Gary Brewer and the Kentucky Ramblers have hit a milestone that very few bands ever meet. During 2020, they reached their 40th anniversary in the music business, and Gary Brewer felt that was something to celebrate. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Brewer and the band had plans to tour America as well as Europe for their anniversary and to promote their 40th Anniversary Celebration CD. Brewer started in the business when he was 14, and he thought all that experience would help guide his thinking. “I think I get a little smart and know the business,” he said. “I thought 2020 would shut down the 40th reunion.”
He was wrong. And he’s glad of it.
Brewer and the Ramblers made the CD and released it during a time of no live music, but it caught on. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart for the bluegrass albums and has stayed in the top 5 for 65 weeks. “We’re blown away,” Brewer said. “The first week out is normally the biggest time for sales.”
Part of the band’s success, Brewer believes, is because of his sons. They are sixth-generation musicians, and “they have propelled the record and are connecting with the youth,” he said. Son Wayne is 27 and plays bass, old-time fiddle, and about any other stringed instrument you hand him, according to his father. Mason is 21 and plays mandolin, bass and drums.
Brewer is honored that his sons want to carry on the family tradition. “My grandfather worked with the Carter family in the 1920s,” he said. Brewer’s father also played in the band but died suddenly last year at 82. Brewer worked with his father from the beginning. “Now, my sons have taken up my dad’s songs,” Brewer said.
The anniversary CD includes guest vocalists such as Dale Ann Bradley, Sam Bush and Ralph Stanley II, and Brewer thinks part of its success is due to matching songs he wrote specifically for the artists. Stanley recently had lost his own father, so Brewer thought his friend could bring special nuance about that loss to “Home Ain’t the Way It Used to Be.”
Because Brewer has been in the music business since his teens, he has known many of his musical guests for decades. “It feels so great, with the success of the new record, to still feel relevant after all these years,” he said.
That relevancy and success continue. Even though the group’s European tour has been delayed another year—until 2022—the shows already are sold out, Brewer said. The success also has the band making more plans for the future. Brewer couldn’t provide specifics but promised: “It’ll be one for the record books.”
Now that they’re playing live shows again, the crowds are bigger than ever. Brewer suspects part of the enthusiasm might be relief that people feel because they can hear live music again. “Music is medicine,” he said. “People need it. People need that, and we need that as artists.”
Although the band is grabbing a great deal media attention, including an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Brewer appreciates his down time back home in West Point.
His heart belongs to Kentucky. “It’s the greatest place to live, and everyone needs to come to Kentucky at least one time in their life,” he said.
To find out more about Gary Brewer and the Kentucky Ramblers’ blend of bluegrass, vintage country, American and mountain music—which they dubbed “brewgrass”—plus the group’s tour schedule, visit brewgrass.com.