Bassett native and Nashville musician Josh Shilling has one clear feeling about this year of the pandemic, unemployment and social unrest: Go to hell, 2020.

Now others are singing along to his tune.

Shilling’s song “(Go to Hell) 2020” premiered on Wednesday with a lyric video, the track and quotes, and it will be released on Saturday.

Artist: Josh Shilling

Hometown: Martinsville, Virginia

Song: “(Go to Hell) 2020”

Release Date: October 9, 2020

Label: Josh Shilling Music

Pre-Save Josh’s upcoming single on Spotify today! http://smarturl.it/gth2020 Coming 10.09.2020

Henry County honored a native son with his own holiday, naming September 7 “Josh Shilling Day” in a surprise presentation during a local music and beer festival.

In tracing the trajectory of modern music, one can find numerous examples of artists that belonged to a band while also simultaneously maintaining a successful solo career. Josh Shilling has parlayed his professional life in much the same way.

Sam Bush Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, Sierra Hull and Ghost Light are among the final list of bands announced for the 11th annual Rooster Walk Music & Arts Festival. Other new additions include: The Steel Wheels, The Black Lillies, ‘Yarn Morrison’ (Yarn’s tribute to Van Morrison), Runaway Gin, The Trongone Band, Sanctum Sully, Disco Risqué, Kate Rhudy, Adar, The Folly, Chamomile & Whiskey, Prosperity’s Folly, The Drove, and MHC Praise Band.

RW11 will offer six different stages hosting live music. The festival will take place Memorial Day Weekend, May 23-26, 2019, at the idyllic Pop’s Farm in the rolling hillsides near Martinsville, Va. These newly announced bands join a lineup that already features: Galactic, Shovels & Rope, The Marcus King Band, Billy Strings, King & Strings, Turkuaz, BIG Something, The Lil Smokies, Yarn, Roosevelt Collier Band, Mountain Heart, The Black Lillies, The Jammy Jam (hosted by The Lil’ Smokies), Kendall Street Company, Fireside Collective, South Hill Banks, The Vegabonds, PalmPalm, State Birds, C2 & The Brothers Reed, Josh Shilling, Wallace Mullinax, After Jack, Jules & The Agreeables, and PHCC Jazz Band.

In a non-televised presentation this afternoon, the 61st annual Grammy Awards announced winners in categories outside of the mainstream pop music world. These are the many thousands of artists who create lasting art in niche markets like Gospel, jazz, blues, zydeco, salsa, comedy… and yes, bluegrass.

Critics will quickly label Mountain Heart as a hybrid bluegrass band. That nomenclature, however, significantly misrepresents their wide musical berth and penchant for genre infusion. Their recent album, Soul Searching, is anchored by roots bluegrass that flirts and flits with a multitude of genres spanning across eras. Throughout Soul Searching, Mountain Heart includes robust musical interludes comprised of piano, guitars, mandolin, and dobro in lieu of the traditional banjo and fiddler. Although the latter instruments do make appearances, the core configuration is quintessential of Mountain Heart's approach to music. They are a band who value traditional bluegrass but use their musical acuity to unravel the genre's boundaries.

Mountain Heart bills itself as a hybrid bluegrass group, of which there are several who have released albums in the last few months. What sets Mountain Heart apart is their instrumentation, notably no banjo or fiddle but piano, guitars, mandolin and dobro instead from the core group. Electric guitars find their way into the mix as well. Also, all four members are contributing songwriters and harmony vocalists. On Soul Searching the band continues to explore their rather unique sound that marries bluegrass, pop, and roots music. The combination of piano with acoustic string instruments is a rather unusual configuration and it sounds just natural and splendid with these players.

Josh Shilling is featured on piano on Del McCoury's first single off his new album.

"To Make Love Sweeter for You" is the first tempting taste of the durable Del McCoury Band's upcoming LP, Del McCoury Still Sings Bluegrass (out May 25th, the same weekend as the bluegrass legend's 11th annual all-star DelFest event). A classic honky-tonk ballad penned by Glenn Sutton (Tammy Wynette's "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad") and songwriter-producer Jerry Kennedy, the song was the first chart-topping country hit for Jerry Lee Lewis after signing with Nashville's Mercury Records' subsidiary, Smash. McCoury's high lonesome vocal is accompanied by rolling piano and weepy fiddle, turning the romantic tune into one that could easily pivot toward unrelenting regret. S.B.

The 10th annual Rooster Walk Music & Arts Festival will take place May 24 – 27 at Pop’s Farm in Martinsville, Virginia. Organizers of the event have added 26 new bands to the lineup, which has now been finalized.

As reported, Marcus King and Billy Strings will present their first King & Strings collaborative set at Rooster Walk 10. Other bands joining the bill include The Mantras, The Dustbowl Revival, Town Mountain, The Grass is Dead, The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, The Southern Belles, Victor Wainwright & The Train and The Trongone Band. Jeff Sipe (drums), Ron Holloway (saxophone), Josh Shilling (piano), Jay Starling (dobro) and Wallace Mullinax (guitar) have been tapped as artists-at-large.

The Wood Brothers, JJ Grey & Mofro and Robert Randolph & The Family Band are the headliners for this year’s Rooster Walk. “We’re thrilled to host so many wonderful bands at Rooster Walk this year,’ said festival co-founder Johnny Buck in a statement. “From top to bottom, I think this is the strongest lineup in our 10-year history.” Check out the full lineup below.

