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| This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen magazine #98 (February / March 2002). The magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription. |
Rhonda Vincent began what was to be her professional career at age three, appearing onstage with her family's band the Sally Mountain Show. It's a path that's taken the Missouri-based musician through more than a dozen albums, to venues all over the world, to Nashville for a shot at a mainstream country career, to guest appearances on Dolly Parton's recordings and the CBS Early Show and, with her last two recordings, back to the bluegrass she grew up with and feels is her musical home. "I've learned so much from this life of music that I've led, from playing with my family to the country music days, every aspect. I've just always tried to learn, and I've had the chance to work with and learn from the very best in the business," she said. "I try to utilize all of those things and to take every opportunity to learn. I think that's why I am where I am now." Where Vincent is now, among other things, is receiving notice from decidedly non-bluegrass publications such as Newsweek magazine and The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, she's just been given the highest accolade from her bluegrass peers: She was named Entertainer of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association in October 2001.
Recalling her childhood growing up in rural Missouri, "It wasn't like music was a choice — it was a way of life," she said. "Music has been traced back at least five generations in the Vincent family, so it was something they were doing long before I was ever thought of. When you're born a Vincent, you're going to play and you're going to sing. It's just a way of life, and, you know, my brothers [Vincent has two: Darrin, who is in Ricky Skaggs' band, and Brian, an accountant] and I, we didn't know any better.
"Every day when I got home from school, my father and grandfather were waiting, and we'd sing 'til dinner. After dinner other friends came around, and we literally played every night of my life while I was growing up," Vincent recalled. Though she did sometimes miss taking part in school activities when she got to her teenage years, "music was so important to me — it really was a way of life. School was just something I did, I had to do, but [I'd think] okay, now that's over for the day, and I can run home and get to the music," she explained. When it's suggested that not everyone who grows up in a family band takes it to the professional heights she has, Vincent agrees. "That's true. I was talking to a friend a few years ago; she hadn't seen me in a while, and, in fact, her husband had played with our band awhile when I was about five, I think. She said, 'I watched you grow up with that, playing every day, and I thought that when you grew older you'd hate it.'
"Instead, I grew to love it," Vincent reflected. "I can't imagine ever wanting to do anything else."
Rhonda Vincent radiates that joy in her music when she's onstage, and it's clear too that she's in absolute command of her main instrument, the mandolin. Although she now favors the mandolin and can play "pretty much anything with strings," she started out as a drummer.
"My dad, he plays all the different instruments," Vincent said. "When I was six, he got me a drum set and a snare drum and a stand and a set of brushes. That was probably the only instrument that wasn't taken in the Sally Mountain Show at the time. Later, we got on this country music show that we became regulars on. I was basically coming on and singing — they had a drummer already. But the guy who ran the show decided that if you just sang, you wouldn't get paid — anybody who didn't play an instrument didn't get paid. So from that point, my dad said, 'Here's the mandolin, here's G, C, and D, and next week you're playing this instrument for two and a half hours.' Even though I only knew three chords!" Vincent recalled, laughing. "My dad always had to find an angle around what the policy was, you know, and that one worked for him — here I was coming up at seven years old and singing and playing my three chords!"
This is an excerpt from an article in Dirty Linen #98 (Feb/Mar. '02). Read the full text in the magazine, available via subscription or on newsstands and in bookstores.
