Biography
Mountain Heart are a bluegrass band filled with soulful artists. Members of the group are guitarist Steve Gulley, fiddler Jimmy VanCleve, mandolin player Alan Perdue, bassist Johnny Dowdle, and Barry Abernathy on the banjo. The band was formed in 1998, but each of the members had already put in lots of time perfecting his skills, some even winning awards — Abernathy was voted banjo player of the year in 1997 by the Preservation of Bluegrass Music. VanCleve, Gulley, and Abernathy had all performed with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. Perdue and Dowdle worked with other bluegrass groups. In 1999, due in part to the success of their self-titled debut, Mountain Heart were voted as the International Bluegrass Music Association's Emerging Artists of the Year. Between 2000 and 2006 they released four more records: Journey (2001), No Other Way (2002), Force of Nature (2004), and Wide Open (2006).
