ABOUT DREW

I was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1980 and grew up in Hendersonville, which is located about 20 miles from Nashville.  My mother was a registered nurse and my father was a chemistry professor. 

My father was not musically inclined at all, but my mother had taken piano lessons as a child and still played at home for her own entertainment.  When I was 7 years old, Mom asked me if I would like to learn to play the violin.  Up until that point my only experience with music was listening to the radio in the car and in my music classes at elementary school.  It sounded like an interesting idea, so I said “yes”.

I started taking Suzuki Method violin lessons from a local violin teacher in Hendersonville, Mr. Thornton Cline, in May of 1987, which was near the end of 1st grade.  The Suzuki Method emphasized ear training as well as learning to read sheet music. 

As time went on, I found that playing by ear came much more naturally to me than reading the notes on the page.  As a student of Mr. Cline, I also performed in concerts with his other students.  We were known as  “The Suzuki Players”.  We played at events all over the Nashville area such as local craft shows, the Tennessee State Fair, and “A Country Christmas” at The Opryland Hotel.  I started participating in these performances very soon after beginning my lessons with Mr. Cline. 

During that time, Mr. Cline also founded the Sumner County Youth Orchestra.  Although our main focus was classical music, we sometimes branched out into popular music, such as movie themes.  We rehearsed one night a week and played at many of the same type of events as the Suzuki Players.

When I was in fifth grade I auditioned for and was accepted into the Blair Repertoire Orchestra.  This was a youth orchestra that was organized by the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  I began playing as part of that group in addition to the Sumner County Youth Orchestra.  On my own, I also played in worship services at church and in talent shows at school.  I credit those early experiences with making me comfortable with performing in public from an early age.

While I enjoyed playing classical music, I somehow felt constrained by playing from sheet music.

As I was nearing the end of sixth grade, a friend of mine who was a few years older than I and who also played in both orchestras, began taking fiddle lessons from renowned Nashville fiddler Kenny Sears.  I was interested in learning some fiddle tunes, so my friend invited me to go to one of his lessons with him so I could see if I might be interested in doing the same.

In April of 1992 when I was 12, my mom and I joined my friend and his mother at Kenny Sears’ home for one of his lessons.  Kenny was teaching my friend how to improvise in playing behind a vocalist.  They were playing a country song on the tape player (somebody’s version of “Long Black Veil”) and Kenny was showing my friend how to chart the chord progression of the song and then use those chords to improvise a fiddle part that would complement the vocals. 

I had never heard of doing anything like that before and I was immediately intrigued and fascinated.  I told my mom I wanted to learn how to do that too, so she made arrangements with Kenny for me to start taking lessons on a weekly basis. 

Not long after that, I was in English class at school one day and was telling someone about starting fiddle lessons with Kenny Sears.  The girl who sat next to me piped up and said “My dad knows Kenny Sears!  My dad plays fiddle for Garth Brooks!”

Garth Brooks was huge at that time so I thought it was pretty incredible that I had a personal connection to someone who played fiddle for him.  I guess part of me thought she was pulling my leg, so the next time we went to Walmart, I asked my mom to buy me a Garth Brooks cassette tape. 

When I got home I tore it open and pulled out the cover that contained the album credits.  Right there in black and white, it said “Fiddle: Rob Hajacos”.  The last name was a match!  From then on, I became a fan of his and paid particular attention to anything that Rob had played on.

Kenny Sears was an inspiring and engaging teacher.  By the end of that summer, I had decided that, although I enjoyed playing classical music, and Kenny was more than capable of teaching me to play classical, I no longer wanted that to be my primary musical focus.  That fall I started 7th grade at University School of Nashville.  The school is situated adjacent to Vanderbilt’s campus where the Blair Repertoire Orchestra rehearsed, so I continued playing in the orchestra there through the 7th and 8th grades.  I had already discontinued my involvement with the Sumner County Youth Orchestra simply for logistical reasons associated with attending school every day in Nashville.  By the end of 8th grade, my musical interests had shifted entirely to playing commercial country music, so I discontinued my involvement with the Blair Repertoire Orchestra and focused entirely on learning all I could about improvisation.

