Roger Everett passes

Most any band performing along the US east coast has made a stop in Suwannee, GA at Everett’s Music Barn. They have hosted live bluegrass music for nearly 40 years in north central Georgia. The venue has been managed by the Everett family this whole time, a spinoff of the long-running Everett Family band consisting of brothers Randall, Roger and Leroy Everett.

We have learned that Roger Everett passed away this past Friday (10/29). He was 61 years old, and had been in hospice care as a result of his long battle with leukemia. Roger was the uncle of Ray Deaton, a founding member of IIIrd Tyme Out, now performing with his own group, Grasstic Measures.

Rogers obituary is published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and includes this overview:

The original Everett Brothers band consisted of Roger Everett, Randall Everett, Leroy Everett, Pauline Everett Deaton and her son, Ray Deaton. Band personnel changed through the years, and Roger was the only Everett brother band mate still alive. Randall died three years ago; Leroy died in 1971, shortly after the barn was built.

In 1992, the Everett Brothers were inducted into the Georgia Country Music Hall of Fame. The next year, the band released “A Little Farther Down the Road,” a CD whose title song had been written by Mr. Everett years before.

“The things he expressed in that song, I can see,” said Diane Everett Dunaway, a niece who is the daughter of the late Leroy Everett. “My grandfather plowing in the field. The vegetable garden and the old wooden stove. He wrote about these things being very much a part of life and that we should remember those times.”

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About the Author

John Lawless

John had served as primary author and editor for The Bluegrass Blog from its launch in 2006 until being folded into Bluegrass Today in September of 2011. He continues in that capacity here, managing a strong team of columnists and correspondents.