Mason Via

Photos by Michael Weintrob

In life, as in love, knowing when and how to make a change is crucial. For Mason Via, the youngest member of Old Crow Medicine Show, leaving the well-established band to focus on a solo career followed serious deliberation. Shortly after making the break official, Via released “Hey Don’t Go,” which he describes as “a song about drifting apart.” In the single, which hints at his bittersweet decision, he sings: 

People change

just like the seasons 

they’ve all got their reasons 

for leaving this town. . . 

Via leaves Old Crow with relationships intact with the band members. In fact, he noted, they are helping to push the single. Working with the band, Via says, he learned so much about songwriting, particularly from Ketch Secor. 

“Ketch taught me so much about how to be a showman…how to write songs… and I learned a little bit from everybody in the band about how to do it professionally on the road…how to live that life,” Via said. He already played guitar, mandolin, and bass when he joined Old Crow. The band members encouraged him to learn to play fiddle and banjo too, rounding out the range of bluegrass instruments. Via co-wrote seven songs on the band’s last Grammy-nominated album Jubilee. 

Via grew up around music. His father David Via is an award-winning songwriter, and while the two have different styles, they share a mutual appreciation of each other’s music. Raised in Danbury, North Carolina, he says he started going to Galax when he was twelve, while he alsolistened to Michael Jackson and rap records. 

From the fiddlers conventions and festival scene, Via developed a broad catalog of new and traditional music. He says he acquired “such a breadth of tunes—thousands of songs on my song list—and then someone pulls one out and I think, ‘I’ve got to learn that.’ That infectiousness, wanting to keep learning and growing that repertoire, gets me going in the morning, makes me want to pick up my guitar and go play music with people. At the root of it all, I love to jam.”

Originally, Via expected to use his degree in environmental studies from Warren Wilson College. “My plan was to focus on the environment,” he said, “to get some kind of environmental job and play music for fun.” At the time he graduated, due to changes in world circumstances, jobs in the field were limited, so he moved to Nashville, borrowing Alan Jackson’s phrase, “Chasin’ that neon rainbow.” He says he arrived “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” but learned quickly that he couldn’t manage driving back and forth between Nashville and North Carolina, where he had booked shows. During COVID, he moved back home, where he was hired as a substitute teacher. He was considering working toward teacher certification when he got a call to audition for American Idol. 

At the American Idol auditions, Via got the golden ticket and headed west for Hollywood Week. He survived the period that contestants call “Hell Week”—lots of stress and little sleep. He made it to the top 40 before he was cut. Via recalls, “Luke Bryan and Katie Perry said, ‘You’ve got a great bluegrass voice, and we love bluegrass, but it’s not American Idol. You should go and be the king of bluegrass.’” 

The exposure on Idol may have caught the attention of Old Crow Medicine Show. When the band’s manager reached out to fill spots in the band, Via’s name came up. Secor invited him to meet the band at their Hartland Studio. 

“We spent a couple of days jamming, playing old-time tunes, then we wrote a song on the third day,” Via said. A week or two later, he got the call welcoming him to the band and asking him to move to Nashville right away.

His tenure with Old Crow, Via said, was an education he will carry into the next stage. The experience, says Via, “was something I loved so much and hold as one of the biggest life-changing events that has made me who I am today, but I wanted to pursue a lot more.” From the beginning, he says, he knew he wanted to make his own music eventually. His goals include singing lead on a wider variety of songs. The expectations of fans of a wildly popular established band are a blessing and a curse. Steeped in the bluegrass and old-time festival scene, Via looks forward to switching up his sets, drawing from his extensive catalog of songs, as well as songs of his own. 

“There’s an expectation from fans in a legacy act like that, primarily to play the old hits sung by the founding members who are no longer in the band. Trying to copy those recordings that people have listened to their whole lives and mimicking the past singer can get old when you constantly feel you are in the shadow of the original voice,” Via said. “I’m personally excited to blaze a new musical trail with original songs and my own recordings, playing them live for folks around the world, knowing it’s all one hundred percent straight from the source so fans are getting what they came for.” 

Via also looks forward to honing his craft as a songwriter. “I want to have that legacy of a song like ‘Wagon Wheel,’” he said, noting that he admires songwriters such as Tim O’Brien and Larry Cordle. “They write songs that are going to live much longer. Some songwriters might not have a huge pop music or country music success, but they live on in the campgrounds—and I want a song like that.”

Living in Nashville has also expanded opportunities to write with some of his favorite singers and songwriters—such as Jon Weisberger, Charles Humphrey III (of Songs from the Road Band), and Christian Ward, whose songs have been recorded by East Nash Grass and Billy Strings. In addition to writing for himself, Via’s songs have been recorded by such stellar groups as Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway, who included Via’s “Down Home Dispensary” on their Grammy-winning album City of Gold, and Del McCoury Band, who included “Brown Paper Bag” on their album Almost Proud.

While finishing up his second solo album, Via released an Americana version of “Hey, Don’t Go.” The single features Via on acoustic guitar on lead vocals, joined by a host of stellar musicians, including Barton Davies, Oliver Craven, and Joshua Quimby on harmony vocals, Nate Leath on fiddle, and Cory Walker and James Kee (of East Nash Grass) on banjo and mandolin. Via plans to include a bluegrass version of the song on the upcoming album. 

His connections in the bluegrass community have also led to his inclusion of top-notch musicians on the album now in progress, a different lineup from his debut album. “I have a Rolodex of people I know,” Via said, “a whole list on my phone of people to call—banjo, fiddle, and on down through different instruments. This next album features some amazing pickers—Jason Davis on banjo, Jeff Partin on Dobro and bass, and Jim VanCleve on the fiddle. Aaron Ramsey, who helped produced the album, played mandolin.” Brooks Forsyth and Nick Goad provide harmonies on the new album, and Via has plans for other guest performers as well. 

On the upcoming album, Kyser George from ShadowGrass plays secondary accompaniment guitar, something Via says he hasn’t done before in a straight-up bluegrass setting. He explained that George’s guitar was tuned low, almost like a baritone guitar, with Via capoed up, producing two different tones. “Kyser’s so good at matching my rhythm; he just locked in with me, adding a lot of big tone,” said Via.

Via calls the album in progress a big change from New Horizons, the solo album he released with Mountain Fever around the time he joined Old Crow. “The last album is light-hearted and fun,” said Via. “This new album is more introspective, with some heavier songs. The songwriting is better, in my opinion, a little bit more experimental.” He also realized he didn’t have many love songs on the earlier album, noting, “This album comes from the heart a little more.”  

Via has a vision for his music at this stage of his career. He referred to jam bands who command a following that drives to see them at the next show, knowing it will be entirely different. He said, “I just played four nights in a row, and there wasn’t a single song repeated. I want to keep people on the edge.” 

As Via puts the final touches on the new album, still untitled, he is playing frequently in some of his favorite Nashville spots, while also touring around the southeast to share a stage with musician friends. Having played some huge venues, he recognizes that in a stadium setting, the connection to the audience can be lost. He says he looks forward to playing his favorite kind of venue—“jam-packed. You can’t move, and everybody’s stoked. They’re with you in the room, going through the same experience. But I’ve also been in a room when a performer is telling a story, getting real, and breaking down the boundaries, and you could hear a pin drop. The whole room is listening. I want to dance and party, but if someone comes to one of my shows there is going to be a balance.”