Blue Highway
Bands / Ensembles
Blue Highway (1994–present) is a bluegrass band based in Tennessee, formed by guitarist Tim Stafford and bassist and lead singer Wayne Taylor. Stafford, a Kingsport, Tennessee, native and former member of Alison Krauss & Union Station, started it as a "weekend band" with Taylor, who was then also driving a coal truck in Southwest Virginia. Mandolinist and fiddler Shawn Lane, Dobro player Rob Ickes and banjo player Jason Burleson completed the original lineup. The band signed with Rebel Records and played its first show on December 31, 1994, at a New Year's Eve celebration in Kingsport. Its debut album, It's a Long, Long Road, won IBMA Album of the Year in 1996, and the band was named Emerging Artist of the Year the same year. Tom Adams played banjo while Burleson took a break around 1999–2000. Ickes left in 2015 and was followed on Dobro by Gaven Largent, Justin Moses and, from 2019, Gary Hultman. The band has recorded mostly original material, with Stafford, Taylor and Lane as its main songwriters and singers.
In the newsletter
- No. 16 Fall 1998