The Po’  Ramblin’ Boys

Progressively Traditional Bluegrass “Pioneers”

Formed in 2014, the group brought together four talented young musicians in their twenties, from different parts of the country, with a desire to make a living doing something they loved while having a stable home life. Although their original expectations were low, their passion, energy, enthusiasm, and work ethic were high, as was their ability to be open to the opportunities that were to come. Now, just eight years later and as a quintet, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are at the top of their game and are redefining and expanding hard-edged traditional bluegrass for a new generation.

Mandolin player C.J. Lewandowski is the band’s senior member and spokesperson. He was born in 1987 and grew up in Jefferson County, Missouri, south of Saint Louis. His earliest musical mentor was his maternal grandmother, Doris Highfill. “Her and my grandpa had a marina on Lake of the Ozarks,” he says. “They had a little church there, and I remember her singing all the time. Her world revolved around music, and that was our bond. The first time I ever got on stage was at that little church in Eldon, Missouri. I sang ‘Jacob’s Ladder.’ She always encouraged me to sing after that. She passed away when I was six.”

The loss of his grandmother was only one of a series of challenges C.J. faced in childhood. When he was eight, his parents divorced, and two years later his mother passed away. Fortunately, he found support from the family of his best friend, Steve Lawson, who also was an only child. Steve’s grandfather, Udell Stout, loved bluegrass music and regularly attended many of the midwestern festivals. “Steve found a banjo under his grandpa’s bed,” C.J. says. “He started messing with it and his grandpa said, ‘Either learn how to play it or put it up.’ He decided he was going to learn, so I found a fiddle and we started learning together.”

The boys began taking lessons from a local teacher, but after a few months, C.J. was struggling and ready to give up on the fiddle. And then it happened. “One of the rooms she taught in had a picture of Bill Monroe and he’s holding his old mandolin,” he recalls. “And it was like there was this power that I seen, and I connected to the mandolin. I took lessons for about three months, and then she said, ‘OK, you need to start going to festivals and getting into jam sessions. Now go out and learn on your own.’”

Just as he was attracted to the power of Bill Monroe’s mandolin playing, C.J. was enthralled by the singing of the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin. “Stanley Brothers was what I would listen to the most, and it was that harmony, the rawness of it,” he reflects. “Jimmy’s energy; I wanted to be like Jimmy Martin so bad when I was in high school! I got into the Osborne Brothers once I saw them at Eminence.”

Steve’s grandfather took the teenage boys to all the major festivals in Missouri, including those in Eureka, Eminence, Steelville, Dixon, and Starvy Creek. As they became more confident in their playing, they began getting to know many of Missouri’s top bluegrass performers. “The first time that me and Steve got on stage was at Dixon, Missouri, with the Ozark Bluegrass Boys: Jim Orchard, Rich Orchard, Ray Gore, Mike Heller. We did ‘Pike County Breakdown.’ After that, Jim kind of took a liking to us. I started [playing] with the Ozark Bluegrass Boys. That’s when I really dove into hanging out with the older guys, the first generation. When I was in high school, I was a rebellious kid, so when I found bluegrass it was my medicine. They understood that and took me under their wing, and it kept me out of a lot of trouble.

“Frank Ray was another influence. He lived thirty miles from me, and he had the old Don Brown Loar [mandolin]. I was loving Don Brown’s music, and I was taking lessons from Frank Ray. I love the vintage instruments because of the people that I was around.” Another of C.J.’s early mentors was Gene Roberts, a long-time bluegrass DJ on KDHX radio in Saint Louis. Roberts introduced C.J. to music he might not otherwise have heard, and often provided him with tickets to concerts in the area. 

In high school, C.J. and Steve started a band called Blue Generation. They won a school talent contest, recorded two albums, and played at local venues. After high school, C.J. decided to try music full-time and formed a band called The Men of the Week. He set out to learn the business from the ground up. “I was digging through the Bluegrass Unlimited festival guide and just calling whoever I could.” 

Over the next couple of years, The Men of the Week began drawing regional attention and accolades. In 2010, they were named SPBGMA Midwest Traditional Bluegrass Band of the Year and C.J. was named Entertainer of the Year. Videos of the band’s performances show twenty-two year old C.J. to be developing into a multi-talented, energetic, and engaging showman. Among those paying attention was bandleader Karl Shiflett, who invited C.J. to join his Big Country Show in June of 2010. 

