Blue Mountain Biography

Blue Mountain Biography

Blue Mountain is the name of a band formed in 1991 in Oxford, Mississippi (USA) by husband and wife duo Cary Hudson (guitar and vocals) and Laurie Stirratt (bass and harmony vocals),who is notably the twin sister of John Stirratt, the bass player for the like-minded Americana band Wilco. After the dissolution of their former Los Angeles band, The Hilltops, the couple relocated to Oxford and, joined by drummer Matt Brennan, began gigging and recording roots rock. With this line-up, the band released their first self titled album on their own 4-Barrel Records in 1993. The band was signed by the independent Roadrunner Records label and released their second album, Dog Days, with new drummer Frank Coutch in 1995. The album was comprised of many songs from their first eponymous release and garnered the band a fair amount of critical and commercial success in alt-country circles, featuring the band's best-known song, "Blue Canoe." Two more albums followed on Roadrunner Records, Home Grown in 1997, and Tales of a Traveler in 1999. An album of all public-domain roots covers, simply titled Roots followed in 2001, before their final 'farewell' live release, Tonight It's Now or Never in 2002. Blue Mountain is widely revered for their high energy live shows, which showcase Hudson's considerable talents on his favorite instrument, a classic Gibson Les Paul. Stirrat's bass lines and harmony vocals and Croutch's intense drum work round out this very gifted band. Blue Mountain is rightly considered one of the pioneering groups of the alt-country movement which took hold in the mid-1990s and is still going stong today. Their songs "Let's Go Running", "Big Black River", "Wink", and "Jimmy Carter" are bona fide classics of Americana music. Blue Mountain reunited in the summer of 2007, and is currently touring extensively. Notable recent performances include a critically acclaimed set at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, in mid-March of 2008, and as one of the main acts at the 2008 Double Decker Arts Festival on April 26 2008 in Oxford, Mississippi, which was attended by an estimated 40,000 people over the course of the day. On August 19 2008, they will release "Midnight in Mississippi", a new album of original material, as well as an album of re-recorded Blue Mountain originals entitled "Omnibus".