Mountain Heart

by Kevin Kerfoot, 02/06/2004

An Interview with Mountain Heart's Steve Gulley

BMP: I know that you guys have a new member. Tell me about him.

STEVE: Lead guitarist Clay Jones has been with the group about six months now. He performed for several years at the beginning of the ‘90s up until the mid-’90s with Lou Reid, Terry Baucom and Carolina. Most recently he played with Marty Raybon. He’s been in the band and been a good buddy for so, so very long and we’re pleased to have him. I think he’s one of the finest flatpickers in bluegrass, one of the most knowledgeable guitar players I’ve ever been around, and a good guy too.

BMP: What’s coming up next for Mountain Heart?

STEVE: We’ve got about eight or nine songs toward the next album. It’ll be a bluegrass album by and large; a secular album. We’ll always have a couple of gospel songs on what we do because that’s the way we believe and the way we live, but this album will be similar to the last one as far as the scope of the record and the material will be largely original from within the band or independent writers. We’ll probably go into the studio after the first of the year and have an album out for the first quarter of next year.

BMP: No Other Way is one of my favorites. What do you think about it and how will the next one differ?

STEVE: We took a lot of chances with this last album. It’s our first effort with Ricky Skaggs and for Skaggs Family. We enjoyed our time with Doobie Shea but with Skaggs Family, because of Ricky’s name, you’re automatically going to have a lot of different credibility with people that didn’t know who you were before. That’s helped. Musically, we took a lot of chances with this record. No Other Way has been our best selling record to date and has opened up a lot of doors for us in other venues with a lot of different crowds that normally wouldn’t listen to bluegrass music. We opened a lot of shows for George Jones, Merle Haggard, Patty Loveless, playing bluegrass for a lot of folks. That album paved the way for that. The next record will just build on that. We’ve finally carved a niche for ourselves in having a particular sound and folks know us when they hear us now and that takes time. We’ve been at it soon to be five years as a band. The material we’ve got so far is just as diverse as the last one and still sounds like us. We’ve got three lead singers in the group - me being the primary one, but Adam (Steffey) and Barry (Abernathy) are great singers and they’ll take a part in it like they did on the last one and it will be similar in scope but a lot different in material because we always want to keep evolving and changing as a group.

BMP: Tell me about the Mountain Heart projects.

STEVE: The first album was self titled and came out in 1999. The Journey came out in 2001 and last year at the IBMA awards was voted Bluegrass Gospel Recorded Event of the Year. No Other Way was recorded in 2002 and the fourth one is in the works.

BMP: You guys have gotten a lot of recognition from the IBMA as players. How does that feel?

STEVE: It makes us feel great. Four-and-a-half years as a band and we’re already up for the three most coveted awards that you can have as a band - Entertainer of the Year, Vocal Group and Instrumental Group. Just to be nominated in the final five with folks like Del McCoury and Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krauss and Doyle Lawson - to be nominated in the same category as those folks that have been doing it for 20, 30 years - is phenomenal for us. If we don’t win a thing we’ll be excited. It’s a great honor.

BMP: How did Mountain Heart come together?

STEVE: I named the band. I’d written a song with that name and we still plan on cutting it one of these days. I used to have a term that came strictly by happenstance. When I heard a great singer that I really liked - I remember saying it in particular about Ronnie Bowman one time - I said Ronnie’s a great, polished singer but he’s got a mountain heart. I told Barry that might be a good name for a band. When we got the band together we went through several possibilities but Mountain Heart stuck and it exemplifies what we do more than any name could. The way we became a band, Barry Abernathy and myself played together with Doyle Lawson in the mid-nineties. I was there from ‘94 to ‘96 and Barry stayed on until ‘98. We talked continuously about starting this band for about two years. We called in Adam Steffey, who had been a good friend of mine for a long time, and he came into the band and helped develop it. It started out as me, Adam and Barry just sitting in a room playing and about two days in Jim VanCleve wanted to join the band - he was playing in Doyle’s band at the time - and we were all too happy to have him. He’s a phenomenal musician. And then we added Johnny Dowdle who played bass with us for the first two-and-a-half years of the band. We added Jason Moore when Johnny got off the road. Alan Perdue left the road and opened the door for Steffey to come back in so it’s been a great evolution as a band. That’s the way we got started - just a bunch of buddies wanting to play. It gelled from the beginning and sounded natural and it sounded pure. It worked into something bigger than any of us expected, but at the same time that we always wished for, so we hope that it continues to go for a good long time.

