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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Po’ Ramblin’ Boys CourtneyBurris©2015

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Come meet the Po' Ramblin' Boys, whose "Blue Ribbon Bluegrass," is the toast of Ole Smoky Moonshine and the Great Smoky Mountains. Band and member bios, videos and everything you need to book the Boys for your next event or festival.

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Po’ Ramblin’ BoysPo’ Ramblin’ BoysCourtneyBurris©2015

!e Po’ Ramblin’ BoysThey were born in the shadow of a moonshine still in the Great Smoky Mountains, springing to life with all the zest and zeal you’d expect from a 1940s-style Tennessee bluegrass band.

But like the thousands of tourists who hear them each day at Ole Smoky Moonshine locations at The Holler in Gatlinburg and The Island in Pigeon Forge, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys have rambled far from home.

Yet, these four friends – C.J. Lewandowski, Jereme Brown, Josh ‘Jug’ Rinkel and Jasper Lorentzen – remain close to their musical roots by cranking out some of the tightest and hardest-driving traditional bluegrass you’ll find in the Smokies.

“We want to be known for keeping the old music alive, and making some new music that’s still close to the roots,” says Lewandowski, a native Missourian who is the group’s eldest member as well as its lead singer and mandolin player. “A tree can’t stand without its roots. So we are just trying to keep those roots alive. We want to complement and not take away.”

“We want to take the best from all the bluegrass pioneers,” added Brown, the band’s youngest member but a fourth-generation banjo player whose own roots include a grandmother raised just a stone’s throw from Bill Monroe’s hometown of Rosine, Ky. “That’s why C.J. plays the Monroe-style mandolin, and I play a Ralph Stanley-style banjo. It all ties together. It works.”

It works, all right. It works like a Missouri mule.

Just ask the band’s fast-growing legion of fans, most of whom are among the 10 million tourists who vaca-tion yearly in the Smokies.

Thirsty for a taste of the Smoky Mountain experience, they amble into Ole Smoky Moonshine to not only sample the ’shine but also discover – many for the first time – this music called bluegrass.

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

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“The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys were the highlight of my trip to Gatlinburg,” a fan from Baton Rouge wrote on the band’s Facebook page. “Sitting outside in rocking chairs listening to some of the finest bluegrass musicians I’ve heard in a long, long time! Great music and jokes too! Just delightful.”

The band calls it “Blue Ribbon Bluegrass,” but whatever you call it, it’s infectious.

Whether they’re playing a standard by bluegrass giants Bill Monroe or Ralph Stanley or a new heartbreaker penned by rhythm guitarist Rinkel, there’s an unmistakable energy to it. The hard-driving bass pounds like a jackhammer as it keeps time; the melodic rhythm hooks you deep with the first note and doesn’t let go until the last playful note of the banjo.

“We are all on the same musical footing,” says Lewandowski. “We’re all big into rhythm and timing, so we build off of that.”

But the high-octane tunes are only part of the show delivered by this quartet of fun-loving friends –there’s a healthy dose of showmanship, too.

Dressed in Pointer BrandTM bibbed overalls, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys dance, wiggle and waggle on stage as they interject their own brand of hilarity into each show. Sometimes, their on-stage antics surprise even themselves – like the time when the bearded Jasper Lorentzen, sitting astride his bass fiddle like a racehorse, broke the instrument’s stand. The crowd loved it.

“He snapped it clean off,” laughs Lewandowski. “I swear it wasn’t planned – it just happened.”

It’s the kind of spontaneity that marks The Po‘ Ramblin‘ Boys, whose seeds of friendship were planted back home years ago but nurtured throughout Gatlinburg’s 2014 summer-long Tunes & Tales street music festival. When Tunes & Tales ended, no one wanted to go back home. Instead, they banded together to become The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, Ole Smoky Moonshine’s liveliest band, and the first to take to the stage at its new location at The Island.

The combination of music and showmanship enabled the group to distinguish itself from Ole Smoky Moon-shine’s other house bands and raised the performance level to new heights. Today, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys can usually be found at either of Ole Smoky Moonshine’s two locations, sometimes performing as often as seven days a week.

The Boys are thankful for the opportunity to be full-time musicians, fully realizing that not every musician gets that chance. This spring, as a nod to its OSM connection, the band plans to add a 1946 Chevrolet pickup truck to their show, complete with a moonshine still emblazoned on it.

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

pa" 3Yes, life with Ole Smoky Moonshine is good. But does that mean The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are done ram-bling? Nope.

Fact is, Lewandowski reports The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys will soon announce details of an August-September tour of Europe and Canada.

