November 2016, was a mix of classic bluegrass covers and tunes written by Kuykendall during his early days as a musician. In early 2018, Asheville Bluegrass brought out their second album, Forever and a Day. ~ Mark Deming