The Country Gentlemen stand with the musical giants whose

The Country Gentlemen stand with the musical giants whose popularity bridges the generation gap. They are to bluegrass what the Beatles were to rock and the Kingston Trio was to folk, but they have outlasted them all.

Fans who first heard the Gents picking and singing bluegrass 31 years ago now’ come with their children and grandchildren to concerts, festivals, and club dates. In 12 years as the headliners at Georgetown's Shamrock Club, the Gentlemen moved the capital of bluegrass from the southern mountains of Kentucky to the flatlands of Washington, D.C., changing the character of this indigenous Appalachian soul music along the way.

B.G. - Before Gents bluegrass was the high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt and Scruggs, and its repertoire was old time, traditional and country.

A.G. - After Gents - the sound was richer and more pleasing to urban listeners. The repertoire was still country, old time, and traditional, expanded with "lost" songs rediscovered by the Gentlemen in the archives of the Library of Congress. But now it also includes bluegrass interpretations of compositions by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Gordon Lightfoot, Steve Goodman, the Beatles, Paul Simon, and other contemporary artists. .

With this redefinition of bluegrass, the Gentlemen found new listeners who previously couldn’t identify with the music's country sound.

WAMU-FM, Washington's top bluegrass station, recently polled its listeners on their favorite tunes and found Country Gentlemen recordings in first place ("Rebel Soldier”), second place ("Fox on the Run”), fourth (“Bringing Mary Home”), seventh (“The In Crowd"), and tenth (“Casey’s Last Ride”).

When the group celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1982 with a retrospective concert at Wolf Trap, congratulatory messages came from