And, of course, the Boys are also ready, willing and able to ramble right into your town. Call today for book-ing ... and watch ’em ’shine.

# # #

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

Jereme Bro#You don’t have to go far to see where Jereme Brown’s bluegrass roots were planted – just hop on over to You-Tube.

For it is there that you’ll find his family’s bluegrass band, Tommy Brown & The County Line Grass, per-forming Pick Some Wild Mountain Flowers for Mary. Oh, and that half-pint fiddler you see on stage? That would be Jereme Brown at age 5.

Of course, he doesn’t remember anything about that 1997 performance in Louisville, Ky.

“I was always on the stage – even if I shouldn’t have been,” the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys’ banjo picker recounts now. “I was never forced to play. I was just up there learning, not really contributing to the band at that time but it was still good for the experience and if I hadn’t been up there I might not have taken music as seriously because I wanted to contribute to the band.”

Even today Jereme is still the youngest member in the band but his bluegrass lineage dates back four genera-tions and provides a sturdy foundation for this group of music-loving 20-somethings. His father, of course, is the banjo-pickin’ Tommy Brown. His grandfather played the harmonica, and his great grandfather played the banjo. His grandmother is from the same neck of the woods as Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, and was part of a family bluegrass band with her broth-ers.

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CourtneyBurrisPhoto©2015

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

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“I’m not going to say they grew up with Bill because I don’t know that for sure, but they originated from the same area and that’s actually the side of the family that my drew my Dad into the music,” Jereme says. “I love the fact that

the music I love has been apart of my family for generations. It makes me better understand the addiction I have for the

music.”

Although he soon gave up on the fiddle, he picked up the banjo and never looked back. “I wanted to be able to play the banjo like he did,” he says. “He showed me one roll on the banjo that was pretty much it. I was off and pickin’. Guess you could say it’s in my blood.”

Most every weekend would find him on stage with the family’s band.

Along the way, he would learn the guitar, bass and mandolin as well but he always came back to the banjo – and the Ralph Stanley style of playing it.

“My main musical influences are my Dad and a lot of the stuff by the pioneers of bluegrass, but mainly Ralph Stanley,” he says.

It’s little wonder then that, in the tight-knit bluegrass community, Jereme would cross paths and become friends with Stanley’s son, Ralph Stanley II. And when “Ralph II” was in need of a driver for his tour bus, he called upon Jereme who was already driving a big motorhome for his dad’s County Line Grass band.

After driving the younger Stanley to a show in Canada and back, he received a call that would send his mu-sical career in another direction. That call was from C.J. Lewandowski, whom he had met in 2008 while working the sound system at a music hall not far from his home in Shepherdsville, Ky.

“I had only been to Gatlinburg, Tennessee once in my life,” Jereme recounted. “And that was to check out the Ole Smoky Moonshine distillery and to see the bands play and experience the atmosphere. But when C.J. called and told me that he was getting a band together, I was ready. I moved down here and the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys were formed a month later. Everything just came together and it works.”

Indeed. The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are a good fit for the banjo picker who first took the stage as a 5-year-old fiddler. That was many songs ago, but for Jereme and his bandmates in the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, the future is looking bright.

# # #

“I love the fact that the music

I love has been a part of my family for generations. It

makes me better understand the addiction I have for the

music.”

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

C.J. LewandowskiHe was in the middle of a fiddle lesson when a picture on the wall changed every-thing.

“It was a picture of Bill Monroe holding a mando-lin, and you could just see the power in that mandolin,” C.J. Lewandowski is saying. “When he had that mandolin in his hands, he was in con-trol. When he was on stage, he was The Man. I decided I wanted to be like The Man.”

It was a defining moment for the 15-year-old Mis-sourian, an epiphany that caused him to set aside the fiddle, pick up the mandolin and pursue the bluegrass life. That was a dozen years ago, and today, Lewan-dowski is sticking close to those roots as the flamboy-ant front man for The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, a band that builds on the traditional music of the bluegrass pioneers but does so with a flair all its own.

“My philosophy on my music is ‘a tree can’t thrive without roots.’ Stick close to your roots, but add your touch,” he says. “Traditional bluegrass is my

passion and what I will al-ways play. The first gen-eration is the greatest gen-eration. I want to be known for keeping the tradition alive.”

His loyalty to the genre’s pioneers is unwavering, the result of years spent under the mentorship of such bluegrass giants as Jim and Rich Orchard of The Ozark Bluegrass Boys, Ray Gore, Mike Heller and Frank Ray of Cedar Hill Blue-grass.