Each time I went to Walmart with my mom, I would talk her into buying me a country cd or cassette tape.  I built quite a collection over those first 2 or 3 years.  I loved reading the album credits to see who was playing fiddle.  Most of the time, it was Rob Hajacos, Glen Duncan, Hank Singer, Stuart Duncan, Mark O’Connor, Andrea Zonn, or Joe Spivey - all of them great players who have their own unique sound and approach. 

I spent many hours in my bedroom sitting next to my CD player with my fiddle trying to copy what I heard on the recordings.  I wore out several CD players from running them back over and over so I could dissect and memorize the fiddle parts.  During that time, I did not play out very much at all other than a few times at school with the choir or at church.

When I was 14, Kenny subbed in at the Long Hollow Jamboree in Goodlettsville, Tennessee one weekend.  There was a 5-piece band there consisting of fiddle, pedal steel guitar, electric guitar, drums, and a bass player/vocalist.  While I had spent many hours playing along with CDs at home, I had never actually played with a live band before.  The first night I went to the Long Hollow Jamboree to see Kenny play, he asked me if I would like to get up and play a song with him.  After changing my mind several times, I finally decided to get up and give it a try.  I asked if they could play something slow.  The band played Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes”, which was a nice slow ballad.  All I did was play some very simple fills on the 2ndverse, but that was all it took.  I got to play with a live band and I was hooked!

That particular night was the first time I ever saw a pedal steel guitar up-close.  Jim Baker was the steel player and he was playing a mid-1960's Sho-Bud.  I had heard the instrument many times on recordings but never really grasped what it was until I saw him playing that night.  To say the least, I was intrigued. 

A few months after that, Kenny became the regular fiddle player at the Long Hollow Jamboree (hereinafter referred to as "LHJ").  I started sitting in with Kenny on Friday and Saturday nights.  The band specialized in traditional country music from the 1950’s-1970’s.  Many of the songs they routinely played were country standards by artists such as Hank Williams, Ray Price, Mel Tillis, Faron Young, Merle Haggard, Jack Greene, Johnny Bush, and Stonewall Jackson.  Most of these were artists with whose work I was unfamiliar at the time. 

One day I walked into my weekly lesson at Kenny's house and there was a stack of about 10 or 12 LPs sitting on the piano stool waiting for me.  They were all Ray Price and Johnny Bush records from the 1950's through the mid-1970's.  Tommy Jackson, one Nashville's most prominent studio musicians of that era, was playing fiddle on most of them.  Kenny told me to take them home and soak in all I could from them.

Today, finding these recordings is as simple as pulling up YouTube on your smart phone, but at that time, the internet barely existed.  If you wanted to listen to a particular artist, you went to Walmart and bought their cassette or compact disc.  The records Kenny gave me that day had all been out of print for many years, so I took them home and copied them to cassette tapes so I could listen to them in the car during our daily trips between Hendersonville and Nashville.

As I listened to the songs and learned the fiddle parts, Kenny and I would work up twin parts that we could play with the band at the LHJ.  I would generally play lead and he would play harmony.  We had parts worked up for Mel Tillis' "Heart Over Mind", Ray Price's "Crazy Arms" and "The Other Woman", and Johnny Bush's "Whiskey River", among others.  Even in Nashville, seeing a band with twin fiddles is a rarity.  The crowd loved it.

The more I listened to the Ray Price and Johnny Bush records, the more I came to love and appreciate every aspect of the songs themselves.  Many of them were written by masterful writers like Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson, Bill Anderson, and Hank Cochran.  The depth of the lyrics went far beyond subjects like pickup trucks and drinking beer.  The melodies were identifiable and memorable.  The recordings themselves, while imperfect in some ways due to  the limitations imposed by the recording technology that was available at that time, also reflected a level of authenticity that is sometimes missing from modern recordings.

