A new Bluegrass Hall of Fame member, a distinguished achievement recipient and the best new artist were among winners with Southwest Virginia ties at the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards ceremony this week.
Franklin County’s the Lost & Found made the hall of fame just a couple of months after founding member Allen Mills died. Another founder, Roger Handy, was at the Thursday night awards ceremony in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Performer, writer and historian Gary Reid, of Vinton, was one of five distinguished achievement award recipients and won the association’s award for best writer. Mason Via, who learned about music growing up in Patrick County, took the new artist honor. Franklin County High School graduate Key Chang, sound tech for Del McCoury Band and The Travelin’ McCourys, won the award for best sound engineer.
Billy Strings was named the association’s entertainer of the year for the fifth time. Authentic Unlimited was selected vocal group of the year, and East Nash Grass took the instrumental group and album of the year honors. See the full list of performance winners and industry award winners.
Handy, who played guitar with the Lost & Found, said in a phone call on Friday that he was with the group for its first six years but grew tired of the road. Renowned banjo man Gene Parker, the only other surviving original member, left the band in the late 1980s, according to Picker’s Guide, and later wrote and recorded music including “Struttin’ to Ferrum.”
Mills and mandolinist Dempsey Young kept at it for decades more with the group, whose traditional bluegrass numbers include “Leftover Biscuits” and “Love of the Mountains.” Young died in 2006.
Handy stayed in Franklin County, continued to perform and has been at it for 60 years, including a scheduled Sunday date at the Floyd Country Store, where he and Parker will be part of an all-star celebration of the Lost & Found.
“It’s kind of exciting to know that you’re going to be in the hall of fame, because that’s pretty prestigious in a way. Even though it’s bluegrass, it’s still big,” Handy said in a phone interview. “It’s a lifetime of work, you know, to accomplish what we did. Old country boys from out the sticks to do that? It’s amazing.”
‘Ready to go’
Mills, who wrote “Love of the Mountains,” learned that the band would be inducted shortly before he died on Aug. 18, at 80. Mark Freeman, whose Rebel Records label released several Lost & Found albums, said he spoke to Mills just a few days earlier.
“He was excited about it and ready to go” to the ceremony, Freeman said in a phone call on Friday.
The group’s fellow inductees were fiddler Byron Berline, the Nashville Bluegrass Band and former Sugar Hill record label owner Barry Poss.
The bluegrass association’s distinguished achievement award is its second highest honor, after the hall of fame, said Reid, founder of bluegrass label Copper Creek Records. It wasn’t Reid’s first award. He has won three times for writing album liner notes, and his book, “The Music of the Stanley Brothers,” helped win him the association’s 2015 prize for best writer.
The multi-instrumentalist and singer continues to perform his original one-man show, “A Life of Sorrow: The Life and Times of Carter Stanley.”
Reid “was bitten by the bluegrass bug in 1974. It has consumed him ever since. Never one to passively enjoy music, he is very much a do-er,” according to a news release announcing his achievement award.
The bluegrass association, IBMA for short, already had told him he would receive that honor. He was surprised, though, when he heard his name called out as the writing winner, he said in a Friday phone call. The achievement award inspired reflection.
“It’s nice to be acknowledged and recognized for the things that I’ve done over the last 50 years,” he said. “I’ve been a fan and connected with the music in more than just the fan capacity.”
Gallagher Guitars, fiddle player Matt Glaser, journalist Derek Halsey and band The Marshall Family were honored along with Reid for achievements.
Next up, Reid will finish a biography of Carter Stanley, who with his brother, Ralph, was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in Nashville, on Oct. 18.
Not a beginner
Via, 29, may have won for best new artist, but he’s hardly a beginner. He was a member of Old Crow Medicine Show for about three years, competed on “American Idol” in 2021 and has been making his own albums since 2015, including last year’s self-titled release.
In a Friday phone call, Via said his buddies in East Nash Grass — who won the award in 2024 after having been around for several years — described it to him as recognition for someone whose career has taken a distinct upward flight path. Via’s fellow nominees were Jaelee Roberts, Carson Peters & Iron Mountain, Vickie Vaughn and Daniel Grindstaff & The Uptown Troubadours.
“I think that, honestly, that’s the case with all the nominees for that category, but man, it felt special to take that one home, you know,” he said.
It was Via’s first nomination, and he said he felt an adrenaline rush when he heard his name.
“The hope is that it’ll become more and more commonplace,” he said, “to where it doesn’t feel like just so outlandishly wild and crazy that it’s happened.”
The multifaceted Via is working on a new album and had considered taking a more Americana-country approach to it. Winning the award on Thursday might have changed that arc, he said, name-checking his father’s band, David Via and Corn Tornado. Via split time growing up between his mother’s home in North Carolina and his dad’s in Patrick County.
“Now I kind of feel like I want to just go lean in on bluegrass with it, you know, real bluegrass and take it back to that old school but also kind of take some music inspired by my dad and Corn Tornado,” he said. “That’s really the dream, is to kind of build something like that … remembered as something awesome.”
Via also got to announce some awards and introduce the Lost & Found tribute medley, which included Patrick County banjo man Sammy Shelor and mandolinist Scott Napier, who joined Mills’ band after Young died. The medley included “Leftover Biscuits,” which Handy’s brother, Harold Handy, wrote.
Roger Handy enjoyed that medley from the audience, noting that Napier played the instrument that Young had used through his Lost & Found career, a Hutto.
“When they did that tribute, it was amazing,” he said. “That’s one of the best-sounding mandolins you’ll ever hear. He played it, and I thought that was wonderful to be able to do that.”
Other nominees with Southwest Virginia ties were Christiansburg’s Scott Patrick, for best song, and Radford native Andrew Gregory, coproducer on music video nominee “New Cluck Old Hen,” by Steve Martin and Alison Brown, with Della Mae.