“The Orchard brothers taught me a lot – Jim was the one who influenced me most. He’s the one who taught me the value of the mandolin chop,” Lewan-dowski said. “Frank Ray lived 30 miles from my

house and I would go to his house and learn man-dolin. Another thing Jim taught me was, ‘If you’re not going to play like Bill Monroe – or within that influence of traditional bluegrass, then you proba-bly ought not play it.”

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CourtneyBurrisPhoto©2015

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

pa" 2It was a philosophy Lewandowski took to heart when he and his best friend, Steve Lawson (a fourth-generation banjo player), put together their first band. Blue Generation, which also included Heller and Gore, released two CDs and enjoyed regional success for two years before disbanding in 2005.

Two years later, Lewandowski put that first-generation knowledge to work as he penned Man of the Week, a traditional bluegrass heartbreaker that enjoyed regional success and spawned a new band, Men of the Week. The group cut two albums and earned a small but loyal following (future Po’ Ramblin’ Boys guitarist Josh Rinkel among them) on the social networking site MySpace.

The all-Missourian band played the Midwest circuit and generated buzz in the industry as Lewandowski, decked out in suits, ties and black-and-white shoes, began establishing himself not only as a musician, but a showman. Like the pioneers before them, the band utilized a single microphone. “The single mic is the only way, I believe, a bluegrass show should be performed,” said Lewandowski. “It adds excitement and more of a show to the live performance and makes the band work more as a team.”

The teamwork paid off as Men of the Week captured the Traditional Bluegrass Band of the Year award at the 36th annual SPBGMA (Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Association) Midwest Music Awards in Jefferson City, Mo. The band’s fiddler, Gerald Jones, took home Fiddler of the Year and Lewan-dowski, won the Midwest Entertainer of the Year Award.

When Men of the Week disbanded in 2010, Lewandowski teamed with another consummate showman, Karl Shiflett & Big Country Show. Together, they traveled the United States, Canada, Europe and even per-formed on a cruise to Belize and Cozumel.

“People were comparing me to Karl because of our dress on stage and our single-mic setup but the funny thing is, I’d never seen one of Karl’s shows,” says Lewandowski. “I had my idea about showmanship, but Karl refined it.”

“Showmanship is touching the audience member,” Lewandowski added. “Make them smile, laugh, cry, miss loved ones and remember the past. Keep them on the edge of their seats with emotion. Entertain through music, stories and history. No dead time should be in a show. The people pay for a show and that’s what you, as a musician, have to provide. Every second of dead time is a moment you could lose a valuable fan.”

It’s a philosophy that has served The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys and Lewandowski well. Of course, the focus will always remain on the music first.

“Bluegrass is a simple music, but it’s also complex,” says Lewandowski. “It can be over thought. Simplify. Bluegrass is more emotion than theory. You have to live the music to execute it properly, that is you have to have felt the emotions you are singing about, grew up in a country way, lived all the stories in order to make contact with the listener. It’s the most real music that I can think of.”

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

Ja$er Loren%enYou might think Jasper Lo-rentzen “rides” his bass fid-dle because he grew up on a 500-acre horse and cattle ranch in North Dakota, but you’d be wrong.

Jasper rides because that’s where music takes him.

“There was this small, four-piece bluegrass band back in Washburn, North Dakota, and the bass player was a lady…,” Jasper says, a smile crossing his face as he begins his story. “I heard her say once, ‘You have to move your hips when you play the bass … it’s all about moving your body and keeping your hips moving.’ She was actually joking and wasn’t even talking to me but I took it to heart. If you can’t feel the music in your whole body, what’s the point?”

Jasper’s been “feeling the music” for most of his life. Raised in a tight-knit musical family with his five sib-lings, a mother who taught music and a father who sang tenor in a gospel quartet, it wasn’t surprising that Jasper should start playing guitar at age 11. But it wasn’t until his father developed an interest in bluegrass and purchased an upright bass from bluegrass icon Frank Ray that Jasper took over the big fiddle for him-self.”

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CourtneyBurrisPhoto©2015

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

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“I never was that good at guitar – my rhythm wasn’t any good,” he says. “But I decided I could play bass better than my Dad, so I just took it over.”

With his father on guitar, kid sister Starlit on fiddle and himself on bass, they formed Old Hat, a family trio that played local and regional venues. “We played a lot of bluegrass-influenced songs, songs by Hank Wil-liams and Jimmie Rodgers,” says Jasper. “It wasn’t really a bluegrass band – we didn’t have a mandolin or banjo or anything like that.”

