John D’Agostino with Mason Ridge

For many years, John D’Agostino has been a prominent force in the music scene of Columbia, Missouri—a town smack dab between St. Louis and Kansas City. Columbia was home to the Roots and Blues Music festival, which hosted an array of blues, folk, country, and soul artists.  Being a college town, Columbia is also home to a number of well-known music venues that host a wide array of musical genres on any given night, and D’Agostino has performed at many of them.  

 With this release, D’Agostino brings us his third album, this time featuring bluegrass band Mason Ridge and showcasing the songs of local songwriting legends from the “bocomo” (Boone County, Missouri) music scene who are no longer with us. 

John D’Agostino with Mason Ridge is a cheerfully irreverent album, with strong undertones of escapism. After listening to “Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em,” written by close friend and co-conspirator Don Dietrich, the listener understands that they ain’t talking about cigarettes. 

I may be biased (John is my uncle), but John’s voice always delivers a raspy James Taylor-like quality with beautiful backing melody from Mason Ridge. He is backed vocally by brother Sam, sisters Katy and Lucia, plus others like his Niece Anna, who has performed with him on several studio recordings.

Mason Ridge is a well-seasoned bluegrass band with the likes of Kevin Shultz on bass, Gerald Jones on fiddle, Claude Crum on guitar, Mike McCoy on banjo, and Kevin Amberguy on mandolin.  This band has performed live with bluegrass banjo legend Alan Munde for a number of years and are a high-demand studio band in the Midwest whenever anyone is looking to record bluegrass.

D’Agostino, a multi-instrumentalist who primarily performs on piano, frequently performs in Missouri clubs as a singer.  His late sister Debbie, who taught him piano when he was young, played with him in bands for many years, and they occasionally played gigs as the D’Agostino Family Choir, a regular fixture at local festivals.  A whole slew of relatives and friends participate with this band. John has always played with the finest regional musicians around and is currently the band leader for the Fried Crawdaddies in Columbia. 

With this third album, we are happy to see that D’Agostino decided to bring in a very talented group of bluegrass musicians to help him highlight his vocal talents.