David Parmley has announced Shayne Bartley as the newest member of his touring band, Cardinal Tradition. He will be playing mandolin with the group.
Bartley has been involved in bluegrass at the professional level for more than 30 years, starting as teen performing on guitar with his older brother Rick’s band, Newground. Since that time, his tour credentials on banjo, mandolin, or guitar include stints with The Lost and Found, Don Rigsby and Midnight Call, American Drive, Southern Blend, The Charlie Sizemore Band, Dave Evans, Unlimited Tradition, Rarely Herd, David Peterson and 1946, and The Karl Shiflett and Big Country Show.
Shayne joins David’s band which is a hallmark of impeccable taste and skilled elegance within bluegrass, itself chock-full of top-shelf sidemen. Dale Perry is on banjo, Steve Day on fiddle, and Ron Spears on bass. Parmley adds his soulful vocals and solid guitar to this seasoned group, which performs traditional bluegrass with very few peers.
David also came to prominence in his teens with his father Don’s group, The Bluegrass Cardinals, in 1974, where his distinctive voice defined the band sound for the next 17 years. He then put together a band with banjo wizard Scott Vestal known as Continental Divide, playing a slicker, more sophisticated style of grass. After Scott departed in 1998, he began to steer the band back towards a ’70s bluegrass vibe, until he left the business in 2012 for a career driving and maintaining tour buses for country artists.
But he was back to bluegrass again in 2015, forming Cardinal Tradition, a nod to his beginnings in the music, with a sound nearly identical to what he had created with Don so many years ago.
Their self-titled debut recording in 2016 was a sensation in the field, and they have been working steadily ever since at shows and festivals where passionately-performed bluegrass is appreciated.
You can follow their schedule online and catch their mix of classic bluegrass, Bluegrass Cardinals hits, and new material near you.