A four-year stint in Shiflett’s band was the perfect opportunity for C.J. to continue his bluegrass education. “I started using my contacts around the midwest and everywhere and applying them to Karl,” he explains. “And so I became somewhat of a booking agent/partner to Karl. And then I was starting to order the merchandise. I just kind of dove in, because I wanted to know every aspect of it. And Karl was the guy that let me do that.”

Meanwhile, in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, just south of Louisville, youngsters Josh Rinkel (born in 1990) and Jereme Brown (born in 1992) became fast friends after their mothers arranged for Jereme and his father to give Josh a banjo lesson. Jereme is the son of acclaimed Stanley-style singer and banjo player Tommy Brown, whose band The County Line Grass was formed in 1991. By the time he was six, Jereme was learning to play fiddle and getting on stage with his dad. By age ten he had taken up guitar and banjo and was a full-fledged member of the band. He invited his new buddy Josh to come along as a “roadie” in exchange for banjo lessons. “Sitting in the back of Tommy’s old Eagle bus, they watched Ralph Stanley videos and Jereme taught Josh how to play banjo,” C.J. says. “He sold his paintball gun and bought a banjo.”

Josh progressed quickly and at age fifteen he joined the County Line Grass, playing second banjo, while Jereme played guitar. In September 2008, their paths would cross with C.J.’s, when both the Men of the Week and the County Line Grass performed at the Jerusalem Ridge Festival in Rosine, Kentucky. “I wanted to go to Jerusalem Ridge and see Bill Monroe’s homeplace,” C.J. relates, “and one main attraction, too, was going to see Tommy Brown. I had heard about him on the radio. And so every show that weekend I was watching Tommy.”

At one point he and Josh struck up a conversation, and Josh told C.J. that his favorite band on MySpace social media platform was The Men of the Week, “So we instantly became buddies. [After that] we crossed paths a lot, we always hung out, we always jammed.” In the spring of 2010, C.J. decided to move to Kentucky, to be closer to the music scene. “I lived a half a mile from Josh,” he says. “We were going to jam sessions and festivals, we would do karaoke, and that’s probably the beginning of the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, was us singing together, having jam sessions everywhere.”

They were also learning the business together. Josh was doing booking and merchandise management for Tommy Brown just as C.J. was for Karl Shiflett. “We were constantly getting together and passing along information, so therefore we kind of had that business bond from the start,” he notes.

In 2013, C.J. heard of an opportunity to play several nights a week in an outdoor series called “Tunes and Tales” in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He spent that summer commuting between Elizabethtown, Kentucky (weekends) and Gatlinburg (weekdays), while still playing shows with Karl Shiflett. In Gatlinburg, he got to know many of the pickers in the area at that time, including Darrell Webb, Elmer Burchett, Seth Mulder, Jerry Cole, and Eli Johnston. 

Work opportunities for bluegrass musicians were plentiful in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area, thanks in part to Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery, which had opened in July 2010 as the first legally licensed moonshine distillery in Tennessee. Ole Smoky management felt that bluegrass music would be an added attraction for its tasting tours and began hiring bands to perform daily. This was appealing to the musicians since it enabled them to make a living without the expense and stress of travel on the road.

As the summer of 2013 was ending, C.J. happened to be in the right place at the right time. “I started mingling with all those [pickers], to where they would ask me to come help them at Ole Smoky,” he says, “and in September I started filling in on guitar or mandolin, and singing, too. I became kind of a swing shift guy. Bo Isaacs and I got called in [to play between sets], so we called ourselves ‘The In-Betweeners,’ which eventually turned into the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys. Bo was singing a song that Elmer Burchett wrote, and I think it was called ‘Po’ Ramblin’ Boy.’ He turned to me one day and said, ‘You know, a good band name would be The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys.’

“In June of 2014, the entertainment director called me to the office and said, ‘We’re going to open another location in Pigeon Forge. We’re going to need a fifth band. Would you want to put something together?’ So the first person I called was Josh, and then I called Jereme. They were still playing with Tommy Brown.” Josh came down immediately to play guitar, and Jereme joined them in August on the banjo. With the addition of bass player Jasper Lorentzen, who was already working in the distillery’s tasting room and playing on the “Tunes and Tales” series, the band was complete.

