John Driskell Hopkins & Balsam Range Debut at The Grand Ole Opry 3/8 And Perform Select Dates in The South
John Driskell Hopkins and Balsam Range Performances:
Fri 2/1 Asheville, NC Isis Music Hall
Thu 2/14 Nashville, TN The Basement
Fri 3/8 Nashville, TN The Grand Ole Opry
Sat 3/9 Knoxville, TN The Shed
Thu, 3/14 Athens GA The Melting Point
More dates tba at www.JohnDriskellHopkins.com
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John Driskell Hopkins and Balsam Range are excited to perform at The Grand Ole Opry on Friday, March 8th! “I’m doubly honored to be able to play my own songs in one of the greatest music venues in the world,” says Hopkins. They will be performing music from Daylight, which was was independently released on Jan 22nd and will also be performing at select shows throughout the year.
Hopkins, widely known as a founding member and bass player for the Zac Brown Band, has been performing music for 20+ years. After hearing Balsam Range on Sirius XM one day, Hopkins, a lover of roots music of all varieties, called them up to see about accompanying him on his original tunes in a new album and a new musical bond was formed with outstanding results in Daylight.
Of performing with with BR, John says “Being on stage with Balsam Range is like body-surfing in warm butter-cream icing with hillbilly cherubs. Smooth…” Balsam Range is Buddy Melton (fiddle, vocals), Darren Nicholson (Mandolin, vocals), Marc Pruett (Banjo, Vocals), Caleb Smith (guitar, vocals), and Tim Surrett (bass, dobro, vocals).
What Folks Are Saying About Daylight:
“A twang-tastic new record… The chemistry between Hopkins and the band is smoking and they shine on the 13-track platter.”
–-Jeffrey Sisk, The Daily News
CMT’s Craig Shelburne listed “I Will Lay Me Down” as a recommended track in indie releases
“…what a great sound for John! I’m excited for people to hear him in this raw and broken-down format, his unique voice front and center!”
–-Oliver Wood (of the Wood Brothers)
“a voice huskier than Charlie Daniels after a hard night.”
—Jim Farber, New York Daily News, #5 in Top 10 picks in music for the week of Jan. 20, 2013
“John Hopkins is a serious student of all kinds of music, and I think it comes through well in the songs he writes. He really runs the gambit from soft, Gospel-sounding acoustic, to hard, driving rock-swing things. John is a ‘power singer,’ and man he can deliver.”
–Balsam Range’s Marc Pruett
“John Hopkins’ new album, Daylight, has rich vocals and excellent pickers that are wrapped around well-crafted songs. What’s not to love?”
–Jim Lauderdale
“An excellent group of songs that fits somewhere in the acoustic country/indie/roots area… If you drew line graphs plotting the changes each song brings to a CD – tempo, subject, mood … – some CDs would flatline and the majority would show moderate spikes up and down. Daylight’s graph would look like the EKG of a person on speed, and every song is a good one.”
–Larry Stephens, Lonesome Road Review
“What pushes this album past other examples of country singers adopting bluegrass trappings is the diverse capabilities of Balsam Range. They’ve never been a traditional bluegrass band, and the arrangements here are more like acoustic country arrangements than Appalachian bluegrass. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this sounds like one of the classic MTV Unplugged albums, which subverted the rock canon by killing all the electricity and forcing the performers to look inward for their power.”
–Devon Leger, Hearth Music, No Depression
“Daylight has some material in common with ZBB, but is even more rootsy, thanks to Balsam Ridge’s involvement on every track. Resonator guitar heads are going wild over ‘Runaway Train,’ with Jerry Douglas sitting in. Banjo innovator Tony Trischka guests on the title cut.”
–Philadelphia City Paper
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