| Rhonda Vincent will perform with her band The Rage Satuday at Bluegrass in Superclass in Perrysburg. (Photo courtesy Rhonda Vincent Publicity) |
Rhonda Vincent’s life always revolved around music.
Her earliest memories are of performing with her family. "It’s just a way of life that evolved into
a career," the bluegrass star said in a recent telephone interview.
Vincent and her band The Rage will be headliners next weekend at the Winterfest 21 Bluegrass in Super
Class held at the Holiday Inn French Quarters on U.S. 20 in Perrysburg. Vincent and The Rage will
perform on Saturday.
Vincent tops a bill of a dozen national and regional acts that will perform Jan. 14 starting at 12:30
p.m. and Jan. 15 at noon. Tickets cost from $25 for a single day general admission to $55 for reserved
seating for the weekend.
Though this is Vincent’s first time at the annual Perrysburg event, such festivals are among her favorite
venues to play. Often a band gets to play a couple shows, and they afford the musicians more time to
hang out with each other and the fans, including at jam sessions.
Last year, Vincent said, her band was at a festival in Jefferson City, Mo., and the members of The Rage
joined in a jam session in the hotel lobby. A fan later told her that she expected Rage band members
would sit in for one number, instead they played about 20.
"It’s a great time," Vincent said. "We are fans of the music first."
Though she’s a trouper through and through, crowned "the new queen of bluegrass" by The Wall
Street Journal, her first memory actually is of her reluctance to perform. At 5 she was singing with her
family in the Sally Mountain Show, and the band was booked to play for the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.
"I decided I wasn’t going to sing," she remembers. But her father took her off-stage and
convinced her to sing, though she doesn’t remember how. She remembers looking up at the monitor while
she was singing "Bicycle Song" and she had tears running down her face. It was a lesson in
doing what you had to do even if you didn’t feel like it.
This was about the same time she recorded for the first time. The room seemed "so large" yet
she doesn’t recall being nervous. "It was just what we did."
And she continues traveling that road to this day having made dozens of recordings, and winning Grammy
awards and International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year and top female vocalist
honors seven times.
"It’s a special feeling," Vincent said. "I love the music. I love the people. I love the
travel. It’s just a continuation of what I was doing when I was growing up."
Despite her prominence as the diva of bluegrass, she did make a detour early in her career to the
Nashville Country scene in the 1990s. Before then the bluegrass fans would tell her she had a country
sound in her singing, and she should go to Nashville to be a star. When she got to Nashville she was
urged to get the bluegrass out of her voice.
Vincent likened her time in Nashville to her college education. She learned about songwriting from the
best as well as what shade of blush was right for her and what cut of dress was most flattering.
Some handlers wanted her to ditch her mandolin and guitar and grab the microphone and stride out to the
edge of the stage. Then someone else would come in and ask why she was strumming all those instruments
she was known for playing.
"What I learned is everybody comes in has to tell you something different than what you are
doing," Vincent said.
That time "wasn’t fun," indeed at times it was "really confusing."
And just like attending college, her Nashville experience was expensive. So when she asked herself how
she was going to make a living, she returned to the familiar, a bluegrass band. She was "never
happier."
Part of that is the joy, and challenge, of playing "with these incredible musicians" – Hunter
Berry, fiddle, Mickey Harris, bass, Ben Helson, guitar, and Aaron McDaris, banjo and guitar. They’re her
support whether on tour or in the studio, and are even credited as co-producers on her most recent album
"Take" released on her own Upper Management imprint in September.
That band has the chops to bring a spark of spontaneity to her shows, surprising and delighting not only
audience members but each other with new licks and flourishes.
Still some tunes are sacrosanct. Fans don’t want her to mess with "Jolene," "Kentucky
Borderline," "Is the Grass Any Bluer?" and "You Don’t Love God If You Don’t Love
Your Neighbor."
Any switch in those tunes’ signature phrases "may be construed as a mistake," Vincent said.
When the band launches into one of those favorites, Vincent senses the energy switch in the audience.
"They start singing," she said. "They instantly light up."