Jasper was born in 1990 in North Dakota, the second of six children in a musical family. His great grandfather was Henry Lorentzen, a famous cowboy painter. His father had played guitar in a country-gospel group in Canada, and his mother gave fiddle lessons. The Lorentzens moved to Indiana when Jasper was about thirteen. By then they had started a family band called Old Hat. 

C.J. first met Jasper and his fiddle playing sister Starlett in 2010, when they all were enrolled at the Kentucky School of Bluegrass and Traditional Music in Hyden. As C.J. and Jasper talked, they found they shared a surprising connection. “He said one of the first bluegrass bands he ever seen was Frank Ray and Cedar Hill,” C.J. recalls. “And that’s pretty crazy, because Frank lived thirty miles from me. The first bass that Jasper’s dad ever bought was from Frank Ray. So we have that in common.”

In the beginning, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys were content to stay close to home and be a “house” band. “We were playing enough at Ole Smoky that we didn’t have to go anywhere else,” C.J. explains. “We had a concentrated group of people from all over the world right there in the holler every day. Instead of us going to them, they were coming to us. We all lived in this house together and we could go home and sleep in our own beds. We did everything together, so we got really close. It was just, ‘We’re the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, we’re at Ole Smoky Moonshine Holler, we wear bib overalls every day because that seems to make the most tip money,’” he laughs.

But events in the coming months would prove fortuitous for the band’s future. C.J. gave his notice to Karl Shiflett in September 2014, and began managing band business for the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys. Josh and Jereme continued to perform with Tommy Brown and the County Line Grass in addition to playing weekdays at Ole Smoky. In October, Tommy Brown’s Leaving This Town album was released on California’s Randm Records, bringing national attention to what had previously been essentially a regional band. The label’s website states: “Randm Records is an independent record label offering up, well, randomly great music. Indie, Rock, Americana, Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Folk, and whatever else we like.” 

The folks at Randm liked what they were hearing from the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys and invited them to join the label. The band recorded its first album, Back to the Mountains, in July 2015. Around that same time, C.J. was contacted by event producers in Canada and Switzerland who knew him through his work with Karl Shiflett. Word was getting out about the hot new band, and suddenly they had a tour booked. “So our first tour was, we went to Canada for four days, played Ole Smoky for five days, and then went to Europe for two weeks! And it was just a fluke thing,” he adds.

February of 2016 saw the release of the new album, and in May the band released a video of the single, “Drive Myself to Drinkin’.” The bib overalls soon gave way to more showy western-style shirts, suits, and hats. In October the Boys returned for another European tour in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In early 2017, they began performing weekly on Radio Bristol’s “Farm and Fun Time” mid-day program. The band was starting to get festival bookings as well. That spring, to advance his business and networking skills, C.J. participated in IBMA’s Leadership Bluegrass course. Soon after that, the band was nominated for a Momentum Award and was chosen to showcase at the IBMA World of Bluegrass in September. “And that’s when a lot of things clicked,” C.J. notes.

The band’s various showcase performances caught the attention of industry movers and shakers, including Ken Irwin and Bill Nowlin of Rounder Records and Mike Drudge of Rainmaker Management, who told them, “You guys are the Johnson Mountain Boys of this generation!” Rainmaker had a developmental program aimed at taking up-and-coming bands to the next level, and Drudge thought the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys would be a perfect fit. “[They] were pretty much grooming [bands] to be the Del McCourys of the next generation,” C.J. says. “So we jumped on board as quick as we could. And they’ve done so much for us. IBMA has, too.”

In 2018, the Boys released their second album, God’s Love is So Divine, a gospel collection, on the Sound Biscuit label. By the time that recording hit the market, they had already been back in the studio and had signed with Rounder Records, Rainmaker Management, and Crossover Touring booking agency. Now the band was busy enough that they needed to hire a bus driver. Since Jereme and Josh were no longer available to play showdates with the County Line Grass, Tommy Brown disbanded his group and began driving for the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, as well as making occasional guest appearances with them on stage. 