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The good folks at MerleFest, which is slated for April 27-30, 2017, have announced the initial lineup for the festival’s 30th anniversary celebration and I am happy to say it’s full of the usual suspects: Jim Lauderdale, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Del McCoury and Peter Rowan. No surprise there as most of these musicians have been involved in the festival since its inception.

I am particularly excited to see Mountain Heart, Front Country, Chatham County Line, Scythian and Swift Creek in the lineup.

Josh Shilling, Mountain Heart’s frontman, is also excited about returning to MerleFest. “We’ve played the festival a few times, but I’m super excited for everyone to see the band’s new configuration,” he says. “The members of Mountain Heart have literally been going to MerleFest since we were old enough to walk. To be returning again to the Watson Stage not only as fans, but as performers, means the world to us. MerleFest is one of the top festivals in the world to experience. The location is gorgeous, the staff is second to none and the lineup of bands and activities are simply unbelievable!”

if you weren’t at Pop’s Farm in Axton, Virginia, the home of Rooster Walk Music and Arts Festival, under the stars on Saturday, Aug. 20, you missed an incredible high-energy performance by the incomparable Southwest Virginia native Josh Shilling and his band, Mountain Heart.

“Hometown! I don’t even know what to say,” Shilling wrote on Facebook after the show. “You guys came out and supported us in the most amazing way last night! To top it off, we had people come from PA, NC, SC, TN and more just to party! I love you guys and I can’t wait to come back home. Way to make us feel incredible!”

Mountain Heart has released the song "Blue Skies" from the forthcoming album of the same name

Many bands weather a shifting lineup through the years — members come and go, and sometimes are even replaced decades later (just look at Adam Lambert tackling Freddie Mercury's vocals as frontman of Queen). But the new incarnation of jam-heavy bluegrass crew Mountain Heart takes this one step further: founded in 1998, their aggressive, acoustic-heavy sound is preserved even though the group no longer boasts a single original player. And the result is a fresh take on an old classic, something apparent on their new single, "Blue Skies," streaming exclusively below ...

"I like to watch the morning news and keep up on politics, and think the subject matter is a fitting theme for what's going on right now," the Stringdusters' Jeremy Garrett tells Rolling Stone Country about the song written with Josh Shilling of Mountain Heart. "The song is about everybody educating each other, getting to know each other. All around the world, people are pretty much the same. It's about peace and harmony, and making music is about the best way I know how to spread that positivity. I toured with Lee Ann Womack about ten years ago and, honestly, I had her voice in mind when I wrote it. She has the high-caliber musicianship, flexibility and tone to just nail it. And she did."

The release of Ladies & Gentlemen, out February 5th on Compass Records, will be accompanied by an extensive tour — nothing new for the road dog Stringdusters, who have gathered a dedicated following for the wild, improvisational nature of their live performances.

Ladies & Gentlemen track listing:

1. Listen (featuring Joan Osborne)

2. I Believe (featuring Lee Ann Womack)

3. It Won't Be Long (featuring Sara Jarosz)

4. Have A Little Faith (featuring Joss Stone)

5. See How Far You've Come (featuring Sara Watkins)

6. Old Whiskey Bottle (featuring Celia Goldsmith)

7. Still The One (featuring Nicki Bluhm)

8. Coming Back To You (featuring Mary Chapin Carpenter)

9. Ladders In The Sky (featuring Claire Lynch)

10. Run To Heaven (featuring Aoife O'Donovan)

11. Rock And Roll (featuring Abigail Washburn)

12. Hazosphere (featuring Jen Hartswick)

So I've been hinting around about a few amazing things going down in my career for weeks now. This is one of the coolest for me!

When I was in the 4th grade we line danced to "Meet In The Middle" for our annual school play. After that I totally fell in love with Diamond Rio. I vividly remember crying listening to Marty's singing at mom's house in VA while stealing chops from Dan Truman, and being mesmerized by Jimmy Olander's B-bender shredding. When I moved to Nashville Jimmy O. and I became pals and started writing tunes together. I really love the guy and his super sweet family. We've written a ton of my favorite songs including a few off my solo album. A few years ago we wrote one about Rio's career and Marty's journey to Nashville called "I Made It."

Not only am I completely dumbfounded that the guys have recorded our song, but it's also the title track from their latest album! Like, seriously?!? : ) I somehow ended up co-writing the title track of my heroes' new record! On top of that they allowed me to play on a track that features the amazing Joshua Bell on violin! I'll post more about that later; I promise. Thanks to the entire Rio gang for making my dreams come true...I feel incredibly blessed to be included on their new project! Congrats to the entire Diamond Rio gang and continued success to you!

Mountain Heart’s Josh Shilling, a Bassett native, will play a prominent role all weekend. Rooster Walk, following the tradition of such performers as “Festival King” Sam Bush, has hired Shilling as its artist-at-large. Buck made that announcement last month, when Shilling came in from his Nashville, Tennessee, home base to play a set with Brooklyn, New York-based alt-country/roots-rock act Yarn.

Buck had put Shilling and Yarn together for that show, after Yarn said it wanted to jam with a talented Hammond B3 organ player. Their performance to a sold-out room went better than Buck had hoped. The acts will reprise that performance at one of Yarn’s Rooster Walk sets.

Shilling will play B3 and sing with a young Martinsville band, Left Hip Pocket, for an Allman Brothers Band tribute on Friday (his version of “Whipping Post” is a tour de force on organ and vocals). He’ll play with his own Mountain Heart on Sunday. In between, he’ll be roving between stages, hopping up for various sit-ins.......