bluegrass
Fancy Gap, Virginia
Photo courtesy of artist
For a musician celebrated as one of the top female singers and bandleaders in bluegrass music, it’s surprising that Amanda Cook kept her vocal talent hidden from everyone but her grandmother well into her twenties. Even her husband, a childhood friend-turned-high-school-sweetheart, had not heard her sing. Now fans around the country recognize her crystal-clear voice and passionate delivery of some of the most compelling songs in bluegrass today.
Growing up in the Florida Panhandle, Amanda got her early bluegrass education as a spectator, attending festivals with her father, Mike Blanton, a talented banjo player. Bluegrass “was just part of our DNA,” music she continued to love through years of playing flute in the marching band and starting a career (in banking) and a family. In 2007, when Amanda was in her mid-20s, her dad asked her to join him in forming a new band, High Cotton. Amanda taught herself to play mandolin and later the upright bass. High Cotton specialized in a very traditional style of bluegrass. “It was like home to me, I knew all those songs and the styling,” she reflects today, but in 2013 Amanda decided to pursue her own calling by founding the Amanda Cook Band. “I would say all the greats that we all admire just played great music and didn’t think about being traditional or progressive. That’s the way I approach my music. I greatly admire all those before us that laid the foundations of this music, and I think they would want us to carry on and make the music ‘our way.’”
The rapid success of her eponymous band brought new opportunities, including a multi-album deal with Mountain Fever Records. Recognizing her talent for arranging and producing, Mountain Fever recruited Cook as a recording engineer, and her family relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains in 2019. Now she’s the studio’s chief of operations, and her new home base in Virginia has put her in the heart of bluegrass culture. Steady touring and albums at number one on the Billboard bluegrass charts followed, making the Amanda Cook Band one of the genre’s brightest lights today.
Amanda believes the breadth of their musical inspirations sets her band apart. Individually, they have experience ranging from gospel to metal to jazz, but they come together around their shared love of bluegrass. Banjo picker Carolyne Van Lierop Boone has been with Amanda since the band was founded; hailing from Tennessee, Carolyne is a veteran of the family bands Sheriff’s Posse and the Rivertown Girls. Mississippi’s Josh Faul performed with Delta Reign before joining Amanda as her upright bass player. Tennessee’s Troy Boone started playing banjo at age seven but switched to mandolin in high school; he joined the band after touring the country with bluegrass stars Sideline. Fiddler George Mason, an Arkansas native, has been performing professionally since his teens, and has toured with a who’s who of Grand Ole Opry stars—and the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. The newest member of the band is lead guitarist Justin Alexander, a recent graduate of East Tennessee State University’s famed bluegrass program. Together, the band is “still riding the wave of excitement from our Opry debut last spring,” an energy they bring with them to Richmond this fall with their captivating, hard-driving sounds.