MASON VIA

  It took four quick years for Mason Via to become one of the newest leaders of modern-day American roots music. During that whirlwind period, he toured the world as a member of Old Crow Medicine Show, earned a Grammy nomination for his work on the band's chart-topping album Jubilee, contributed songs to Grammy Winning and Nominated records by Molly Tuttle and Del McCoury Band, and released his solo debut, New Horizons. The momentum continues with Mason Via, a self-titled solo record that balances the progressive with the timeless, reintroducing Mason as a southern storyteller and sharp-eyed singer/songwriter steeped in the bluegrass tradition.

 

With its acoustic arrangements and top-shelf flat-picking, the new self-titled album "Mason Via " was inspired by the music Mason heard as a child in Appalachia, raised in two mountain towns that straddled the Virginia/North Carolina border. One parent lived in Danbury, NC; the other lived in Patrick County, VA. Mason spent time in both homes, absorbing the musical traditions of an area that hosted fiddlers conventions, banjo competitions, and campfire jams. 

 

Mason Via began playing the acoustic guitar and mandolin, winning regional competitions while still a teenager. He started writing his own songs, too. By the early 2020s, he'd already flown the flag for bluegrass and folk music on prime-time TV as an American Idol contestant, completed multiple tours as the youngest member of Old Crow Medicine Show, and collaborated with artists like Sierra Ferrell — another Appalachian export who, like him, put her own spin on the music of the mountains. Mason Via, his follow-up to a critically-acclaimed debut album championed by NPR and The Oxford-American, is rooted in the mountains, too. After traveling from coast to coast during his time with Old Crow Medicine Show, Mason hasn't just returned to his solo career with renewed purpose and an evolved sense of showmanship; he's also gained a new perspective on his own roots.