Soon after the family moved to southern Indiana, Jasper and Starlit attended the Kentucky School of Blue-grass & Traditional Music in Hyden where they first met a young mandolinist named C.J. Lewandowski, who had moved to Shepherdsville, Ky., from Missouri. A year later, in 2011, Jasper met two other Kentucki-ans, guitarist Josh Rinkel and banjo picker Jereme Brown, at the 37th annual Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA) convention. Unknown to them all, the wheels were in motion for the creation of the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys.

But first, there would be other roads to travel – roads that would take Jasper, his sister and father, into Indi-ana prisons where they performed for inmates as part of a music ministry. “It was great getting the opportunity to play in prisons,” he says. “The people are always very appreciative and responsive to the music.”

The prison ministry also gave him another opportunity – it’s where he met his wife, Sofia. “Her Dad and my Dad had grown up together in Alberta, Canada, and she and her family also played music in prisons as a ministry,” Jasper says, adding that Sofia played bass, sang and performed ballet to contemporary Christian music. “We knew each other before, but we really got to know each other in prison literally.”

The bluegrass bug was still biting, however. Jasper and his sister would form Flickertail Holler, a bluegrass band of their own which not only performed at various venues around home but also was tapped for Gatlin-burg’s spring/summer street music festival, Tunes & Tales Festival in 2011. They would return for the event the next three years – the last two while he also worked on the retail side of Ole Smoky Moonshine.

It was while working Ole Smoky’s “bottle shop” that Jasper learned of an opening for bass player with the new group C.J. Lewandowski was putting together for Ole Smoky Moonshine at The Holler. Reluctant to ask because he didn’t know the mandolinist well, he urged others to put in a good word for him.

“Finally, I ended up talking to him and got the audition on Sunday,” Jasper recalled.

Like the other Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, he showed up wearing his Pointer BrandTM overalls. And when he hopped astride his big Kay bass fiddle and began to ride, writhe and wiggle throughout The Rooster, he had the job.

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

Jo& ‘Jug’ RinkelHe was born in Kentucky where Bill Monroe is king, and he comes to The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys from a bluegrass band that lives and breathes The Stanley Brothers.

But it wasn’t those blue-grass giants who drew Josh Rinkel into the world of bluegrass – it was … paint-ball?

“I don’t know if you know anything about the sport of paintball, but someone as wide as me shouldn’t be in it,” he says with a smile as he explains how he “tired of getting blasted” and sold his paintball gun for $200.

“So I walked into a music store and was looking around, and I found a banjo that was like $190,” he continues. “So I bought it and as I come walking out of the store, there’s my Mom with this look of ‘What in the world is going on?!’ I said, ‘I bought a banjo.’ She asked, ‘Do you even know what a banjo is?’ and I said, ‘Not really. But I think it’s like a guitar I guess.’”

It was a purchase that stunned his family, a family that was decidedly UNmusical. “No one in my immediate family has anything to do with music,” he said.

Even so, his mother, who owned a hair salon, thought she might encourage her young son by trading haircuts for banjo lessons – and she just so happened to have a family of bluegrass musicians among her clients. The family? Tommy Brown & The County Line Grass band with a young banjo picker named Jereme Brown.

CourtneyBurrisPhoto©2015

– More –Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

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“They gave me a couple of lessons, but then they came to my Mom and said, ‘Listen, this banjo isn’t going to work – it’s a piece of junk,’” said Rinkel. “They said, ‘A good banjo costs a few grand. He’ll never learn on this because it’ll never sound the same as what we are showing him.’ So she says, ‘OK, we’ll get him the banjo that he needs. We’ll buy him a good banjo. Just let me know how much it will cost.’ And they came back and said, ‘It’s going to be $3,500.’ So, she wrote a check out and the next thing I knew I had a $3,500 custom-built banjo and not a clue how to play it.”

It would take eight months before the banjo was ready, but Rinkel wasn’t waiting. He joined the Brown fam-ily’s bluegrass band on the road, working the CD table and the sound board. “So, here I was on the road with a bluegrass band and I didn’t know who Ralph Stanley was, I didn’t know who Bill Monroe was – I hardly knew what a banjo was,” he said.

But he learned. And it wasn’t long before Josh – now nicknamed ‘Jug’ by a promoter who could never re-member his real name – was picking banjo on stage with Tommy Brown & The County Line Grass. When the group lost one of its guitarists, he grudgingly made the switch. “I barely knew how to play guitar,” he protested. “I was mad about it at first, but I eventually learned to play the guitar.”

As he spent his weekends on the road with the band, his musical interests shifted from rap music to country to bluegrass. He began to appreciate the history behind the music, and found a band to his liking on MySpace.

“They had some music clips on there, and I was listening to them, and I was like ‘Hey, this is good stuff! This is a young bunch of guys laying out some traditional music.’ History is my thing. I was always into the traditional music and preserving it because it went along with my love for history.”