BMP: How do you define Mountain Heart’s style and what are some of your favorite Mountain Heart songs?

STEVE: I like anything that we’ve done. I’ve had a hand in developing the band from the ground up and I’ve always wanted our music to be just us and not be categorized in traditional or contemporary. I think labels are really bad for our music because people don’t know what they like but they know what they read and a lot of times that doesn’t coincide with what they think they’re gonna hear. With us you’ll hear traditional music, you’ll hear contemporary music, you’ll hear fifties country music, because we don’t put a difference or a label on that. I’ll sing George Jones tunes and I’ll sing straight ahead stuff because we’ve always included every member’s personality in the molding of the group’s sound. So if you come and hear us you’re always going to hear a variety of music, a diverse product, but it’s always going to have the same vein or the same feel to it because that’s us. It’s heart music. We play and sing out of our heart - period! We play and sing stuff that’s close to us and we always will continue to do that.

BMP: Who were your influences?

STEVE: My Dad, Don Gulley, is a great musician and he started a group called The Pinnacle Boys which was really popular in the seventies in bluegrass music. I grew up playing around the Knoxville, Tennessee area with a lot of great players that have come through there. My Dad was the program director of a radio station for about 40 years so my tastes were set in stone from the beginning. My biggest heroes singing wise and vocally and musically have to be Ricky Skaggs, George Jones, Bobby Osborne, Ira Louvin, James Taylor, Michael McDonald and my Dad - different people from different backgrounds, but all with the same thing going through them - I feel something when I hear’em sing. Larry Sparks is a huge favorite of mine because he can come out there with just his guitar and floor you - it’s perfect and he sings out of his heart - and folks like that have influenced me continuously through the years. I started singing on stage with my Dad when I was five and I just turned 41 so I’ve been at it for a long, long time. I grew up playing around Renfro Valley. I played there for the better part of 15 years before going with Doyle Lawson.

BMP: Can you give me a fond memory of your time with Doyle?

STEVE: I remember specifically recording the Grammy-nominated album There’s A Light Guiding Me - a gospel record. Being a Christian it was important to me to be a part of that and I especially loved his gospel music. I remember recording and looking at each other and the spirit being so strong in the music that we had to literally stop two or three times and go outside and wipe our eyes and come back in and sing.

BMP: You mentioned Ricky Skaggs. How do you like having the opportunity to work with one of your heroes?

STEVE: Ricky Skaggs is one of the finest people I’ve ever met and I’ll say that until the day I die. He and I believe the same way spiritually but its deeper than that - musically he has influenced me in so many ways that he didn’t know. He’s been great for our band and bends over backwards and introduces us to people that can help us. He didn’t have to do that, but he’s done it. We’ve remained good friends for a long time and it’s a match made in Heaven for our band because he hears what we hear in the studio and having a great set of ears like that behind the console makes all the difference in the world. It’s been a really good fit so far and we hope it lasts for a long time.

BMP: Tell me about your instruments.

STEVE: I have an old Fender P-Bass that I’ve played for ever and ever and the one guitar I own is a 1946 D-18 Martin and I will probably hold on to that one until they throw the dirt in my face.

BMP: What is Mountain Heart’s plans for the future?

STEVE: We want to continue doing what we’re doing and broaden our scope and play in front of more people as we go along. We’re working hard to take bluegrass music to a lot of different people that wouldn’t normally buy it and that’s our future plans. Everybody seems really happy and we all get along really well and we’ve been in place now for a long time and we hope that this continues.

reprinted with permission from
Jan/Feb 04 Bluegrass Music Profiles Magazine

Click here to visit Mountain Heart website