'Good Thing Going'

By LEE WARD / THE INDEPENDENT

ASHLAND May 14, 2008 09:12 am

— When Rhonda Vincent brings her band to the Paramount Arts Center this month for America’s Bluegrass Gospel show’s Spring TV taping, she will be in her comfort zone professionally.
“I love that area,” she said. “Kentucky is a pretty popular bluegrass area. It’s always exciting to go to a place where they’re familiar with bluegrass.”
That’s not the case with some of Vincent’s shows.
“We travel the world and there are places where the people have never heard bluegrass,” she said. “I was in Switzerland recently and they’d never heard of bluegrass so we introduced it to them. They loved it. They stomped the floor and gave us 15-minute ovations between songs. It’s exciting to know they embrace the music.”
Vincent said she and her band with Marty Raybon will perform about five songs during the program.
She said she has multiple connections with Raybom.
“He worked with Darrel Webb, my guitar player, recently on his live project,” she said. “And his banjo player dates my daughter.”
Vincent said their performance is likely to include a new song she wrote that will be on the new Bill Gaither gospel CD.
“It’s actually a testimony,” she said. “A lady wrote it down and gave it to me and years later, I wrote a song, ‘I Heard My Savior Calling.’ The song incorporates everyone in the band. Everyone sings, it’s five-part harmony so that’s different for us.”
Also scheduled to perform are Larry Cordle, Don Rigsby, Tim Surrett, Joe Isaacs, Joe Freeman and Rob McNurlin.
Vincent said her band will also do a new song titled “I Will See You Again,” written by a new composer from Alabama. The song is on her new CD, “Good Thing Going,” which was released in January has been number one on Billboard’s chart for seven weeks. Russell Moore from IIIrd Tyme Out joins her on “I Give All My Love To You,” which Vincent said is the centerpiece of the album.
“My assistant and dear friend Julia was getting married not long ago, and I was her wedding planner,” she said. “She couldn’t find a song for her wedding, so I took pen and paper and snuck off to the back of our Martha White Bluegrass Express bus, and just started writing down what I thought of her and how happy I was for her.”
LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.

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