Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver

DOYLE LAWSON & QUICKSILVER

With almost 40 albums to their credit, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver have multiple Grammy, Dove, ICM, IBMA and SPBGMA Award nominations, and are seven-time winners of IBMA’s Vocal Group of the Year Award. Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver are the reigning Inspirational Country Music Association Vocal Group of the Year, crowned in October at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, on the heels of Lawson’s induction into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at the Ryman Auditorium on September 27, 2012.



Lawson was heralded by journalist Craig Havighurst as “one of music’s lions” following Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s performance at the 2011 IBMA Awards Press Conference in Nashville. Of DLQ’s performance, which garnered three standing ovations from a sold-out crowd in Nashville, Havighurst wrote: “There was no question who was going to close the show. Doyle Lawson is one of music’s lions at this point, and when he came out in perhaps the most beautiful western jacket I’ve ever seen… he was a holy vision. … When DLQ, in quartet mode, nailed the final chorus of the a cappella gospel song “He Made It All Right,” I swear we were mainlining the holy spirit. You know how the word awesome gets overused and misused? Here’s where it applies.” (http://www.musiccityroots.com/passionate-precision)



A native Tennessean, Lawson was honored in February 2012 by Governor Bill Haslam and the State of Tennessee for his contributions to the state and America through his music (Senate Joint Resolution 467). Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver (DLQ) were very visible in 2011 through multiple national television appearances and a European tour, while their album “Drive Time” spent several weeks atop the new Alternate Roots Top 66 International Bluegrass Chart at #1, reflecting radio airplay nationwide and across the globe. “Drive Time” was also heralded as an Essential Album of 2011 by “Acoustic Guitar” magazine (Feb 2012 issue).



DLQ’s Paul Simon-penned single “Gone At Last” reigned for May 2011 as the most played song on Sirius XM Radio’s Bluegrass Junction and scored kudos from 12-time Grammy winner Paul Simon himself who praised, “Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver have done one of the best covers I have ever heard of a song of mine.”



Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver also appeared with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Paul Simon on the 12-time Grammy winner Simon’s 2011 album release “So Beautiful or So What.” DLQ also appeared on the acclaimed “Mark Twain: Words and Music” with such heavy-hitters as Jimmy Buffet, Clint Eastwood, Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, and Emmylou Harris.



Legendary in the Bluegrass genre and called a “mandolin virtuoso” with “perfectly silken harmony” by The New York Times, Doyle Lawson also broke new ground in 2011 with a benchmark Children’s Hospital and Arena Tour, the first tour of its kind in any genre, combining National Anthem performances at major sporting arenas with performances for boys and girls at Children’s Hospitals in the same cities or regions. The Tour combines helping hospitalized children with inspiring national patriotism, and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver performed for nearly 108,000 people during six games in 2011 (not including live broadcast audiences for the NBA and NCAA games), as well as for children, families, and staff at four children’s hospitals. DLQ sang their first NASCAR Anthem in 2012, kicking off Sprint All-Star Weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR’s second largest track with 165,000 screaming fans, as they performed the National Anthem for NASCAR’s N.C. Education Lottery 200 on May 2012, with other superstars on hand for the weekend including Blake Shelton and Tim McGraw. Pretty impressive numbers and company from the little boy from Kingsport… who grew up to be a LEGEND.



(By Sherri George. Updated Jan 2013)




SELECT AWARDS & NOMINATIONS:

DOYLE LAWSON:

2012 Inductee, International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame

National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, 2006
Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from King College, 2007
SPBGMA Awards – Male Vocalist of the Year: 1984, 1988, 1989, 1995
SPBGMA Awards – Mandolin Player of the Year: 1986-1990, 2013
2011 IBMA Awards – Recorded Event of the Year, with J.D. Crowe & Paul Williams
2011 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year, with J.D. Crowe & Paul Williams


DOYLE LAWSON & QUICKSILVER:

2012 ICM Awards – Vocal Group of the Year

2011 SPGMA Awards - Gospel Group of the Year (Traditional)
2007 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
2001-2007 IBMA Awards – Vocal Group of the Year
2006 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
2005 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
2003 IBMA Awards – Song of the Year
2003 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
2000 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
1996 IBMA Awards – Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year
1990 IMBA Awards – Song of the Year

SPBGMA Awards – Bluegrass Band of the Year, 1984-1988
SPBGMA Awards – Vocal Group of the Year, 1989-1993
SPBGMA Awards – Bluegrass Album of the Year, 1987-1991
SPBGMA Awards – Gospel Bluegrass Band of the Year: 1986, 1988, 1990-1992
SPBGMA Awards – Gospel Group of the Year: 1992, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006

2011 GMA Dove Awards Nomination – Bluegrass Album of the Year
2008 GMA Dove Awards Nomination – Bluegrass Album of the Year
2008 GMA Dove Awards Nomination – Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year
2001 GMA Dove Awards Nomination – Bluegrass Album of the Year
1997 GMA Dove Awards Nomination – Bluegrass Album of the Year

2011 ICM Award Nomination – Musician of the Year and Inspirational Bluegrass Artist of the Year
2002 Grammy Award Nomination – Best Bluegrass Album
2000 Grammy Award Nomination – Best Bluegrass Album
1999 Grammy Award Nomination – Best Bluegrass Album
1996 Grammy Award Nomination – Best Bluegrass Album


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DOYLE LAWSON

Doyle was born in Ford Town, Sullivan County, Tennessee, near Kingsport, the son of Leonard and Minnie Lawson. The Lawson family moved to Sneedville, Tennessee in 1954, around the time that Doyle acted on his love for music. Doyle grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. This is where he became inspired by Bill Monroe, the "founding father" of bluegrass, and his band the Blue Grass Boys. His own instrumental piece, "Rosine," is a tribute to Monroe's birthplace and features, among other things, strains from the singer's 1967 instrumental "Kentucky Mandolin." Doyle became interested in playing the mandolin around the age of eleven, so his father borrowed a mandolin from Willis Byrd, a family friend and fellow musician. Doyle taught himself how to play the mandolin by listening to the radio and records, and watching an occasional TV show. His love for music grew and Doyle decided to learn to play the guitar and banjo as well. Doyle’s perseverance and hard work style has shown through nearly forty albums since 1977 and through his band’s schedule, which includes over sixty concerts in one year. His hard work and high expectations for his band seem kind of humorous to some with Doyle’s recollection of one practice when he "instructed each member to go to a separate room in the house and continue singing. If the individual members were no longer in pitch when they rejoined their leader, they'd start over again. ‘Of course, they thought I was crazy,’ he told John Wooley in Tulsa World, ‘but I told 'em that if it'd work for the banjo, it'd work for vocals. What it does is, it gets you to do things without being conscious of it, because we all were being programmed the same way.’" Doyle expects a lot from his band, and it shows with numerous awards and innumerable Grammy, Dove, IBMA, ICM, and SPBGMA nominations. Each year, Doyle hosts the Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver Festival in Denton, North Carolina. He has one son, Robbie,and two daughters Suzi and Kristi. Kristi gave birth to the Lawson’s first grandchild, Spencer, in July 2007. Doyle rededicated his life to Jesus in May 1985 and is a member of Cold Spring Presbyterian Church.