The McLain Family Band is an American bluegrass band founded in Hindman, Kentucky, in 1968.
Raymond Kane McLain studied folk music at university, and began playing bluegrass music with his then-three children in the late 1950s. They formalized their group in 1968, and played for WKYH-TV before moving to Berea, Kentucky. In the years since, the group has played in 50 U.S. states, at renowned venues across the US, and on nationwide television. Initially sponsored by the United States Department of State, the McLains performed in 63 total nations. From 1978 through 1987, the band hosted an annual family-friendly bluegrass festival in Bighill, Kentucky.
The McLain Family Band developed their sound by ear, with only their patriarch having been classically trained. Music reviewers and ambassadors of the United States alike spoke of the band's authenticity and heartfelt approach to music. In 2013, the International Bluegrass Music Association awarded the McLain Family Band with their Distinguished Achievement Award.
Some McLain songs are originals, some are bluegrass and country music standards, and some were specifically commissioned classical pieces: the first bluegrass band to combine those genres. The core of the band has always been the progeny of Raymond K. McLain, but the group has expanded and contracted over the years. Some members have worked on their own projects when the family band wasn't touring; at least a half-dozen albums attest to that.
History Formation Dr. Raymond Francis McLain (May 2, 1981) was president of Eureka College, Transylvania University, and the American University in Cairo during his career in academia, while his wife Beatrice "Bicky" Kane McLain (1906–2004) was the director of the Center for Southern Regional Folklife Studies at the University of Alabama (1966–1976). Raymond Francis and Bicky had two children: daughter Rosemary (a "singer/songwriter and artistic pioneer in the rubber stamping industry"), and son Raymond Kane McLain (1928–2003).
Raymond Kane combined the passions of his parents; he majored in music theory at Denison University, studied at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and did graduate work in folk music studies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina before moving to Hindman, Kentucky in 1954 where he became the director of Hindman Settlement School. While at Hindman, Raymond Kane developed an interest in bluegrass music; he introduced his three eldest children—Raymond Winslow, Alice, and Ruth—to the genre, and the four of them began playing together.
Raymond Kane married Betty Winslow in 1952, and founded the band at her encouragement in 1968. Initially performing under the name Bluegrass State, the quartet performed on a weekly WKYH-TV television show for two years. On December 31, 1968, the family's Hindman home burned to the ground; all seven family members and their instruments survived, and in 1970, the family moved to Berea, Kentucky.
Performing The band performed in all 50 U.S. states, and particularly in Alaska during the winters where "people really needed music." In 1980, Alaska Airlines sponsored the McLain Family Festival (January 11–12); inside West Anchorage High School, away from the weather, the family was joined on stage by the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra and future McLain band member Michael Riopel. On the mainland, the band also stood before audiences at the Speed Art Museum, Carnegie Hall, the 1982 World's Fair, the Lincoln Center, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (at least six times), and the Carter Family Fold (since 1974). They also appeared on the CBS Morning News, the Grand Ole Opry, Hee Haw, The Johnny Cash Show, Music City Tonight, Nashville Now, Today, and their own weekly program on WKYT-TV.
After the McLain Family Band played for the National Endowment for the Arts' music committee in 1972, Gian Carlo Menotti was so "charmed by the band" that he invited them to that year's Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. That July, the band undertook their first international concert tour sponsored by the United States Department of State, traveling to Italy, West Germany, and Belgium. The band made 14 overseas tours—including an "around-the-world odyssey in 1975", and has performed in 64 different countries, including:
The band stopped extensively touring in 1990 to allow Raymond Winslow, Alice and Al, and Ruth to personally rear their children without being on the road for months at a time. In 2018, for their 50th anniversary, the band toured widely again through the US and Europe.
Festival
Raymond Kane had envisioned for years a family-friendly bluegrass festival dedicated to performing family groups, and in 1978 he found a farm on U.S. Route 421 in Bighill, Kentucky that perfectly met the needs of such a festival: "I found this farm with this marvelous hill forming a natural amphitheater. At the bottom of the hill is a grove of locust, wild plum and oak trees, a great backdrop for the stage. The rest is history." That year, the band hosted the inaugural McLain Family Band Festival in Renfro Valley, Kentucky, but all subsequent festivals were held on the farm.
The festival showcased both domestic (including Patsy Montana, The Whites, Jim & Jesse, Janette Carter, and the Osborne Brothers) and international talent (including the Appleseeds from Japan, the Nuyens Family from Belgium, and Fesaci from Czechoslovakia). Some years, the festival's performers were broadcast on NPR and Kentucky Educational Television. Between 6,000 and 7,000 people attended the festival each year, many of whom camped on the McLain's farm for the duration. No alcoholic drinks or illegal drugs were allowed on the premises. In 1987, the entrance fee was ; the festival ran for three days from noon to 11p.m., and ultimately lasted for ten years.
McLain music While Raymond Kane was classically trained, his children were taught and learned to play by ear. The band watched videos of their performances to find weaknesses and continually improve: said that we should be able to play a piece three consecutive times with no mistakes if it was ready to perform."
