View from the mountain and a band that was ahead of their time.
Joe Tripplet was a member of the D.C. counterculture band Claude Jones with Happy Acosta and Jay Sprague. That band shared a farm out in Warrenton with Nils Lofgren & Grin and I'm sure that there are many tales of life on the farm from that amalgalm. Joe and Happy began performing as an acoustic duo calling themselves The Rosslyn Mt. Boys (RMB from here out). The RMB made a decision to go electric and invited Peter Bonta of The Nighthawks join as bass player along with Bob Berberich from Grin on drums . Tommy Hannum on pedal-steel guitar, who had been working with Emmy Lou Harris in her D.C. days, rounded out the band and the RMB were set.When Jay Sprague also came aboard from Claude Jones, Peter was able to move over to keyboards and guitar. The RMB were contemporaries of the Flying Burrito Brothers and both followed the trail blazed by the Byrds. If the RMB had been West Coast based like the Burritos, they may have broken through to a universal recognition. Their first album "The Rosslyn Mt. Boys" released in 1977 on Gene Rosenthal's Adelphi label sold over 12,500 copies. They opened for and backed up stars like Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn and Buck Owens. The RMB called it quits in 1979 and the members went in various directions. Peter was a member of Artful Dodger before opening Wally Cleaver's Recording in Fredericksburg,VA; Tommy Hannum relocated to Nashville and has been Ricky Van Shelton's band leader and an in-demand session player for some years while Peter Bonta and Rico Petrocelli, the last RMB bassist, went on to record and tour with Mary Chapin Carpenter.
There's been a lot of water under Key Bridge since the last recording by the Rosslyn Mountain Boys. The band that brought real country, rockabilly and its own, original, brand of country-rock once again defies the boundaries. This is a collection of some of the best RMB material that spans from the late '70s to today - from Rosslyn to Nashville, Fredericksburg to Frederick, form D.C. to Memphis...
Same soul, same voices, Different Skyline...
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