(Marion, VA) – A capacity crowd filled the Lincoln Theatre earlier this month to enjoy the nationally syndicated Song of the Mountains concert taping featuring the Seldom Scene and Amanda Cook Band. If you missed it your next chance to be part of the live audience is coming up on Saturday, March 1st. See and hear Grand Ole Opry regulars Darin and Brooke Aldridge with their special guest Dave Peterson and 1946.Also a special presentation will take place with Mac McRoy who has written a song titled “Song of the Mountains” Mac will be unveiling his new song at the show on March 1st.
Darin & Brooke Aldridge have spent over a decade amassing a loyal, active fan base, reaping awards, becoming Grand Ole Opry favorites with over 50 Opry performances, and releasing a string of critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums and Number 1 singles. Brooke is a four-time consecutive winner of the “Female Vocalist of the Year” for the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA). Darin was a former member of the legendary bluegrass band The Country Gentlemen. He is an IBMA “Mentor of the Year” award winner and a truly gifted singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist.
Darin and Brooke have also been recognized with IBMA’s nomination for “Vocal Group of the Year”. On April 18, 2023, they were named “Bluegrass Artists of the Year” at the Absolutely Gospel Music Awards in Nashville, TN. And in 2023 their smash hit single “Jordan “, featuring special guests Ricky Skaggs, Mo Pitney and Mark Fain was nominated for IBMA’s “Gospel Recorded Event of the Year” as well as the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Award for “Bluegrass/Country/Roots Song of The Year” and spent time at #1 on multiple Bluegrass/Gospel charts. Since the song’s release in early 2023 it has amassed over 1 million combined views and streams and will be a staple in their setlist from now on.
Their current album, “Talk of the Town” was released in April 2024 and debuted at #1 on the distinguished Billboard Top Bluegrass Album Chart and remained there in the Top 5 for more than 5 weeks. It has produced 4 singles through December 2024 that reached the top of the singles chart in various industry charts.
Darin and Brooke, native North Carolinians, live in Cherryville NC where in 2023 their hometown honored them with a mural on Main Street as part of the famed N.C. Musicians Trail.
David Peterson & 1946 exhibit unabashed bluegrass in straightforward unapologetic manners. They’re bluegrass with a capital B. Earmarked by airtight vocal harmonies, lyrics of substance, and highwire taut musicianship, they entertain without the need of technological gizmos. They bring it, buddy. Like Bill Monroe with Jimmy Martin diving alongside to piledrive a song into a microphone, when David Peterson & 1946 take to record or the stage, they back up and then they push, hard. Peterson chose 1946 as his band’s name as not only an homage to Monroe’s most famous lineup of Bluegrass Boys, which gelled in 1946; Peterson selected the name as a way to brand his band with an uncompromising descriptive.
Take Peterson. As if hardwired with an amp inside his burly frame, Peterson’s atomic voice projects to reach not simply the back row. He sings as if he’s trying to be heard down the block and around the corner. Oh, the power of his God-gifted pipes. And yet his voice can cradle subtlety of a ballad as well as any hard-driving bluegrass rambler he so chooses to tackle. Peterson’s 1946 earn high marks on the bluegrass scale
Established in 1999, David Peterson & 1946 forged an unforgiving route dead center within the bluegrass realm. Others belonged within the vanguard of progressive whatever. Peterson budged nary a notch. He looked and sounded authentically bluegrass then as now. While many embrace trends, Peterson exudes simple excellence in the unmitigated shade of blue.
And it works. For instance, David Peterson & 1946 have played on the Grand Ole Opry. They played the Ryman Auditorium, Lincoln Center, and 40 dates on Country Music Hall of Fame member’s Brooks & Dunn’s Neon Circus and Wild West Show Tour in 2003.
But be sure to know that David Peterson & 1946 do not parlay boot scootin’ bluegrass. When cradling a bluegrass tune, they treat it like a loving mama would her swaddling babe, as if nothing else matters. A hallowed thing, bluegrass, particularly when curated and graced by the exquisite talents of David Peterson & 1946.
Mac McRoy
Mac McRoy is from a small country town in Eastern NC called Blounts Creek, not even a caution light where he comes from. He heard Bluegrass at an early age from an old album his great grandmother had of Raymond Fairchild and his talkin’ banjo. Mac was hooked. He sang in church and around family gatherings but didn’t pick guitar until 1997. Being a lefty an instrument was hard to come by. After getting his first lefty guitar for Christmas of that year he learned 2 chords by the end of day and wrote his first song the next morning. Now he plays several acoustic string instruments and still writes songs and sings with his bride at church and out on the road with his band South Point . This music just blesses his heart and hopes it will bless others. Mac thanks God for his talents and gift of song writing and the opportunity to share it with others.