Mason Via

A washed-out festival in Union Grove

In September 2015 Mason Via played Ancient Tones, a first-year festival held on the old fiddlers' convention grounds at VanHoy Farms in Union Grove, North Carolina. It rained hard all weekend. The campground stayed empty and the bands played to almost nobody, and Mason still talks about it as one of the good ones. It was the first time he saw Mountain Heart, The Horse Flies and Seven Handle Circus.

"There was more people backstage than there were listening to the bands."

That weekend came back around. Aaron Ramsey, who was on that bill with Mountain Heart, went on to produce Mason's self-titled bluegrass album, with Jim VanCleve on fiddle and Jeff Partin on bass and reso-guitar. Both are Mountain Heart alumni too.

The funk band

Long before the bluegrass world knew the name, Mason spent years fronting a funk band. It grew out of a friendship with Camry Harris, now the drummer for Town Mountain, who grew up alongside him and brought in players from the church scene around Martinsville, Virginia, including a sacred steel player raised in that tradition.

One set of it survives on record by accident. Jon Lohman of the Virginia Folklife Program recorded the band at Rooster Walk and did not tell Mason until afterward. Mason sat on the tape for a couple of years and put it out in 2020 as Live @ Rooster Walk.

"That's kinda my connection to a lot of these bluegrassers, is that we can connect on a musical level when we can realize, all right, we can play a little bit of bluegrass, but we really like to get down with the funk."

Three years with Old Crow

He joined Old Crow Medicine Show in 2021 as its youngest member and stayed through 2024. He had played the Opry once and cut a full album with the band before he did much of anything else in public with them. Two of the band's records topped the bluegrass chart in that stretch, Paint This Town in 2022 and Jubilee in 2023, and Jubilee was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album. He headlined Salmon Fest in Alaska with them, which he counts among his favorite shows he has played anywhere.

Then he left, to run his own thing.

"I just want to play music and for people to hear it. And I think if the right people hear it, then it's just gonna work."

Songs that go to other people

His writing travels ahead of him. Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway cut "Down Home Dispensary," which he co-wrote, on City of Gold. The Del McCoury Band cut "Brown Paper Bag" on Almost Proud. He co-wrote "Ride Forever" with Charles Humphrey III for Off The Rails, the band Lucas White plays lead guitar in.

He writes by hearing the finished record before it exists.

"It's kind of like a silhouette of that idea in my head."

When Off The Rails sent back what they had done with "Ride Forever," it matched the thing in his head.

"They turned it into the thing I wanted it to be, and I didn't know if it ever even could be that."

Not picking a lane

Mason is not choosing a genre and staying in it. The model he names is Peter Rowan, who will turn up with a bluegrass band one night and a Tejano band the next. He has recorded an EDM track and shelved it for being too far from what he is after. His own bluegrass record moves between straight bluegrass, jam grass and Americana.

"I'm trying to channel that Peter Rowan energy, the young Peter Rowan vibe."

"It's always something new for the people, and I think it's fun for me, and it's fun for everyone else, too, when you push the boundaries a little bit."

The Nashville rooms he named as the working ones were Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge up in Madison, where East Nash Grass, the band Cory Walker and James Kee built a Monday night into a movement, and Jane's Hideaway, the bluegrass supper club Shawn Spencer helped open. Jane's closed in 2025.

Mason Via, the self-titled album he was mixing when these episodes were recorded, came out on Mountain Fever Records in April 2025. It was made in Floyd, Virginia. The IBMA nominated him for New Artist of the Year in 2026.