For one night only at Pickathon, the songs that reshaped bluegrass come back to life, played by the artists who first brought them into the world.
Some collaborations are so rare they feel like legend. This is one of them, and it’s about to happen at Pickathon.
This Saturday, August 1 at 10PM, Pickathon headliner Steve Earle takes the Paddock Stage, and partway through his set, The Travelin’ McCourys will walk on to join him. Together they’ll play four songs from The Mountain, the landmark album Earle and the McCourys first made in 1999. They haven’t shared these songs onstage in a quarter-century. This isn’t on the printed schedule, it won’t be repeated, and it exists for one reason: the people standing at the Paddock Stage when the first note lands.
To understand why this matters, you have to go back to where it started.
How it began
In 1995, bluegrass founder Bill Monroe surprised Steve Earle onstage at a Nashville concert and played a few songs at his side. For Earle, a songwriter who had already lived several musical lives, it was one of the great nights of his life. When Monroe passed the following year, Earle answered the only way he knew how. He wrote The Mountain, his first fully bluegrass record and a love letter to the music Monroe invented. In the liner notes, he called it “my interpretation, to the best of my ability and with all of my heart, of the music that Bill Monroe invented.”
He didn’t make it alone
To bring the album to life, Earle enlisted the finest bluegrass band working: Del McCoury and his sons, Ronnie on mandolin and Rob on banjo, with Jason Carter on fiddle and Mike Bub on bass. Then he filled the room with legends. Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Tim O’Brien, Marty Stuart, Stuart Duncan, and Iris DeMent all lent their voices and their hands.
Released in 1999, The Mountain earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album and became a landmark the moment it landed. It brought new respect to a genre and new ears to the McCourys, and it stands today as one of the great modern bluegrass records.
Then, almost as fast as it began, it was over
The partnership burned bright and brief. One brilliant album, one tour, and two singular artists went their separate ways. The songs never stopped mattering, but the people who made them didn’t play them together again. For 25 years, The Mountain lived on records and in memory, not on a shared stage.
The circle comes back around
Today, Ronnie and Rob McCoury lead The Travelin’ McCourys, Grammy winners in their own right for their 2018 self-titled debut. The music that Monroe sparked, Earle wrote, and the McCourys shaped has traveled one full generation. Father to sons. Then to now.
On Saturday, it comes full circle in the one place built for a moment like this: the Paddock stage, under the trees, with a crowd that knows exactly what it’s hearing.
Be there when it happens
Four songs. One night. Players who last shared this material a quarter-century ago, together again for something that won’t come around twice.
🏔️ Steve Earle (headlining), with a special appearance by The Travelin’ McCourys Saturday, August 1 · 10:00 PM · The Paddock Stage (Main Stage)
We hope that’s you.
