Andy Rhodes - Bass
Andy Rhodes started playing guitar at 13. He has been influenced by all styles of music, especially the progressive rock like Yes, Rush, and especially Pink Floyd.
After years of playing lead and rhythm guitar in various band, Andy’s musical taste continued to expand to Steve Morse and the Dixie Dregs. He started gaining interest in acoustic music and more of the jazz and bluegrass styles.
Sometime during the transition from rock to bluegrass, Andy started playing bass, and fell in love with the sound of fretless bass. This led to playing more bass and eventually building the fretless bass that he uses now.
As for his influences on bass, Andy lists Geddy Lee, John Entwistle, Pino Palladino, Tony Levin and many others.
But, Andy’s style is truly his own. The sounds he gets, particularly out of the fretless perfectly fits with the music of Deeper Roots String Band. The swelling notes and walking, tasteful basslines are always unpredictable and creative.
“My approach to playing bass is not traditionally such as keeping rhythm but almost as a lead instrument,” says Andy.
Andy and Jerry Lankford (banjo for Deeper Roots) also play together in the southern rock band Crusher Run, in which both play electric guitars. They’ve conspired on several other projects including helping with the production of the stage play Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend with the Wilkes Playmakers. Andy has also been involved in many other productions with the theatre company and is locally known for his musical abilities and prowess with sound equipment.
Deeper Roots String Band
Jerry Lankford is a native of the Blue Ridge foothills and works as a full-time journalist. He is the former guitarist/songwriter for the Sanford, N.C.-based rock band Dahlia Blue. In 1999, when he moved back to Wilkes County, he attended MerleFest for the first time and immediately fell in love with Americana music.
During the opening season of the stage play Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend, Lankford and his newspaper, The Record, became heavily involved promoting the show. From researching the story of Dooley, which was made famous by the Kingston Trio’s hit song, he became familiar with the history behind the old mountain tale. From that knowledge he wrote and recorded the song Epitaph: The Ballad of Anne Melton, a lament about a woman involved in Dooley’s love triangle. From that musical involvement with the show, Lankford was named musical director for the show. In the winter of 2002, he formed The Elkville String Band. This became the house band for the Dooley show for two consecutive years. None of the members of that group, however, were interested in playing banjo, therefore Lankford, who had always been a guitarist, taught himself to play the five-string. His style is unique in that it uses a two-finger style of picking, similar to the Frank Profit mode.
After his third year with the Dooley show, Lankford formed the group Darby Road to perform for the play. From his participation in the Dooley project, Lankford and his fellow performers received honors from the N.C. Society of Historians for three different CD recordings of old-time and traditional music and performed at numerous venues, including four consecutive years of performing at MerleFest.
After five years with the show, Lankford left to explore other musical avenues. In 2005 he and Record Publisher Ken Welborn organized the first annual ChickenFest, a free-to-the-public musical festival which is held every Memorial Day Weekend at The Record Park in North Wilkesboro. Lankford and Welborn organize other musical events at The Record Park as well, including Americana Day, held on Labor Day weekend, and Salute to Veterans, held in honor of Veterans Day.
Lankford and his daughter, Anna — a vocalist, guitarist and songwriter — have performed many shows together. It was through Anna’s involved with Deeper Roots that Lankford met Rick Brockner. He had already performed several shows with Rick Gaughan, mainly with local fiddling legend Ernest Johnson, so the trio seemed destined to come together. He also plays guitar in with the Southern Rock band Crusher Run.
“This way I have the best of both worlds,” Lankford said.