That summer Rounder released the single, “Next Train South,” which a year later would be the opening track of the Toil, Tears & Trouble album. In September the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys were named IBMA “New Artist of the Year.” Just days later, they made their debut performance on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Their Rounder Records debut would mark another leap ahead for the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys’ music. While the Back to the Mountains album focused on subject matter (mountains, cabins, drinking, nostalgia) that would appeal to distillery patrons and God’s Love is So Divine paid tribute to the band’s musical heroes and families, the material on Toil, Tears & Trouble had a decidedly more contemporary feel. “[With Rounder] I think we were honing in on what we wanted to do a little bit more,” C.J. affirms. “And we learned a lot from Ken [Irwin]. Look at the Johnson Mountain Boys, at the James King records, at the Longview records. They’ve got different harmony structures, they’ve got different tempos, they’ve got different subject matter. The album tells a story. And there’s no filler material. We like songs with depth.”

As on the two previous projects, this album included obscure material from the band’s heroes, such as Frank Ray’s “Ice on the Timber” and Jim Orchard’s “Longing for the Ozarks.” But it also included powerful story songs from more contemporary songwriters including Jamie O’Hara (“Cold Hard Truth,” “Bidding America Goodbye”), Slaid Cleaves (“Hickory, Walnut and Pine”), and Barry and Holly Tashian (Don’t Kneel By My Graveside”). Josh Rinkel also contributed an original song, “Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue.” Lead vocals were shared among C.J., Josh, and Jereme, all of whom are gifted singers. While Jereme and Josh are steeped in Stanley-style banjo and guitar picking and C.J. in Monroe-style mandolin, their instrumental work on this album demonstrates masterful versatility. The album was a 2019 Grammy finalist.

Joining the Boys on Toil, Tears & Trouble, as she had on the gospel project, was fiddler Laura Orshaw. She had already been performing and recording with the band for several years, and she officially became a Po’ Ramblin’ Boy in January 2020. Laura was born in 1988, grew up in Pennsylvania, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father was a Stanley Brothers fan and her grandmother sang and played folk songs in a style similar to Hazel Dickens. Laura began playing fiddle as a young child, and by the time she was twelve she was giving lessons to adults. 

C.J. felt an immediate connection with Laura. “We met her at Ralph Stanley’s festival, playing fiddle with Danny Paisley, and she just blew me away,” he attests. “And then we had a jam session up in New York, and she said, ‘C.J., sing that Buzz Busby song,’ and I was like, ‘You know who Buzz Busby is?’ So we became friends really quickly after that.”

Not only does Laura’s fiddle prowess add new variety to the band’s instrumental arrangements, but the group now has four solid vocalists who can handle both lead and harmony. Just as important, C.J. stresses, is compatibility. “We hired her because she can play the fiddle like nobody’s business, and she can get along with us on the road. We wanted someone to add to vocals, instrumentation, personality on stage, entertainment value. But at the end of the day we have to get along on the bus. And it was super easy with Laura.”

The affiliations with Rounder, Rainmaker, and their current booking agency, Prater Day, have propelled the band another step up the ladder of success. In 2021, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys were finalists for IBMA “Entertainer of the Year” and were chosen to perform at the Awards Show and on the main stage at the Wide Open Bluegrass festival. Just a week earlier, they had performed for the first time at AmericanaFest in Nashville. 

The group also took part in Porch Pride, a virtual performance event for the Bluegrass Pride organization. This non-profit group grew out of a discussion about diversity, equality, and inclusion during Leadership Bluegrass week in 2017. After listening to the concerns of participants who felt marginalized because they didn’t fit the stereotypical bluegrass image, C.J. gained a new understanding of what would become Bluegrass Pride’s mission and its catchphrase: “Bluegrass is For Everyone.”

He, too, had felt the sting of discrimination. “I’ve been told that I couldn’t get on the stage because of [wearing] bib overalls,” he states. “I’ve also been told that I can’t get on stage if I show my tattoos. So I felt like we could stand up in a way of support, ‘Hey, we understand.’ If you’re good at what you do, you can be a professional, at anything. If you love bluegrass music, you are a part of this patchwork quilt of a musical family. Kara Kundert, the president of Bluegrass Pride, asked if we would do the Porch Pride event online, celebrating diversity and inclusion. So we’ve become allies, and we are very proud of that, because we think that bluegrass is for EVERYONE. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are. Music tears down walls and erases lines of separation. If you’re someone who likes bluegrass music, that’s all that matters. We love you for it!”

In April 2021, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys released the single, “Missing Her Has Never Slowed Me Down.” In September came the announcement that they had signed with Smithsonian Folkways Records. Their new album, Never Slow Down, was released in March 2022. C.J. had first met Smithsonian associate director John Smith in 2017 at Leadership Bluegrass. They crossed paths several times after that, and Smith expressed an interest in recording the band if they were interested. Once the Boys had parted ways amicably with Rounder, they decided the time was right.