The McLain Family Band's music has been reviewed as being cheery,' 'light,' and 'wholesome, and lacking the painful, "dark and haunted side of bluegrass". George Vecsey noted in 1975 that many bands, the McLains do little talking, and they minimize their fancy solos." The band performs music of their own composition, as well as "bluegrass and country standards, novelty songs, and eastern Kentucky traditional music." Many of their songs are written by Raymond Kane's sister, Rosemary. The McLain Family Band also played with symphonic orchestras, presenting pieces arranged by Phillip Rhodes, Newton Wayland, and P. D. Q. Bach (the fictional alter-ego of Peter Schickele). All band members sing both lead and harmony.
In the late 1970s, the McLain Family Band pioneered combining bluegrass and classical music, the first bluegrass band to do so. In 1973, composer Phillip Rhodes wrote Concerto for Bluegrass Band and Orchestra for the McLain Family Band, the first "major work ever written for a bluegrass band and symphony orchestra." The McLain Family Band has performed it "hundreds of times with orchestras from all over the [United States]." Rhodes also composed orchestral arrangements of original McLain Family Band songs under a commission by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
One of the band's most-requested pieces is "Kentucky Wind", a song written by Raymonds K. and W. while homesick during a South American tour. Another is "Troublesome Creek", by Raymond W. about a waterway in Hindman; the song is like the creek, "sometimes, it is a placid stream, a place to catch tadpoles and crayfish. But other times, it is troublesome, a rising torrent threatening to flood houses."
Over the years, the McLain Family Band has repeatedly said that they play because they enjoy doing it. Raymond Kane once said, "People pay us to leave our homes, to ride in a van for hours, to set up our instruments...but they don't pay us to play music. We do that for fun. The minute we stop enjoying that, we'll do something else."
Discography
Under their own label (Country Life Records), the McLain Family Band released 14 LP records.
Members The initial four members of the McLain Family Band were Raymond Kane and his first three children: Raymond Winslow, Alice, and Ruth. Over the years, band membership expanded to include Raymond Kane's youngest two children Nancy Ann and Michael, Alice's husband Al White, and Ruth's husband Michael Riopel. At times, the group also featured Raymond Winslow's wife Beverly Buchanan and non-relative Tom Owen. Raymond Kane's wife, and mother of the five McLain children—Betty—was the band's business and talent manager.
, the McLain Family Band lineup included Raymond Winslow McLain, Alice McLain and Al White, Ruth McLain Smith, and Daxson Lewis, occasionally joined by Nancy Ann Wartman, Michael McLain, and Jennifer McLain.
Raymond Kane and Betty
Raymond Kane McLain was born on April 18, 1928, in Alliance, Ohio. In 1970, Raymond Kane began teaching the United States' first university-level courses in bluegrass and Appalachian music at Berea College. Raymond Kane McLain was the bandleader of the group for 20 years. He sang and played the guitar and accordion. Raymond Kane also wrote music; the Elizabethton Star called his arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto "the most stunning" of his musical compositions for the band. After the band stopped touring in 1989, Raymond Kane became a librarian. He died in Lexington, Kentucky on February 14, 2003, at 74 years old.
Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Winslow (1928–2011) had a degree in psychology from Oberlin College, and married Raymond Kane in 1952. After they moved to Hindman, Kentucky, she became the recreation director of the Hindman Settlement School. It was with her encouragement that Raymond Kane started the family band in 1968. For "over 20 years" she managed the band full-time—acting as talent manager and bookkeeper at home in Berea, Kentucky while the band toured—and also hosted the band's annual Bighill, Kentucky bluegrass festival. She taught English country dance, and was an executive field director for the Wilderness Road Girl Scout Council. She was married to Bill Tallmadge from 1999 until his death in 2004.
Raymond Winslow Raymond Winslow McLain was born in 1953. He enrolled at Berea College when the family moved there in 1970, and married Beverly Buchanan in December 1979. In 2000, Raymond Winslow was made the director of the Bluegrass and Country Music Program at East Tennessee State University. , he was the executive director of Morehead State University's Kentucky Center for Traditional Music.
A high tenor playing clawhammer banjo, and fiddle, Raymond Winslow is the most well-known of the McLain family outside of the band, and one of "the most well-traveled musicians in his field". Playing with the family band, Raymond Winslow "took nearly all the lead breaks in their early years." He was a "musical ambassador" for the United States Department of State, and made more than 230 appearances with orchestras. Paul Jenkins of Bluegrass Unlimited called Raymond Winslow's playing virtuosic, and in 1972, he won a Bluegrass Music Award.
After the family band stopped touring in 1989, Raymond Winslow joined Jim & Jesse and played with them for 10 years. During those ten years, he also released two albums of his own: A Place of My Own (1992) and Kentucky Mountain Banjo (1995). Since then, he's also played with "Canadian harmonica virtuoso" Mike Stevens.
Alice and Al White