In an off-mic exchange that didn’t make it into Episode 330 of The String, Mason Via told me a story that says a lot about his trajectory as an artist. In 2019, when he was about 21 years old, Mason’s rather new string band Hot Trail Mix won the band contest at Virginia’s Floydfest, the eclectic roots and jam gathering that took place in those days just over the state line from where he was living in North Carolina. The prize included playing the main stage the following year. By the time Floydfest 2021 came around after the pandemic, Mason Via was in a new band, one you might have heard of called Old Crow Medicine Show. So he played the main stage all right, in a headliner slot for more than 10,000 people.
Mason Via, now 28, stepped out on his own a year or two ago, so he’s not playing to Old Crow sized crowds these days, but anything’s possible for this talented triple-threat. He’s based in Nashville now. He’s got a manager, booking agents, and a record label (Mountain Fever of Willis, VA). He’s been talked about in roots music industry circles for years, and he was able to wrangle stars like Rhonda Vincent and Junior Sisk to sing with him on his new disc.
In conversation, he exhibits a mix of rural charm and latent star power. He sings high and clear, more Vince Gill than Bill Monroe, but after trying on several musical sounds, the country-inflected bluegrass that he embraces on his 2025 self-titled album marks a breakout. He calls it a turning point, and it feels that way to me as well. The songwriting is the best he’s offered, and the picking, captured by producer Aaron Ramsey, is top tier. The young man whose surname means “by way of” is on his way for sure.
We start at the beginning, with Mason’s father David Via, who’s not only a popular and accomplished musician and songwriter but a center of gravity for the mid Appalachian roots music social community. “Dad would have these picking parties when I was a little kid,” Via says. “It would be all these local guys that have kind of went on to do some crazy, cool stuff in the bluegrass world, Dan Tyminski, Ronnie Bowman, Junior Sisk, Alan Bibey, and the list goes on. There's a lot of music that has come out of Stokes (NC) and Patrick County (VA) and that area of the world that I grew up in, so a lot to live up to.”
You’ve got to hear the story about the Bluegrass Buddy Belt. I leave that to you.
Despite being surrounded by this talent and years of running around and playing at the region’s many music festivals and old-time gatherings, music was not the obvious career path for Mason. He saw more security studying to be an environmental scientist, knowing that some bluegrass greats like Dr. John Starling of the Seldom Scene had been professional people with musical side hustles that went very well. But after college, jobs in his field were scarce and he had to ride out the pandemic between home and Nashville, and like a lot of folks his age during that time he felt at a “crossroads” with no clear way forward. Then a couple of things happened.
“I got called to audition for American Idol, and I made it to the top 25 there. And then it was, like a week or two after that, I got called by Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show to come audition here in Nashville,” he says. We get into the brief and surreal American Idol experience as well as the good times with Old Crow. Even more than the touring, Via left his mark by co-writing most of the band’s Grammy-nominated Jubilee! album with Secor, and you’ll hear in this hour Mason’s lead vocal on the song “Daughter Of The Highlands.”
But the main event right now is Mason’s new self-titled album. Mason and Aaron Ramsey, mandolin player for Mountain Heart turned producer, sifted as many as 100 songs into a collection of ten that showcases the mix of moods and styles one craves from a progressive bluegrass album, not to mention serious picking from the likes of Jim Van Cleve (fiddle), Jason Davis (banjo), and Kyser George (guitar). “Melt In The Sun” is a dangerously catchy and tuneful tale of woe from a guy full of regrets. There’s more running from trouble at an even faster tempo in the bluegrass blazer “There Goes Another One.” “Oh Lordy Me,” a late-breaking addition to the project, brings in the voices of Ronnie Bowman and Junior Sisk on a joyful romp. Rhonda Vincent adds extra loveliness to the album’s soothing closer “Mountain Lullaby.”
As Sierra Hull and Billy Strings and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes have done before him, finding their sonic hearts and their way of processing the enormous inheritance of their genre, Mason Via’s locking into something, call it bluegrass or not. “The reason I play this style of music is based around the community that I grew up in and my surroundings,” he says. “There's certain kinds of functionalities, or the way that the pieces fit together with the bluegrass instruments, that I can kind of hear in my head. So I’m just keeping going with it for as long as I can, just because I think it feels like home.”
