Marc Pruett, interview by Wayne Peeler

The band consists of Caleb Smith, Buddy Melton, Tim Surrett, Darren Nicholson, and Pruett. Their latest recording, “Trains I Missed,” is an energetic and warm collection of contemporary bluegrass, with a good mix of ballads and barnburners.  The band is fortunate to have four strong singers in Melton, Nicholson, Surrett and Smith, ably backed up by the quintet’s instrumental prowess. Marc is a master player in the Scruggs mold. As his friend Darrin Vincent put it, “Marc should be a household name like Earl Scruggs, for his traditional and inspirational note selection, plus the extreme dynamic drive of his right hand.”

In the five years since Balsam Range has been in existence, the band has  released three recordings, with three of their songs gaining the Top Ten on the National Bluegrass Survey (Bluegrass Unlimited Chart). All five of the band’s members are from Haywood County, North Carolina; the band’s name refers to the local mountain range where the Smokies meet the Blue Ridge.

Pruett has been playing banjo professionally for 45 years (he just turned 60). He began learning when he was eleven, after hearing Earl Scruggs on the radio. He progressed by observing and imitating local banjo players, like Mike Pressley, Raymond Fairchild, Shorty Eager, Roy Kirkpatrick and Tom McKinney. By the time he was in his twenties, he was playing with the likes of James Monroe and Jimmy Martin, and moving on to stints with Ricky Skaggs, The Whites,  the Kingsmen, Billy Edd Wheeler, and his own band, The Marc Pruett Band. He has also played with the popular and long established Asheville-area Whitewater Bluegrass Company. And for the past two decades Marc’s day jobs have been in state and local government; for the past eleven years he has been Erosion Control Program Director for Haywood County. Among his honors is a Grammy for his participation in Ricky Skaggs’s “Bluegrass Rules,” and an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Western Carolina University.

Wayne Peeler: Tell us how you got into professional banjo playing.

Marc Pruett: When I was about 15 years old I got my first professional job at Ghost Town in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. I was with a great old showman, James Howard Nash. He was the original one-man band. They called him Panhandle Pete. We played 6 or 7 forty-five minute shows a day. It was wonderful; I met a lot of wonderful people in Maggie Valley.

BNL: You were playing banjo?

MP: I played banjo and bass fiddle. After that I went to college and played in some different bands locally. There are a lot of good musicians in our region. In ’71 or ’72 I did my first program with Jimmy Martin. I had seen Jimmy in my home county of Haywood County in 1969, met him and got to pick a little bit. I thought, I’ll never be able to replace Earl Scruggs in “that” band, maybe I can get on with Jimmy (laughter). I never was really a full-time member of Jimmy’s band, but I filled in with him for about a three or four-year period, in between banjo players. I played at New York’s Lincoln Center with Jimmy, and my first time on the Grand Ole Opry was with him.

BNL: So you just went to hear Jimmy and met him that way?

MP: Right. He was at the old Maggie Valley Playhouse in 1969. That was when the great Chris Warner was with him, and Vernon Derrick, Gloria Bell, and Doug Green, who is Ranger Doug with Riders in The Sky. My mother had made up some little business cards that said: “Marc Pruett, 5 String Banjo,” and I gave Jimmy one. That opened up a conversation, and over the years Jimmy and I talked some and picked a bit. And when Alan Munde was with him, I went down to the old Lake Norman Music Hall, played Train 45 on stage. I’ve always loved Alan Munde’s banjo playing, and he’s also just a fine, fine person. But anyway, that’s how I got started, just hanging in different bands and following Jimmy’s band.

In Asheville there is a mandolin player named Ralph Lewis; he always had a band. I’d travel around with him and do festivals and various things. But in 1973 I got my first big break. I was in college at Western Carolina University, and I got a job with Bill Monroe’s son, James. I played that season full-time with him. That was when the “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album was really hot, and Bill got together with MCA Records and they put together their answer to “Circle”; that was the first Bean Blossom album. It was a big double album; it had Lester Flatt, Jim and Jesse, Jimmy Martin, Bill Monroe of course, and James Monroe. I was on that record with James. I played Train 45, and James introduced me on the album. A lot of people have told me over the years, “I first heard you on that Bean Blossom album.” MCA’s producer for that record was a man named Snuffy Miller, and as he was going out of the park at the end of the week he stopped me and said, “Boy, I really liked your banjo playing with James on that and I’m going to put that song on the record.” I thought, “Bingo”! (laughter) Of course you can be the biggest star in bluegrass and you’re still walking through a cow pasture to get to the stage. (laughter) I’ve worked with some wonderful people over the years in bluegrass.

Anyway, the job with James Monroe led me to a summer where I was around Ricky Skaggs some, and I got to hang out with him at Ralph Stanley’s Festival in McClure that year. Ricky asked me to be on his first album, and I did all the banjo work on that project in 1974. That was one of five albums I did with Skaggs over the years. I also worked a while with The Whites, when they carried a banjo player.

Interview continued in the print edition of the October 2011 Banjo Newsletter