Most of these records featured either Buddy Emmons or Jimmy Day on pedal steel guitar, both of whom were pioneers of the instrument.  The pedal steel guitar was born in 1953 when Bud Isaacs (steel guitarist for Webb Pierce) rigged up a way of changing the tuning of his steel guitar by drilling a hole through the tuning head and pushing the end of a coat hanger up through it, which he then looped around the string that he wanted to alter.  He made a loop at the other end of the coat hanger where he could stick the toe of this boot through it.  When he wanted to raise the pitch of the string, he just mashed down on the coat hanger with his boot.  He unveiled his invention on the Grand Ole Opry with Webb Pierce on a song called "Slowly".  Shortly thereafter, the Opry office was inundated with letters from people asking how Mr. Isaacs had achieved that sound.  Many people started experimenting with their steel guitars using coat hangers and gas pedals from junked cars.  By the late 1950's Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons had formed Sho-Bud and Leo Fender was building his own cable-driven version.

The evolution of the instrument and how it was being played by 2 of its greatest players was clearly evident on Ray Price's recordings.  I found myself paying more and more attention to the steel parts on those records, and they added fuel to my fascination-turned-obsession.  I had to have one. 

In the fall of my sophomore year of high school, I finally managed to talk my parents into buying a pedal steel guitar for me.  It was a red GFI student model with 3 pedals and 1 knee lever.  My father was not at all convinced that it was a good idea, but I think he finally got tired of hearing me talk about it and realized the only way to get me to shut up was to let me have one.  He did not want it to distract me from advancing as a fiddle player.  I started teaching myself to play by listening to steel guitar parts on recordings and then hunting around on the steel until I found it. 

In the fall of my junior year of high school, Kenny left the LHJ band to play for Jimmy C. Newman on the Opry.  The band at LHJ offered me the fiddle spot and I jumped at the opportunity.  I played there every weekend until the spring of my senior year of high school when our band got replaced by a man with a karaoke machine.

By that time I had already planned to attend Belmont University in Nashville to pursue a degree in accounting.  During my time at Belmont, I continued to play around town with various bands, mostly as a sub.  I also got involved in the music scene at Belmont.  It was during my freshman year there that Kenny started playing with The Time Jumpers who were at that time playing on Monday nights at The Station Inn.  Kenny, Hoot Hester, and Aubrey Haynie were all playing fiddle, so I went there almost every Monday night to hang out.  It was, in essence, a 400-level college course in playing triple fiddles.  Their focus was traditional country and western swing and their musicianship was unmatched.  Some nights the room would be full and other nights there would be 5 or 10 people there.  I loved every minute of it.  A few years later they even asked me to sub with them several times, which was an incredible experience.

Besides Jimmy C. Newman, Kenny had also started playing with Jeannie Seely when she sang on the Opry.  At that time, Jimmy was still doing some road dates.  In the spring of my freshman year at Belmont, Kenny had to go out of town with Jimmy one weekend and he invited me to sub for him on the Opry with Jeannie that Friday night.  I enthusiastically accepted, but I was scared out of my wits.  We did "Candy Kisses" and I had the intro.  Little Jimmy Dickens brought Jeannie out and she introduced me by name and told the audience that it was my first time to play the Opry.  I was so nervous and my hands were shaking so badly that you could almost hear my bow bouncing across the strings of my fiddle!  The performance was over within 3 minutes, but it was a euphoric experience that I will never forget.  During 1999-2000 I got to sub with Jeannie several times at the Opry.  The last time I did it in 2004, it was a matinee show at the Ryman Auditorium and I also got to back Little Jimmy Dickens. 

During my second year at Belmont, I met a very talented vocal performance student in the Belmont School of Music who was a couple of years older than I was and hailed from South Carolina.  His name was Josh Turner.  I played fiddle on some demo recordings that he did in the recording studio at Belmont.  We discovered that we both liked the same kind of food (country fried steak, turnip greens, corn bread, etc.) so we would sometimes go eat dinner together at a local meat-and-three that was near Belmont's campus. 

One afternoon during my junior year, he called and asked me to run by his apartment because he wanted me to hear this song that he had written.  When I got there he picked up his guitar and played "Long Black Train".  He said he wanted to book the recording studio and get a demo done on it as soon as possible.  Soon after that he booked a 10pm time slot in the studio and got a small bluegrass-style ensemble together to play on it.  I played fiddle, and he had upright bass, dobro, and acoustic guitar.  We all gathered around one microphone and I think we got it on the first take.  Within a few months, Josh had a record deal with MCA.

