Kentucky Traveler: My Life in Music
*Starred Review* In the 1980s, Skaggs was one hot ticket in country music, raking in Grammys and other awards by the handful. Both before and since that heyday, he’s been a bluegrasser—a hot mandolinist, a fine fiddler, and, when he started a tour minus a lead guitarist, an ace on a D-28 Martin. As he explains in his own voice—which Eddie Dean, who helped Ralph Stanley forge Man of Constant Sorrow (2009), has made a fluent literary vehicle—his career has been a matter of following a God-given calling. He was also to the “manner” born, you might say, in mountainous eastern Kentucky. His father was a keen amateur guitarist devoted to bluegrass, who encouraged his early-shown musical bent in near-daily teaching, coaching, and playing sessions that prepared him so well that Ralph Stanley added him to the Clinch Mountain Boys when he was still shy of 16. From Stanley’s band, he went to the Country Gentlemen, J. D. Crowe’s New South, and Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band before stepping out as a leader himself. He tells the stories of that first half of his life and of the rest, too, with natural enthusiasm, innate good nature, and an unflagging, positive Christian spirit that rivals that of one of his nonmusical heroes, Billy Graham. --Ray Olson