Can you believe it’s been 25 years since the initial release of Del and The Boys on Ceili Music in 2001? Neither could Del McCoury when we talked last week about the special 25th anniversary edition of the album set to drop next month.
This was the record that cemented The Del McCoury Band as superstars, the one that introduced Richard Thompson’s Vincent Black Lightning to the bluegrass world, along with now classics of the McCoury repertoire like Travelin’ Teardrop Blues, A Good Man Like Me, All Aboard, and several others.
Clearly among the finest bluegrass albums every made, it was well into Del’s long recording and performing career when it hit, and perhaps the first to accurately capture the raw energy and intensity of their live shows onto tape. Del and The Boys, with ownership now transferred to McCoury Music from Ricky Skaggs’ Ceili Music, will be re-released as a remastered project on July 10, with three previously unreleased tracks, recorded at the time of the original.
But before we talked about the album, I had to ask about DelFest, held in late May in Cumberland, MD.
“It was great. It was wet, man. The wettest one we ever had. I don’t think it ever stopped raining. When I got there on Tuesday the sun was shining and it was hot. But by Wednesday it started raining, and kept up until we left on Monday.
But the people were there, man, they still came. They stood out there in the rain. We had three stages going all the time. One stage is in the utility building, and that’s where we had one of the shows. I guess those people were lucky!”
After expressing some surprise at the time since the record first came out, Del explained about one of the “extra” tracks, Long Enough, written by Brink Brinkman, now available as a single in duet with Lee Ann Womack.
“Hard to believe it’s been 25 years!
Ronnie’s the one who came up with this. We found three songs that were left out of that record. If I hadn’t heard them played, I would have completely forgotten about it.
Ronnie suggested that we get one of the ladies in to sing on this one with me. I asked who he was thinking of, and he said Lee Ann Womack.
She and her husband have their own studio, so she asked if we could send it to her and let her work on it.
I wanted her up loud on the track, and Ronnie kept saying it was too loud for my voice, but I liked it like that.”
As he is wont to do, Del got to reminiscing a bit as we discussed 2001, which led to this exchange about Ronnie McCoury getting his first mandolin.
“I had a little old mandolin at home, and I gave it to Dick Smith to fix it up for Ronnie. He had been playing fiddle in school, and he had a recital coming up. He told his teacher he couldn’t make the recital because he had a baseball game, and he was the star pitcher.
The teacher got all upset. She even called us.
That was the end of his violin career.
One day he was out on the road with me, and Monroe handed him a mandolin and told him, ‘Here. You play that.’ On the way home he asked me when Dick would have that mandolin back. He really took to it, and he never did put it down.”
Ronnie ended up going on tour with his dad in Europe that summer, and Del says that he called home one day and said, “Mama… I’m starving over here.”
“He didn’t like the food over there at all!”
With any artist still going strong at 87 years of age, you have to ask how he’s feeling.
“I feel good!
Supposed to be retired, but I guess I’m just rewired.”
God bless Del McCoury.
Pre-orders for the 25th anniversary edition of Del and the Boys can be placed now online.
