The name of the band may not be familiar – yet – but the bluegrass pickers headlining Nightfall on Friday night, June 12, are some of the best in the business. Ronnie Bowman, Don Rigsby and Kenny Smith front Band of Ruhks, known for a time as The Rambling Rooks.
Before coming together as a trio in 2013, they had spent more than a decade in solo careers after leaving the Lonesome River Band in 2001. Their first stab at a name as a trio was The Rambling Rooks, though they’ve said it was always a temporary moniker.
When it came time to release a record, they wanted to brand the band with a new name and distinct sound.
“Ruhks,” Bowman has explained in various interviews, is a Persian word for a warrior’s chariot. “They would dress up their chariots to look like a castle and bring terror to anyone they were fighting. They looked like the chess piece, like a tower,” he told BluegrassToday.com.
Bowman says he loves the name “and its weirdness.”
To celebrate the name and its original English spelling, we’ve come up with five more interesting words that help to define the new band.
* Reunification: Bowman, Rigsby and Smith were core members of the Lonesome River Band when the supergroup cut its most commercially popular album, “Finding the Way,” along with “One Step Forward” and “Talking to Myself.” They departed the band at the same time in 2001 to pursue solo careers.
* Ubiquitous: The band’s three key players stayed plenty busy in the time between the Lonesome River Band and Band of Ruhks. In addition to receiving accolades for his solo albums, Bowman has scored No. 1 hits as a songwriter with artists including Kenny Chesney and Brooks & Dunn and was recognized with three Male Vocalist of the Year awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association as well as awards for Album and Song of the Year. Rigsby, a two-time Traditional Male Vocalist of the Year for the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America, has released six well-received albums. Smith has remained a staple in the bluegrass circuit, releasing eight albums with his wife, Amanda, and receiving a Grammy Award nomination and two nods for Guitarist of the Year from the IBMA.
* Homage: Bluegrass godfather Ralph Stanley sings an a cappella rendering on the first single, “Coal Minin’ Man,” from the band’s self-titled debut album. “Getting to work with the legendary, iconic Ralph Stanley on ‘Coal Minin’ Man’ is the perfect match for the song and truly an honor for Band of Ruhks,” Bowman told Rolling Stone.
* Kibosh: Two early recording session for the new album were canned “because after we listened, it sounded just like the Lonesome River Band,” Bowman told BluegrassToday.com. “We didn’t want to do that, because there’s already a Lonesome River Band. We didn’t want to be the LR-used-to-B.”
* Skulduggery: The fourth member of the band is John Meyer, but maybe the hiring wasn’t exclusively about Meyer’s banjo talents, Bowman joked to BluegrassToday.com. “We tried a lot of people out, but we had to have the perfect fit. He’s a good-looking young kid, and he’ll make us look better – he’ll drive all the girls crazy. But seriously, he’s amazing, a very mature kid – and he gets it.”