(Featured photo: Rhonda Vincent/Sharp Images)
She’s been called the Queen of Bluegrass.
And on Feb. 9, Rhonda Vincent’s concert with her band, The Rage, at the Imperial Theatre will end the reign of the Southern Soul and Song Series.
Kevin Grogan, the director of the Morris Museum of Art, which has been the beneficiary of the bluegrass series’ receipts, said in July 2023 that the 2023-2024 season would be the final one for the long-running concert event.
“The economics simply don’t work anymore,” he said in a July 19 article. “That’s the hard truth of it.”
Sponsorship is vital to the series, and one of its major sponsors has had to cut back over the years. Ticket sales alone aren’t enough to cover the cost, he said.
Vincent, who has played the series before, can trace her musical heritage back through multiple generations of her family tree, according to her PR website.
“Rhonda’s life of music evolved into a successful career in bluegrass music; after being discovered by Grand Ole Opry Star ‘Jim Ed Brown,’ and later spending what she calls her musical college years recording for Giant Records; and learning about the music business from Nashville’s best like James Stroud, Jack McFadden, and Stan Barnett.
“It was her pivotal bluegrass album ‘Back Home Again’ that transformed Rhonda Vincent into the All American Bluegrass Girl, and crowned the New Queen of Bluegrass by The Wall Street Journal in 2000,” according to her biography at the site.
Vincent has won multiple GRAMMY Awards including bluegrass album of the year in 2010, 2015 and 2022; she’s also been named the International Bluegrass Music Association female vocalist of the year eight times.
In 2021, she was inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Tickets are $20-$55 and are available at the Imperial Theatre website.
While the series comes to an end, Grogan said it’s not the end of music for the Morris.
The Music at the Morris series continues with free concerts. The Jan. 21 event with the Savannah River String Band has been cancelled due to illness, according to the Morris Museum of Art’s website. The next one in that series, which is sponsored by the Cleon Mauldin Foundation will feature Will McCranie at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18.
To learn more, visit themorris.org.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for 35 years. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
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