Bluegrass musicians relocating to city

In the late 1980s, Terry Woodward and others dreamed that the bluegrass music museum, which they were proposing, would attract artists, recording studios and instrument builders to relocate to Owensboro.

It’s taken more than three decades, but it’s finally happening.

This year, Rick Faris, a musician and instrument builder, opened his Kentucky Guitar Works in the old location of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

And he brought his friend, Shane DeWitt, an apprentice luthier, from Topeka, Kansas, to work with him.

About the same time, Scott Napier and his wife, Lauren Price Napier, moved to Owensboro.

He’s a musician and is now the program coordinator of the new Bluegrass & Traditional Music program at Owensboro Community & Technical College.

She and her twin sister, Leanna Price, perform as The Price Sisters.

Faris said the fact that Owensboro now calls itself “The Bluegrass Music Capital of the World” and is two hours from Nashville, made his decision to move here easy.

“I love this town,” he said. “And it’s so close to where bluegrass music originated.”

He spent several years in the band, Special Consensus, before starting the Rick Faris Band.

Tuesday, he was playing the first guitar built in Owensboro during an interview at the Hall of Fame.

30 to 35 guitars a yearHis goal is to hire more luthiers and build 30 to 35 guitars a year here.

Faris is cutting back on touring.

“In 2019, I was on the road for 226 days,” he said. “This year, it will be 38 days.”

The bluegrass scene here is much bigger than in Topeka, Faris said.

Scott Napier, a Hazard native, spent nine years with Larry Sparks and then toured with Dale Ann Bradley, Marty Raybon and the Lost & Found.

In 2014, he accepted a full-time teaching position at Hazard Community & Technical College’s Kentucky School of Bluegrass and Traditional Music, where he was an associate professor.

Napier said he was approached by Steve Johnson, director of Owensboro’s Bluegrass Music Initiative.

“We were talking and I said I would love to take what I was doing to Owensboro,” he said. “I can’t think of a better town to have this.”

Napier said he ran a bluegrass mandolin camp with the late Hall of Famer Bobby Osborne in eastern Kentucky.

He plans to bring that camp to Owensboro.

Napier still plays with the band Wildfire.

Owensboro, he said, “is just big enough” for bluegrass musicians.

Napier said he hopes to attract international students to the OCTC program and have them perform around the area.

The program will add more teachers as it grows, he said.

Recording studio plannedHe said a local recording studio is in the works.

Lauren Napier has a day job as store manager at the Hall of Fame.

She said she and her sister are on the road 30 to 40 days a year performing and “we want it to grow.”

They started performing in 2016 and were in Owensboro in 2019, performing in the Hall of Fame’s “Bluegrass in the Schools” program for two weeks.

“I was here in 2012 at the Monroe Mandolin Camp at the old museum,” Napier said. “I got a scholarship when I was a senior in high school.”

She said she and her husband were both ready for a change when the opportunity to move to Owensboro came up.

“Everybody has been so welcoming,” Napier said. “I’ve never seen a community as into bluegrass as Owensboro.”

But, she said, “I wish we had more venues where people could hear bluegrass during the week and where artists could play.”

Johnson said the Napiers and Faris will tell their friends about Owensboro.

And he expects more to relocate to Owensboro.

“We want people to know this is the ‘Bluegrass Music Capital of the World’,” Johnson said. “Bluegrass needs a home and Owensboro is the right size.”

He said he expects more announcements in the future.