During my time at Belmont I also got to play both fiddle and steel guitar with Julie Roberts who was a student in the music business program there at the time.  She also went on to have a record deal after graduating.

In May 2003 I graduated from Belmont with a Master of Accountancy degree.  I had already accepted a job offer from Deloitte to work in their Nashville audit practice.  In 2000 I had begun playing every Friday at LHJ again with a different band, which then included legendary steel guitarist Jim Murphy.  Although I kept a hand in playing music, I somewhat put it on the back burner for a few years as I studied for the CPA exam and gained some work experience in the accounting field. 

I became a licensed CPA in April 2005, and later that year, I left Deloitte to pursue a career path in corporate accounting for a Nashville-based healthcare company.  Making that change allowed more time for me to pursue my musical interests.  I continued playing at LHJ on Fridays, and also picked up engagements with other bands in and around Nashville.  I also played on some recording sessions.  I played quite a bit during that time on the Ernest Tubb Midnite Jamboree.  I backed many artists on that show, including Leona Williams, Ron Williams, Darrell McCall, Tony Booth, Justin Trevino, Amber Digby, Billy Yates, and Dottie Rambo.  Steel guitar legend Weldon Myrick was often playing steel on those shows, so I got to pick his brain a lot.  Weldon ended up joining the band at LHJ for a couple of years between 2005 and 2008, so I got to know him very well and we struck up a great friendship, which I treasured.  I also learned a lot about playing steel just by standing next to him on stage watching him play.

I was blessed to get opportunities to play fiddle on engagements alongside some of the finest steel guitarists that ever lived, including Don Helms, John Hughey, Hal Rugg, Weldon Myrick, Doug Jernigan, Paul Franklin, Mike Jones, Dickey Overbey, Steve Hinson, Russ Hicks, Mike Johnson, Robbie Turner, Jim Murphy, Johnny Cox, Tommy White, Buck Reid, Rusty Danmyer, and Randy Beavers.  I always tried to soak up anything I could as far as their unique approach and technique. 

In 2010, I changed accounting jobs again when I left the healthcare company and joined Starstruck Entertainment in Nashville as their controller.  The next year I also joined a new group at LHJ called "Blue Creek", which was comprised of singer/songwriter Dave Lindsey, singer/songwriter and bassist Ernie Rowell, steel guitarist Charlie Whitten, singer/guitarist Damon Gray, and drummer Willie Cantu (who later left the group and was replaced by Johnnie Barber).  We played weekly at LHJ until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 and forced LHJ to close down for over a year.  We released 2 albums during that time.  After the pandemic restrictions were lifted, several of the group decided they did not want to return playing regularly, so the group disbanded. 

In the summer of 2021 I was invited to join the band as one of the fiddle players on a new television show called "Perley's Place", backing multi-talented singer and musician Perley Curtis.  I play twin fiddles with Jordan Larsen, who is an excellent fiddle player and guitarist.  On the show's first season, I played steel guitar on some of the songs as well.  Beginning in the show's second season, Rex Wiseman joined the group to play steel and I moved entirely to fiddle.  The show has been very well-received and I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of it.  We have completed filming of 4 seasons at this point and there are more to come.

In November 2021, since Blue Creek had disbanded, I was asked to put together a group to play at LHJ on Friday nights.  That group now includes Perley Curtis on acoustic guitar and vocals as the front man, Jim Hartley on drums and vocals, Larry Barnes on bass and vocals, and Charlie Whitten on steel guitar.  We continue to focus on traditional country dance music from the 1950's-1970's, and it has been very well-received.

For many years, I have led the praise band at First Presbyterian Church of Hendersonville and also played in the handbell choir there.  In April 2022 I completed my gospel instrumental project, which I began working on in 2008.  For various reasons, it got put on the back burner several times over the years, but it was worth the wait.  I am very proud of how it turned out.  My intention for this project was to combine my love of traditional country fiddle and steel guitar with church hymns that I grew up singing and playing.  Thanks to the help of Nashville pianist and arranger Walt Cunningham, I think it does exactly that.

Music has been and continues to be a blessing in my life.  I have enjoyed so many rich musical experiences and made many great friends along the way.

-Drew Covington