Adcock,  Gaudreau,  Waller & Gray

The  Country Gentlemen Reunion Band

            The Country Gentlemen Reunion Band --Adcock, Gaudreau, Waller & Gray-- are four musicians bringing back to life the sound of the 'Classic' Country Gentlemen, the legendary bluegrass band that happens to be one of the biggest reasons why bluegrass music sounds the way it does today.

            The Country Gentlemen Reunion Band will be performing in concert at the Southern Ohio Indoor Music Festival, at the Roberts Convention Center in Wilmington, Ohio, on Saturday, March 31, 2007.  The four men who will take the stage span nearly 50 years’ worth of Country Gentlemen. 

            On board are Eddie Adcock (banjo player and baritone singer) and Tom Gray (bassist), the surviving half of the 'Classic' Country Gentlemen; Jimmy Gaudreau, who followed original Gent John Duffey in 1969 in the mandolin and tenor-singing spot; and original Gentleman Charlie Waller's son Randy on guitar and lead vocal, completing the circle.  Since his father's passing a year and a half ago, Randy carries on the 'regular' Country Gentlemen touring band in the spot that his father held for 47 years.

            While the entire five-decade span of the Country Gents era is represented by these four musicians, their reunion involves both a seamless recreation of early Gents material as well as a look into what might have evolved, had the original classic band remained together.

            The Country Gentlemen Reunion Band debuted at last fall's IBMA gathering in Nashville TN, where tremendous audience response brought down the house.  Fans concurred that it was "magical, like seeing and hearing the past and present all together at one time," and there were more than a few sentimental tears shed.  Banjoist Adcock described seeing "a sea of white hankies in the audience.  I thought everybody had caught the flu!"

Those iconic 'Classic' Country Gentlemen --John Duffey, Charlie Waller, Eddie Adcock and Tom Gray-- were genre-busters of the 1960's who swept the Washington DC area into prominence as the "Bluegrass Capital", bending the music into a more modern form and taking it into venues where it had never before been heard.  Before long their uniqueness, coupled with vocal and instrumental excellence and a brash approach, set the standard for a modern style of bluegrass. 

Going on to international renown and plentiful accolades, the Classic Gents eventually were inducted as a band into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor in 1996, the only group to be awarded in that manner. 

            The original Country Gentlemen band was born in the early morning hours of July 4, 1957, as the result of a fateful automobile accident on a highway in southern Maryland.  Singer Buzz Busby and several members of his Bayou Boys band, which at the time included Eddie Adcock, were partying after playing a show at the Admiral Grill in Bailey's Crossroads VA when, drinking and driving, they crashed at high speed into a power pole. 

Busby band member Bill Emerson had elected not to go along on the ride and, facing the group's obligation to play a show the very next night, called Charlie Waller, John Duffey and bass player Larry Lahey to perform in place of the injured musicians.  With a long recuperation ahead for Busby, Adcock and the others, the improvised band stayed together and soon called themselves the Country Gentlemen. 

During the next year banjo and bass players came and went until Eddie Adcock, fresh from a stint with Bill Monroe, set the wheels in motion when he was asked to join the Country Gentlemen.  He did so on the condition that they begin to pursue original material and their own sound, the spark which allowed the creation of a sound that initiated a sea change within bluegrass music.  The Gents soon added bassist Tom Gray, began to record albums, and earned a spot in the bluegrass pantheon.  Eddie Adcock is quoted as saying, "Eventually, everyone sounded a little bit like the Gentlemen, even Bill Monroe."

            But the path to icon status isn’t easy:  they were so innovative that, nearly 50 years ago, a reviewer said of them, “Well, they’re good, but they’re not bluegrass.”  Now we know that they definitely were.  The early 'Classic' Country Gentlemen were ground-breakers and envelope-pushers, and they helped shape bluegrass music into what it is today.

The 50th anniversary of the formation of the Country Gentlemen rolls around in 2007, and several bluegrass festivals in various parts of the country have them slated to appear.  The Country Gentlemen Reunion Band has recently recorded a CD project for release in the near future.

 ( For more information on the Country Gentlemen Reunion Band call 615-443-7135. )