Smith welcomed them with open arms: “I can’t think of any group more perfectly suited to carry on the long legacy of bluegrass music on Smithsonian Folkways than the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys. Few other bands are able to balance the reverence and deep knowledge of this music’s history while making it entirely their own.  Their rousing live performances are inspiring and a sight to behold.  It’s a combination that makes them one of the most compelling bands performing American music today, and all of us at Smithsonian Folkways are incredibly excited to be working with them.”

Never Slow Down follows the band’s trademark formula of paying tribute to its mentors, putting its unique stamp on more contemporary material, and introducing originals written by guitarist Josh Rinkel. “We pulled out a Don Brown song,” C.J. says. “I played Don’s old Loar mandolin on that song. There’s a Tommy Brown song, ‘The Blues Are Close at Hand.’ Josh wrote ‘Missing Her Has Never Slowed Me Down’ and ‘When Are You Gonna Tell Me.’ The subject matter for him is usually heartbreak and most of his songs have some truth behind them. There’s been a George Jones song on every record that we’ve put out, and this time Laura’s singing ‘Where Grass Don’t Grow.’ Laura’s taking a front seat on this album. I think she’s brought a new fire to the band, as far as creativity. She does Hazel Dickens’s ‘Ramblin’ Woman’ and Jim Lauderdale’s ‘Old Time Angels.’ She found a song by Chris Brashear, ‘Mason’s Lament,’ and placed it in Jereme’s lap and said, ‘You should do this.’ It’s a stout song.

“There’s a bunch of variety as far as subject matter, tempos and timings,” he continues. “There’s a lot of different harmony structures on this album, because we can do it now that we have Laura. We recorded our first ever quartet number that we can do on stage with the actual band members. I’m singing a song called ‘Take My Ashes to the River.’ On the chorus it’s actually Laura singing lead and Josh and I are echoing her back. It’s pretty intense. We took ‘Little Glass of Wine,’ the classic Stanley song, and rearranged the chord structure, so it’s a fresh version of an ancient song. So we’re paying homage to some founders of the music, but we’re also bringing a new edge to it.”

This year The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are also celebrating a new sponsorship agreement with Ole Smoky Distillery. Their bus is newly wrapped with eye-catching Ole Smoky logos and graphics. The band and the distillery are doing some cross-merchandising and co-promotion as well. Ole Smoky CEO Robert Hall is excited about the affiliation, saying, “We are proud of The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys and their passion for bluegrass music. We like to think of them as family, as they started playing together at our Holler Distillery. What started as one of our house bands, is now a national bluegrass favorite. We look forward to supporting their national tour this year.”

With sincerity, enthusiasm, authenticity, audacity, and a knack for making any song their own, the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys gain new fans wherever they go. “We’ve played Bourbon and Beyond with the Foo Fighters and John Fogerty,” C.J. asserts. “We’ve played Pickathon, when the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Tyler Childers were there. MerleFest, that’s a place to prove a point if you can. Mostly we got in there because we made the right decisions with booking agents and management. We weren’t afraid to spend a little money, we weren’t afraid to go outside our comfort zone, and we weren’t afraid to listen to other people. Those people are good at what they do. Bluegrass is a big, happy family, but it’s also a business. So find people you trust and work with them.”

As he reflects on the band’s formative years and looks toward the future, C.J. is both grateful and proud. “The people in the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, would never have met if it wasn’t for bluegrass music,” he maintains. “We wouldn’t be the friends we are, and the family that we are. We’ve lived some dreams, that’s for sure. We never thought we’d play the Grand Ole Opry, we never thought we’d tour the country, go to Europe, own a bus, be nominated for a Grammy. Some of the best people that’s ever come into my life were because of bluegrass, so I feel like we owe bluegrass music something back.

“We want to leave the mark on bluegrass music that bluegrass has left on us as individuals. We’d really like to be known as the premier bluegrass band of our generation. If you’re true to yourself, the people are going to see that, they’re going to admire it, and they’re going to support you. My standard of bluegrass, I feel like we are hitting that, and expanding on it. We’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. Be open to what comes along, don’t be afraid of change, just go out there and do what you do and have a passion for it.”