Yesterday And Tomorrow
This new project is a continuation of the Tribute Band created in 2005 by Bill Yates, former Gentlemen bass player. The band at that time consisted of Yates, Mike Phipps, Darren Beachley and David Propst. This group produced an album in 2006 and toured around the mid-Atlantic area until Yates’s passing in 2015.
Now this new incarnation of the band has original members Mike Phipps (guitar, vocals), Darren Beachley (resonator guitar, vocals), David Propst (mandolin, vocals), joined by Lynwood Lunsford (banjo, vocals) and Kyle Windbeck (bass).
The key to the band is Phipps’s uncanny resemblance to the vocals of the Gentlemen’s lead singer Charlie Waller, and, as a whole, the group recreates many of the Gentlemen’s well-known recordings. On this project the selections include songs familiar to Gentlemen fans, such as “A Fool Such As I,” “How Great Thou Art,” “Miner’s Child,” “Teach Your Children,” “Mountains and Memories,” “Sea of Heartbreak” and “God’s Coloring Book.” Other cuts include instrumentals “(Ghost) Riders In The Sky” and “The Eddie Swing,” along with “One Tin Soldier,” “Misty Mountain Rain” and “The Legend of the Dogwood Tree.”
Phipps’s Waller-sounding vocals are fully backed by the rest of the group both vocally and instrumentally, making this new project a wonderful tribute to one of bluegrass music’s greatest bands.
