The Reno Family
40 Years Late…and Right On Time
This is a noteworthy year in the history of bluegrass music because it is the year that we lost the last of our first-generation heroes. While a few of those bluegrass trailblazers, like the most recent to leave us—Bobby Osborne and Jesse McReynolds—lived past their 90th birthday, there were several who we lost far too soon. Carter Stanley, Red Smiley, Lester Flatt and Don Reno are a few that immediately come to mind. Fortunately, what helps us hold on to their talent and contribution are the recordings that they left behind. Regrettably, we often feel that what was left behind wasn’t nearly enough…we wish there could have been more. Thankfully, in the case of Don Reno—nearly 40 years after his passing—there now is more!
A year or two prior to Don’s passing (at the age of 58 in 1984) he had started performing and recording with his sons Ronnie, Dale and Don Wayne. During a few California tours, in 1983 and 1984, the group had recorded two albums worth of material for producer Tom Stern. One group of songs were recorded with guests Tony Rice, Byron Berline and David Nelson. That set of songs was released in 1988 under the title Family and Friends. Another group of tracks were not released. Plans were made for a release, but those plans never materialized. Then the master recordings went missing.
After retiring from the road in 2019, Ronnie Reno decided that he needed to organize his family’s photos, paperwork, video and audio archives. While searching through boxes of archived family material, he ran across his copy of the master tapes from the recordings that were made in California during 1983 and 1984. Ronnie decided to partner his Man-Do-Lin Productions company with 615 Hideaway Records and release these heritage recordings under the title The Reno Family—40 Years Late…and Right On Time.
Recalling this time in his life, Ronnie Reno remembers, “Basically, we were going to start touring as the Reno Family. The four of us were really playing some great music together. I had left Merle Haggard and Dad had left Bill Harrell. The brothers were young, but they were really playing well. It made a lot of sense for us to come together as a family.”
In 1982 the idea for the three brothers to start performing and touring with their father came together. At the time, Ronnie, at the age of 35, was already a seasoned veteran musician. His younger brothers, Dale (21) and Don Wayne (19) were less experienced, however, Ronnie said, “We really sounded good as a family band.” The band configuration was Don on banjo, Ronnie on guitar, Dale on mandolin, and Don Wayne on bass. Occasionally, Don and Don Wayne would play twin banjos and Ronnie and Dale would sometimes play twin mandolins. Typically, Ronnie sang the lead and Don sang tenor.
Ronnie said, “What is so unique about this new project is that we only recorded three projects together and two of them were recorded during ’83 and ’84 in California and the other was here in Nashville. We only got half of that one recorded and Dad passed away. The brothers and I finished that one. The Final Chapter was the name of that one, but in reality it wasn’t the final chapter, this new one is the final chapter because it was never released.”
The plan for the release of the 40 Years Late…and Right on Time material is to introduce a total of five singles prior to releasing the full ten song project. Two of the singles, “Sundown and Sorrow” and “I Love My Savior Too,” were released on July 28th, 2023. The next two, “Whispering” and “Unwanted Love,” were released on August 18th. The final single, “Another Baby” was released in mid-September. The full recording will be released on October 6th.
The original projects were recorded in the San Francisco area of California and came about as a result of California music producer Tom Stern being a fan of Don Reno. Ronnie remembers, “We would go out to tour in California twice a year. Once in March and the other time in the late fall. The first tour was in early 1983 and we knew record producer Tom Stern was a big fan of Dad’s banjo picking. He was recording some cuts for a project he was doing called The Usual Suspects on Kaleidoscope Records. We got in touch with Tom and recorded one song for his project, “Lonesome Hearted Blues.” It went so well that we approached Tom about doing more recordings when we came back in the fall. That started two full projects with us recording for two years during our California tours. One was Family and Friends released in 1988 and the other was the Reno Family.”
Remembering the Family and Friends project, Ronnie said, “Tony Rice was living in California at the time and playing with David Grisman. So, he was a good friend of Dad and myself and with Tom Stern. Tony played on five or six cuts on that album. Byron Berline was in California too, so we flew him up from Los Angeles. He was a great fiddle player and he knew us very well. So, it made sense for us to use Byron. David Nelson knew Dad from working on The Good Old Boys album that was produced by Jerry Garcia. That was with Dad and Chubby Wise, David Nelson and Frank Wakefield. That was our connection with David Nelson and David was a friend of Tom Stern’s also. We only did one song with David. One other gentleman, David Shapiro, also played guitar on several songs. But, the whole point of the Family and Friends album was to bring in Tony, Byron, and David Nelson to play with us.”
Amongst the recordings that were being tracked for the Family and Friends record, the band also recorded many other songs. These are what now comprise the new record. Ronnie said, “Tom Stern and I both had copies of the master tapes and Tom passed away suddenly quite a few years ago and his masters were lost. So, I was the only one that had a copy of them. Tom and I were going to do a tribute to Dad in 1990 and use these tracks, but we didn’t get to it. So, now I’ve decided to release this under the Reno Family the way it was originally recorded. The only way that I found my copy of the master tapes was that when COVID hit you couldn’t go nowhere and couldn’t do anything. I wanted to take the time to get my publishing company and production company in order to where my family would understand where all of my stuff is. I had things in the barn and scattered here and there. While organizing all of the photos, papers, video and audio in 202o, I stumbled across these tapes. My passion is my video library and I’d like to leave things in the form that you could easily showcase any artist. My video library goes back to 1963 with Dad and Red. That is what I was trying to put together and fortunately for me, I found these old master tapes of the California recordings. So, we are going to put it out for future generations. What motivates me to do this is not only leaving something for Dad’s legacy, but my brothers and I and the whole family. From the past comes the future.”
The last tour that the Reno Family played was a six-day multiple city tour in Alaska opening for the rock band Three Dog Night. Shortly after returning from that trip, Don was working in the garden at his home in Lynchburg, Virginia and started to feel dizzy. He went to the hospital and they discovered that he had clogged arteries in his neck. He underwent surgery for the clogged arteries at the University of Virginia Medical Center and multiple complications arose. Don spent about four months in the hospital before passing on October 16th in 1984.
Although Ronnie Reno retired from touring in 2019, he is still active with his company Man-Do-Lin Productions producing and archiving bluegrass audio and video. He maintains a library of over 300 television shows recorded as Reno’s Old-Time Music, a TV show that aired weekly for nearly 25 years on RFD-TV.
Brother Dale, in addition to performing with The Reno Brothers, has also continued to play music in a variety different settings, including performing with Lonesome Standard Time, Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, actor and country singer Tom Wopat, and Grass to the Bone. Additionally, Dale played mandolin and guitar with the bluegrass-rock fusion band Hayseed Dixie. In recent years, Dale has teamed with his brother Don Wayne and Mitch Harrell, forming a new version of Reno and Harrell, Sons of the Legends.
Don Wayne Reno, who started performing with his father at the age of 15, started and ran the Reno Revival Banjo Camp in 1991 teaching Reno style banjo. He also performed with Hayseed Dixie for over 10 years and currently performs with The Farm Hands (featured in Bluegrass Unlimited, March 2023).The name Reno has been a big part of bluegrass music since Don Reno first stepped on stage alongside Bill Monroe in 1948. With the release of this “new” old recording, fans of the Reno family will not only have the opportunity to hear Don’s banjo playing and singing, but they have the opportunity to hear him do it with his boys—every one of them true masters of bluegrass.