That band was Men of the Week, founded by C.J. Lewandowski. He would later meet Lewandowski and his bandmates by accident while playing at a bluegrass festival in Rosine, Ky., and begin a friendship that would grow over the next several years. When Lewandowski invited him to join Gatlinburg’s Tunes & Tales, he was ready. “I moved down here to work Tunes & Tales but I never worked one day for them,” he says. “I hooked up with the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys instead.”

Lewandowski is glad he did. “Most guitar players concentrate on their breaks but totally forget about the rhythm,” he says. “Not ‘Jug.’ He will break the neck out of a guitar.”

But there’s more to Rinkel than meets the eye. This rhythm guitarist is also solid songwriter. “my big thing is meaning – a song has to have meaning,” he says. “I’m a sucker for a good heartbreak song.”

Just because he can turn on the tears, doesn’t mean he can’t also turn up the heat. Just listen when he turns his Martin guitar loose on Carter Stanley’s Gonna Paint the Town and you’ll see for yourself – no paintball guns are required.

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

CONTACT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEC.J. Lewandowski, The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys (540) 230-6276

PO’ RAMBLIN’ BOYS GET BIBS AND BACKING FROM POINTER BRAND

BRISTOL, TN. – It’s the deal of a lifetime – no written agreement except the one permanently tattooed on C.J. Lewandowski’s left forearm: He is now, and forever will be, loyal to Pointer BrandTM overalls.

“We are sponsored for life,” Lewandowski, lead singer and mandolinist with The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, says with a laugh. “I only wear Pointer bib overalls. Pointer BrandTM bibs are bluegrass. If you show up at a bluegrass festival and aren’t wearing Pointers, you just aren’t cool.”

Lewandowski is such a fan of the American-made work apparel that he had the Pointer BrandTM logo tattooed on his arm in April 2013. Some months later, he visited the L.C. King Manufacturing Co.’s cut-and-sew operation in Bristol where the tattoo caught the eye of owner Jack King.

“When I showed Jack my Pointer BrandTM tattoo, he said I was the most dedicated customer they ever had,” said Lewandowski. “They graciously accepted me and loaded me up with bib overalls, chore coats and jeans.”

Today, King’s appreciation is extended to the entire Po’ Ramblin’ Boys band which proudly promotes the brand from the stages of Ole Smoky Moonshine in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.

“We have no written obligations,” said Lewandowski. “L.C. King just loves us wearing their product in front of so many people on stage, but we make the effort to talk about Pointer BrandTM during our stage shows and send people directly to the factory. In turn, Pointer takes care of us in numerous ways, supplying us with overalls, jeans, chore coats, wool coats, even wallets and stockings!”

– More –Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

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“The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys show so much enthusiasm for us it’s a real treat when they visit the factory in Bris-tol,” said Ben Collins, marketing director at the L.C. King Manufacturing Co. “True ambassadors of the Pointer BrandTM, we couldn’t be prouder of how they represent us and keep spreadin’ the word.”

Likewise, Josh “Jug” Rinkel, guitarist for The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, is sold on Pointer. “Since 1913, the Pointer BrandTM has delivered the quality that a product needs to survive,” said Rinkel. “Made in America ... the way it should be.”

“Durable, classic and comfortable. And most importantly, made in America,” echoed Lewandowski. “It’s an American staple, just like bluegrass.”

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Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

Want to see what the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are all about? Click the three links below to see their recent appearance on “Behind the Barn,” a live radio concert series on 105.3FM

from Barley’s Taproom in Maryville, Tenn.

PART I

PART II

PART III

Ramblin’ VideosRamblin’ Videos

Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Booking/Publicity [email protected] 540.230.6276

What Fans Say...What Fans Say...Loved you guys. Visited this weekend and came back for evening session. We loved your humor and your music! Look forward to seeing you soon! — Deb Hall Hartman

Wished I was in Gatlinburg listening to y'all! We were there 2 weeks ago & enjoyed so much watching y'all & listening to your great talent ! — Lisa Hooper Mullinax

Great stage presence and smokin’ musicians! — Dustin Golightly

Awesome bluegrass music the way it should be played!!! — Robert W. Porter

These guys are the real deal. They don't just play bluegrass music they ARE bluegrass music. ... Thanks for keeping it real, guys. — Bob Cook II

You sounded great! Loved the humor. It really is a nice way to show you love bluegrass music. Keep onkeeping it bluegrass! — Bessie Gilbert

This bluegrass band is a MUST SEE if you ever have a chance. Great musicians, very entertaining, a fun experience! — Josephine Stevens Budny

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